A Man of His Word

by Merline Lovelace

  Another frown creased her forehead as she dodged the first fat splats of rain on her way to her rented Blazer. She had enough documentaries under her belt to appreciate the intricacies of negotiating permits and approvals for an on-location shoot, but the requirement to coordinate her shooting schedule galled more than a little. Hopefully, this guy Henderson would prove more cooperative in person than he had by fax.

  Sliding inside the Blazer, she shut out the now-pelting rain and groped for the keys in the pockets of the military fatigue pants she bought by the dozen at an Army-Navy surplus store in south L.A. The baggy camouflage pants didn’t exactly shout Rodeo Drive chic, but Sydney had found their tough construction and many pockets a godsend on isolated shoots like this one.

  One foot on the clutch, the other on the brake, she keyed the ignition and wrapped a hand around the shift knob, wishing fervently she’d thought to specify automatic drive before Zack arranged for rental vehicles. From the way the gears ground when she tried to coax them into first, the Blazer obviously wished so, too.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, working the clutch and the stick again.

  After another protesting snnnrck, the gears engaged. With rain pinging steadily against the roof, Sydney eased the Blazer onto the road. She kept her foot light on the accelerator and her eyes on the treacherous curves ahead.

  Little more than a dirt track, Canyon Rim Road snaked along the canyon’s edge for miles before joining the state road that accessed the dam. The stone outcroppings that edged the road on the left made every turn a real adventure. The sheer drop on the right added to the pucker factor. The deluge that poured out of the black sky didn’t exactly help either visibility or navigability. Chewing on her lower lip, Sydney downshifted and took a hairpin turn at a crawl.

  A few, tortuous turns later she was forced to admit that it might have made more sense to wait until daylight to drive along the canyon rim. She’d needed this time alone with her memories, though. And there’d been no indication earlier that a storm might—

  “What the—!”

  She came out of a sharp turn and stomped on the brake. Or what she thought was the brake. Her boot hit the clutch instead, and the Blazer rolled straight at the slab of rock that had tumbled onto the road from the outcropping beside it.

  Choking back an oath, Sydney swung both her foot and the wheel. With the rock wall on the left and the sheer drop-off on the right, there was no room to maneuver around the obstacle. The Blazer swung too far out before she jammed on the brake and stopped its roll.

  To her horror, she felt the road’s narrow shoulder begin to crumble under the Blazer’s weight. The vehicle lurched back, dropped at an angle, stalled. Frantic, Sydney dragged the stick back to neutral, twisted the key.

  “Come on! Come on!”

  The engine turned over at the exact moment another piece of the rim gave. The four-wheel tilted at a crazy angle and started to slide backward.

  “Oh, God!”

  Shouldering open the door, Sydney threw herself out. She hit on one hip and twisted desperately, scrabbling for purchase on the rain-slick earth. Beside her the Blazer gave a fearsome imitation of the Titanic. Metal groaned against sandstone. Nose up, headlights stabbing the rain, it slid backward like the great ship slipping into its dark grave, then slowly toppled over the edge.

  The echoes of its crashing descent were still ringing in Sydney’s ears when sandstone and muddy earth crumbled under her frantic fingers and she followed the Blazer over the edge.

  Reece Henderson slapped a rolled-up schematic of the Chalo River Dam against his jeans-clad thigh. Jaw tight, he waited while the phone he held to his ear shrilled a half dozen times. He’d started to slam it down when the receiver was fumbled off the hook. Reece took the mumbled sound on the other end for a hello.

  “Where is she?”

  “Huh?”

  “Where’s Scott?”

  “Whoziz?”

  Gripping the receiver in a tight fist, Reece glared at the mirrored calendar on the opposite wall of the office set aside for his use.

  “This is Henderson, Reece Henderson. Chief engineer on the Chalo River Dam project. Where’s your boss?”

  “Dunno.” There was a jaw-cracking yawn at the other end of the line. “What time izit?”

  “Eight forty-seven,” he snapped. “She was supposed to be here at eight.”

  The irritation that had started simmering at 8:05 was now at full boil. He’d hung around topside waiting for the blasted woman, wasting almost an hour he could have spent down inside the dam with his engineers.

  “Did you, like, try her room?” The kid at the other end of the line sounded more alert now, if not more coherent.

  “Yes. Twice. There wasn’t any answer. The motel operator said you were her assistant and would know where she was.”

  Actually, Martha Jenkins, who pulled triple duty as owner, operator and day clerk at the Lone Eagle Motel, had provided Reece with more details than he’d either asked for or wanted. Martha hadn’t been on duty when Sydney Scott and her gum-popping, green-haired, multiple-body-pierced assistant Zachary Tyree checked in late yesterday afternoon, but things got around fast in a town the size of Chalo Canyon.

  “Hang loose.”

  The phone clattered down. The sound of sheets whooshing aside was followed in quick succession by the snick of a zipper and padding footsteps. Long moments later the phone rattled again.

  “She’s not in her room.”

  Reece rolled his eyes. He thought they’d already established that fact.

  “Well, if she strolls in anytime soon, tell her I left my brother’s wedding early and drove half the night so I would make the meeting she didn’t bother to show for. She can call me here at the site. I’ll get back to her when and if…”

  “You don’t understand, dude. She’s not here.”

  Reece felt the last of his patience shredding. “Tell your boss—”

  “The blinds in her room were open and I looked in. Her bed hasn’t been slept in.”

  Worry put a crack in the kid’s voice. A different sort of emotion put a lock on Reece’s jaw.

  God! He’d been hearing the rumors and gossip about this Scott woman for weeks. How she’d thrown herself at Jamie Chavez ten years ago. How Jamie’s father had all but dragged her out of his son’s bed. How her father had knocked Chavez, Sr., on his butt the next day. Now she was a big, important Hollywood director, coming back to Chalo River to impress everyone with her success…and to try her luck with Jamie again.

  Reece couldn’t suppress the disgust that swirled in his gut. The woman had arrived in town only yesterday afternoon and had already spent the night somewhere other than her motel room. Pretty fast work, even for a big, important Hollywood director.

  Well, Reece had complied with his boss’s direct communiqué. He’d cooperated with the woman, or tried to, damn near busting his butt to get back here in time for their meeting this morning. The ball was in Ms. Sydney Scott’s court now, and she could lob it at the net from now until next Christmas for all he cared. He started to hang up when the sharp concern in the kid’s voice stilled his hand.

  “Syd drove out to the canyon right after we got settled here at the motel yesterday afternoon. She could still be out there.”

  “What?”

  Reece’s irritation spiked into anger. He’d made it plain to Ms. Scott in their exchange of faxes that neither she nor any of her crew should go poking around in the restricted area behind the dam until he briefed them on the repair project and the potential hazards during the blasting period.

  “Syd said she wanted to check the water level in the reservoir and get her bearings. Told me not to wait up for her. You don’t think she, like, got lost or something?”

  “I understand Ms. Scott used to live in this area. She should know her way around.”

  “That was ten years ago, dude.”

  “The name’s Henderson.”

  “Right, Henderson. Could you, like, drive
around and check on her? She sorta gets involved in her projects sometimes and forgets what day it is. I’d go myself, but I don’t know the geography, and Syd’s got the Blazer, which leaves me, like, without wheels until Tish and the others get here.”

  Reece wanted very much to tell the kid what he and his boss could, like, do, but he’d assumed responsibility for this project and all the challenges and headaches that went with it. Including, it appeared, Sydney Scott. If she’d entered the restricted area and gotten her vehicle stuck in the mud after that gully-washer last night, she was, unfortunately, his problem.

  “All right. I’ll drive along the rim and look for her. Take down my mobile phone number. If she walks in, call me.”

  “Thanks, man!”

  After a call down to his second-in-charge to advise him that he’d be on mobile for the next half hour or so, Reece exchanged his hard hat for a battered straw Stetson, legacy of those rare breaks between jobs which he spent at the Bar-H, helping his brother Jake. A moment later, he left the air-conditioned comfort of the office for the blazing heat of a summer Arizona sun bouncing off concrete.

  The administration building perched on the east end of the dam, a massive concrete arch that thrust its arms against the steep Chalo Canyon walls. Some 305 feet below, two fully opened spillways poured tons of rushing water into the lower Chalo. Tipping his hat forward to shade his eyes, Reece paused for a moment to assess the reservoir behind the dam. All traces of the thunderstorm that had lashed the area last night had disappeared. Sunlight sparkled on the water’s surface, already, he noted with grim satisfaction, sunk well below its usual level.

  By tomorrow, he should be able to examine from the outside the cracks that had started stressing the dam from the inside. He’d know then how much work he had ahead of him, and how long this Sydney Scott would have to film her documentary before the reservoir started filling again.

  Assuming, of course, that she’d intended to make a movie at all. Maybe the rumors were true. Maybe this documentary was just a smoke screen, a convenient cover for her personal intentions. Maybe she’d really come back to Chalo River to make nothing but trouble.

  If that was the case, she was off to a helluva good start. When and if Reece located Ms. Scott, she might just realize she’d bitten off more trouble than she could chew this time.

  He found her twenty minutes later. Or more correctly, he found the spot where the canyon rim had crumbled, taking half the road with it.

  Chapter 2

  “H ey! You down there! Are you okay?”

  The shout jerked Sydney’s head back. Never in her life had she heard anything as wonderful as that deep, gruff voice. Keeping a tight grip on the twisted piñon tree that had broken her slide into oblivion seven long hours ago, she shouted to the dark-haired cowboy peering cautiously over the edge of the rim.

  “I’m okay. No broken bones that I can tell. Have you got a rope?”

  “Yes. I’ll be right back. Don’t move!”

  Don’t move. Right. As if she planned on releasing her death grip on the rough-barked trunk or shifting her body so much as a centimeter to either side of the narrow toehold she’d found in the canyon wall.

  She leaned her forehead against the tree, almost giddy with relief. Then again, this dizzy sensation might have something to do with the fact that she’d just spent seven hours wedged between a tree root and a cliff face hundreds of feet above a narrow river gorge.

  She’d been prepared to spend even longer. Sydney hadn’t expected Zack to roll out of bed before ten or eleven, much less organize a rescue for his missing boss. Her assistant was worth his 140 pounds in gold once he revved his motor, but getting him going some mornings could take a half-dozen calls that ran the gamut from wheedling to cajoling to outright threats of death and dismemberment. Thank God this was one of his rare self-starting days!

  The thump of a rope hitting against the cliff face above her snapped her attention back to the rim. She looked up just in time to take the shower of small stones and dust dislodged by the rope full in her face. Wincing, Sydney spun her head sideways, which caused the tree to shake and its occupant to let out a small, terrified squeak.

  “Dammit, don’t move!” her rescuer snapped. “I’ll work the rope over to you.”

  Clinging to the tree trunk with both arms, she blew upward in a vain attempt to get the dust and straggling hair out of her eyes. Her Rams ball cap had gone the way of the Blazer during that three-second slide down the cliff face. Sydney only hoped the sacrifice of a hat and a four-wheel-drive vehicle had satisfied the canyon gods.

  Her heart in her throat, she watched the thick rope hump and bump its way closer to her precarious perch. Only after it was within reach did she discover that her arms were numb from the shoulders down. She couldn’t seem to unlock their tight grip on the trunk.

  “Take the rope.”

  Swiping her tongue along dry lips, she tried again. Her left arm came unwrapped and dangled like over-cooked linguini at her side.

  “I need a minute here,” she croaked to her rescuer. “I can’t seem to feel my arms.”

  “All right, it’s all right.” The gruff voice above her gentled. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Sydney muttered to the piñon, her eyes on the rope a tantalizing few inches away. Suddenly it jounced up and out of sight.

  “Hey!”

  “Hang on, I’m coming down.”

  He pulled off his hat and looped the rope around his waist. Within moments he was beside her. Black hair ruffled. Blue eyes steady and encouraging in a tanned face. Shoulders roped with reassuringly thick cords of muscle. Altogether he looked big, strong and wonderfully solid.

  On second thought, Sydney wasn’t so sure big and solid were desirable characteristics in a man whose only connection to terra firma was a length of twisted hemp. Swallowing, she said a silent prayer for the sureness of his lifeline while he propped his boots against the canyon wall. With a cowboy’s one-handed ease, he shook out a loop in the length of rope he’d left dangling behind him.

  “Bend your head. Let me slip this over you.” He spoke slowly, his deep voice calm, confident. “I’m going to lift one of your arms. Got a grip? Okay, now the other. Easy, easy.”

  The noose tightened around her waist, cutting off most of her breath. The taut, muscled arm the stranger slid around her cut off the rest.

  “I’ve got you. I’m going to swing you in front of me. We’ll walk up the cliff face together. Ready?”

  Even with the rope and her rescuer’s muscled arm around her, it took a considerable leap of faith to let go of the sturdy little piñon. Swallowing hard, she let him lift her from the tree.

  “I’ve got you. I won’t let go.”

  She managed a shaky laugh. “Promise?”

  “I’m a man of my word,” he assured her, his breath warm in her ear.

  She hoped so. She certainly hoped so.

  “Ready?”

  She gulped. “Ready.”

  They crab-walked up the cliff, her bottom nested against his stomach, his arms caging her ribs. Five steps, seven, eight, then a palm on her rear and a heaving shove.

  Sydney went over the rim belly down. Panting, she crawled on hands and knees until the ground felt firm enough for her to turn and try to help her rescuer over the edge. Her arms were still so weak she gave up after the first useless tug.

  Not that he appeared to need any assistance. With a smooth coordination of brawn and grace, he hauled himself up. Once safely away from the crumbled rim, he untied his lifeline and strode to the Jeep that had anchored it. Sydney gave a little croak of delight when he hunkered down beside her a moment later, a plastic bottle of spring water in his hand. She downed a half dozen greedy gulps before coming up for air. After another swallow or two, her throat had loosened enough to talk without croaking.

  “Thanks…for the water and the rescue.”

  “You’re welcome.” He picked up his hat and dusted it against his th
igh before settling it on his head. “Sure you’re not hurt?”

  “Just a little weak from hanging on to the tree all night. I collected a few dents and scrapes on my way down, but nothing that won’t heal or cover up.”

  His blue eyes raked her over from the top of her dusty head to the toes of her dusty boots, performing their own assessment. Evidently he agreed with her diagnosis.

  “I saw the wreckage at the bottom of the gorge. What happened?”

  “There was a boulder in the road. With the rain, I didn’t see in time and swung too sharply. I got out of the Blazer before it went over, but the rim crumbled beneath me. I thought…I was sure…” She substituted a wobbly smile for the shudder she wanted to let rip. “The piñon broke my fall. How does that poem go, the one about never seeing anything as beautiful as a tree?”

  “Beats me.” He studied her from under the brim of that beat-up hat, his expression noticeably less comforting and reassuring now that they were back on solid ground. “You’re a lucky woman.”

  She started to point out that not everyone would classify someone who went over a cliff as lucky, but his next comment buried the thought.

  “And damned stupid.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Most people would have more sense than to drive along a narrow canyon rim road late at night in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

  Sydney had come to the same conclusion herself just before she went bungee jumping without a bungee, but she didn’t particularly enjoy hearing it from someone else. Still, he’d plucked her out of her eagle’s nest. She owed him, big-time.

  Ordering her arms and legs to do their thing, she pushed herself to her feet. Her rescuer had to shoot out a hand and catch her before she whumped back down on her rear. Shaking off his hand, she tried to sound grateful.

  “Thanks. Again. I’m Sydney Scott, by the way.”

  “I know who you are.”

  She flushed at the drawled response, feeling even more stupid than he’d implied earlier. If he was part of a search party, of course he’d know who he’d come looking for.