by Valerie Parv
“Has anyone told the snakes?”
Leaving him chuckling, she stamped away, adjusting her camera as she went.
Blake watched her go, fighting the urge to call to her when she disappeared behind some rocks. She was right, she didn’t need a minder, but he was sure tempted. The desire to protect her was palpable. Watching the outback seduce her had been like seeing it anew through her eyes. He knew he was close to falling in love and, for the first time, didn’t feel a need to resist. If anything, he wanted to fall harder, faster, taking her with him on the ride of their lives.
He was so caught up in looking for her and thinking about the future he wanted them to have that he didn’t hear the noise behind him until it was too late. He spun around, catching a glimpse of a figure emerging from the shadows, arm upraised. Blake barely had time to lift his own arm as a shield before pain exploded through him.
Crouched among the rocks, Jo fiddled with the camera but it was no use. The delicately tinted bush orchids blooming in a crevice were too petite for her to get a good shot of them. Did they even have a name? She had heard that new wildflowers were being discovered all the time in the Kimberley. Perhaps she’d stumbled on a new species. She took some shots anyway, then stood up. Karen wasn’t likely to thank her for pretty pictures of wildflowers.
She had to clamber between more rocks before she could frame the overhang in her lens. Blake had stretched out full length on the rock taking a nap, she assumed. If she had any sense she should do the same. The heat was oppressive.
The hand she swiped over her face came away damp. The sun beat through her hat and long-sleeved cotton shirt. But she felt too restless to follow Blake’s example. Too aware that his interest in her went deeper than she wanted. Frustration gnawed at her. Weren’t men supposed to be the ones wanting sex without commitment? Trust her to attract the one exception.
She climbed along a series of ledges to photograph a collection of rock paintings above her head. They looked fresh so must have been retouched by the modern-day custodians of the work. She had been warned that some galleries were off-limits to women, but Blake had assured her that these galleries weren’t among them. She snapped away to her heart’s content.
The faint sound of pebbles rattling away into the gorge brought her head around. Blake couldn’t have reached her so quickly. So who—she felt her color drain. A man was climbing toward her ledge. A man she thought she recognized, and he was carrying a traditional club.
Her knees almost buckled but she made herself back slowly into the shadows. The man hadn’t seen her yet, although from his purposeful progress he must know she was up here. A new terror swamped her as she pictured Blake asleep in the overhang. Her blood ran cold. Not asleep—unconscious. The man must have reached him first.
Suddenly, she felt the ground give way beneath her. Then she was slipping and sliding between the steep, moss-covered walls of a hidden crevice. Too shocked and winded to scream, she scrabbled desperately for a handhold. The slippery walls offered none and she hurtled down into blackness.
Chapter 10
Winded but conscious, Jo revived to the sound of water trickling into a pool. At first, she thought her sight had been damaged because she could barely make out ferns and mosses clinging to the rock overhang above her. Gradually, her vision adjusted and she saw she was in a gloomy underworld, resting on a living carpet of green that had broken her fall.
Cautiously, she sat up. Nothing seemed to be broken, but the cavern lurched around her. She held still until the dizziness passed before getting shakily to her feet. An assortment of aches told her she was going to have an interesting collection of bruises soon.
The sheer rock walls towered above her from a fern-shrouded pool. She had fallen into a long, sinuous cavern that was almost completely screened from the sunlight, allowing a garden of mosses to thrive.
Another fact became abundantly clear. There was no way she could climb out the way she had fallen in. If she could manage the climb, Blake’s assailant could be waiting for her. It was agony not knowing how badly Blake was hurt. She needed to get to him, and the only way was to walk out.
Shivering slightly in the damp air, although she had been sweating before she fell, she tested the narrow rock ledge surrounding the pool. While slimy, it felt solid underfoot. With exaggerated care she put one foot in front of the other, her heart trip-hammering as she nearly slid into the pool at one point. With no way of knowing how deep it was or what lurked in the water, she wasn’t anxious to take a dip.
At the far end of the pool, her way was blocked by a fallen log, also slick with mossy growth. She inched across it, catching her breath as it shifted under her weight before settling. The log formed a bridge to a wider, fern-filled amphitheater. If she wanted to go any farther, negotiating it was her only option.
Stepping off the log was a relief and she gave herself a few seconds to take stock of her surroundings. What looked like a tide mark ran the full length of the cavern at about head height. Above the mark, Aboriginal paintings adorned the walls. A reassuring sign, she decided. Someone had found their way down here at some point, and since there were no sign of human remains, they must have found their way out again.
So could she.
At her feet, a thin stream of water trickled out of the rock, meandered along the cavern floor and disappeared somewhere in the distance. Maybe she could follow the watercourse to the open gorge. Feeling her spirits lift slightly she set off, only stopping when something glittered where she was about to put her foot.
She crouched and picked up four sparkling stones the size of pinheads, sluicing them in the water before turning them over in her palm. Could they be diamonds? Hadn’t someone said that Max Horvath had found some of the gems in a creek somewhere near the Uru cave? Perhaps the creek traversed a good part of the gorge’s length.
Her heart sank. If most of the creek traveled underground, it might not be any help in guiding her to safety.
An unwelcome thought came to her: Blake’s grandfather had died in a cavern like this. His body was never found. The stones she buttoned securely into her shirt pocket might have come from his mine. Was she, too, destined to disappear into Kimberley folklore?
Don’t wimp out now, she told herself firmly, pushing away the panic fringing her mind. Blake needed her. She had eaten recently. She had access to water. Sooner or later, she would make her way to the open gorge. All she had to do was remain calm.
Easier said than done, she discovered after exploring her surroundings without finding any sign of a way into the main gorge. To her eye, all the rock walls looked the same, angling upward to meet overhead like the rim of a volcano, the opening thatched by heavy greenery screening out most of the sunlight.
She turned her gaze to the aboriginal paintings. Someone had created them and presumably knew the way out. It could be right in front of her, perhaps camouflaged in a fold of rock.
The silence, broken by the sound of trickling water, felt eerie, as if the place was haunted. She shook herself. Better not start thinking of that now. Later, when they were together again, she and Blake would laugh about her fears. She was staking a lot on him being all right, she realized. He would be. He had to be.
Lifting her wrist to check her watch, she saw it had stopped. Now she had no way to tell how long she’d been here or when she could expect someone to be looking for her. She could only keep going. And hope.
Blake shook off his grogginess and gained his feet in almost the same breath. The ledge shifted under him and he stilled, breathing deeply until his legs no longer felt like buckling. He blinked to clear his vision. He had to get to Jo before the attacker did. He had a good idea who had hit him, but there was no sign of the man now, and the gorge slumbered undisturbed in the afternoon heat.
Worry gnawed at Blake. He should never have allowed her to go off alone. Now she could be in real danger.
Where the devil was she?
Gaining strength from action, he made his way c
autiously down the slope to a cluster of boulders and looked around. This was where he’d lost sight of her. Tiny bush orchids bloomed among the rocks and he smiled grimly, imagining her stooping to photograph them. Blake didn’t have Andy Wandarra’s skill, but he was a pretty fair tracker when he needed to be. Besides, it didn’t take much ability to spot Jo’s footsteps leading back to their lunch spot. Or the second set following hers. At the sight of them, ice shivered through his veins.
Halfway there, both sets of tracks headed to the right and continued climbing until Blake lost them on the baking rock. They petered out in the direction of another vine-clad overhang, this one decorated with aboriginal paintings that had been recently touched up by Andy’s people. Blake would bet Jo had gone into the cleft to photograph the paintings.
Sure enough, he found more footprints under the overhang, and something a lot more worrying. Her camera lay on the ground where she’d evidently dropped it. And beyond that, a tangle of torn greenery told its own story, though there was no sign of their attacker.
Heart slamming against his chest, Blake inched toward the broken bushes, parting them so he could see what lay beyond. His worst fears were realized when he saw the slick stain of green plunging down between steep walls into blackness.
Dropping to his full length, he peered over the edge. “Jo, are you there?”
No answer.
“Jo, speak to me if you can.” Oh, God, don’t let her be lying at the bottom, broken and unable to respond, he prayed.
Cupping his hands to his mouth he gave the traditional outback call, “Coo-ee,” stretching out the last syllable so it had the best chance of carrying over a long distance.
Still no response.
Everything in him wanted to hurl himself over the edge and into the abyss, to reach her the quickest way he could. What if she was injured? He wouldn’t let himself consider that she could be dead. He would have felt something. He had to hold to that certainty.
Think, he ordered himself. This isn’t Jo lying at the bottom of the crevice. She’s a woman you’ve been hired to guide around the Kimberley. How would you deal with this if she meant nothing to you? His heart tried to reject the order outright as blatantly untrue, but he willed himself to focus.
He was about to start back down the rocks when he heard the faint sound.
“Blake, can you hear me?”
He dropped again and leaned over the fissure. “I hear you. Are you all right?”
“What?”
“Are—you—all—right?”
“I’m uninjured but there’s no way to climb back. What about you?”
He cupped his hands to his mouth. “I’ll live. Stay put while I try to get to you.”
“Blake?”
Hearing the alarm in her voice at the prospect of him leaving, he felt torn. But he wouldn’t help her if he stayed. “Hold tight. I’ll be as fast as I can,” he promised and tore himself away before he could reconsider.
Back at the overhang, his pack was gone, along with his cell phone, but their assailant had evidently overlooked Jo’s pack in the shadows. He pushed her camera into it and hoisted the bag over one shoulder. He debated trying for the Jeep, but Andy could well have moved it by now. No sense wasting time.
Back at the crevice, he used his knife to hack free a length of the vine thicket growing down from the escarpment above. A few minutes later he was snaking down the improvised rope into a cold, damp cave with a low ceiling. A dozen feet from the bottom, the vine snapped and he had no choice but to jump. His landing was cushioned by a bed of ferns and mosses that had evidently also broken Jo’s fall. Although she’d said she was uninjured, he drew his first whole breath in an hour when he didn’t find her crumpled at the bottom.
There was no sign of her anywhere. Damn it, he’d told her to stay put. She must have tried to walk out in the only direction available. He adjusted her pack on his back and headed after her.
Although Jo had been straining to hear Blake’s footsteps, her heart lurched when she heard a sound behind her. She had to force herself to turn and her knees weakened as she recognized his tall, commanding figure.
She retraced her steps to his side. “Blake, are you okay?”
He shrugged off the concern. “I told you to wait.”
“You told me to hold tight. I was looking for an easier way out.”
He began to run his hands over her body, across her shoulders and then down her arms to her sides. When he reached her legs, she batted at his hands. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure nothing’s broken.”
She endured the examination with outward calm, but inwardly she trembled at the intimacy of his touch. “Don’t you think I’d know?”
“Desperate people have been known to walk for miles on broken legs.”
“And stubborn men have been known to walk around with a possible concussion.”
He massaged the back of his neck. “I wasn’t knocked out completely, only dazed for a few minutes. I’d half turned, so he only managed a glancing blow,” Blake said, with more than a hint of male bravado.
“Did you see who hit you?”
Shaking his head produced a grimace. “I was hoping you had.”
“I must have just missed seeing him. It looked like you were taking a nap.”
He grinned without humor. “A long one, if my friend with the nulla nulla had gotten his way.”
“The what?”
“It’s a traditional weapon used for killing. Usually thrown, but sometimes wielded as a club.”
“By Eddy Gilgai?”
“I thought you said you didn’t see him?”
“I recognized him when he came after me. I was backing away when I slipped into the crevice.”
“And he took off and left you there?”
“Left both of us,” she reminded him.
“Back at the homestead, when I called to ask Andy to move the Jeep, Horvath must have been with Judy, and sent Gilgai after us,” Blake said. “Horvath must be getting desperate, thinking we’re closing in on the location of the diamond mine.”
She fumbled in her shirt pocket. “Maybe we are. I found these beside the creek not far from the crevice.”
He examined the specks in her palm. “It’s too dark in here to tell if they’re real. They could be quartz crystals or zirconias.”
“But you don’t think so?”
He shook his head. “Horvath claimed he’d found diamond traces near the entrance to the Uru cave. If your creek is the same one that surfaces there, the mine could be somewhere in between. We would need a properly equipped expedition to find out for sure. First, we have to get out of here.”
“We wouldn’t have the problem if I hadn’t stupidly fallen in.”
His gaze was warm on her. “Not stupid at all. You probably saved yourself from much worse at Eddy Gilgai’s hands. And you were ready to walk out on your own, if that’s what it took.”
“Until I heard your voice, I couldn’t see much alternative.”
He lifted a hand to her cheek, pressing the back against her heated skin. “A lot of women would have gone into hysterics right where they fell.”
She didn’t care to be lumped in with other women, and let her flashing gaze tell him so. “I’m a city girl, remember? Bred to be self-reliant.”
Without warning, his mouth fastened on hers. She reeled, her reaction making nonsense of her claim to self-reliance as he devoured her as if to reassure himself that she was truly in his arms.
For the first time since she’d tumbled down the Kimberley’s equivalent of Alice’s rabbit hole, she felt safe, felt as if they had a chance of getting out of here. The crazy thing was, her sense of urgency had receded. There was something remarkable about being kissed by the man of her dreams in a lost world where they were the only human inhabitants.
The mystical twilight filtering through the fern ceiling gave everything a surreal quality. Even the feel of being in Blake’s arms was like a dream. She lifted h
er hands and clung to him, testing his flesh to assure herself she wasn’t dreaming. He was really here.
She needed him so much, but didn’t like needing him. She leaned on him anyway, comforted by his support.
After a time, he held her at arm’s length. “Have you any idea how I felt when I discovered you’d fallen down that fissure?”
About as despairing as she’d felt thinking Eddy might have killed him. “Blake, don’t.”
His fingers dug into her flesh. “Don’t what? Don’t care about you? Tell me how to stop and I will.”
She tried to move away. “This isn’t supposed to be happening.”
“Do you think I want this any more than you do? My life was supposed to be clear-cut, and it didn’t include falling in love.”
“No!” The protest was out before she could stop it.
“You think it’s that simple? I don’t fit into your plans any more than you fit into mine. But denying what we both feel won’t change reality.”
She pulled in a strangled breath. “I can’t deal with this right now, and you’re hurting me.”
Becoming aware of the strength of his grip on her arms, he freed her as if he were scalded. The relief wasn’t as great as it should have been.
“I’d never intentionally hurt you,” he vowed.
She met his gaze out of her own pain. “It’s the unintentional that worries me.” He had already hurt her. Not by his grip on her arms or the bruising she’d sustained in her fall. Those she could handle. The deeper pain in her heart troubled her far more.
“I have plans for my future,” she said, wondering who she was trying to convince. “Editor at thirty-five. Maybe publisher at forty.”
“I suppose Lauren’s the closest you’re going to come to having a child,” he rasped.
“Lauren isn’t,” she protested, then her voice stalled. Could he possibly be right? Was she using Lauren as a substitute for having a family of her own? “She’s none of your affair.”