Deadly Race (15 page)

No, I won’t
, she wanted to shout.
I’ve fallen in love with you against my better judgment and you don’t want that love
. The words came into her mind, forcing her to acknowledge what she had known the night before. After her father had abandoned her, it had taken years to repair the damage. After her fiancé’s deceit, she hadn’t been sure she would ever be the same, but finally she had pulled herself together and moved on with her life. Now, she realized she wouldn’t be able to recover from Slade Calvert as easily. Slade had branded her his, whether he wanted to or not, and she would have to carry that mark around for the rest of her life. The emptiness in the pit of her stomach, reflected the feeling she would experience when they said their good-byes.

“We’ll tie your flats on your feet to help keep them on.” Slade rummaged through his duffel bag until he found the twine he had taken from the plane. “Give me your foot.”

She stared at the thin piece of rope, then looked up at him. There was no way she would let him touch her. She was afraid she would fall apart and make a total fool of herself. “I can take care of that.” She held out her hand, schooling her features into a neutral expression while inside it felt as though her whole body was quavering.

“Fine,” he said with a shrug and dropped the cord into her grasp.

As she proceeded to tie her shoes onto her feet, Slade busied himself preparing for their departure, stuffing everything he could into his duffel bag, which he then flung over his shoulder. When she completed her task, she stood up on shaky legs. She glanced at the mountain as she wiped the sweat from her brow.

“I’ll carry all our stuff. You just concentrate on getting yourself over that mountain.” Slade scattered the ashes of the fire, then started into the thick bush.

All that had happened to her the past few days would be nothing compared to the next hours. She inhaled a deep, fortifying breath and moved forward, her heart racing even before she had taken two steps.

* * *

Don’t look down. Don’t look down
. Ellie chanted those words over and over in her mind as she fumbled for a foothold, her fingers digging into the rocky ridge. With her gaze trained on Slade above her, she hoisted herself up onto the ledge, her breathing a shallow raspy sound. Sweat poured off her and ran down into her eyes, stinging them. Her clothes were drenched and clinging to her as though she had taken a shower—which she wished she had.

The second thing she would do when she reached civilization, right after pigging out with a five-course meal, would be to relax in a bubble bath until her skin looked like a raisin. Of course, each day she was stuck in the jungle her fantasy concerning what she would do when she returned to civilization kept growing. Before long she would have herself indulging in a resort spa for a week. No, make that two weeks, where everything was done for her and to her. Manicures. Pedicures. Facials. Deep muscle massages. Ah, the thought brought a smile to her lips.

“We’ll take a rest here,” he announced and plopped the duffel bag down beside him on the six by four foot stone shelf.

“Here?” She scooted back as far as she could on the ridge and closed her eyes. She breathed in deep gulps of the humid air that felt oppressive, as if someone were pressing down upon her chest. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Won’t it be dark soon?”

“You need to rest, Ellie, or you won’t have the strength to finish the climb.”

She heard the concern in his voice and for an instant relished the fact that he cared. Then she remembered all that stood between them and knew he would feel that way about anyone in this situation with him. The thought saddened her, and she had to work to push it into the background, where she could deal with it later.

“Okay. Fifteen minutes. That’s all. We’re so close to the top,” she said, keeping her eyes shut to the world around her. She realized the wisdom in his words because her body ached from fatigue, her muscles quickly turning to mush. She honestly wasn’t sure she would be able to stand to finish the climb.

“You know, I’ve never shared what happened to me as a kid with another. How it felt to feel so alone even though people were around me. Strangers really.”

“Me neither. I didn’t want to upset my mother so I kept quiet and after she died, I didn’t want to upset my grandmother, so I kept quiet. But I’m fine now. That’s the past.” She forced a light tone into her voice while behind her closed eyelids she could picture her and Slade kissing by the waterfall. She’d certainly not felt alone then. She opened her eyes to rid herself of that image and suddenly wished she hadn’t.

She sucked in a gasp when she saw how high up she was. A sea of green treetops was all she could see for miles around her. Her heart beat so fast she thought she was going to faint. She immediately closed her eyes again, but it was too late. She knew she was hundreds of feet above the jungle floor. She plastered herself against the rock surface and clawed at the stone beneath her, as though digging in would reassure her that she would be all right.

“I can’t do this,” she whispered.

She felt Slade move to her side. “Yes, you can, because you have no other choice.”

“We are above the trees, the tall trees.” She knew she had been climbing for hours, but she hadn’t thought about going up, just each step she had taken to get her to this ledge.

“Don’t think about that.”

“I wish I wasn’t.”

“Then don’t.” His voice was harsh as he gripped her and pulled her around to face him. “Look at me.”

“No.” She was afraid to open her eyes again.

“Just look at me,” Slade said in a gentler tone. “Nowhere else.” His hands eased their hold. “Come on, Ellie, you are tough. Think of all we have been through. Not many women could have done what you have done these past few days. This is just one more thing for you to overcome.”

Slowly she opened her eyes to have him fill her vision. She resisted the strong urge to caress his handsome face, to trace those lips that she’d enjoyed kissing. His gaze locked with hers, and she wanted to melt into his strength and draw from it. She wouldn’t. She remembered his reserve that morning, as if he was regretting opening himself up to her.

“We don’t have much farther to go. We are high up. I won’t kid you about that, but this isn’t much different than being in an airplane.”

“How so?”

“When you’re on a plane, you visualize yourself on the ground. Do the same thing now.” He eased her back against the ledge. “We’re back at the waterfall.”

“Not there.”

“Our campsite?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes. She couldn’t think about those two places. “You know, this reminds me of when I went camping my one and only time.”

“I can see that. We’re outdoors. We’ve been roughing it.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t sleep outside.”

“In a tent then?”

“No, I slept at a four-star resort in one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in.”

He chuckled. “I’m afraid to ask what happened to your plans to camp out.”

“My friend and I made the mistake of pitching our tent in a dry creek bed that didn’t remain dry when the rains began. We lost everything. We barely got out of the raging creek alive. You should have seen us staggering into this plush resort, drenched, battered, our clothes torn. Needless to say, I haven’t jumped at the chance to camp outside, since that one insane moment when I agreed to go with my college roommate because she loved to commune with nature. Since that time the closest I’ve gotten to nature until this little excursion of ours was the zoo.”

“Trouble follows you around, doesn’t it?”

“That camping trip wasn’t my idea.”

“Who thought to camp in the creek bed?”

She glanced sideways at him. “Okay, so it was my idea. It was flat and in my defense didn’t look like a creek.”

“Didn’t your roommate know better?”

“You would think so, until I found out all she had ever done was hike several times into a national park near where she grew up. Here I had been depending on her as the expert, and she was as much a novice as I was. I think the park ranger knew that. You should have seen the look he gave us when we told him we were camping out. If he hadn’t come checking up on us, we would have still been there, wandering around lost.” She smiled, the first time in hours. “Come to think of it, I would probably be better off lost in that national forest rather than lost here.”

“Hey, I’m offended. I know where we are.”

“Yeah, one mountain away from the coast. I’m comforted by that thought.”

“Do I detect sarcasm, Ellie?”

“Never.”

“Now I know I detect sarcasm.” He inched closer until his arm was touching hers. “About last night.”

“You won’t let that go?”

He shook his head.

“You’ve got me as a captive audience. I’m certainly not going anywhere.”

He started to say something.

She reached up and placed her hand over his mouth, making sure that her gaze didn’t focus anywhere but his face. “We shared things we don’t normally. People do that all the time. Well, maybe not all the time, but it really is no big deal.”

“It’s not something I do.”

“Me either, but nothing about this little adventure is real. This,” she swept her arm wide to indicate the jungle without looking at it, “isn’t our reality. Boston is yours. New York is mine. There is no need to feel anything beyond that.” She removed her fingers from his lips, the contact disrupting her equilibrium. “Now, don’t you think it’s about time we get a move on it. I am not going to sleep on this ledge. My control only goes so far.”

Slade frowned.

She wasn’t sure if he was going to drop the subject. She could only deal with so much at one time. Right now her priority was keeping her sanity, long enough to get to the top of the mountain in one piece. “Please, Slade.”

With a quick scan of the area, he scooped up the duffel bag and began to examine the rock surface for his first foothold. As soon as he found it and started up, Ellie followed, again watching him rather than the terrain around her. That was probably why, when she grabbed hold of a plant she thought was anchored into the mountain, she wasn’t prepared for it to come loose. She had a second to stare at the offending plant in her hand before she began to fall. As she plunged downward, her mind went blank from absolute terror, and she flailed her arms out, trying to latch onto something to stop her descent. There was nothing.

She landed with a breath-wrenching thud on the same ledge she had been on, only a short time before. Blackness hovered at the edges of her mind. She watched Slade through a blurry haze as he scrambled back down the mountain. She wanted to tell him to be careful, but the words died on her lips as the darkness finally swallowed her up.

* * *

Slade saw the still form of Ellie lying on the stone shelf, and it felt as if his heart stopped beating for a few seconds. He refused to think beyond the need to get to her. His foot slipped from a hold, and he grasped a rock jutting out to keep himself from losing his balance, too. He made himself take deep breaths and slow his descent. He would be no good to her if he injured himself. But the fact it was taking too long to get to her and she hadn’t stirred concerned him more than he wanted to acknowledge.

I can’t lose her. I promised I would protect her
.

When he reached the ledge, he knelt over her, running his shaking hands over her body to check for any broken bones. There didn’t seem to be anything broken, but he wouldn’t be sure until she awakened and moved around.

If she awakened … The thought went unfinished as he started to pray as he never had before. Smoothing her hair from her pale face, he waited, feeling powerless, wishing he could take her into his arms but afraid to move her, wishing he could trade places with her. The sun had disappeared below the tree line when Ellie moaned and raised her hand to her forehead. Relief flooded him.

“Ellie, I’m right here.”

She moaned again. Her eyes opened, then immediately closed.

“Lie there for a few minutes and get your bearings.”

After a few minutes of silence, she looked up at him. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere too soon. The world is spinning.”

“You have a nasty bump on the back of your head. You were out for a while.”

“Do you know how easily I bruise? People are going to think I went ten rounds with the heavy weight champion of the world. And guess what? They aren’t going to think I came out the winner.”

Slade smiled. “I think you’re going to be just fine.”

“Fine! I ache in places I didn’t know I had.”

“Can you move your legs? Arms?”

Ellie wiggled all of her appendages. “Stiff but in working order.”

“Good, probably nothing’s broken then. I’ll help you sit up.”

“No,” she waved him off. “I can do this.” She tried to raise herself and groaned. “Maybe yes. Just a little help.”

He put his arms under her and lifted her to a sitting position. She closed her eyes and sagged against him.

“All I see is dark green swirling around.” She leaned back and stared up into his face. “It’s getting dark!”