“She never acted like a kid,” Drew said. “Didn’t cry, mope, moan or wail. Game to try anything. Brave, loyal, trustworthy—a real Boy Scout.”
“Shouldn’t that be Girl Scout?” Sarah said with a smile.
“Real tomboy,” Drew explained. “Never saw her in anything but jeans and a T-shirt and cowboy boots.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t call you when she couldn’t reach her mother.”
“Kate wouldn’t have known I was here,” Drew said. “I’ve been living like a hermit. Haven’t wanted to be bothered.”
“Home nursing your broken heart?”
Drew shot her a sideways look. “I don’t have a heart.”
Sarah wasn’t so sure, but she wasn’t going to argue. They’d reached the parking lot at the foot of 25 Short, and she pulled in and parked the Tahoe. “How long is it going to take us to get to this cabin?”
“Maybe thirty minutes,” Drew replied.
Sarah stood with her face to the wind, gauging its speed, then looked up at a gray sky heavy with snow clouds. Finally, she looked at the unpredictable, avalanche-prone snow cresting 25 Short, which she knew, having just been up there, was a risky place to be skiing.
“How high up do we have to go?” she asked.
“Not far. Just across the base and up a ways,” Drew replied.
“Let’s get on and get off,” Sarah said, eyeing the mountain above them.
They’d been skiing fifteen minutes when Sarah felt a thirty-mile-an-hour gust of wind. “That isn’t good,” she said, staring up. “Wind like that’s going to shift the snow on the crest.”
“What do you want to do?” Drew asked.
“Go back,” Sarah said. “Wait till the wind dies down.” She felt a shiver roll down her spine as she heard the sharp crack of snow breaking free.
“Is that what I think it is?” Drew asked, raising his gaze to the top of 25 Short.
“We need to get off this mountain.”
Drew turned to her, his blue eyes fierce and said, “What if that cabin gets buried by snow before we get back?”
Sarah was used to making hard choices, but she didn’t like the one Drew had presented to her. If they moved forward, they could very well end up buried under an avalanche started by the gusting wind thousands of feet above them.
But if Drew could find the cabin, and if Kate Grayhawk was inside, they might be able to rescue her and escape, since snow from an avalanche might not get this far down the mountain.
What if they turned around, and later discovered that Kate Grayhawk had been in the cabin and been buried alive? Sarah would never forgive herself.
“Sarah?” Drew prodded.
Sarah made a frustrated sound in her throat. There was no more time for what-ifs. It was time to act.
“How far to the cabin?” she asked.
“Maybe five minutes.”
“Let’s go.”
Sarah’s breath created trails of fog as she sucked oxygen open-mouthed. She was fast on skis, but Drew could have won prizes racing. She struggled not to lose sight of him as he pressed forward through the spruces and pines.
“Wait for me,” she called out. “We don’t know what—or who—we’ll find at that cabin.”
“If Kate’s abductor is there,” Drew replied, “he must be as aware of the avalanche danger as we are. He might already be high-tailing it out of there.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Sarah said. “Don’t go in there without me.” And my gun, she added silently.
Drew glanced over his shoulder, and Sarah realized that he wasn’t going to wait for her. She increased her stride, using every bit of strength and skill she had to close the distance between them.
Sarah felt the ground shudder, or maybe she only imagined the earth shaking beneath her feet, and acknowledged the fact that they’d run out of time—and luck. She was aware of her heart beating like the drum in a marching band and the taste of copper in her throat.
Under the circumstances, a healthy dose of fear was a good thing. She could use all the adrenaline her body cared to shoot into her veins. Tons of snow were on their way down the mountain. She was racing for her life.
The sad thing was, they’d risked their lives for nothing. They’d never found Drew’s mysterious cabin.
“There!” Drew said, pointing in the distance. “See it? There!”
Suddenly, Sarah saw the tiny cabin through the trees, every bit as ramshackle as Drew had said it was, half a football field away.
She could also hear the snow thundering its way down the mountain, could see the mist rising along its path, like a powerful steam engine billowing white smoke.
“Our Father, Who art in Heaven,” she began praying.
“Move your butt!” Drew shouted.
Sarah realized he’d stopped and was waiting for her. She spurred muscles that were already screaming to even greater effort, and together they made it to the cabin door. She stepped out of her skis and pitched both skis and poles inside. The snow appeared like a giant tidal wave at the edge of her vision.
“Inside!” he snapped, throwing his skis and poles in after hers and pushing her inside ahead of him.
There was no time for caution, no time to see whether the cabin was occupied by friend or foe, before Drew closed the door behind them.
It took Sarah a tenth of a second to realize that the cabin was empty. In a glance she took in a broken table. Spiderwebs. Dust. A single boarded-up window.
She turned and met Drew’s gaze. It was all going to be over in another tenth of a second.
Sarah launched herself into Drew’s open arms, her face buried against his shoulder as the thundering snow cracked trees like matchsticks on its way down the mountain. She held tight and waited for the moment when the ancient logs that protected them would crack, and they would be crushed under tons of snow.
Sarah’s chest hurt, and she realized she was holding her breath. She gasped a life-saving breath of air as the thundering sound moved beyond the cabin, and she realized the walls hadn’t come down, and they hadn’t been buried alive.
Or maybe they had.
Sarah’s fear was that the cabin was buried under so much snow that they wouldn’t be able to dig themselves out, that eventually they’d suffocate. She had to try the door. She had to know for sure whether snow had trapped them in a cold white tomb.
She pulled free of Drew’s grip, but her legs were trembling so badly they wouldn’t hold her upright. She grabbed at him as she started to fall, and his arms once more tightened around her.
“Whoa, there,” he murmured in her ear. “Take it easy.”
“We’re alive,” she said. And then felt stupid for announcing the obvious.
“Yeah,” he said.
She realized he was trembling, too. She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Getting there.”
Then she remembered what Clay Blackthorne had said about Drew being buried in an avalanche on 25 Short. She slid her arms around his waist and held him tight, giving back the support he’d offered her. “That was close,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She heard him swallow and looked up to see he had his eyes closed and his jaw clamped tight.
She raised a hand and cupped the back of his head, drawing it down to her own, so she could lay her icy cheek against his. “We’re safe,” she murmured.
Maybe saying it would make it true.
She heard him swallow hard again, and realized her own throat was tight with emotion. She was no more willing to admit her own fear than to force him to admit his.
They stayed clutched together until the rumbling snow had passed beyond their hearing.
Sarah was so caught up in comforting Drew that it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing. “Thank you, God,” she murmured.
“What?” Drew said.
Sarah smiled up at him and said, “You’ll be pleased to hear we haven’t been buried alive.”
> “Damn pleased,” Drew said, returning her smile with a lopsided grin. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
Sarah pointed at a crack in the chinking near the front door of the cabin. “Sunlight.”
Drew left her and crossed to the door, which faced the downslope, and opened it. A foot of snow blocked the threshold, but that was all. He turned to her and smiled. “I’m feeling damn lucky right now. How about you?”
Sarah felt something lurch inside her at the sight of Drew’s brilliant smile. She’d found him attractive from the start, but the heightened emotions of the past half hour had made her even more susceptible to whatever it was about this man that made him stand out from all others. Lucky? She’d be damn lucky to get out of here with her heart intact.
She forced her gaze away from him, back to the interior of the cabin. “Too bad there was no one here for us to find,” she said, as she surveyed the dilapidated one-room cabin.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I was hoping…” He met Sarah’s gaze and said, “I wanted her to be here.”
What he meant, and hadn’t said, was that he wanted Kate Grayhawk to be alive. Sarah wanted the same thing. More than he knew.
“We’d better go,” she said. “I need to check on my kids.”
She watched Drew curb the reflexive twist of his mouth at the mention of her kids. He looked at her and smiled ruefully.
Her heart was thumping heavily, and her body felt languid. She resisted the urge to move in his direction. So what if he’d allowed her to comfort him? So what if he’d comforted—and protected—her? So what if he had a thousand-watt smile?
He was a rich playboy. He couldn’t stand kids. Well, most kids. All he wanted from her, if he wanted anything at all, was sex.
Sarah looked into Drew’s striking blue eyes and felt her insides take the kind of uncoordinated flying leap a bullrider takes off a ball-breaking Brahman.
She realized she was trembling again, and wondered if it was a leftover response from the avalanche or anxiety about what might happen next. She stumbled over her own feet when she tried to walk. She must have looked like she needed someone to hold her up, because Drew crossed the room in two seconds flat and tucked his arms around her.
“You okay?” he asked, staring down into her eyes.
She stared back up at him, feeling her insides clench in a way she recognized all too well. “No,” she rasped. “I’m not okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
She closed her eyes to shut out the concern she saw in this near-stranger’s eyes.
“Hey,” he said, holding her close and rocking her. “We’re okay. It’s all over. We’re fine.”
He kissed her on the forehead. Purely in comfort, she was sure. Then on the cheek. And then his mouth slid down to hers.
And she felt the world turn upside down.
9
Adrenaline was still running hot through Sarah’s veins. That was the only explanation she had for the voracious need she felt to be kissed, to be touched, to somehow climb inside the skin of the man whose need seemed as ravenous as her own.
“Sarah,” he said in a guttural voice.
Just her name. She answered his call with the wanton desire that had gone from tight bud to full bloom in the seconds since his mouth had claimed hers.
His eyes glittered avidly in the shafts of sunlight that streamed through the cabin walls, as the snow settled on the countryside around them.
Their mouths meshed, their hands searched urgently for flesh, discarding mittens and shoving coats and sweaters aside. Sarah gasped as Drew’s warm hand surrounded her breast and heard his gasp in return as she slid her hand inside his long johns.
Her mouth sought his in a frenzy, her tongue dueling with his, hot and wet and urgent. He lifted her and she clasped her legs around his waist as he impaled her. She heard a ragged murmur of satisfaction in his throat and answered with a moan of her own. Everything was feeling—hot, liquid, pulsating need.
He took the few steps necessary to brace her against the wall and give him the leverage he needed to thrust. Her body tightened around his and she groaned as she convulsed in a sweet agony of joy and pain. He uttered a savage, guttural sound as she felt the heat of his seed inside her.
Her breath hissed from her in smoky clouds, as it did from him. The air felt painfully cold as she sucked deep breaths to feed desperate lungs.
The sudden knowledge that they hadn’t used anything to prevent conception woke her abruptly from the fantasy she’d created with him. “Oh, God,” she croaked. “Let me down.”
She kept her face pressed against Drew’s chest and her arms on his shoulders as he released her cramped legs.
She resisted the touch of his fingertip under her chin until he said, “Sarah, look at me.”
She wasn’t brave enough to deny him. She lifted her chin defiantly, ready to confront him.
When their eyes met, she saw a glint of humor, and then the amused twitch of his mouth.
“I have to admit I wasn’t expecting that,” he said. “From near death to spectacular sex in the space of a heartbeat.”
“It’s the ‘near death’ part I could have done without,” Sarah admitted. “The ‘spectacular sex’ was…” She ran a fingertip over his still-damp lips and felt her insides quiver. “Spectacular.”
“Except now I’m about to freeze my ass off,” Drew said with a smile that threatened Sarah’s heart rate. Her nipples peaked as he straightened her sports bra back over her breasts. She held her breath as he lowered her long john shirt, trailing his hand enticingly across her pubis. She fought the urge to arch her hips against him.
She grabbed his hand and said, “Don’t.”
He looked surprised but didn’t push the matter. “I think your sweater’s over there on the floor.”
By the time she’d retrieved her sweater, he was dressed again and holding her coat, scarf, hat and mittens in his hand. She allowed him to help her into the coat, then took everything else from him and finished dressing.
They’d abandoned their cross-country skis and poles on the floor inside the door. Sarah picked hers up and stepped outside into the powdery foot of snow with Drew on her heels.
“Are we going to talk about this?” Drew said.
“No.” She stepped into her skis, grabbed her poles and shoved off in the direction of the parking lot.
Sarah felt surprisingly self-conscious when she and Drew ran into a Teton County Search and Rescue team heading up the trail as she and Drew were going down. She knew her eyes must be bright, and her lips felt beestung from Drew’s kisses. But no one seemed to notice anything different about her.
“Hey, Sarah,” the team leader greeted her. “Should have known you’d be up here ahead of us. Who’s that with you?”
Sarah had no choice but to introduce Drew. “This is Drew DeWitt. A…friend.”
Too late Sarah realized she shouldn’t have tried to put a label on Drew, because once she did, eyebrows went up all around. Detective Sarah Barndollar was a notorious loner. Ever since Tom had disappeared, she’d claimed she had no time for anything except work and family obligations. Yet, here she was skiing with a stranger none of them had ever met—in a town where local folks knew each other—and calling him a friend.
“Any suggestions where we ought to go looking for the Grayhawk girl?” the team leader asked her, his curious eyes on Drew.
To Sarah’s surprise, Drew answered, “Above the avalanche, because if she was anywhere below it she’s dead and buried now.”
He shoved off without giving anyone a chance to reply. Sarah stayed only long enough to say, “Head up to where we marked her backpack was found and work your way downhill. Good luck.”
Drew reached the Tahoe ahead of her and was leaning against the front fender, his skis already strapped to the roof, waiting for her. “They aren’t going to find her,” Drew said flatly.
“Probably not,” Sarah agreed as she lashed her skis to the SUV. “But they h
ave to look.” She paused and added, “Just as we did.”
Drew turned his back on her and looked up at the mountain. “Where the hell has she gone?”
“We may never know,” Sarah said. It was a brutal truth she’d been forced to live with before.
He turned angry blue eyes on her and said, “That’s not good enough, Detective Barndollar.”
“I’ve done all I can do today,” Sarah replied. “There are a lot of dedicated officers searching for Kate. I’ll start again tomorrow, and I won’t ever stop searching until I find her. But right now, I have to go home to my kids.” She got into the Tahoe and waited for him to join her.
They made the trip back to town in a silence all the more provocative because of what had passed between them on the mountain. When they reached the parking lot where Drew had left his Porsche, Sarah killed the engine and reached for the door, hoping to escape without talking to him.
He caught her arm and said, “This isn’t over.”
She forced herself to meet his gaze and said, “It was sex. Precipitated by—”
He caught her nape and kissed her hard on the mouth. Her blood thrummed through her veins, and she felt completely alive as she hadn’t since long before Tom had walked out the door. She didn’t try to escape. She simply stopped returning his kiss.
When he let her go, she put up a wall behind her eyes to keep him from searching out the chaos his kiss had created inside her. “Good-bye, Drew,” she said.
His lips curved in an ironic smile. “I’ll be seeing you, Detective Barndollar.”
Sarah didn’t contradict him. She was just glad to get him out of the car and out of her life, before she got involved with him anymore than she already was. She stayed where she was until he’d removed his skis from the Tahoe and strapped them onto his Porsche. He gunned the engine, so she could hear the horsepower under the hood, but since it was a police parking lot, he eased the Porsche onto the street like he was taking his dog for a pleasant walk.
Sarah leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes and let the remorse flood over her. What had she been thinking?
The Rivals Page 12