by Linda Jacobs
The changes were subtle. A pair of candleholders he remembered from her place graced his nightstand. Thick wax columns smelled of spice. A foot-thick swath of feminine items peeked from his open closet door. A leopard print cosmetic bag lay open on the bathroom counter, with little jars and bottles spilling out.
What in hell was he going to do?
Alone in Wyatt’s kitchen, Alicia used the corkscrew on one of the good bottles of wine she’d bought. Her hand trembled, and she spilled red drops that stained the white counter.
She ought to be in the bedroom with Wyatt right now, but this wasn’t turning out the way she’d hoped. She’d left the front hall dark so their opening kiss would be more romantic. He’d turned on the overhead light. And she’d never known him to pass on one of her candlelit bubble baths. What had he meant about something happening on the mountain?
She told herself he must be exhausted from a long day in the saddle, especially with an injured ankle. It would probably be a good idea to back off and let him unwind.
Ten minutes passed. The potatoes were in, and they would keep. The salad waited to be dressed. The steaks were seasoned.
Wyatt spoke from the doorway. “Dinner looks wonderful.” He sounded distant.
“I was shopping for goodies this morning at the Pic and Sav when the big one hit. That’s a story.” She knew she was babbling.
“Are you okay?” His gray eyes flicked over her without the interest she’d expected after their time apart.
“Cut my hand on some glass.” She displayed a strip of bandage on her palm.
“I’m glad that was all.”
Alicia waited for him to pull her into his arms, but he turned his attention to the wine label, a California Cabernet. She poured for him.
“Nice,” he nodded after sampling. “You know, a guy could do a whole lot worse than to come home to all this.”
“You want to start the steaks?”
“In a bit.” He pulled out a chair, sat at the table and studied his hands. “We lost all three of the horses in the quake and came out by chopper. A big landslide … almost killed Nick Darden of USGS.”
Alicia sank into the chair next to Wyatt. “No wonder you seem upset.” She took a gulp of wine. “Is he all right?”
“Should be. We were damned lucky.”
Seeing the haggard look of Wyatt, she recalled his affection for Thunder. “I’m sorry about the horses.”
“They were good friends. Old Gray broke his neck … I had to shoot him.”
Her stomach turned. “Oh, dear.”
They sat for a moment in silence. Then it occurred to her that there was a piece missing from his explanation, and though it probably wasn’t the time or place … “What about Kyle Stone?”
“She was there. Up the hill on some rocks.” His shoulders tensed and he evaded her eyes.
Creeping dread came over Alicia as Wyatt drank off his wine in a single draught. In his room, her clothes, her candles, her cosmetics. With all her heart, she wished she hadn’t been so bold.
“So what were the sleeping arrangements up there?” It was like walking out onto a frozen lake, but she couldn’t stop.
“Alicia, don’t do this.” He wouldn’t meet her accusing stare. “We had a common bunkroom for the three of us.”
“No side deals?”
“For God’s sake,” he snapped. “Unless you count Darden sniffing out his old girlfriend.”
“You can lie to me, Wyatt, but don’t lie to yourself.” Blood beat in her temples. “I saw the way you kept making mooneyes at her in the Lake Hotel sunroom.”
“Get off my back. I just can’t stand to watch her make the same mistake she made years ago with Nick. She can do better than that.”
With an almost audible click, everything came into focus. The countertop with wine stains. The hum of the refrigerator and the furnace fan stirring warm air, frost forming patterns on the window above the kitchen sink.
“You poor son of a bitch,” she said. “You’re in love with her.”
Wyatt shoved back his chair, dragged Alicia up, and kissed her. It had always been good between them, and he could make it happen again. The last thing he wanted was to lie alone tonight and think about Kyle and Nick.
He should be glad he’d come home to find Alicia part of his welcome. How much darker would his hall have been without her embrace? How empty his bachelor housing?
She was out of his arms. The space she left felt cold. With her back to the refrigerator, she challenged, “If you can honestly tell me you’re not in love with Kyle Stone, I’ll stay.”
“Don’t play games.”
With a sigh, Alicia said, “I love you, Wyatt.”
A test. He reached his hand palm forward and she matched hers to it. He twined their fingers and squeezed but did not answer.
Her tears spilled over, mascara running. “I thought maybe you and I were each other’s answer. You could have been mine.”
Closing his eyes, Wyatt said, “I’m sorry.”
Two hours later, he sat alone in the living room recliner with an ice pack on his ankle. The TV was off and the only light rose from the candles Alicia had left behind. He’d brought them out from his bedroom and eaten steak, salad, and a piping hot baked potato by candlelight. Just because he was by himself didn’t mean he had to be a slob.
The spicy scent rising from the melting wax reminded him of Alicia’s bedroom. Torn between the desire to call her and the wisdom of leaving it alone, he mentally toasted her and drank off the last of the red wine.
He set his empty glass down so hard it fell over with a clink. Kyle was up at the hotel with Nick, and here he sat trying to pretend it wasn’t eating his heart out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SEPTEMBER 28
Snow was still falling when Kyle returned with Nick from the restaurant in Mammoth. He held her arm to help her across a patch of glazed ice in the parking lot, although she was probably more in command of her faculties than he. A drink of Crown in the room, a couple glasses of wine, and the medication he’d taken after all clearly had him feeling no pain.
Dressed in the sweats she’d bought, they stopped by the coin-operated washer to transfer their field clothes into the dryer. Nick kept up the banter he’d been throwing at her silence all evening. “At 21,000 feet in Tibet it was colder than a banker’s heart. The food was what we all looked forward to, something hot and filling like that steak tonight.”
She produced quarters, and he fed the metal slots.
“The Chinese couldn’t run the truck mounted seismic unit and get decent data. When we rejected it for poor quality, they killed a couple of the camp dogs and served them to us for dinner.”
Kyle grimaced. “What did it…?”
“Like chicken.”
She pressed a hand to her mouth.
“You see, some of us had sort of bonded with the dogs, so our punishment did double duty. Finally, I got in the seismic unit and taught the locals how to run it. After that, we got back to eating stewed yak.”
“Which also tastes like …?”
“Sorry, no. Like beef. Really, really well-aged.”
She laughed in spite of herself.
In their room, he went to the window and opened it to smoke a cigarette. She stood beside him and watched the snow whirl past a streetlight and coat the lawn. It felt like old times, listening to Nick spin stories.
Perhaps she’d been too quick to shut him down earlier when he’d trivialized death. Maybe it was just his way of coping. After all, though he’d figured out she didn’t like the dark, he had no idea why.
“How about a nightcap?” He poured himself one as he spoke.
She shook her head. “How are you feeling?”
“Head gives a throb now and then.” The patch of blood on the gauze had turned a rusty brown.
Kyle pulled off her boots. In the bathroom, she un-braided her hair and shook it loose over her shoulders. Despite a few streaks of gray, its burnished mahog
any was intact. She looked into her eyes and remembered her youthful, sun-reddened face in the bathhouse mirror at field camp.
When she came back into the room, Nick had closed the window. “You wanted to know how I feel. Actually, I’m a little melancholy.”
“You?” In her sweat suit, she crawled onto the bed nearest the door and sat against the headboard. “You’ve been making me laugh for hours.”
With a dismissive hand, he waved away his clowning. “You should know I go on like that when I’m afraid to act serious.”
She pulled her knees up toward her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I don’t think you’ve ever admitted that before.”
“I thought everyone knew.”
“So why are you sad?”
“Guess I’ve been thinking too much. Close calls will do that to you.” Nick came to her and sat on the bed’s edge. “That summer, the weekend we stayed here in the cabins, was a time like nothing that has ever happened to me.”
“That’s flattering, but you must have felt something more when you got married.”
“All I can tell you is that was different. I was older, more jaded.”
She reached and took a swallow of his drink.
He met her eyes. “You scared me to death, Kyle. You made me want to settle down and raise babies and dogs. That fall I was scheduled to do field work in Antarctica.”
She wrapped her arms around her knees and drew into a tighter ball. “Don’t you see that you weren’t ready when we met, and not when you married.” Her voice sounded surprisingly calm. “One of the things that struck me about you when we met again was how little you had changed. I even worried that I wasn’t the girl you once knew.”
“You haven’t changed, babe.” He smoothed her hair.
Kyle sat up straighter, a move that pulled her out of his reach. It would be too easy to have a few more drinks and fall under the spell of being on a bed with him. “I’ve changed inside,” she persisted. “Are you willing to?”
“I have. I know better than to run from you a second time.” His eyes were as serious as she had ever seen them.
“But are you willing to make hard decisions? To settle down?”
Nick left his drink in her hand and walked to the window. “It always comes down to this, doesn’t it?”
“I may be a scientist, but earthquakes and volcanoes scare me witless, especially up close and personal. I don’t think I could stand waiting and worrying about you.”
“I can’t promise to stay out of the field. It’s my life.” He came back to Kyle and took her hand. “Ask me anything but that.”
“I’ll bet that’s exactly the way you proposed marriage,” Kyle said. “Twice.”
Nick pushed off the bed. “I’ll go check on the dryer.”
An hour later Nick lay with his back to the bed Kyle had chosen. More than once he opened his eyes and stared at the cold sky spawning another swirl of snowflakes. He’d left the drapes open to let some cool in, balancing the steam radiator’s relentless enthusiasm.
He wouldn’t have thought he’d be sleeping alone. Even when he’d walked out to get their laundry, he’d believed in his ability to talk Kyle into changing her stance.
Wondering if she was asleep, he considered just slipping into bed beside her … but his respect for her was too great. He had to play it straight, for no other women had ever brought him close to really settling down.
He lay back and tried not to think. He could count sheep, but the riddle of Nez Perce Peak was more interesting. He’d agreed to come out of the field because he knew Kyle would insist on it no matter how much he wanted to stay. Now, this hotel with all the amenities felt like the sidelines with a big game in progress.
Nick closed his eyes and imagined Nez Perce, pristine and unspoiled, except where wildfires had left their mark. Like any treacherous dormant volcano, it wore a veil of green and masqueraded as a cool and airy peak.
Then, in his mind’s eye, it erupted. First, a steam explosion formed a crater, beckoning him to stand on the rim and peer into the inner workings. Already, he could smell acid fumes and feel heat pouring from the chasm.
Nick began to drift; images of rough hot rock, his footsteps crunching over clinker, and the taste of sulfur spun in his head.
In his dream, he was first on the scene and loving it at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. He watched the high fountains of fire, burbling endlessly into the black of night. Bits of bright liquid were tossed hundreds of feet, sparkling like fireworks.
It was beautiful but treacherous to be out here in darkness. The fresh crust of pahoehoe, the smooth, billowy variety of lava, hid many voids. One might walk across the same spot safely several times, but then luck could run out.
There was a constant low rumble from the earth, a trembling roar pounding through tubes beneath the crust. Great thumps and whumps of liquid lava sloshed against the walls of a vacant chamber, alternating with panting respirations that might have been a monster inside its lair.
Where the river of molten rock met the ocean, it hissed like a dragon. Waves hurled onto the shore and flashed to vapor. The glow lit the underside of the steam clouds, turning them an eerie grayish-orange.
Nick stood near a dark flow that moved slowly like congealing cake batter. Heat radiated toward him as though he stood before an open oven. Upstream, a crack appeared in the top of a rounded lava dome. The fissure burned bright.
Another appeared about ten feet closer.
While Nick watched, the piece of black rock between the cracks began to float, then was submerged in a fresh flood of red. Another section broke free and the stream became a raging torrent. It washed toward the low ridge, not three feet high, which separated Nick from the lava channel.
He turned and ran. The wall of heat that pushed him was so strong he thought his hair might catch fire. For a moment, he wished he was wearing one of those moon suits with the hoods and masks, but they weren’t used much because the visors had a tendency to fog, and in a headlong rush they were too bulky and slow.
Nick’s foot crashed through the crust, and he went down. The sharp glassy surface sliced his hands. He struggled to pull out of the hole as heat seared through the sole of his boot. Only the insulating effect of the solidified rock kept him from bursting into flame.
He dragged his leg onto the crust and managed to get up. The wind shifted, bringing the stinging stench of sulfur dioxide. Trying to contour uphill, he broke through the crust again. He was on fire, screaming in searing agony, but it was cold, so cold. His whole body was turning to ice. All the light and the life were going out of him, for his luck had finally run out.
Nick woke with a shock, chilled to the bone and sobbing like a child. He’d thrown off his covers and lay naked. Outside the window, snow still fell.
Strong fingers gripped his bare shoulder. “Nick,” Kyle said. “You’re having a nightmare.” She lifted the crumpled covers and smoothed them over his bare body. Her weight depressed the bed as she sat. “They must have turned off the heat after midnight.”
He felt groggy trying to focus on the cold hotel room while the afterimage of lava made the bathroom light Kyle had left on look green. Uncoiling from his fetal position, he swiped at his tears. “Sorry. Damned silly of me.”
“I have nightmares, too.” Kyle’s strong chin divided her face into a Harlequin mask, part dark where the shadows fell.
“Not like this one.”
Kyle had never seen Nick this vulnerable. With his tear-stained face and bloody bandage, it was all she could do not to clasp him to her heart.
He drew his knees up and cocooned beneath the covers. Feeling the cold herself, she rose and dragged the spread off her bed, sat back down and wrapped herself. “So tell me your nightmare.”
His face began to compose itself back into controlled lines.
She grabbed his hand to keep him from withdrawing. “No bullshit, Nick. Let’s have the dream that just woke you crying like a baby.”
He grinned. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a relentless woman?”
“Every one of my students.”
Even as she held on to him, she felt him slipping away, back to the man who walked the edge. There was only one thing she could think of that might pull him closer, something she’d never thought she was capable of… until Wyatt broke down her defenses. If she told Nick about her sixth birthday, let him see inside her and understand the fears she had for both herself and him …
“Shall I tell you a nightmare first?” she asked with a calm she did not feel.
“Okay.”
With her free hand, she snuggled the bedspread tighter around her shoulders. She still felt cold. “When I was six …”
“No bullshit,” Nick warned.
“Stay with me. The night I turned six, my family and I were camping in Rock Creek Campground over in Montana. That was on August 17, 1959.”
“Oh, Jesus.” His expression went stark. “This is no dream.”
“I lost my mother and father and our dog Max during the earthquake and flood.” Nick reached out his hand. She took it. “In my dreams I found them. Over and over I’d uncover Mom or Dad. Sometimes they’d be perfectly preserved, but their staring clouded eyes said life was gone. The next time I’d find a mass of bloody rags, but I’d know it was one of them.”
“Your dreams win,” Nick conceded. “No contest.”
Kyle hugged her knees and for a moment, the only sound was their quickened breathing.
He nodded toward the bathroom. “No wonder you sleep with a light.”
He frowned. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I couldn’t talk about it.”
Nick gestured for her to come into his arms.
She remained where she was. “Just this week, I told the first person.”
“Wyatt.” Nick’s hands lowered.
“Now your dream,” she suggested.
“Mine?” He shrugged. “It’s not about anything that ever happened to me.”
She felt the house of cards she’d built collapsing. “Then what were you afraid of?”
“I fell into a lava flow. Thought I was dying until I woke up.”