Kiss Me, Chloe

by George, Linda

  “Kiss me, Kyle.”

  “For real?”

  Her answer was to press her lips against his. And this time, she didn’t pull away. When they parted, Kyle’s grin warmed her heart.

  “Pete wouldn’t want us to be late,” she reminded him.

  “I don’t know. Being stranded up here alone with you wouldn’t be half bad. It does get pretty cold at night, though. We’d have to huddle together real close to stay warm.”

  “I think we’d better get back to the jeep.” She worked her way back that direction, holding Kyle’s hand, feeling no guilt whatsoever for that simple gesture, even when Greg stared, his displeasure radiating from an angry scowl.

  She took another half dozen pictures on the way back while the others gathered. Pete counted to make sure everyone was present.

  “One missing. Can anyone tell me who?”

  Greg leaned forward. “The girl who was sitting in front of me isn’t here.”

  “That’s Keri,” another teenage girl said. “She went behind that mine shack over there.” She shrugged apologetically.

  He nodded. “The falls tend to do that sometimes. How long has she been gone?”

  “Longer than I expected. Should I go after her?”

  “We’ll give her a couple more minutes.”

  When Keri didn’t come back after five more minutes, Chloe volunteered to go look for her, wanting to take some close-up shots of the mine shack. Keri’s friend climbed down from the jeep, to go along.

  “I’ll go,” Kyle offered.

  Chloe pressed his arm to keep him seated. “A young girl might not appreciate having a man barge in on her. If we can’t find her, we’ll let you know.”

  Chloe hurried to the abandoned building, which had been left to the unrelenting mercy of the elements for many years. It was easy to see inside by peering between the weathered boards, slowly rotting away.

  Wildflowers bloomed in profusion, surrounding the sad old shack. Chloe didn’t see Keri anywhere. They called several times, with no response.

  Chloe raised her voice and tried again. “Keri! It’s time to go.”

  A tiny voice penetrated the silence.

  “Help me!”

  Chapter 11

  A finger of fear sent shivers through Chloe. She listened carefully for the girl to call again. Her voice came from inside the ramshackle building.

  “Keri!” Chloe yelled.

  “Help me! I’m down here!” A spasm of coughing followed the words, barely audible, even in the peaceful quiet of the basin.

  With panic crawling through her, Chloe sent Keri’s friend to get Pete. Then, without waiting, she pushed the door farther open and inched her way through, cringing at the protest of rickety boards beneath her feet.

  Dark and dank inside, the smell of decaying wood and musty earth surrounded Chloe, accelerating her fear.

  “Keri! Keep talking!”

  “I don’t know what to say!” came the reply.

  “Recite something. ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ ‘Three Blind Mice.’ Just keep talking.”

  “That’s dumb.” More coughing.

  “I know, but to get you out, we have to find you first.”

  “Mary…had a little lamb.” Coughing. “Its fleece…” More coughing.

  Chloe followed the voice almost to the center of the structure. Kyle, Greg, and a half dozen others had reached the door. Pete warned them to stay out of the old mining shack, afraid someone else might get hurt. Kyle and Greg ignored him, though, and followed Chloe inside.

  “Keep everyone else out,” Kyle told Pete, who nodded that he would. “Chloe, where are you?”

  “Over here. Keri! Can you still hear me?”

  “I hear you. ‘Everywhere that Mary went …’”

  “Good, Keri! Keep talking!” Chloe, relieved to see them behind her, whispered so Keri couldn’t hear. “She’s somewhere in the middle. Her voice sounds terribly weak.” Where could she be?

  “The lamb was sure to go.” Keri coughed again, longer this time. “It’s hard to breathe with all the dust, and my ankle hurts something awful. Get me out of here!”

  “We’re coming!” Greg yelled. “Keep talking.”

  The rumble of collapsing earth and timbers drove them back. A cloud of dust rose in the center of the shack, about ten feet in front of them.

  “The walls are caving in!” Keri screamed.

  “Be still, Keri, and keep talking. We’re going to get you out.” Chloe tried to keep her voice calm and even.

  Kyle cleared some fallen timbers between them and the place where dust had erupted from the floor.

  “‘Why would Mary—“More coughing. “—have a stupid lamb as a pet?’”

  “I found her!” Kyle motioned for the others. “Be careful. The shaft appears to have been covered, but when she stepped on the boards, they crumbled.”

  “Keri, can you hear us?” Greg called.

  “Yes! I’m buried up to my knees!”

  Kyle nodded. “That means she’s standing on something solid. Maybe the hole isn’t too deep. Keri, is your ankle broken or just sprained?”

  “I can’t tell. It really hurts. Dirt and boards are all around me—and my feet are getting wet.” She sobbed, clearly terrified.

  Pete called to them from the doorway. “Did you find her?”

  “She’s fallen down a well or a shaft of some kind. Do you have any rope in the jeep?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  Greg scanned the ceiling, which was as full of holes as the walls. “What do you think, Stanton? Can we use one of those rafters as a pulley?”

  “I doubt they’re strong enough. We can try it and see, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole roof caved in on us.”

  Pete returned with a fifty-foot coil. “Will this be enough?”

  “Perfect. Thanks.” Greg climbed up on a pile of rubble and tossed the rope over a beam in what was left of the ceiling. “Try it.”

  Kyle pulled tentatively on the rope, adding more and more of his weight until he could almost pick up his feet. “If it’ll hold me, it’ll hold the girl. Let’s get her out of there.” He made a loop with a slip knot in one end of the rope.

  “Keri,” Chloe shouted, “we’re lowering a rope. Loop it around your waist and hold on tight. We’re going to pull you out of there.”

  “What if the walls cave in on me?”

  “They won’t. Just get the loop around your waist, or under your arms, any way you can.”

  “You don’t know that for sure, Chloe,” Kyle said.

  “Yes, but if Keri gets too scared, someone will have to go down after her. Since you and Greg have such wide shoulders, it would have to be me, and I’m not wild about the idea. Let’s do it. If the shaft gives way, pull hard and fast.”

  Kyle looked at Greg. “Are you ready?”

  Greg wound the end of the rope around his hand several times and nodded. The rope snaked into the hole.

  “I’ve got it!” Keri shouted back, coughing. “The walls keep caving in and the dust is awful! I can hardly breathe.”

  “Do you have the loop around your waist?” Chloe knelt at the edge, trying to catch a glimpse of Keri, but there was only blackness.

  “Not yet. It’s hard to— Ow!”

  “What happened?” Chloe winced, a dozen frightening images darting through her mind.

  “My ankle. Okay. The rope is around me, under my arms.”

  “Hang on tight! Don’t let go, even if it hurts, okay?”

  “But my ankle—”

  “You can stand it. Here we go.”

  Greg nodded to Kyle and they pulled together. The beam creaked and groaned but held firm.

  Keri screamed when they lifted her free of the debris around her, but quieted after her legs hung free beneath her.

  “Just a couple more feet …” Chloe peered into the hole, fanning dust from her face, trying to see.

  Keri’s head appeared just below the top of the hole. Kyle knelt and reached
for her. Grabbing Keri’s hands, he pulled her up as far as he could.

  Greg held tension on the rope while Chloe reached for Keri. They pulled her up and out. The beam shifted above their heads, showering them with sawdust, but held.

  Lifting her injured ankle to avoid putting weight on it, Keri hugged Chloe tightly, sobbing with relief.

  “You’re going to be fine.” Laughing away some of the worry and tension, Kyle offered his hand to Greg, who shook it vigorously.

  “We’d better have a look at that ankle.”

  “Let’s do it outside.” Chloe examined the ceiling. “I’d hate for us to become permanent fixtures in this place.”

  “You’re right about that.” Kyle picked Keri up and carried her outside into bright sunshine. Everyone cheered!

  A quick exam showed Keri’s leg, just above the ankle, had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Broken. Her girlfriend had some ibuprofen in her purse. Keri took it gratefully.

  With Keri needing more room on the seat, Greg persuaded the woman who’d sat next to Kyle and Chloe on the way up to the Basin to trade places with him, so Chloe ended up sandwiched between the two of them. Kyle put his arm around her, but Greg didn’t protest, so neither did she.

  Keri settled next to her friend, gratefully accepting one blanket to cushion her ankle, another to cover her, chin to toes, and fell asleep on the way back.

  Chloe peered over her shoulder at the slumbering girl. “How can she sleep with all this bouncing, and in pain from a broken leg?”

  “Exhaustion, fear, and the aftermath of an adrenaline high. You were a real trooper back there, Chloe.” Kyle patted her shoulder affectionately.

  “Me? You two did all the work.”

  “Yeah, I know. But you didn’t cry and wail and get all hysterical like some women might have in the same situation,” Greg said. “You always come through in a crisis.”

  “Keri needed reassurance, not wailing,” Chloe said quietly. Greg’s praise rankled her. He was treating her like one of those women in the old movies who fainted or screamed at the slightest hint of danger. During their time together, whenever there’d been any sort of “crisis,” Greg had handled it, while she’d offered praise and consolation, if necessary, after it was over. He’d never called on her to help him in any way, except in college, typing term papers for him, which hardly qualified as a crisis.

  “I’d say we all deserve congratulations on a rescue well done.” Kyle squeezed her shoulder, but she didn’t respond. He wondered what was bothering her, but postponed the question until later, when they were alone.

  <><><>

  Back in Ouray, Keri’s parents were waiting at the office, summoned after Pete called in the incident on his radio. At first, the Wilsons were outraged that the driver would allow one of his passengers to wander off from the tour, but Keri, a bit pale and still in pain, explained it was her fault and not Pete’s. She never should’ve gone into the building after Pete warned them not to. She introduced her parents to Kyle, Greg and Chloe, and explained how they’d saved her life.

  Mr. and Mrs. Wilson thanked them repeatedly, then bundled Keri into the back seat of their car and headed for the doctor’s office.

  Back at the boarding house, Byrdie met them at the kitchen door. “How was the trip?”

  Chloe hugged her. “Beautiful! I took more than a hundred pictures, saw thousands of gorgeous wildflowers, and Greg and Kyle saved Keri Wilson’s life after she fell down a mining shaft. Teamwork, right, guys?” She’d purposefully left herself out of the rescue, but Greg didn’t seem to notice.

  Kyle, on the other hand, held up one finger for attention. “Chloe found her and kept her calm. We just handled the rope. Without her help, it could’ve gone wrong in a dozen ways.”

  She smiled her gratitude.

  Byrdie led the way to the kitchen, where a batch of warm chocolate chip cookies waited on cooling racks, and insisted on a complete account of Keri’s accident.

  “Why did the little thing go off like that in the first place?” Byrdie’s forehead creased with worry lines while she listened to the story.

  “Stupid kid,” Greg mumbled.

  “Nature call,” Kyle explained.

  “Inside that old mine? I can’t imagine—”

  “Maybe she decided to explore a little.” Kyle rubbed his chin with one hand. “She never did explain why she went so far into that mine shack.”

  “Well, I’m thankful she wasn’t killed or crippled for life.” Byrdie reached for her apron and swiped at her eyes.

  Chloe patted her back lovingly. “You’ve never even met Keri. Why the tears?”

  “Lost children always make me cry.”

  “Well, no need to cry for Keri. She didn’t stay lost for long, thanks to Chloe.” Kyle patted her back.

  “You would’ve been proud of Kyle and Greg, working together the way they did.” Seeing them put their differences aside to join forces meant a lot to Chloe. She couldn’t say why. It just did.

  “Thank the Lord you were there. Well, I’d best be getting back to my cooking. Greg, I expect you to stay for supper, you hear? Kyle, start a fire for me, please.”

  Kyle got up from the kitchen table, reached for Chloe’s hand and led her to the living room. She sat on the couch while he piled kindling and logs over crumpled newspaper, then lit the whole thing with a butane lighter Byrdie kept in the front of the log bin.

  Greg sat in Byrdie’s recliner and leaned back one notch, groaning with pleasure. “Feels great to prop my feet up.”

  After closing the screen on the fireplace, Kyle joined Chloe on the couch. It was quiet in the room except for the pop and crackle of the logs. A little chickadee in the front yard chirped happily, as though celebrating the ecstatic events of the day before the sun dipped behind the mountains for a few hours of rest.

  “Tired?”

  “A little.” Chloe felt as though she’d done an hour of power aerobics.

  Greg yawned and stretched. “Me, too. I guess I ought to head back to the Clipper and catch a nap before I fall asleep right here.”

  Kyle shrugged. “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t sleep right there. We’ll be real quiet.”

  “You talked me into it.” Greg reclined the chair fully and closed his eyes. In less than a minute, he began snoring softly.

  Kyle got up quietly and led Chloe out on the front porch to the swing.

  “Now, where were we?”

  She knew what was coming next, but Kyle didn’t kiss her the way she expected. Instead, he tantalized her with feather-light kisses, pleased with her reaction, staying out of range until she reached for him and pulled him firmly against her mouth.

  He loved the way her arms twined about his neck, her fingers combing through his hair.

  Chloe’s brain whirled when he kissed her neck and shoulder, breathed on her ear, then murmured how good she smelled and how pretty she was.

  “Kyle, you’re making me crazy,” she whispered.

  “Good.” Then, he said, with a wry grin, “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was black as soot.”

  “Soot?” she whispered back, on the verge of laughing.

  “And everywhere that Mary went, his sooty foot he put.”

  Chloe giggled. Kyle covered her mouth to shush her. She kissed his palm. Less than an instant later, he replaced his hand with his lips.

  Smiling through the kiss, Chloe wondered again how she could have been so lucky to share a booth in a restaurant with a trucker from Texas who could kiss like no one she’d ever known—including the man sleeping just inside the house.

  Greg appeared at the door. “Three’s a crowd,” he mumbled, and headed for his car.

  “Come back, Houston,” Kyle ordered. “We’ll behave, now that you’re conscious. Besides, my nose tells me—”

  “Supper’s on the table!” Byrdie called from the kitchen.

  “That’s exactly what my nose was telling me. Let’s eat.”

  They all went to the ki
tchen, stomachs rumbling over the tantalizing aroma of baked ham with cherry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, green beans and corn on the cob waiting on the Susans. Other guests poured in during the next half hour, until the dining room was full.

  After supper, Kyle volunteered to help Byrdie in the kitchen, urging Chloe and Greg to “visit a while.”

  “Kyle, are you sure?” Byrdie asked him quietly.

  “They need to talk, now that things are easier between them. Anger never makes a good backdrop for getting things straight.”

  “Aren’t you worried—“

  “Damned straight, I’m worried. But Chloe has to know for sure what she wants. Now that everyone’s calmed down, she’ll be able to explain better to Greg exactly what she wants him to know.”

  “All right. If you’re sure.”

  Kyle grabbed a dishtowel. “I’m not sure of anything.”

  <><><>

  Greg led the way to the porch swing where they sat together, enjoying the crisp evening air. After a moment, Greg stretched his arm along the back of the swing, then rested it gently on her shoulders.

  After three years of being engaged, sitting together like this should’ve been a frequent occurrence, but she couldn’t remember the last time Greg had been this relaxed—or this affectionate.

  “Chloe, I was really proud of you today.”

  Anger flared again. “I don’t know why.”

  “No need to be modest. Not every woman would’ve been so level-headed in that situation.”

  So that was it. “Women are emotional and tend to panic in a crisis, while men stay calm and save the day. You’re proud of me because I didn’t cry and carry on and get hysterical. Is that it?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “What did you mean, then?”

  “Nothing! What is it with you, anyway? Since you left Houston, you don’t seem like the same person.”

  She stared across the porch, focusing on a red geranium, nodding in the evening breeze. “Maybe I’m not the same person. Or maybe I am. It could be you never took the time to get to know the real me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Of course I know you. We’ve known each other since the fifth grade.”

  “Then tell me what I love more than anything.”