Flashes across the canyon momentarily blinded him. Sun reflecting off Summer’s binoculars. He remembered the concern in her voice when she called to him after he’d rappelled down the rocks. Was she still worried about him? He felt a ripple of something—was it pleasure? It’d been a long while since anyone, except the teammates from his former military unit, cared what happened to him.
For a few seconds, Colt savored the welcome thought. Then a cloud drifted across the sun, blanking out the flash from the other side. The shadow might as well have been a bucket of cold water; it had the same effect on Colt. Even if Summer Marsh was inclined to care for him, which was iffy, he had nothing to offer her in return. She’d soon have three million bucks in the bank. He didn’t have enough savings to buy even a hundred acres of this land.
Removing his cap, Colt stuffed it in his pocket. He untied his neckerchief and banded it around his forehead to stop the flow of sweat. Facing the crux, the most difficult pitch of any climb, he drove in another chock before creeping higher.
Three feet below the nest, the fingertips of his right hand slipped off a narrow ledge, and he fell. Secured by the ropes, he nevertheless slammed full force against the jagged spire. Shaken and dazed, Colt realized the sound echoing inside his head, over the frantic screech of the eaglets, was Summer’s scream, delayed as it rolled across the width of the ravine.
The fear he heard in her scream served as a kick in the butt. Untangling his ropes, he righted himself and signaled to her. The bright squares of her wool jacket danced up and down as she waved back. Even from this distance, he could sense her relief. Or was it his own? Closing his eyes for a second, Colt ignored the sting of his bleeding flesh where both shirt and skin had suffered rips from the jutting rocks.
Centered again, he inched his way toward the frightened baby birds. He didn’t breathe until he’d lashed a rope solidly to the pinnacle sticking out above the nest.
From this vantage point, he looked down on Summer. Jeez, he wished she’d step away from that ledge. It was really no more than a thin lip of granite, badly eroded underneath by centuries of wind and weather.
But when he lifted both arms over his head and motioned her back, she didn’t understand. She merely waved at him.
Wanting this rescue over and done with, Colt wrenched the lid off the basket. His plan had seemed simple. He scooped the three eaglets into the basket easily enough—and after that, his plan went to hell. The birds were heavier than he’d expected. Plus, they were nowhere near as docile as he figured they’d be, considering their lack of food. First, one squawked and flapped. Then each in turn. Colt got biffed in the nose by a feathery wing. He sneezed twice in succession, all but losing his grip on the basket.
“Hey, ouch,” he yelped as one of the birds took a nip out of his left ear. “Damn.” For a minute, he seriously considered dumping them back in the nest. He’d been dead wrong to think these guys couldn’t deal with a few buzzards.
One thing kept him going: imagining Summer’s disappointment if he went back empty-handed. So at great cost to his already overtaxed muscles, he clamped an arm over the basket and shinnied higher up the pinnacle. Level with the lid, he closed it on the noisy birds and banged it shut. He was surprised at how short of breath he was. While he rested, dangling and clinging to his precarious perch, he again heard Summer call, “Are you all right…right…right?” The echo made him dizzy.
The one-handed wave he offered held little conviction. Especially as a talon pierced the side of the basket and sliced his chin. Colt realized they’d be lucky to make it home with the basket intact. And they wouldn’t have a hope in hell if he didn’t get it across the gorge soon. Aligning the ceramic handles, he leaned against the rock and shoved the heavy container toward Summer with all his might—counting on gravity to slide the basket straight into her waiting hands.
Very flawed logistics, he quickly discovered. The flapping birds inside the container made it swivel off its axis. A foot from its destination, the basket bounced several times, tilted sideways and stopped.
Colt sagged against his harness, willing the basket to move closer to Summer. He almost leapt out of his skin when she flung herself flat on the precipice and used both hands to shake the rope. From what he could see with the naked eye—and he was blessed with twenty-twenty vision—it appeared that she was in danger of pitching headlong off the cliff.
“Stop,” he ordered, only to be ignored. Dammit! He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed “Wait!” Colt felt the rope jump methodically and knew it wasn’t due to the eaglets, but to Summer’s efforts to dislodge the basket.
His skin crawled. Damn, he hated feeling helpless. The only other time he’d experienced helplessness to this degree was when his parachute opened early, caught by an updraft that carried him five miles from his team before dumping him in the middle of a steaming jungle. As he came out from under the tangle of chute silk, he saw twenty automatic rifles held by hostile guerilla forces, all aimed at his head.
If Summer Marsh toppled off that ledge, leaving her son in the hands of that idiot ex-husband of hers, he’d suffer agonies almost as bad as those he’d endured at the hands of those guerillas.
Colt had intended to stay put until Summer hauled in the birds. Then he’d release the rope and retrieve it from the other side. Now, he decided to hell with saving the rope. He left the anchors he’d set on the way up, too. All he did was release the belay and let the rope slide through his gloves. Halfway down, he wore through the soft leather. The second half of the run tore up his flesh.
At the bottom, Colt didn’t waste time gathering his ropes. Nor did he care about getting his feet wet crossing the creek. And there were few things a true horseman hated more than wetting a broken-in pair of boots.
Once he landed on the same side of the ravine as Summer, Colt again cupped his hands and hollered, “Get back from the edge, dammit! I’ll be topside in five minutes.”
She shouted something, but her words were garbled.
Colt latched on to the rope he’d left tied to the upper boulder. Pain ripped through his badly-skinned hands. Maybe he’d gone soft. He’d once been skilled at scrambling up ropes and jungle vines. Grimacing, he muttered something he wouldn’t want repeated in civilized company, then began an arduous hand-over-hand ascent.
His arms and lungs clamored for relief when he topped the rim, and by determination alone, he threw himself face-first onto solid ground. It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. For a heartbeat, he thought he might heave his guts out. But as he raised himself on arms that didn’t want to hold his weight, he saw Summer lean out too far and grasp the basket with both hands.
Horrified, he watched the basket slip backward two inches, leaving her stretched out over nothing but air and a rocky landscape two hundred feet below. Her toes dug into a ledge that wouldn’t take much more than a sneeze to crumble. That tenuous toehold was the only thing standing between her and probable death.
In the past, Colt’s instinctive reactions had been credited with saving his life or the lives of his teammates. This time he added prayer to the combination as he dived across the space separating him from Summer.
Colt’s grip on Summer’s ankles was hampered by the leather of her boots and the shredded condition of his gloves. Sharp pain assaulted his damaged palms and his arms still protested from his fast vertical climb. Please, God, give me strength enough.
From her wobbly position, Summer knew she was in trouble the minute she felt the basket drag her forward off her knees. Terror slammed through her even though she couldn’t catch her breath to scream. Strange thoughts raced through her mind. Thoughts like: Had she made her bed this morning? Did Rory have a white shirt that fit him? Yesterday, his teacher had said she’d like him to sing in the school’s holiday program, but he’d need a white shirt. It was barely October, and the program wasn’t until the third week of December. Who except Summer would know to buy him a shirt?
One of the eagles drove his beak in
to her right hand so hard it brought tears to her eyes. The pain nearly caused her to jerk her hand away. Luckily, a stiff breeze chose that moment to slap the loose edges of her jacket against her. It was warning enough to check her withdrawal. And warning enough to hammer home the seriousness of the mess she was in. At last, the scream she’d been holding back erupted in a long howl, and Summer tasted her own fear.
Her scream must have scared the eaglets. Thank God, because they stopped flapping and became still, which meant the basket stopped moving.
Just when she was sure her arms would be ripped from their sockets and she’d be dashed onto the rocks below, something vicelike clamped around her ankles. “Lord, what now?” She tried kicking loose.
“Don’t fight me,” said a distorted voice. It seemed to come from the boulder behind and to her right. “Give me time to brace my feet. Then I’m go…ing to pull you back.”
Summer realized it was Colt talking. Or was she hallucinating? She’d seen how long it had taken him to climb up to the eagle’s nest. There wasn’t any way in the world he could’ve made it back here so fast. Was there? Wild hope stirred within her heart as her body wriggled toward safety.
She heard her belt buckle scrape the outer lip of the ledge, and for the first time since she’d landed in this fix, felt solid rock underneath her stomach.
Tears filled her eyes. “C-Colt,” she stammered. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he growled, his voice rough. Summer noticed that her backward progress had ground to a halt.
Over the moan of the wind, she caught faint sounds of the man behind her gasping for air. Her pulse began to jump erratically. He might not save her.
Her main concern was for Rory’s welfare. Let Frank do as he would with the ranch, but she didn’t want him raising Rory—turning him into a poor excuse for a man like he was himself.
“Colt?” she called frantically.
Nothing. And yet the pressure around her legs remained strong.
“I know you can hear me. I don’t care what Frank does with the Forked Lightning. If I don’t, uh…ride back with you today, promise you won’t let him take Rory.” The wind blew hair into her watery eyes. “Promise, dammit!”
“Hush,” Colt snarled. “Save your breath.” He fell silent again. Summer wished he’d say something. Anything. And yet she understood the wisdom of his command. Lord knew that when she pulled mired cows out of mud holes she didn’t appreciate idle comments from her wranglers.
She almost laughed hysterically then. Grabbing for the basket hadn’t been her smartest move. But once she’d calmed down and assessed her situation from Colt’s perspective, Summer began to plot how she could help.
She released one hand experimentally from the basket, sliding it back along the rope until she felt the rounded ledge. Bracing the heel of her palm, she attempted to scoot back. The granite below her hand cracked ominously. Seconds later, a section broke off and her arm dropped away, tilting her body dangerously. A cry tore automatically from her throat.
The sound of breaking rock spurred Colt into action. It was what he’d feared, why he hadn’t crawled out on the ledge to haul her in. It didn’t matter that he needed more time for his muscles to stop feeling like useless globs of jelly. Time had run out.
Welding his feet hard to the boulder where he’d tied the rope, he clenched his teeth, tightened his hold around Summer’s ankles and yanked.
She seemed to be stuck. Seconds dragged by. The sun winked out behind a cloud. Shrubs where the horses were tied rustled in the breeze. One horse whinnied. The buzzards circling overhead called to one another. That, as nothing else, fueled Colt’s determination. Though his arms felt like they might fall off and his legs were numb from the knee down, he blanked his mind to personal discomfort. Using every ounce of strength he had, he heaved Summer up and over top of him.
She hadn’t made rescue easy. In her panic, she wrapped both hands around the basket held by a rope frayed from sawing back and forth against the sharp granite ledge. That, as it turned out, was lucky for the eaglets. Colt’s mighty effort and her death grip on the basket tore the ceramic handles right out of the webbing as the last thread of the rope snapped.
Summer, basket and all, sprawled down on Colt.
“Oof!” What little air he had left blew out of his lungs. Colt literally saw black-and-silver stars. Ordinarily he would have jackknifed at the force of Summer crashing into his stomach. He no longer had any automatic reflexes except to lie among the rubble where they’d landed. He was simply glad to know she was alive. He wanted to hug her but couldn’t lift his arms.
They lay entwined, and nothing around them moved for a time except the ever-present wind. Long seconds ticked past before Summer came to the conclusion that she’d survived. She opened one eye and found herself nose to nose with a furious eaglet who’d popped his scrawny head through a hole where a basket handle had torn free. The bird darted toward her, and Summer dodged. “No, you don’t, you little devil.” Seeing him about to make good his escape, she rose on her elbows and clapped a hand over the hole.
“Ooof!” Colt’s second protest was accompanied by a stream of colorful language.
That was when Summer noticed both of her elbows were planted in his midriff. She tried, to no avail, to scramble off him without opening an avenue of flight for the birds. Now, instead of staring cross-eyed at an eaglet, she was gazing into a pair of angry gray eyes.
Colt’s pain prevented even the feeblest attempt to wrap his injured hands around her jacket lapels. “What are you trying to do?” he finally muttered between labored breaths. “Emasculate me because you didn’t succeed in throwing us both over a cliff?”
It dawned on Summer that one of her elbows was buried in his shirt a few inches above his belt buckle, the other dug in an equal distance below.
“Oh. I, uh, need to thank you.” She tried again to disengage her body from his without losing her tenuous hold on the basket. The heavy basket full of birds plopped down hard on Colt’s privates.
“For God’s sake, woman!” This time he did succeed in rolling away from Summer and out from beneath the basket. He drew his knees protectively to his chest, and for a lengthy moment, neither spoke.
“Colt?” she finally whispered, once she saw he’d begun to breathe more normally. “I was only trying to keep the eaglets from escaping. We’ve come so far and endured so much, I couldn’t stand the thought of going home without them.”
Little by little he uncurled and eased into a sitting position. “You saved the birds?” He gaped at the shredded, misshapen basket before uttering a disbelieving curse. “I suppose you’re to be commended for having the tenacity of a mongoose. Excuse me, though, if I ask to see a shrink before I ever so much as raise my hand to offer you help again.”
“What a spoilsport.” Summer, over the worst of her fright now, scrambled to her feet. “We came to do a job, which I’ll remind you isn’t finished. This basket is falling apart, and we still have to get the contents home in one piece.”
“What about getting us home in one piece?” Colt asked, slowly standing up. Was it possible she didn’t know how close she’d come to dying? Didn’t she realize she’d scared him half to death? He extended a hand, wanting to touch her face—to make sure she was real and not a figment of his imagination.
“Yikes! Look at those scrapes,” Summer exclaimed, wincing as she examined his hands. Gently, she peeled away his useless gloves. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in my saddlebag. These cuts need tending. Follow me.” She sprinted toward her mare.
Annoyed by her apparent disregard for everything they’d been through, not to mention her dictatorial manner, he turned away, gathering what was left of his climbing gear. He was short an expensive rope, but what the hell. It seemed a small price to pay considering what this debacle could have cost them.
Feelings hurt, Summer stared at his stiff back. She owed him so much, owed him her life. Obviously, rescuing damsels in distress was al
l in a day’s work for Coltrane Quinn. Too bad if she was still so shaken she desperately needed to stay busy to keep from falling completely apart. Blinking fast, she lugged the heavy basket up the trail toward the horses.
“You want to give me that basket?” he said, once he’d secured his bundles behind his saddle.
“Why?” She wiped her nose on one jacket sleeve, continuing her futile effort of weaving shrub twigs through the holes. “So you can toss these poor babies to the buzzards?”
“Now who’s acting like a spoilsport?”
“Me. I’m still quaking, I guess,” she admitted. “So shoot me.”
Colt frowned. “Summer, I’m mad at myself for botching this whole mission when it should have been a simple, straightforward operation.”
Her gold eyes darkened as she studied him from under tear-clumped lashes. “You’re not in the military now, Quinn. It’s okay for civilians to screw up on occasion.”
“Maybe it would help if you didn’t sound so much like my old C.O.” He said it with a grin, enabling Summer to muster one in return. She decided he was as eager as she was to end their childish squabble.
“All right,” she agreed. “No more barking orders. I’m open to suggestions about how we can contain these birds.”
Colt chuckled outright, even though it still hurt. “Duct tape.”
“Excuse me?”
“I have a roll in my saddlebags. No self-respecting man would be without one. We’ll run a few rows of tape around the basket, leaving a small opening for air. Then we’ll strap the basket to one of our saddles and go home.”
The way he said go home sent a longing shivering through her. A longing based on an old dream. An unfulfilled dream, thanks to her ex-husband. She used to sit on the porch with her dad in the evenings. They would discuss the day’s events and make plans for the ranch they both loved. Summer imagined someday sharing the same kind of quiet evenings with her husband, both of them working toward a common goal. Frank apparently had other ideas. He’d seen the ranch as collateral, not as a home. To her shame, he only ever saw her as a means to an end.
Wide Open Spaces (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 7