by Julia London
For one thing, all the local boys TA had hired were following Olivia with their mouths gaping open. She walked slowly and serenely, smiling beatifically at the mountain peaks that surrounded them, the sparkling lake, the luxurious little cabin. It was almost as if she were filming a scene.
“Marnie!” she called as she glided through the tall grass.
“Hey, Olivia.”
“Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it exactly as I described? Look,” she said, slipping an arm around Marnie’s waist and resting her little head against Marnie’s shoulder, “that’s where we filmed the last scene. You know, the one where I find Vince dying? I think that was some of my best work. Of course, I was inspired by the beauty of this little place.”
“It is beautiful,” Marnie agreed.
“I knew you’d like it,” she said, smiling up at Marnie, She let go and stretched her arms to the sky. “Oh my, I am so tired. I think I’ll rest now.” With a very loud yawn, she wandered up the steps to the cabin and disappeared inside.
“Hey,” Vince said absently as he jogged past Marnie and followed Olivia inside.
“Hey,” Marnie said to his back. She turned around and looked at the meadow. At the moment, two boys were carrying up bottled water and chairs. That reminded her—she had a lot of work to do, too.
She spent most of the day going back and forth between the lodge, carrying up everything Olivia and Vince would need for the actual ceremony (and very carefully, too, as the bridge creaked and moaned and really gave her the creeps)—their clothes, the paperwork. Michael and Jim and John helped her out by checking in everything they would need for the reception, which was arriving as frequently as guests, in big trucks that rumbled up the gravel drive, the screech of their low gears echoing through the mountains.
By midafternoon, the lodge was almost filled with people ready for a party. All the stuff Marnie had ordered had arrived, save the flowers, which would arrive fresh in the morning, and the reception tent had been fully erected, its four peaks mimicking the mountains. Marnie and Michael took a couple of local boys and went over the table arrangement with them—they would set up the tables on the wedding day and then Marnie, Jim, and John would begin laying out linens, crystal, and floral arrangements.
While Marnie reviewed everything with Jim and John, Operation Arch was underway, signaled by Jack’s arrival in the helicopter from Durango, where it had spent the night in a hangar. Marnie got a ride back up the mountain from one of the local boys so she could make sure the arch and altar were set correctly.
In the clearing, Eli, Cooper, and Vince were waiting to receive the arch. Marnie joined them to wait, too, idly watching the dark clouds forming behind one of the mountain peaks. “Looks like rain,” she said to Cooper, nodding in that direction.
He glanced at the clouds. “Monsoon season. It’s typical to get showers in the afternoons and evenings.” He shifted his gaze in the opposite direction, where the arch would appear. “Nothing to worry about. The summer storms usually clear out as fast as they come in.”
Marnie looked at the clouds. It didn’t rain a lot in LA, so she really didn’t know, but the dark-purple and midnight-blue clouds looked awfully menacing. But she quickly forgot it when she heard the crackle of a radio. It was Jack on the other end, telling Eli they were ready to bring it up. A moment later, they heard the whir of a helicopter starting up.
The sound obviously woke up Sleeping Beauty, because Olivia came stumbling out of the cabin, squinting at them and the lake, where four bright orange stakes had been planted.
“Oh no,” Olivia shouted over the noise the helicopter was making below. “No, no, no, no!”
“What is it now?” Vince snapped with exasperation.
“I told you! I don’t want it there. I want it on the other side of the lake in that beautiful clearing.”
“There isn’t room enough over there, Olivia,” Cooper said calmly.
“Yes there is.” she shrieked. “I want it over there.”
Cooper, Marnie, and Eli looked at Vince. Vince threw back his head and roared, “Good God will someone please burn that fucking arch?”
“I’m the fucking bride, Vince! And I don’t fucking want it there. Why doesn’t anyone give a fuck what I want?” Olivia shrieked the last question so loudly that a flock of birds lifted from the trees behind the cabin. She whirled around and stormed back inside. A scant moment later, Rhys came running out as if he’d seen the Texas chainsaw guy.
“Goddammit!” Vince shouted as the arch rose above the trees and headed right for them. He probably never even saw it—he’d gone racing into the cabin after Olivia. But Marnie saw it, and she stood, dumbfounded, as three hundred pounds of plastic flew right at them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Somehow, Marnie, Eli, and Cooper managed to get the arch down. With a lot of grunting and shoving and moving the thing this way and that, they got it anchored and tied down with two bungee lines at each corner.
The sun was beginning to sink behind the mountaintops when Cooper returned to the lodge, catching a ride with the guy who brought food up for Eli and Marnie. After they devoured the food—they were all ravenous—Eli, Marnie, and Rhys sat around the fire Eli had so effortlessly built and listened to the sounds of what Eli said were night owls, distant coyotes, and lynx, until the rising wind drowned them out with the rustling of trees around them…and what the wind didn’t cover, the fighting in the cabin did.
Somewhere between the pan-fried steak and crème brûlée Rhys had prepared, the soon-to-be-weds had begun to argue.
Marnie felt dizzy—everything seemed out of sync now. The happy couple fought bitterly, the stars disappeared behind black clouds, and a bone-chilling wind made her headache even worse. She’d had the headache since she and Eli had argued yesterday, but at some point this afternoon, it had begun to pound like a drum.
Rhys turned in, tired and cold and surprisingly happy to wander off to sleep with his coolers, which he insisted on having in the tent with him. Marnie watched him go off, grimacing slightly at the pain in her head.
At the sound of a thud in the cabin, Eli turned and looked at the door. “I hope we didn’t fly that arch up here for nothing,” he said, wincing a little when the thud was followed by the sound of glass breaking.
“Pre-wedding jitters. A lot of brides go off a day or two before the big event,” Marnie muttered. “It’s to be expected.”
“I give it two years, max,” Eli said, as the cabin door suddenly opened and a pair of boots came flying out onto the grass below the porch.
Marnie watched the boots roll to a stop. “That’s ridiculous—a year at most.”
Eli looked at Marnie with some surprise and smiled. Marnie tried to smile, but she couldn’t manage it and rubbed her forehead. Eli’s smile faded into a look of concern. Oh yeah, right, she thought bitterly.
“What’s the matter, Marn? Are you all right?”
“I have a raging headache, if you must know.”
“Ah,” he said with a knowing nod, shoved a hand into the pocket of his jeans. “Did you ever hear of altitude sickness?”
“Yes, Eli, of course I have,” she said irritably. “But we’re not exactly climbing Mount Everest here.”
“What does that mean?”
Was he kidding? “Mountain climbers who go way up get altitude sickness. Not people like us, just somewhere in the mountains,” she said, waving her hand at the somewhere they happened to be.
“Somewhere in the mountains,” he echoed and withdrew a tin of aspirin from his pocket and shook out two. “This may not be Mount Everest, but you came from zero feet above sea level to eleven thousand feet above. Your body is bound to react to the altitude, and that headache of yours is a primary symptom.” He took her hand, turned it palm up, and put the aspirin there, then reached for a bottle of water nearby. “It takes the body a couple or three days to adjust to the oxygen deprivation.” He handed her the water. “Take the aspirin, get a good night’s sleep, and you�
�ll feel immeasurably improved by morning,” he said with a wink.
She really wished he wouldn’t wink. He was so sexy when he winked, and she could picture him, dipping his hat at her, winking, before he rode off into the Texas wilderness to find his lost brother or something. “But Sheriff, when will you come back to us?” “Aw, now, Miss Banks, don’t go waiting on me. I’ll come back in the spring…if the Indians and the vermin don’t get me first. You take care of yourself and Rufus, Miss Banks.”
Rufus? Who the hell was Rufus? Marnie shook her head. “Thanks,” she said and popped the aspirin into her mouth, chased them down with some water. “I think I’m going to take your advice and turn in.”
“Well, hell, we’re making some progress here,” he said with a grin. “You’re taking my advice.”
“Only because I’m incapacitated. Don’t get used to it,” she said and stood up, giving him a begrudging smile before walking on.
She went to her tent, grabbed a little bag of toiletries, and headed for the outhouse, conveniently equipped with a pump sink for those poor souls who did not have access to the cabin. When she emerged, she tiptoed around the back of the cabin, but as she neared the corner, she stopped, her mouth agape. Was that moaning? The kind that went along with hot monkey love? Dear God, it hadn’t been fifteen minutes since the boots had come flying out the door and here they were, going at it again. What was it with those two? Whatever it was, they were definitely getting it on.
Some people had all the luck.
Marnie marched on around the corner and down the path to the tents. Eli was still at the fire, staring into it, his eyes on something a thousand miles from this mountain. Interesting. What was he thinking? What he had to do for the wedding? His next extreme sport? If he should get down to the lodge to meet the cocktail waitress she’d gone on and on about like an idiot?
Maybe he was thinking about all the reasons he’d be glad to be rid of her, she thought petulantly and crawled inside her tent, managed to squirm out of her clothes and pull on her pajama pants and a thermal shirt. She stuffed her clothes and toiletries into her backpack and crawled into her sleeping bag.
Surprisingly, she had no trouble drifting off to sleep. It was as if the stress of the last couple of days had finally caught up with her—plus the fact that her bedroll was nice and cozy and unexpectedly comfortable. And okay, the utter tranquility of the mountaintop was soothing. The wind was like a lullaby, and she felt herself sliding into a deep sleep.
It really wasn’t until later—how much later, she had no idea—that the sound of thunder startled her from her sleep.
At the top of the world, stars seem close enough to touch. Thunder also seems a whole hell of a lot closer. Like in the tent with her. Marnie didn’t like it so close, and pulled the sleeping bag over her head, trying to muffle the sound of it, but it was impossible. The wind was picking up something awful, and it was obvious the storm was moving toward her, not away.
Cooper had said these storms passed quickly, and she lay there hoping it would rush right by. But then rain began to fall, big sheets of torrential rain, pounding so hard on the tent that she feared it would give way. Still, Marnie was determined not to be a big baby about a storm…until the crack of lightning striking something very nearby scared her out of her wits. She came up like a shot, unzipped the tent, and looked outside into a downpour. The wind was blowing so hard now that it actually lifted one corner of her tent.
With the second gust, Marnie had an image of herself rolling down to the bottom of the ravine, tumbling and crashing into rocks. The next gust convinced her; with a shriek, she grabbed her backpack and darted outside. She was quickly soaked through and freezing—the sting of rain on her face felt more like shards of ice. She crawled the fifteen feet on all fours to Eli’s tent. “Eli!” she shouted, and groped for the zipper of his tent. Another clap of thunder on top of her and she screamed.
The flap of the tent suddenly came open and whipped away. Eli was on the other side, reaching for her with two strong hands, dragging her through the entrance and quickly zipping it up again.
“What the hell?” he asked calmly in pitch blackness. “You should have stayed in your tent—you could have been struck by lightning!”
“I know, I know.” Jesus, her teeth were chattering.
A flare of soft light startled her; Eli had a small kerosene lamp, just enough light to read by or, in Marnie’s case, to get a good look at Eli in his thermal shirt and boxer shorts.
Eli didn’t notice—he was too busy frowning at her. With his big hands he pushed her wet hair away from her eyes and behind her ears. He clutched both sides of her head and lifted her face up to his, studying her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. No! The storm is on top of us, and I thought I was going to blow away.”
“Yeah, it’s a bad one,” he said, just as another crack and flare of light shattered the dark around them. He ignored it and rummaged through his bag, pulling out a long-sleeved tee. “Here,” he said. “Put this on. You’re soaked through.”
“No, no, that’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. You could get hypothermia.” He thrust the shirt at her. “The pants come off, too.”
With a sniff, Marnie reluctantly took the shirt and shifted around as best she could in the tent, took off her shirt with her back to him, glanced over her shoulder to see him watching her intently, then hastily pulled the T-shirt over her head. She glanced over her shoulder again—he had stretched out on the sleeping bag, one leg bent at the knee, obviously enjoying the show. She frowned at him and artfully wiggled out of her pajama pants.
Eli watched her—or her legs, rather—with a look that sent a warm rush of blood through her. But another crack of lightning brought her back to her senses. She glanced fearfully at his tent, expecting it to rip away from the poles. “This is really bad, isn’t it?” she asked as the rain beat down on the nylon.
“It’s a little freakish,” he admitted. He threw open the top layer of his sleeping bag and slid his bare legs into it. “Come on…get in.”
Now the warm blood spread to her face. “That’s really not a good idea,” she said, shaking her head. “We’re, ah…we’re not going there, remember?”
“You have a better idea? Come on, coppertop—it’s freezing. It’s not a declaration or an invitation—it’s survival.”
She might have argued, but it was freezing and another rip of thunder and a gust of wind sent her into the sleeping bag with him.
Eli covered them up, zipping the thing all the way around so that they were snugly ensconced. In deference to their mutual agreement not to go there, Marnie turned on her side, but Eli spooned her, putting his arm around her waist and holding her tightly to him.
The wind was whipping the tent; another crack of lightning struck something nearby, eerily illuminating the world outside, and Marnie scrunched down deeper in the warmth of his bag. “Is it possible this could be a tornado?” she asked.
“No,” he said softly, his breath warm on the back of her neck. “Don’t be afraid—this will pass. We won’t blow away, I promise.”
Marnie wished she could believe him, but groaned softly at a succession of thunder and lightning claps. The wind was so fierce that the tent seemed to be sliding along. “We’re moving!” she said desperately.
Beneath the cover of his thermal bag, Eli caressed her arm. “We’re not moving, Marnie. We’re staked down all the way to China.”
Staked. Shit! She’d forgotten to stake her tent. No wonder she’d felt the corner lift. She squeezed her eyes shut, could feel a tear slip from the corner of one.
“Marnie?”
She couldn’t answer, because if she did, she’d scream.
“It’s all right, coppertop,” he said soothingly into her ear. “It’s all right.” And he continued to caress her arm, his hand amazingly soft for one so large and callused. She hoped he’d never stop, that he’d keep caressing her arm, and that if he couldn’t do it forever, tha
t he would at least do it until the storm passed. But then his hand went to her hair, stroking it, his fingers carefully moving the wet, tangled tresses from her face.
She wasn’t so cold anymore. She could feel her limbs warming, the blood in her swirling around, spreading out in a hot stream. The memory of the night they were together was suddenly the only thing on her mind. The storm raging around them was fading in her consciousness and being replaced by the memory of how it felt to have him cover her body, to move inside her.
The release of her breath was inadvertent, like the leak of air from a balloon, long and soft. Eli draped a leg around her, pulled her into his body, and his hand slipped up beneath the T-shirt she wore. His fingers were rough; the feel of them on her skin ignited her as he rolled the peak of her breast between his fingers and filled his hand with her. That was when Marnie rolled over and buried her face in his neck, surrendering her fear to him.
The rain continued relentlessly, pounding the tent in hard sheets while thunder shattered the air around them. But the storm was only a distant noise to Marnie—suddenly, there was nothing but a rough-and-tumble cowboy and his girl, making love by the light of the campfire, beneath the stars and the shadow of horses. His hands moved expertly on her body, arousing her breasts, then skimming down to her bare leg, and up again, his fingers slipping carelessly and enticingly between her legs and the folds of her sex.
His mouth moved, too, sliding down to the breast he’d somehow managed to bare, and up, to her shoulder, and her neck, and her mouth again, which he filled with his tongue. He nipped at her lips, licked her cheek, and sucked on the lobe of her ear before descending to her breasts again to tease her nipples with his teeth.
All the while, his hands were moving, stroking and caressing her, making her slick with desire, then retreating to more untouched skin. Marnie stopped trying to keep pace with him; her arms moved upward, out of the bag and above her head, and she closed her eyes, let her head drift to one side as he moved so smoothly across her body.
When he came over her, straddling her legs, his cock pressed into her belly, he smiled wickedly at her in the dim glow of the kerosene lamp, and he very adroitly unzipped the bag. “I love the taste of you,” he said, nipping at her lips.