by Jill Shalvis
More recently, and for more complicated reasons, Hudson had also been searching for their dad, much to Aidan’s frustration. He didn’t want that asshole within a thousand miles of here. “Please tell me you were up all night watching that cartoon porn again and not searching for Dad.”
In the way he’d been doing since he was a kid, Hudson set his jaw. And the big brother in Aidan sighed, knowing he’d come up against the brick wall that was Hudson’s stubbornness. “We’ve been over this, man. We don’t need him.”
“We do,” Hudson said. “And it’s not porn, it’s called anime. It’s an art form.”
Aidan shook his head. “Whatever. Just concentrate on finding Jacob. Forget Dad.”
“I can do both.”
“But you don’t need to,” Aidan insisted. “We don’t need Dad here right now.”
Or ever.
Hudson slid him a glance. “On a scale of one to goat-fuck, how stubborn are you going to be about this?” Hud asked.
Aidan just gave him a hard look.
“So goat-fuck then,” his brother muttered. “Perfect.”
They pulled up to the incident command center and joined the fray.
“Gonna be like hunting a needle in a haystack,” Hudson said, squinting at the fog.
No doubt. During the summer months they had more rescues than any other time of the year. With its sheer rock face for climbing, challenging trails for hiking, and some decent rapids, Colorado was a magnet for what they called weekend walkers—people who were office-dwellers during the week and adventure-seekers on the weekend. They were the main reason things stayed so busy for S&R and the fire department.
Depending on the runoff from the surrounding creeks and estuaries, the river rapids could go from an easy class two up to a class four in a blink, making it all too easy to run into trouble. And in spite of the carefully posted warnings, the signs were all too often ignored. It was as if people lost all common sense the moment they smelled fresh air and got onto a dirt trail.
Today’s trouble came courtesy of a group of six girlfriends who’d gone on an overnight hiking expedition to Eagle’s Cove. They’d decided to prank the sole single girl in their midst into thinking she was being tracked and stalked by Bigfoot because he could smell her virginity. Terrified, she’d run off, heading into the woods.
And had not been seen since.
This had been at midnight, but the girls hadn’t called it in until four a.m. because they thought she’d been playing a return trick on them by disappearing.
Plus, they hadn’t wanted to get in trouble.
But then a bear had crossed their paths, and they’d all run screaming into the night, racing all the way back to base, convinced their friend had become Bigfoot bait.
Aidan wasn’t too worried about the bear sighting. They’d most likely seen a black bear, known to be meek and mild-tempered—unless you got between a mama and her cub. That always changed the game. Hoping for the best, Aidan and Hudson geared up with the others on their team. Mitch had caught an extra shift at the fire station so he hadn’t made it, but the rest of them headed out into the predawn light.
There’d been plenty of June snowstorms over the years, and it was definitely cold enough for one today, but there was no precip in the forecast.
Small favors.
Two hours into the search, the sun had come up and they’d found the girl’s bandanna hanging off a branch. She’d gotten as far as the base of North Peak.
Problem was, this sat at a crossroad and they had no way of knowing which way she’d gone. Alone in the dark, frightened, she could’ve chosen any of three options.
The team split into pairs, each taking a different direction, with Aidan and Hudson continuing north. A quarter of a mile later they found a torn piece of sweatshirt material snagged on another branch.
“Shit,” Hudson muttered, and they both looked up farther north—to Dead Man’s Cliff.
Had the girl left the trail and tried to climb the rocks down? The trail did vanish into nothing in a few spots, it was entirely feasible to get turned around and completely lost in less time than it took to blink.
“This is no place for a novice,” Hudson said.
Hell, it wasn’t a place for an expert. Dead Man’s Cliff had claimed far too many lives, and yet people still ignored the warning signs posted everywhere and purposely left the trail and risked their lives.
Aidan had seen far too many deaths in this area, but the one that always stuck with him, and in fact still gave him nightmares, was Ashley Danville’s. He had to shove that thought aside or he wouldn’t be able to do his job. They radioed in their new information and kept going.
An hour later they found another breadcrumb—the missing girl’s shoe.
“Not a good sign,” Hudson said, the master of understatements.
“She was moving fast,” Aidan said. “Probably scared out of her mind.”
Hudson pointed to yet another STAY OUT OF THIS AREA sign. “Why do we bother with these?” He shook his head. “Maybe she hasn’t seen any of the Scream movies, the ones where the girl who runs off on her own dies a horrible death.”
They kept going. An hour later, Aidan stopped again. Shoving his sunglasses up on top of his head, he crouched down next to a low-lying manzanita bush and stared at the shoe that matched the one they’d already found, this one dotted with some blood. “Shit.”
Hudson echoed the sentiment and radioed it in.
A few minutes later they heard the thumping beat of the search chopper flying overhead.
Their radios crackled in stereo as the report came in from the helo. The missing girl had just been spotted one hundred yards north of Aidan and Hudson’s position, off the side of the trail, where she’d apparently fallen and was clinging to some undergrowth.
Aidan and Hudson raced to the spot and peered over the side.
Yep, there she was, twenty feet down, conscious and hyperventilating by the looks of things. “Shannon,” Aidan called down while Hudson prepared the rope, harness, and attachment point. “How you doing?”
She burst into loud sobs while simultaneously cussing out her coed sisters with enviable creativity.
“It’s okay, we’ve got you now,” Aidan told her. “Just hang tight, we’ll be right there.” He looked at Hudson. “Hit it.”
“Not me,” Hudson said, nudging the harness at Aidan. “You know I don’t do criers. This one has your name all over it.”
Aidan snatched the harness. “What makes you think I do criers?”
“Have you met the women you date? Teri, Breanne, Molly, Shelly—” Hudson ticked off Adrian’s exes on his fingers.
“I never dated Shelly,” Aidan said, slapping Hudson’s helping hands away.
“Banged then,” Hudson said.
Aidan straightened the harness and narrowed his eyes at Hudson. “And how is it you get to escape all the crazy?”
“It’s a talent I picked up by watching you and doing the opposite,” Hudson said.
The rest of the team arrived. As Hudson belayed him down, Aidan kept his eyes on the girl. “Keep your head down,” he told her. “Don’t look up or you’ll get rock dust in your eyes.”
So of course she promptly looked up and got rock dust in her eyes. She screamed and slid down another few feet. “Omigod, I’m losing my grip! I—”
Aidan snatched her just as she let go. “Got ya.”
Still screaming, she managed to climb his body, gripping him with both arms and legs like a monkey.
Déjà vu …
“Shannon,” he said firmly while keeping his voice purposely low so that she’d have to strain to hear, theoretically shutting up in the process. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
She stopped screaming. With a noisy sniff, she met his gaze, her face puffy and mascara ravaged, as the team pulled them up. “Are you married?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you want to be?”
By the time they got Shannon down
to the base of the mountain, a rather large crowd had gathered. Any rescue on Dead Man’s Cliff was always big news in Cedar Ridge. Other than that time the Housewives of Beverly Hills had come through town complete with their television camera crews, Cedar Ridge’s biggest claim to fame was the cliff and the lives it claimed.
The group of Shannon’s sorority sisters looked worried, and for good reason. They were probably about to get their asses handed to them in a sling.
You play, you pay, Aidan thought, knowing it all too well. He and his brothers had been pulling shit on each other forever.
“Remember when Gray locked us in the Cat?” Hudson asked, obviously thinking along the same vein. “We found the keys and drove it into town in the middle of the night in the snowstorm from hell. Good times.”
“Good times?” Aidan asked. “We nearly went to juvie for grand theft. We would have if my mom hadn’t made Gray stand up before the judge and tell how he’d locked us in.”
Hudson grinned wide. “We all got our asses handed to us on that one. It was fun.”
“We were grounded for months,” Aidan reminded him.
“Yeah. Together.” Hudson shrugged. “I had the time of my life. You let me drive, remember?”
Yeah, Aidan remembered. Mostly because Hud had nearly killed them on Pine Pass Road when they’d narrowly avoided more than one tree. But he knew that compared to Hudson and Jacob’s rough childhood, nearly going to jail as a cocky fourteen-year-old with his big brothers at his back might indeed have been the time of his life.
They made their way through the crowd, but Aidan stopped short at the sight of the woman standing off to the side of the others, chewing on her thumbnail, a haunted expression on her face.
Lily.
His chest squeezed. Nothing about this woman should reach him, nothing, and yet he couldn’t seem to help himself. It was the kiss—stupidity at its finest. He’d gotten a taste of her, and it was messing with his head. “Don’t do it, Kincaid,” he muttered.
“Do what?” Hud asked, and followed Aidan’s gaze. “Ah. That’s what.”
“Give me a minute.” Ignoring the instincts that had kept him alive on more than one occasion, and despite being exhausted, starving, and on his last ounce of energy, Aidan walked over to Lily. “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
She looked away, but not before he caught the flash of worry she’d been masking. The rescue had brought back horrific memories for her, of that he had no doubt.
“Just wanted to make sure everyone was okay,” she finally said.
She sounded calm, but he could feel the tension simmering beneath the surface. He felt for her and the nightmares this mountain must bring. “We got her,” he said, voice softer now, feeling things when he didn’t want to. Way too many things. “She’s going to be okay.”
She nodded. “Good.”
Walk away. You’ve done your duty, now get the hell away from her. “How about you?” he asked instead. “You going to be okay?”
“Always am.”
More like she’d always had to be. Their gazes held for a single heated, tension-filled beat, and that’s when he knew something else as well—he was all kinds of screwed. Upside down, sideways … every which way, because just as she had in the past, Lily drew him in with those eyes, her voice, the outer toughness she showed the world, the inner vulnerability she did her best to hide.
And damn if he didn’t want to kiss her and then drag her back to his place caveman-style and show them both what they’d been missing out on. He tried to remind himself that their time, if they’d ever had one, had long since passed. Which was proven when, without another word, she broke eye contact and walked away.
Chapter 9
Lily managed to get to the Mane Attraction at nine a.m. on the dot, half an hour earlier than her official start time. She liked to be prepared. Unlike, say, how it felt to run into Aidan again. Nope, she was as unprepared for that as one could get …
The salon was located in the bottom floor of the big lodge at the resort, next to an equipment rental and sales shop. The place itself was small and cluttered but warm and welcoming nevertheless. There was one client room for waxing, and everything else was done out in the main room of the salon.
In other words, no real privacy.
“Not what you’re used to, I’m sure,” Jonathan said as he walked her around.
True enough. The place was nothing like Lily was used to. In San Diego they’d had 10,000 fabulous square feet, every inch designed to soothe and calm and rejuvenate the spirit.
They’d been a five-star salon and proud as hell of it.
Jonathan gestured to the three hair stations. “Pick your spot.”
Pick her spot? “Don’t you have more staff coming in?” she asked.
“Today it’s just you and me, Lily Pad.”
She stared at him.
He sighed. “Cassandra’s not supposed to be on her feet for more than a half hour at a time, so she’s not working anymore until after she pops. And then there’s my part-timers, Terika and Rosa, but they’re not in today either.”
“What days are they in?”
“Well¸” he said with a grimace. “That varies. Terika’s mad at me right now.”
“Why?”
“Something to do with a late night, too much Jack Daniel’s, and a really awkward morning after.” He sighed. “It’s complicated.”
I bet. “And Rosa?”
“She scares me.”
Lily laughed, but Jonathan didn’t. “You serious?” she asked.
“As a midget at a nudist colony,” he said.
Lily shook her head and spent a few minutes selecting a station and getting her stuff all set up. They shared a wash station, and everyone had to answer phones, since they didn’t have a receptionist. Definitely not five star, but then again this wasn’t SoCal. Needs here were different. Things were simpler.
For the last ten years, she’d thrown herself headlong into the San Diego culture and lifestyle. But the Rocky Mountain way of life came back to her in less than fifteen minutes. The lack of fake niceties, the laid-back atmosphere … all of it.
It took her about five more minutes to realize that the Mane Attraction needed some major modernizing: new supplies, brighter lighting, new equipment, and a better system all around.
Which became obvious two hours into her shift, when she blew a fuse after attempting to straighten a client’s hair while another client sat under a dryer. She found Jonathan in the back office grabbing a snack. Chips and dip, and her mouth watered.
“Damn,” he said. “It’s a sad moment when you lose a chip in the dip and you send in a recon chip but that breaks too.”
“Stop it, you’re making me hungry,” she said, and grabbed a chip. “What kind of dip?”
“Ranch.”
“Low fat?”
“Hell no,” he said. “Life’s too short for fake butter, dip, or people. Call the landlord about the blown fuse. The number’s programmed into the phone.”
Knowing full well who the landlord was, Lily balked. “I don’t think—”
“It won’t be him,” Jonathan said. “It’ll be Gray.”
So she made the call, and indeed got Gray, who was calm and efficient. She had no idea if that was because he could hear the panic in her voice that he might try to strike up a conversation or because he just didn’t care. In either case, he didn’t try to make the call personal. He simply promised to send someone within the hour.
The front door opened, and Jonathan’s next client walked in. Char Kincaid—Aidan’s mom. She gave Lily a big hello hug and seemed genuinely happy to see her.
“You look great,” Lily said.