The depths reached up, tugged at him.
And then the tree shifted, rolling back on him into the grasp of the river. Branches caught him, netted him, dragged him down. Water crested over him, the current twisting him into the wreckage of branch and rock.
Imprisoned, he bucked and thrashed, but the tree had him by his shirt and pants.
He’d lost the surface.
His air began to hemorrhage. His chest turned to fire.
No—not like this. He’d made promises, and more—
He wanted to live. Really wanted to live, instead of this half-hearted, gray life—
A hand grabbed his shirt, fisted the fabric, and yanked.
Not enough oomph to pull him up, but it gave him a start. He followed the tug, wrestling past the gnarled branches.
He broke the surface, gasping hard.
Liza was hunched over on the tree, her legs hooked around a branch, reeling him in.
Saving his life.
He draped himself over the trunk, breathing hard.
She knelt next to him, shaking. “I saw you go under—I thought—” She wrapped her hands around his body, holding on, leaning into him. “I thought you were going to drown.”
Everything hurt, and he coughed, clearing water from his lungs, his nose.
“Me too.” He looked up.
Her eyes were so wide, so luminous, he thought he might lose his breath again. “Thank you for grabbing me.”
She backed away and sat in the middle of the tree, curled in a ball, bedraggled and shivering, her eyes huge and dark.
Conner pulled himself the rest of the way onto the tree. “Are you okay? I thought you were caught—”
“I got free when the tree landed.”
He felt their life raft shift beneath him. “Oh no.”
“It’s moving,” Liza said, gripping the branches. “We have to get off or we’re going over the falls.”
Ten yards away the world dropped off into a darkened horizon. Spray hazed the air.
“We’re not getting off here,” he said. “The rocks are buried, and the branches lodged against them are breaking.” He climbed up to her, caught her cold, trembling hands. “We’re going over, Liza.”
She shook her head, eyes still wide, her gaze in his. “I can’t—we—”
“Shh. We can. The current will bring us to the edge and pull the tree over. When it does, we’ll jump away from the tree and the falls. As far out as we can. And I’ve got you. I’m not letting go—”
“But you did before—”
“I swear I won’t let you go!” He took her hand, clasped it between his. Cold and wet, she was trembling, and he longed to pull her into his arms. “I promise.”
Her jaw tightened and for a second she didn’t move.
Then the tree jerked, and she fell against him, her arms around his waist.
“Sorry.” She leaned back.
Really?
He reached down to lace her fingers between his. Strong, long, beautiful fingers, used to shaping pottery bowls and pitchers. She tightened her grip, reinforcing it with a hold on his forearm.
He found his feet, leveraging himself on a branch.
“Don’t let go!” she said over the roar.
Never. “Make sure your feet are clear of any branches!”
The tree jostled against boulders but otherwise ran a clear path, rocketing toward the edge of the falls, the mist rising over them, sprinkling their skin.
“Ready?”
She might have nodded, he didn’t know, but she edged up behind him.
Then the front of the tree shot out over the lip of the falls.
Seconds later, the back end rose with the force of the leverage.
“Jump!”
With everything inside him, he launched himself into space, his hand a death grip in hers, willing them to float, to fly, to soar over the churning cauldron below the falls.
He didn’t know how far down it might be, hadn’t gotten a good look as the tree climbed, but time lengthened as his feet kicked the air, his arm windmilling to keep them upright.
Liza’s scream rent the air.
He splashed down hard, sinking fast, this time without the lethal weight of his backpack to derail him and drag them to their deaths.
Only as he began to kick did he realize that she hadn’t let go.
And neither had he. He pulled her up with him, fighting the tempest wanting to drag them back under.
His head broke the surface. He yanked her up a second before the current grabbed them. “Swim!”
He used the combat stroke he’d learned in the military to propel them away from the falls. She kicked valiantly beside him.
He swam them towards shore and parked them in an eddy where his feet could touch. Here, on the far side of the falls, the water calmed, smoothed out in a pool before gathering strength to surge to the next great ledge.
Still in the water, he pulled her against himself, releasing her hand, his arm around her waist, his breaths tumbling over each other.
The moonlight fell against her whitened face, glistening in her hair.
“Are you okay?”
She gave a watery, flimsy smile. A nod.
And he couldn’t stop his gaze from tracing over her beautiful face, skimming to her lips.
Couldn’t ignore the fact that she was in his arms, hers around his neck, her body pressed against his, clinging to him.
Wow, he’d missed her.
And suddenly, he wasn’t cold at all.
A great big piece of him just wanted to lean in, kiss her. Just gulp her whole with a crazy, hot, palpable joy.
He could nearly taste her with the yearning for it.
Because, yeah, he still loved her, too.
And that thought came hot, fast. Brilliant into his head. Loved?
Okay, yes. If love was not being able to forget her, to have the almost insatiable desire to talk to her, the deep need to hear her voice, to see her smile.
If that was love, then he’d probably loved her from the moment he’d found her on the beach in Deep Haven and she’d offered him hope. Breakfast.
The kind of friendship that he should have realized was more, much more.
When this gig is over, you’re going to walk out of my life…
Oh no he wasn’t.
He wrangled his voice free. “Ready to get out of this river?”
Her mouth curved then into a delicious smile. “I dunno. Is there a grizzly waiting to eat us?”
“Oh, that?”
She laughed.
And then, he couldn’t take it. The sound of her laughter was like water to his parched heart.
Wow, he’d missed her.
Almost without thinking, he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers.
He meant for it to be quick, something akin to relief or gratefulness. Something that didn’t commit either of them to anything but simply relished the fact they’d survived.
But he’d never been able to keep his heart from racing out ahead when it came to Liza. One look, one touch, and he found himself all in, even if his common sense told him otherwise.
And he was fresh out of common sense.
His kiss turned in one rich, blinding second from short and sweet to something primal and needy, something wrought from the fact that he’d had her in his arms, lost her, and found her again. He didn’t want to think about anything beyond right now and never letting her go.
So his kiss went deep, diving in to really taste her.
And, hallelujah, she was kissing him back. Not sweetly, not quietly, not tentatively, but her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him, or maybe just holding on—but thank you, river!—reaching for all he could give her.
In fact, he couldn’t remember—ever—being kissed like this, by her, by anyone. Not quite so thoroughly, without reserve, as if she wanted to inhale him, gulp in all of him.
He’d gotten a taste of the passion behind her reserve back in Sedona
during their first kiss. But he’d forgotten how it could reach in and ignite his own.
Then, before the river could steal her away, he reached down and wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her there.
His arms lifted her, closing around her back, his legs planting, just a little offset, and he twined his fingers into her floating, long silky hair, letting himself explore, taste, relish.
She tasted of fear, relief, the delicious friendship they’d shared, and more.
Healing, and even the hope for tomorrow. He thought his heart just might explode.
Then all at once she jerked back.
What—? “Liza?”
She met his eyes. “Oh no.”
“Huh?”
“No, no...oh no.” She unlocked her legs, pressed away from his shoulders.
As she floated back, a tiny fist formed in his gut.
“What’s oh no?” he said stupidly, hating his own words. Because yeah, he knew.
But please, he didn’t want her to say it...
“I’m such an idiot. I did it again—I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want this—”
“Liza, I kissed you first. Trust me, I wanted to.”
She shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”
What—?
He wanted to reach for her again, but she treaded water just out of his reach.
“Listen. We’re alive, right? It’s just adrenaline.” She turned and worked her way toward the dark folds of shore. “We’re cold and tired and shaky.”
He could admit to shaky, but it had nothing to do with being cold and tired.
“Liza, I—”
“It’s okay, Conner.” She pulled herself up onto a boulder, her arms around herself, shivering. “Like I said. When this gig is over, you’re going to walk away, and I’m going to let you. But...” She smiled then. “I do thank you for keeping your promise to hold on.”
His question must have shown on his expression.
“Although I think my fingers might be broken.”
He came to sit beside her on the boulder, tamping down the urge to pull her close, to keep her from shivering.
And wished he’d made that promise long ago.
Chapter 11
They’d become the ones needing rescue.
Liza stood at the edge of the river, water running in rivulets down her back as she shivered from her core. A nip of chill laced the night air, raising gooseflesh on her skin.
Overhead the moonlight sparkled against the blackened river, the boulders along the shoreline glinting like steel. Behind her, the wind twined through the forest, hushing, gathering the quiet darkness into dangerous, inky pools where a grizzly—or any other predator—might scent her fear.
Didn’t animals prey on the fearful, the weak?
She had half a mind to crouch right here, on shore, and not move.
Or maybe cry.
Conner came up beside her, however, after climbing out of the river and shaking himself off like a dog. He pushed his hair back from his face, his T-shirt plastered to his frame.
A very muscular, solid, safe frame, one that she’d practically had to peel herself away from.
Oh, she was definitely playing with fire now.
“We can’t hike out. We’ll need to find a place to hunker down.” Conner held out his hand.
Liza took it without a pause. Never mind about the kiss, the fact that she’d practically attacked him. Tomorrow, in the light of day, she’d somehow gather up her common sense. Tonight her frayed edges made her cling to him, follow him along the shore.
He led her across rocks then deeper into the forest, as if he knew where he might be going. But with their equipment at the bottom of the river, well—
So much for keeping promises to Shep.
“Do you think the bear will find us?”
“I don’t think so,” Conner said, not looking at her.
She’d hoped for something more reassuring.
“If it’s tracking us, it would have lost our scent when we went in the river,” he added, as if reading her mind.
He stopped, let go of her hand and parked her at the edge of a small clearing. The starlight reflected off the river, adding texture and faint illumination to the night. From what she could see, he’d found them a small alcove in the forest, surrounded by aspen and scraggly pines.
Walking into the middle of the clearing, about fifteen feet of inlet space, he seemed satisfied and began to clear away the earth. He kicked away duff with his boot, scattering twigs and rocks before he bent to root out the spot with his hands.
“What are you doing?”
“We can’t bushwhack out of here in the dark—and we’re still pretty shaken up. Best to make camp and figure out what to do in the morning. I know it was hot out today, but the mountains cool down quickly at night, and I don’t want us to get hypothermia.”
He scraped out a small rectangle and rolled stones in two lines, bracketing the patch of earth.
“Are you making a fire?”
He was squatting, putting the final stone into place, adding it to one end. “Yep.”
With what? Except, yes, he’d been Special Forces—a Green Beret. Of course he knew how to build a fire with his bare hands.
What couldn’t the man do? He’d saved her from a bear, rescued her from a waterfall...
He could also probably make her forget her promise not to fall for him.
She could still feel his kiss on her mouth, the overwhelming urge to cling to him. In one life-altering moment, he could stop the world, turn her to fire, and make her believe that everything would work out.
They would survive. And find Esther.
She didn’t have a prayer of emerging from this with her heart intact.
“What can I do?”
“How about find some kindling? Small twigs, pine cones, and needles. You might find some old wood—anything dry, although right now the entire forest is flammable, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”
He had his knife out—she hadn’t even noticed that he still wore it on his belt—and was using it to cut birch peels from a nearby tree.
She stepped into the forested area and hit her knees, feeling the forest floor for anything on his list. Her hands closed around a nest of pine cones, and she gathered them into her shirt.
He’d created a small pile of kindling and she dumped her cones next to them, then went in search of twigs.
“Look for squaw wood—the branches on the bottom of coniferous trees. They’re usually dead, and you can break them off.”
She followed his suggestion, found a shaggy pine, and easily broke off an armful of branches.
When she returned, he was shaving birch fiber from a peeled section of bark. Then he took out a metal bar.
She crouched next to him. “What’s that?”
“Fire steel. It’s part of my knife sheath—a survival kit from the military.” He scoured his knife down the edge of the steel, and sparks shot into the birch shavings. In a second, a tiny flame flickered. He set the shavings in the middle of the fire pit and added a handful of peels.
The fire caught, consuming the birch.
“Pine cones?”
She scraped up her pile and dropped them in. They sparked, flamed.
“Pine cones are fantastic fuels,” he said, the light flickering across the planes of his face. His hair had dried to a mop of tangles, and his late-afternoon grizzle turned him rough-edged and dangerous. At least to the predators who might want to hurt them. As Liza handed him her offering of sticks, their hands touched, and a wave of emotion swept over her—part gratitude, part relief.
Way too much longing.
“I’ll get some bigger branches.” With the fire adding illumination to the night, she could pick her way into the folds of the forest, find some dead branches, maybe some downed trees.
“Stay close.”
His warning tone raised a shiver. She glanced at him, and he lifted a shoulder, offered a hint of a smile. “I j
ust don’t want to lose you.”
Huh.
She headed into the woods, the forest undulating under the flickering light. Tripping over a log, she followed it with her hands, found bigger branches, which she broke off and hauled back to the camp.
He had built a firebreak with rocks on one side of the fire. On top of the fire, he’d created a pyramid of sticks and logs, building it up with crisscrossing sections.
He took the branches from her and began to break them with his feet.
“You’re a regular MacGyver,” she said.
“Six years in Special Forces.”
He brought the wood over, finished making the pyramid. “Come closer—we need to get you dried off and raise your core temperature.”
Oh, no problem there. But as she crouched near the fire gnawing away at the wood, the heat poured into her hands, her chest. She was colder than she’d thought.
“I’m going to build us a shelter,” he said after a moment.
“I can help.”
He didn’t argue with her, just stood up and motioned to a stand of trees. “We’ll use these as our shelter braces. If you can find a suitable ridgepole or cross section to brace the logs, I’ll find some spruce roots to lash it to the trees. Then we’ll lean trees and brush against it to make a roof thatch. That’ll at least give us some shelter.”
Nope, Daniel Boone had nothing on Conner Young.
Liza measured out the length between the stand of trees and cast about for something that might serve as a ridgepole—a downed tree, a long branch. Meanwhile, Conner hiked into the woods. She could hear him breaking branches, snapping roots.
Twenty feet from the edge of the forest, she found a poplar as big around as her arm, the casualty of a downed pine. Kicking it, she freed it from the earth and hauled it back to the camp.
Conner held a coil of roots in his grip. “Nice ridgepole.”
A crazy pride bloomed inside her.
She held the branch up to the tree about waist high as he looped a root around one side, securing it, then moved over to the other.
“I know you’re getting tired, but if we can find some more branches, we can cut off the boughs and make a quick shelter. I think we’ll feel safer inside a lean-to.”
Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) Page 14