The connection between them was too strong to ignore, but nothing good could come of giving in to their mutual desire. The problem was simple, yet complicated. They didn’t completely trust each other.
He pushed off the boulder and headed for the well-worn path. She followed a few paces behind, studying the flex and ripple of his muscles through the fabric of his denim shirt. He’d long ago stuffed his jacket into the backpack he carried.
As they descended the steep trail, he grabbed her hand to steady her, such a natural gesture she didn’t resist. Once they reached their destination, they perched on some rocks overhanging the creek. Rushing water cascaded over the boulders in the streambed, creating a pleasant backdrop to the scene. She closed her eyes and drank in the moment. “It’s peaceful here.”
“Yes, it is,” he agreed.
“This was a good idea.”
“Glad you think so…even if you do say so yourself.” He smiled at her and then glanced away.
“You suggested it first,” she reminded him.
“Yeah. I guess I did.” He turned toward the view on the opposite side of the creek.
She studied him while his concentration was elsewhere. He was a good man, a compassionate man. Strong and gentle. An interesting combination. Manly without being macho. She perceived in him a core of inner strength she envied. His relentless search for Carol showed his persistence. He had called himself stubborn. She agreed with him. Stubbornness is after all the other side of persistence. He could probably be alternately both.
“Will you tell me about her?” Her abrupt question broke the uncomfortable silence. A strange mixture of emotions preceded the question. She wanted to know about Carol, and yet, didn’t want to know all at the same time. Until that moment, she hadn’t even been aware her mind was traveling there.
“What do you want to know?” The pleasant tone left his voice, tension filling the void.
“Why do you think…?” The question stuck in her throat.
“Because the woman…” He read her mind. “I was there when they recovered her body. Her face was right, but her eyes… I think maybe it was the look in her eyes. I don’t know if that makes sense. The coroner said it was possible her eyes wouldn’t look right. Then, there’s this other thing.”
“What?”
“My wife was pregnant.” He turned away and proceeded with his explanation, a catch in his voice. “The dead woman wasn’t pregnant. She’d had a hysterectomy.”
The revelation hit Chris like a sledgehammer. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. By the time he turned back toward her, she had regained control of her outward expression. But her insides were shaking.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to scream. But most of all, she wanted to retreat into some remote place inside herself, but it was much too late for that. She had to press forward. This time, she had to remain in the real world.
“So then she couldn’t have been your wife.” She understood his pain very well. “I’m so sorry,” she managed through trembling lips.
“Me, too.”
She stood and placed a tentative hand on his shoulder. He flinched at her touch, but didn’t attempt to dislodge her hand. “I apologize for the way I acted yesterday.” She kept going before he could interrupt. “I dumped everything on you. I’ve had so much pent up rage inside me. I guess it built up over the last five years. It just boiled over. I realize my reaction yesterday was a little dramatic. I thought the least I could do was give you the opportunity to explain if you were inclined to.”
He turned toward her and stared into her eyes. “I understand the rage.”
Reaching up, he took her hand from his shoulder and held it next to his cheek for a long moment. She didn’t resist. They were two hurting people who needed comfort.
At that moment, she wanted to be Carol. “Will you tell me about her?” She needed to know more about this woman. Would his description of Carol resemble the person she thought she was, or even the person she might have been had life been different?
He groaned and let her hand drop, picking up a rock and throwing it hard across the creek. Then he picked up and threw another and another and another. She didn’t interfere. She understood it was a necessary release of tension.
Chapter Fifteen
They still had about a mile of trail to go before they reached the terminus and the promised waterfall. Steve was beginning to regret his impetuousness. He should be leaving Colorado now instead of allowing this hurt to gouge deeper into their separate wounds.
The day had been pleasant, if a little tense, until his pained revelation. He placed one foot in front of the other like an automaton, not noticing his surroundings, wondering what his revelation had done to Chris and how his refusal to answer her question about Carol had affected her. Her compassion tore his heart in two.
Longing flared in her eyes, but the desire seemed to evaporate as soon as it appeared. Could Chris be falling for him? No, she had already fallen. In that moment, he knew she loved him, but she was never going to allow her feelings to show as long as she wasn’t sure who she was. In her eyes, he had seen something far deeper than mere physical attraction. He recognized the emotion that had flamed and caught fire. He’d seen it in eyes that looked so much like hers before…when he was with Carol.
How can I tell her about Carol without telling her about herself? It’s too obvious. Somehow, the two women had merged in his thinking. It bothered him he could no longer distinguish between current reality and faded memories. Chris was becoming Carol. Or rather, Carol was becoming Chris.
He didn’t want to remember Carol’s face. He didn’t want Chris to see his pain again. Against the Norfolk Sheriff’s advice, he had been there when they recovered the woman’s body. He closed his eyes as the mental picture of Carol in the grave presented itself against his will, the image seared on his memory. Sometimes he awoke crying, the nightmares painfully real.
If Chris was his wife, what happened to their baby? He had hid his raw emotion from her when he told her about the pregnancy. Could the child be alive somewhere? The question had plagued him since the day he arrived in Purgatory and first stared into her eyes.
She broke into his tortured thoughts. “Do the authorities believe she was your wife?”
He didn’t want to answer, to start another hard dialogue. Rather, he wanted to backtrack to their earlier interrupted conversation, the one where she confessed she’d miss him when he left.
He stopped mid-stride and answered her without turning. “Yes.”
“Why?”
He turned to her. “Her physical description and her dental work matched records for Carol Stone. She had a healed break in her femur that was consistent with her medical records. She had an arrest record in North Carolina for driving under the influence. The fingerprints matched.”
He could see her mind turning the information over, absorbing all its meaning. “So the dead woman was really Carol Stone. Then the woman you married, who was she?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
“So the woman you married was using Carol’s name, and then Carol was murdered.”
“That’s how it looks.” He wondered if Chris would take her speculation to its obvious conclusion.
Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “What if…” The unfinished question hung in the air between them. This time the unemotional mask fell away, and her face revealed her horrified reaction. “You think I’m your wife.”
“Yes.”
“Then you must also wonder if I had anything to do with that woman’s death.” She stared him straight in the eye without flinching.
“I admit I have considered the possibility, but I don’t think you could murder anyone.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’ve looked into your eyes.” There was no shadow of a doubt. He was sure of his answer and of his assessment of her character.
“You don’t
know me.”
“Yes, I do. You just don’t remember how well I know you.” But then, he wasn’t sure any longer how well he remembered her. Five years could have made the memories less real.
****
Steve chose an eatery in Telluride that faced the mountain on the south side of town. From where he sat, he could see the smooth indentations of ski runs. He watched the gondola cars as they traveled up the mountain and back, noting the lift had quite a bit of traffic despite the season.
On the other side of the restaurant, Telluride snuggled into the base of a box canyon along the San Miguel River. Beyond the town, he could see a gravel road winding up the left side of the canyon. “Suppose we go up there after we eat?” He pointed to the top.
“You do love an adventure, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I guess I do.” He grinned at her astute observation, wondering if something buried deep in her subconscious core still stored memories of him. The intense discussion of Carol and her murder didn’t appear to resurrect any memories for Chris. The larger mystery remained. Who was Carol? Who was Chris? Maybe the whole conversation hadn’t come off as awkward as he thought it had. Maybe he had dreaded the conversation unnecessarily.
Her next comment burst that bubble. “I suppose hanging around with a suspected murderess would qualify as an adventure.” Her expression wasn’t grim. It wasn’t serious in the least. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying his shock at her bluntness. Delight twinkled in her eyes.
“Do I detect a warped sense of humor under that placid façade?”
“Placid?” She leaned back and crossed her arms.
“Yes. Placid.” He squelched the amusement that threatened to play across his features.
“Façade?” Her smirk demanded a reaction.
“Yes. Façade.” He maintained a straight face with extreme effort.
“Hum. Warped humor?” She tapped a finger on her chin as if assessing his ability to delve into her personality enough to make such an appraisal.
“Yes. Very warped humor.”
“Why, thank you. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” The sun’s brilliant rays blazed in the warmth of her smile. Hope burned within him as he reflected on the brief interchange. Carol used to say the same thing in the exact same way…right down to the twangy, little Texas accent. His doubts shattered one by one. He stared into his wife’s beautiful blue eyes, unwilling to turn away for even a moment.
After they finished eating, Steve suggested they ride the gondola to the ski village on the other side, so they took this detour in their plan. As the car bumped and swayed up the mountain, he absorbed the surrounding area, noting the resort boasted ski runs on both sides of the mountain. He stared at the manufacturer’s plate riveted to the interior of the car on the left of the automatic sliding doors.
Chris leaned over his shoulder. “What are you looking at?”
“The manufacturer’s plate.”
“Scoping out the competition?” she asked with a quirky grin.
“Uh-huh,” he muttered. “Switzerland.” Why Switzerland? His company could have built this lift.
“Do you ski?”
“I have. Once or twice.” He turned back toward her. “I’ve ridden a lot of lifts.”
“Yeah, that would seem to be a good idea. You’d need to test them, right? I mean, you’d want to make sure they stayed in the air. That’s important in a ski lift,” she quipped. He smiled at her attempted levity.
After they finished their gondola ride, they drove up to the powerhouse above Bridal Veil Falls. The waterfall crashed three hundred sixty-five feet to the valley below, the sound of the fall deafening from where they stood observing it. Below them, Telluride appeared to be a miniature village like the kind people display at Christmas, sans snow.
He nudged her elbow and they retreated from the roar of the falls a bit, settling on a large boulder to absorb the beauty around them. The sun had started its descent into the west hours ago. He knew they’d have to leave soon.
“That thing is loud,” he commented with a happy grin.
“Yep,” she smiled her agreement.
“Are you ready to go?” He hoped she wasn’t.
“Not quite.”
Good answer. He didn’t want to go just yet either, disdaining the inevitable trip back to Purgatory. “You’re better company than Jeff,” he quipped with a light heart.
“I imagine anybody is better company than Jeff,” she said with a snort and an attitude that screamed more than mere dislike. Her mouth curled into a disgusted frown. He discerned something deeper bugging her about his foreman. This wasn’t her first display of distaste for Jeff.
“What have you got against him?”
“Where do I start? He’s obnoxious.” She picked a piece of leaf from her jacket and tossed it on the ground. Was she hiding her expression from him?
“Has he been insulting you or something?” If Jeff insulted her, that would explain her disdain.
“What? You don’t notice the way he leers at me? Oh please, Steve! He’s not a nice man.”
“Are you sure that’s not just your—”
“Imagination? You sound like Brian.”
He didn’t appreciate the comparison. He wasn’t Brian. Why did she have to bring Brian into this anyway?
“I know the difference between an appreciative glance and a degrading leer. I’m not stupid, or blind. Just because I can’t remember my education, doesn’t mean I didn’t have one.”
“Whoa! I never said you were. I just meant I’ve never seen that side of Jeff. It kind of surprises me. If he’s looked at you that way around me, he’s done it behind my back. If I ever catch him doing it—”
“Well, he would always show you deference, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t want to lose his job, now would he? And…and he made sure he did it behind your back.” She shut that faucet off pretty quick. Why didn’t she want him confronting Jeff about his bad behavior? She studied him another moment. “How well do you know him anyway?”
He thought that an odd question. “Well, he’s a good supervisor. He gets the job done. He’s fair with the crew. If they do their job, he’ll stick up from them. If they don’t, he’s the first to chew on them. I wouldn’t say he’s a warm-hearted individual. Actually, most of the time he’s kind of surly. But I’ve never known him to be anything but straight up.”
“Is he married?”
Okay, so she wasn’t digging for a job reference. She wanted to know something personal about the man. “No,” he answered slowly, wondering what direction her questioning would take them.
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“I thought not. Has he ever been in trouble with the law?” She quirked a blonde eyebrow at him.
Surely, the woman wasn’t romantically interested in Jeff Osborne. No, of course not. Earlier, he’d convinced himself she was in love with him. She’d allowed her feelings to show all day long. Well, some of the time anyway. Why the interest in Jeff? “Why do you want to know?”
“Because something isn’t right about him. And you don’t seem to see what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Jeff’s all right. I did a background check on him when I hired him…” It suddenly occurred to him that Jeff came from Texas, an intriguing thought. Had Carol—or Chris—known Jeff before she married Steve? If Jeff recognized Chris, he had kept that bit of information to himself. Now, why would he do that?
“And?” she pushed him to continue.
“He had an arrest record,” he admitted. Boy, he hated divulging that to her. What would she make of Jeff’s criminal history?
“For what?”
He sighed. “Possession, I think. But he’s stayed clean.”
“How do you know?” What was this? Was she questioning his judgment? That did not set well.
“Because we handle heavy equipment, I require periodic drug screenings as a stipulation of employment.” Now, that sounded officious, didn’t it
?
“Steve,” she sighed, obviously weary of the prickly conversation. And truthfully, he was ready for it to end as well. “How well do you really know anybody? You didn’t know Carol and you thought you did.”
Touché. “So what do you want from me? You want me to interrogate him?
She blinked at him. “You know, this isn’t my problem. You’ll be leaving soon…” Her remaining words dropped away, unwanted and unspoken. She didn’t have to say it. He was well aware of his imminent departure. It was now a matter of days rather than weeks.
Chapter Sixteen
Steve steered the Jeep onto the road out of Telluride. Chris leaned back in her seat as they followed the San Miguel River out of the canyon and then took the highway back north to Ridgway. He sighed with contentment. A good hike always made him mellow. He relived the entire day. All the pleasantries and all the hard questions. Every tender look and every tense moment. He wanted to remember it all.
Chris presented him with her profile, keeping her eyes on the passing scenery. Her impassive expression dismayed him. Was she once again in another time zone? Somewhere he couldn’t follow? He glanced at her, as much as driving the vehicle and watching the road would let him.
They had the top down. She fidgeted with her jacket, fighting the wind clutching at the tendrils of hair. Then she pulled her hair loose from the windbreaker and let it fly behind her as the cool mountain air rushed past them in the open Jeep. He wanted to reach over and tuck the wayward locks behind her ear so he could see the scar that graced her face. Somehow, the scar made her even more beautiful than she was before he lost her.
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