by Lori Ryan
He snorted.
He looked up at the rock face. They would be climbing in successive sections. Each pitch was roughly fifteen to twenty feet apart. Thankfully each one had a place where they could take a break to rest and check their gear.
In no time, Kayleigh was at the top of the rock face. “Rope!” she yelled, warning him.
“Ready,” he shouted up to her. Two separate ropes fell to his feet, hanging down the face of the wall where they’d be climbing.
“Coming down,” she shouted. Before he could acknowledge her, she was repelling at an impressive speed. He must be getting old because her swiftness freaked him out a little. Maybe it was all those years in med school. When he was young, he’d want to be the one flying down that wall. Now, images of broken bodies flashed through his mind from his rotation in the emergency room.
“Kayleigh,” he shouted in warning, like that would slow her down.
Less than thirty seconds later she plopped to the ground, dusting herself off. “All set.” She smiled as if she hadn’t just rappelled down the side of a mountain like a government spy.
“Shit, girl,” he said.
“What?”
He shook his head, knowing there was nothing he could say.
“You ready?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so.”
“Want me to go first?” she asked. “It’s probably been a while since you’ve been here. Wait, you do know how to belay right?”
She was referring to the key person in rock climbing, the one whose job it was to keep proper tension on the rope so the other climber didn’t plummet to their death.
“Yes,” he answered sarcastically, “How exactly did you think we were going to do this if I didn’t?”
She shrugged. “Just checking.”
He paused to look at her. “You’re comfortable belaying me?”
She scowled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re, um…” Small he wanted to say but stopped his sentence, knowing better than to insinuate she couldn’t do something. Instead he agreed to let her go first. They’d figure out the rest later.
She raised a brow but lifted the braking device she had hooked to his harness. “The Grigri helps with the added weight,” she said as if hearing his silent concern.
He knew that. The Grigri would help her lock him into place when she was taking up the slack on his rope. The braking device wasn’t foolproof, though, and he was a lot heavier than her. Not to mention, he had a good five inches on her.
She glared at him, then pointed to a spot on the rock wall. “I’ve set a low cam to act as a backup in case I drop you.” She turned away grumbling under her breath and he was pretty sure she said something about dropping him on his head.
He bit down on a grin.
“Here.” She handed him the equipment to secure to his harness, then fed the rope through the right carabiners and tied off several knots.
“Don’t trust me?” he asked, smiling.
She glanced up at him, her blue eyes sparkling in the sunshine peeking through the trees. “There aren’t a lot of people I trust.” The tightness in her voice gave him pause. She always seemed so confident, so sure of herself. It had never occurred to Aaron that she’d been battle scarred.
She moved from his harness and secured the rope to her own as she went to the rock formation and looked up. “I usually take this route up to the first pitch.” She pointed to the left.
He followed her gaze.
“But today I want to try taking this route.” She motioned toward the right to another area. Glancing over her shoulder, she stared up at him. “It’s more challenging.”
Aaron studied the two routes. ‘More challenging’ was putting it mildly. The trek to the right was a big jump in skill level. Still, he and his brothers had done it years before. There was no reason she couldn’t do it. “I’ve got you,” he said as he positioned himself to belay for her.
“On belay?” She called out.
“Belay on,” he said, tightening the rope through the equipment. They went through the safety words all climbers did to ensure everyone was ready.
“Climbing,” she said, grabbing hold of a crack in the sediment.
“Climb on.” He watched as she scaled the mountain like a pro.
“You doing okay down there?” she asked, laughing.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. As his hands went through the steps of taking up her slack so that she would be caught if she fell, he watched her climb, trying to memorize the path she was taking. There was no way he wanted to slip up with Kayleigh watching.
She stepped over her lead rope, letting it fall behind her. Not a safe way to be when you were on the face of the mountain. If she fell, the rope could flip her upside down as it caught, making a fall that much more dangerous.
“Your lead rope is behind you Kayleigh.”
She didn’t look down at him, but he heard the annoyance in her response. “I got it.”
She stepped to the side and brought her leg back around the right way.
“Sorry, just trying to help,” he muttered.
She grunted a response and Aaron had to stop himself from laughing. She was so damned prickly at times.
She wedged her foot between two huge rocks. The opening was tiny and she didn’t have much hold. She was only fifteen feet from the top of the pitch.
“You’ve got it,” he shouted at her. “You’re almost—” Before he could finish, she lost her footing and fell.
Aaron anchored his brake hand to secure the rope, stopping her descent.
“Dammit!” she yelled. “I almost had it.”
Because of her position and the shape of the rock face, she didn’t come back to land near the wall. Instead, she hung in mid-air, swinging from the ledge.
“There’s another ledge just below you. I’ll lower you to it so you can regroup. It’s about ten feet underneath you.”
“No!” she shouted. “I’ve got this.”
Aaron watched as she propelled herself. She tried several times to grab the rock face but missed.
“Kayleigh, let me help. I’ll just lower—”
“No,” she yelled again. “I can do this.”
“I know you can,” he said, holding back the frustration. “You can do anything you put your mind to, but sometimes it’s okay to ask for help.”
She looked down at him, her face puckered with irritation.
He changed his tone, trying to reach her. Today it was about safety. “I want to help you, Kayleigh.”
In that moment he realized nothing had ever been truer. Helping her would make him feel good.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
She hesitated, gripping the ropes. “Yes,” she said so quietly he could barely hear it. “I trust you.”
Her face remained impassive. He could hear the fear in her voice. It was as if she was more afraid of trusting him than plummeting to her death, and at her current height of fifty feet off the ground, that’s what this would mean if things went south.
“I’m going to lower you down,” he said. “There’s a protrusion about two feet to your right. It’s closer than the ledge above you so I think you’ll be able to grab it.”
“Yeah,” she said, the determination back in her voice. “Hold on.” She stuck her hand back in her chalk bag. He was sure the earlier fall had her palms sweating. His own heart had been racing during that initial plummet.
“Okay,” she called down. “I’m ready.”
Slowly he released the rope, running it back through the braking device until she was just level with the protrusion. She was still dangling in the air and his heart hammered in his chest.
“Push off with your left foot on the rock face,” he said.
She did as he instructed and set herself swinging. It was the same move she was trying up above, but with the positioning for this ledge, she would be able to do it more easily.
“Now, grab the rock with your right hand and stabilize y
our motion with the left foot.” He watched as she did what he instructed before he continued. “Push up hard with your left foot and there’s another ridge just above your head, to the left. Grab it and you should be okay.”
He held the rope tight—and held his breath—and watched her work the rock face. Her muscles strained and even from below he could feel her determination.
“I’ve got it!” she shouted, pulling herself higher. Within a few minutes, she made it to the top.
“I did it!” she yelled, “Oh, my gosh.” She leaned forward on her knees, breathing hard. “That was super hard. Thank you.”
He smiled up at her, knowing it had been difficult for her to not only ask for his help, but to take it. He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened in her life to make her so fiercely independent.
“Anytime, princess,” he said. “Anytime.” And he meant it. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to help this pint-sized, independent, beautiful woman, even if he had to fight her to do it.
Chapter Eighteen
Kayleigh was still cranked from the climb. “Oh, my God, that was awesome,” she said as she dropped the backpack she’d been carrying on to the ground.
“It really was,” Aaron said.
Earlier she’d packed food and a blanket for a picnic after rock climbing. After they’d disposed of the gear, Aaron helped her lug all the food down to a spot near the creek that flowed around the back side of Canyon Creek Mountain.
“This looks like a good spot, huh?” she asked. The patch of land by the creek was free of trees and wide open to the sun, but the blazing ball was slowly descending behind the mountain. Still, Kayleigh knew they had a few hours before the sun fully set.
“Yeah, this is good,” Aaron said, setting their things down.
She dug through her backpack and held up a large blanket. Unfolding it, she laid it flat across the ground. She crawled on top and straightened the corners, working to smooth it out over the grass.
“You’re a little OCD.” Aaron laughed.
She glanced up. “Why do you say that?”
“I’ve seen your house, your kitchen,” he raised a brow, “and now your picnic site.”
“I like things neat. Sue me.”
He chuckled and shook his head.
“Hand me your bag,” she said.
He walked to the edge of the blanket. “Should I remove my shoes first?”
She laughed to herself. She’d almost told him to before he asked. Maybe she was a little OCD. “It’s up to you.” She shrugged, trying to hide her anxiety.
The funny thing was, vet medicine was ugly and messy, and her desk was atrocious. That was probably why, when it came to her personal life, she wanted things neat and orderly. Or maybe it was a reflection of her childhood, or rather, her mother’s OCD control over Kayleigh’s childhood. Her mother had drilled in to her the need for order in every part of her life.
Aaron’s laugh broke into her thoughts. He was watching her. “You really want me to take them off, don’t you?”
Kayleigh held up her thumb and pointer finger. “Maybe a little bit.”
She blew out a sigh of relief as he kicked off his shoes and set them at the edge of the blanket. He gazed down at her, grinning.
Wow, she thought. Those hazel eyes shone in the afternoon sun. He’d run a hand through his shaggy hair and it was a tousled mess that looked sexy as hell. She dreamed of letting her fingers dive into those locks some day.
“Earth to Kayleigh.”
She blinked several times. Oh, shit, he’d been talking, and she’d been molesting him with her eyes.
He sank down to his knees and laughed as if he’d read her thoughts.
“What did you say?”
“Should I pull out everything?”
“Oh, yes. Hand me the small cooler. It has drinks. Then you can grab the bigger one. I packed chicken salad sandwiches. I hope you like those.”
“Oh, definitely. I grew up in a house of boys. We learned to eat whatever my mom put in front of us whether we liked it or not.”
“These are my grandmother’s recipe.”
Aaron handed her the small cooler and she popped the top, producing two sodas.
“Tell me about your grandmother,” he said, pulling food out of the other cooler. “It sounds like you two were close.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You face always lights up when you talk about her.”
Kayleigh thought back to her summers in Texas with her Grammy and smiled.
“See,” Aaron said, pointing at her, “right there. You’re smiling.”
Kayleigh laughed. “Yeah, I loved my Grammy a lot.”
“She lived in Texas?”
“Yes, on a farm, about two hundred acres. It was a lot for her to take care of when my grandfather died.”
“How old were you when he died?”
“Seven. My grandmother took it pretty hard. They’d been high school sweethearts.”
“Oh, wow. Sounds like my parents.”
Kayleigh heard the sadness in his voice. She reached over and squeezed his leg. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
He gave a small smile that seemed guarded. “Thanks. We all miss him. He would have loved the lodge.”
“What about you?” Kayleigh asked.
“What about me?”
“Were you close with your grandparents?”
“My father’s parents died when he was twenty.”
“Oh, my gosh.” She sucked in a breath. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah. He left college and moved back home to take care of my Uncle Mark and Aunt Sally. They were only teenagers.”
“Aaron, that’s horrible.”
“I’m sure it was hard, but he was determined, and my mom was right by his side. They were amazing…to all of us.”
Kayleigh cast her gaze behind Aaron’s shoulder at the running water. Her parents had never been amazing, well at least not her mother. She didn’t want to think about that, so she moved on to Aaron’s other side of the family. It was easier to talk about other people than herself. “So what about your mother’s parents?”
“Her father was an alcoholic for most of her life growing up but got sober shortly after Ben was born. My mom told him there was no way she’d allow him to see any of his grandchildren if he was still drinking.”
“And he did, for you boys?”
“Yeah. He was a good guy. They lived here in Canyon Creek. He would take me and my brothers fishing and hiking and stuff.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No. He had Alzheimer’s. He suffered for many years. Or I should say my mom and grandmother suffered. It was an awful thing to watch.”
“I’m sure. I’ve never had personal experience, but I’ve heard it can be awful. And what about your mother’s mom?”
“Unfortunately, she passed away as well. Shortly after my grandfather. I think she was worn out from taking care of him their entire married life. First it was the alcoholism, then the Alzheimer’s. I think her heart just gave out. It was pretty hard on my mom.”
“Valerie is a tough lady,” she said. She wondered what it would be like to have a mother who doted on you like Valerie Sumner did her boys. And that extended to Kayleigh’s friend, Maggie, who was now Valerie’s daughter-in-law. It was almost like Maggie had always been her child, the way Valerie treated her.
“Yeah, she is. That’s why we’ve all tried to back my mom up on the lodge. Well, as much as possible. Ben, Emmett, and Max have really been pulling a lot of the weight. I just couldn’t get back.”
“Until now?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“And that wasn’t your choice was it?”
“No.”
She unwrapped their sandwiches and slid his toward him. They sat in comfortable silence. She watched as Aaron quickly devoured his sandwich.
“You weren’t kidding, that was an amazing sandwich.”
“Do you want another? I brou
ght more.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” she nodded, putting her food down to dig through the cooler for the third sandwich she packed.
He grabbed it and began eating. “I totally forgot how much rock climbing takes out of you, but it was amazing. How did you know I’d want another sandwich?”
“I have an older brother. I remember how much he used to eat after we did any recreational stuff.” She laughed at the memory. “Or really, just anytime at all.”
“Remember?” He cocked his head. “You said it in the past tense.”
She picked at her sandwich, her appetite slowly draining away at the thought of her family. “It’s just been awhile since I’ve seen him is all.”
And will probably be longer before I do.
“So, what’s the deal?” he asked. “With your family?”
“What do you mean?”
Aaron chewed and swallowed before answering. “I mean, your family. You said your dad wants you back. You talk about your brother in the past tense. And you hardly ever mention your mom.”
“My family is…” How could she phrase it and not make herself look foolish? “Different.”
“Who’s isn’t? Have you met mine?” He laughed, swallowing down some of his soda.
“Yes, I’ve met yours. You have an amazing family. You mother is so sweet, and your father was always supportive of everyone, not just his family. You’re blessed.” Kayleigh’s eyes fell to the quilt and she picked at a stray piece of thread.
“Hey.”
She saw his hand reach across the blanket to grasp hers and looked up.
His hazel green eyes shone with genuine caring and she felt her chest squeeze and tears prick the backs of her eyes. She refused to become emotional about her family. She’d been blessed herself in so many ways. She never once went hungry, she never wanted for clothes or toys or a new Jeep when she got her license.
Complaining about her family wasn’t something she wanted to do.
“I’m fine.” She waved off his concern and decided she might as well share this with someone. It was probably time. Drawing in a deep breath, she searched her mind where to start, knowing Aaron was safe. “You already know I come from money.”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Well, I actually come from a lot of money. Old school money.”