by Ruthie Knox
“What happens now?” she asked.
“We go back where we belong.”
“That seems…” She didn’t know what word she was searching for. Something like impossible, or irresponsible. Neither of those things.
She’d spent two years planning, and she’d never planned for this. Rosemary didn’t know what it meant. Either her adventure was over when it had barely begun, or this was merely the first dramatic setback in a longer tale, like the moment in a Nile adventure when they lost the boat, found themselves stranded on a spit of sand.
It was times like this that people discovered what they were made of.
You fucked a stranger.
Unhelpful.
“Where’s the rest of my team?”
“They flew out already.”
“To Kathmandu?”
“Yeah.”
Probably there would be a message on her dead phone’s voicemail from Indira. Her laptop would hold the first of many emails she and Indira would exchange to put the pieces back together.
Rosemary found she didn’t want to look. Not yet.
“Isn’t there more we could do? To help?”
He shook his head.
She knew he had to be right. The dire medical cases would have already been evacuated, and as for assisting in the rescue efforts, digging for survivors—there were only two ways to get to Everest Base Camp. No one would put her on a helicopter, not given what she’d just been through. She had no useful skills, even if she could make the eight-day trek back to Base Camp, there wouldn’t be anything for her to do by the time she got there.
She looked at her companion. His shoulders were broad, the muscles of his upper arms well developed, powerful. But the soft bed yielded to his weight in a way that made her aware of his resignation, an ache in his heart that matched the pain she couldn’t quite catch up to.
He’d survived, too. Neither of them had begun to figure out a way to put it in any kind of frame or context that might lighten it, make it more bearable.
She didn’t know how to go home.
She didn’t even know, really, what home meant to her.
Beatrice.
“I killed my mobile,” she said. “When I got out of bed.”
“That sucks.”
She let out a breath. She was meant to climb Everest, and after Everest Denali, then Elbrus…“It all seems rather pointless at the moment.”
His hand fell to her shoulder and squeezed. “I’ve got a phone you can borrow, if that helps.”
“I’d like that, thank you. I should speak with my daughter.”
“You’ve got kids?”
“Just the one. She’s in New York.”
“Oh, yeah? Where at? I live in Elmhurst.”
Rosemary must have looked as perplexed as she felt, because he clarified, “Queens. It’s in New York.”
“Oh. Yes. She’s a student. A film student. In Manhattan.”
“What’s her name?”
“Beatrice.”
He nodded.
They kept nodding at each other. Rosemary began to feel the prickling unease of sitting naked in a sheet next to the stranger she’d shagged, ignorant of his name, blandly agreeing with everything he said, relying upon him for the mobile she’d need to reach her daughter.
“How did you find me?” she asked. “My room, I mean.”
“I was keeping tabs after we landed. I figured I should check up on you.”
“They gave you my room number?”
He shrugged.
“I’m not sure what that means,” she pressed.
“I just asked at the desk. They don’t have much security.”
She must have seemed very much in need of caretaking, to inspire him to take such measures to check up on her. Rosemary didn’t like to think of that. Didn’t want to be so needy that she’d inspired this man to bend the rules.
Though he may not be the sort of man who felt bound by rules. She didn’t know him. He could be a different sort—the sort who had one-night stands all the time.
On the other hand, he was an ice doctor, and they were generally understood to be careful. And he’d made such a generous speech about the reason they’d done what they’d done, as though he’d required such an explanation to put his own mind at ease.
Her thoughts spun around in lazy circles, and she blinked, unsure what was required to bring herself to heel.
She’d lost the boat, cast up on the spit of sand, with river monsters crawling toward her. She was meant to light a fire, or pick up a stick and start beating them off.
She thought of her daughter. Her bright eyes. Her soft, round face.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You want to get something to eat? After you talk to your kid, I mean?”
His eyes were kind. She wanted to be able to tell him that she could sail her ship quite capably without assistance from here, thank you. That she would procure her own breakfast after a proper bath to rinse the evidence of their poor decision-making off her—
Oh. Bloody hell.
Bloody cunt-fucking buggering hell.
“Whoa. What just happened?”
“Did you use a condom?”
The words came out sharply pointed, in the voice Beatrice had once called Mum’s bossy voice, the voice she used for intransigent workmen and obstructive members of the local council.
“What?”
“Last night. Did you use a condom? Or did you just think you could come over here and stick your willy wherever you wanted, with no consequence?”
“Stick my…no. No, I came over with food. I didn’t plan—”
“Didn’t you?” She was standing now, clutching the sheet between her breasts. “Because that’s what you would say, isn’t it? Regardless of what you’d planned? You followed me here, accessed private information about my location, barged into my room when I was vulnerable, and…and—”
“And had consensual sex with you.” His voice was mild, but a muscle jumped in his square jawline, and his eyes had fire in them when he repeated himself. “And had consensual sex with you. Right, princess?”
“My name is Rosemary,” she snapped. “Not that it matters to the likes of you.”
He crossed his arms. Tilted his head, eyes narrowed. “Oh, it matters.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“It might turn out to be important down the road,” he said. “Given all the possibilities we both failed to prevent last night.”
“Have you given me a disease?” Some of the starch had gone from her voice.
“Have you given me one?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“So there’s only the one possibility we’ve failed to prevent.”
“Mmm,” he said.
And then, after a beat, “I’m Kal, by the way.”
“I know who you are.”
“Yeah?”
“Calvin Beckett,” Rosemary bluffed. He’d stolen the upper hand with his calmness, with his knowledge of things she didn’t know about, such as what one did next, and how one was to feel. “You’re the son of Yangchen and Merlin Beckett.”
“It’s Kal with a ‘k,’ ” he clarified. “Short for Kalden with a ‘d,’ not Calvin with a ‘v.’ But it sounds like you’ve studied up on the rest of my pedigree, which could come in handy when you have to do the baby’s family tree.”
“There won’t be a baby.”
Though she couldn’t say it without thinking of one, tiny hands and feet, too much skin, perplexed wrinkles on its miniature forehead. For heaven’s sake. The closer she came to the end of her fertility, the more doggedly her mind insisted on reminding her of the lure of precious, small things.
“You can say that for certain?”
“Well, there certainly shouldn’t be. We’ve only”—she waved at the bed—“the once, after all, and I’m thirty-nine, which isn’t young, and I’m not about to tell you the
ins and outs of my cycle but suffice it to say that it’s highly unlikely I’ve ovulated in the past year, much less—”
“Twice,” he interrupted.
“Twice what?”
“You don’t remember? You woke me up. You were on top, sitting up. You said—”
“Please, shut up.” She did remember, now, with an awful tingling thump between her legs, and radio static in her head, which had officially run out of sensible thoughts.
Rosemary had no idea what to say to this man, this Kal-with-a-K, to get him to go away, and no desire to be alone with herself after he’d gone.
Thankfully, he did shut up.
He flopped back onto the bed, closed his eyes, and shut up for so long that she found room to pace to the window and back. Ten steps each way.
She did it eight times, counting, and began to feel calm.
His stomach was flat, dark hair disappearing into his jeans. Kalden Beckett. A rather interesting man.
It was to be hoped not the father of her baby. Surely there wouldn’t, couldn’t, be a baby, when she’d been working so hard to reach peak fitness that her period had ghosted away to nothing for months now, her ovaries dark and quiet.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
London was the only reasonable answer. Indira and the rest would have gone to London. There would be interviews to give, plans to make. She would need to speak with each member of the team to see how they were doing, whether they remained game for the rest of the summits, when they could leave for Denali, if they wanted to move the timetable up or let everyone rest first.
Just thinking about it made her tired.
“I’d like to see my daughter,” she said.
She’d survived an avalanche on Mount Everest. Now she needed to lay eyes on Beatrice, if only briefly, before she resumed beating back beasts on a sand spit and transforming herself into the woman she’d always wanted to be.
“So, New York?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too.”
“Yes. You said.”
He opened his eyes. Found hers. Smiled. “Want to be my travel buddy?”
Chapter 5
Kal raked his nails through his short hair and braced his hands on the doorframe, leaning into his room.
He closed his eyes. Opened them again.
Let out a sigh.
He’d fucked up. Royally. And he couldn’t even remember doing it.
Last night, he’d felt pretty normal when he left the room with the tray of food. Pumped up on adrenaline, a little off his skis, but thinking clearly enough. The fact that he’d left his key in the lock, an open invitation to anyone who wanted to stroll in and steal all his stuff, then waltzed himself into a room with a recently naked princess, fed her, boned her without a condom, and slept for seventeen hours, interrupting his slumber only to bone her some more?
Probably this was karmic retribution for his misdeeds. Not that he believed in karma—his mom’s efforts to raise him as a Buddhist hadn’t amounted to much—but he wouldn’t go so far as to say he didn’t believe in it.
He was agnostic on the question of karma.
Also, he was an asshole.
He let himself into the room, checked by the bed to confirm that his phone was gone, yep, checked the closet to confirm that his backpack with all his climbing gear had been spirited away—there went, what, five thousand dollars on a down suit, sleeping bag, boots, regulator, oxygen mask?—checked by the sink to confirm his toiletries were gone, but no, apparently the thief hadn’t seen much use in a ratty toothbrush and a travel-sized bottle of Pert Plus, so that was a win.
Kal blew out another sigh, opened the closet, and covered one eye, squinting with the other. If the room safe was empty, he didn’t really want to know. If he’d left it wide open like the door, shoved his passport and travel documents into it with his money clip and then forgot to close it, his mom would have a fucking kitten when she found out—
No. The safe was there, sealed up tight.
Maybe he’d done something right in a previous lifetime after all. He spun the dial, stroked the blue cover of his U.S. Passport in glorious reunion, lifted it up to see what was under it, and—
Shit.
No money clip, and as soon as he beheld the blank space where it was supposed to be, fat with Nepalese cash and a Chase Platinum credit card, he remembered taking the money clip out of the safe to pay for the food when they sent it up.
He’d left it in the room.
So basically, he was boned.
He walked back to the sink and gathered up his toiletries in one hand. He had a bottle of shampoo, a toothbrush, and a passport. He had a pair of jeans, Adidas sandals, a T-shirt, and a nubbly Patagonia fleece jacket with a cigarette hole burned into one wrist.
Not much. But more than most people had in Nepal, and more than enough to get him back to New York with a little help.
He left the room door open behind him.
When he knocked at Rosemary’s room, she called, “Who is it?”
“It’s Kal.”
She opened the door. “You didn’t have to bring me your mobile. I’d have been happy to wait until you were showered and—”
“Yeah, so, bad news about the phone.” He spread his hands. “I got robbed.”
“Pardon?”
“It seems I left my keys in the door last night. Someone waltzed in, stole all my stuff, waltzed back out.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
He checked her face, amused despite himself. Getting robbed sucked, but hearing Princess Rosemary tell him it was unfortunate with her prim mouth frowning and her eyes liquid with concern almost made it worthwhile.
Was it normal that he found her most endearing when she frowned at him? Or, for that matter, that her lecture about condom usage had made him semi-hard?
He blamed Helen Mirren. Ever since he’d stumbled on that old photo shoot of her naked in the bathtub…
“Have you contacted the police?”
Kal rounded up his straying brain cells. “I could, but I don’t think I’m going to. I figure whoever’s got my stuff probably needs it more than I do.”
“That’s a generous perspective.”
She wouldn’t think it was so generous if he told her he never planned to need his alpine boots again, much less the suit, the regulator, the mask. He was going home, and he didn’t expect to visit Base Camp ever again. He’d get back to helping run the restaurant and the grocery store, driving old ladies around the city, dropping his kid sister, Patricia, off at school, making sure Sangmu stayed on top of her college applications. There was plenty to do in New York, a hundred ways he could make himself useful.
Next season, some other Sherpa would wear Kal’s stuff on the mountain, somebody who would take the money he earned as a guide home to feed his kids.
Kal hoped all that fancy baffle technology and 800-fill goose down kept the guy warm.
“You’ll need a police report when you contact your embassy,” she said. “Or a report of some kind, I imagine.”
“I’ve still got my passport. I stashed it in the safe. Usually I put my money and credit card in there, too, and my phone, but last night I guess I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.”
Rosemary’s hand crept to her earlobe. “You should at least mention it at the front desk,” she said after a beat. “They’ll want to know they have a security problem.”
“Will do. And I’ll have to tell them about it anyway when I explain how I’ve run into a problem paying for my room.”
“Ah.”
“Yep.”
“Would you like to come in for a moment?”
“I’m good.” He was enjoying the way she looked framed in the doorway, one hand on her hip, her hair falling in blond waves over her shoulders, fingers still fussing with her earlobe. Off her pins. There was unexpected pleasure in rattling this woman’s composure to see what would knock loose. “Hey, Rosemary?” He said her name slow, savoring it, and took a step c
loser until he was crowding her personal space. She was only an inch or two shorter than him. She looked taller when she lifted her chin like that. Heat radiated off her, and Kal wondered what he was doing and why it felt so good.
“Yes?”
Her voice was the opposite of breathless, because she was like that: steely and brazen in the face of a challenge. She’d worn that same steely look when she rushed headlong out of her tent in the middle of the night at the cracking sound of the avalanche and he’d sent her right back in.
Kal had always had a weak spot for people who rose to the occasion.
He shifted until his cheek rubbed against hers. She held still, trembling. He kissed a spot beside her ear and whispered, “Any chance you’d like to spot me a few bucks for a decent cup of coffee?”
—
Rosemary sipped cinnamon-flavored iced latte through a fat green straw. She lifted the straw up, stabbed it back through the whipped cream topping, and sucked hard.
Heavenly.
Through the window beside their table, she watched a chain of porters guiding laden yaks down a narrow lane. The sun was out over the Himalayas, the sky a clear blue, the temperature about fifty degrees, though it felt warmer in the beam of sunlight that cut through the glass.
She remembered this view from her arrival in March. How close Everest had felt, how excited she’d been.
Now it seemed impossibly distant. Impossibly cold and terrible.
The village of Lukla was a blip on the map, a collection of dirt lanes crowded with blue-roofed stone lodges and restaurants, porters and yaks, a stream of Everest trekkers disgorged from the airport at regular intervals. The guidebooks recommended passing right on through in favor of more enticing destinations ahead.
The last of the yaks disappeared around a bend, the line of loaded animals heading toward the trail to the next village and on into the Khumbu. Everything in the region had to be carried in by human or beast. There were no roads. Lukla’s airport was the only one, its airstrip so short and the weather at this altitude so dicey that it held the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous in the world.
In recent memory, she’d found that information exciting.
But there were bodies on the slopes of the mountain—bodies that would have to be dug out of the snow, encased in plastic, carried down to Lukla on the backs of yaks.