Wild at Heart (Walk on the Wild Side #1) (19 page)

Before the words were quite out of his mouth, another blinding bolt sizzled across the sky, making the dark clouds blaze and churn white and yellow as though an artillery battle had suddenly begun above the horizon. Instinctively, Amber dove for the ground, and this time she was fairly sure only two seconds passed before thunder shook the air around them. She was lucky she didn’t lose control of her bladder.

Nick, though, was still on his feet.

“Get down!” she shouted, grabbing at the leg of his jeans, her heart banging against her sternum in full-blown panic. “I don’t want you getting struck either!”

“Just give me a minute,” he said, shaking her off and striding forward as if offering himself as tribute to the lightning gods. “Keep yourself low, kiddo.”

She wanted to scream, but she knew him too well to think anything she said would make him turn back now. So she focused all her energy on willing the skies to hold back the worst of their wrath for a few minutes, until Nick found the good sense God gave a woodchuck and got himself back under cover again.

He went right to the edge of the chasm, silhouetted against a weird greenish glow, which boiled through the thunderhead like something radioactive. “Ruby!” he shouted into the battering rain. “Jake! Can you hear us? Where are you?” As far as Amber could tell, the storm swallowed up his voice. But maybe his call was carrying down into the hollows and valleys beneath.

Nick yelled for Ruby and Jake over and over, cupping his hands around his mouth and turning in a slow circle, sending out his cry in all directions. His determination was palpable.

Amber strained with every nerve to try to hear an answering shout, but not even an echo came back. The world felt bleak and wet—and empty of any life beside the two of them. For all they could hear beyond the rain, they might as well have been packed in damp cotton wool.

“Enough, Nick,” Amber finally called out. “Ruby wouldn’t have come this high. Let’s go down, look for...I don’t know, a cave or something.”

Nick held firm for a moment, taking another look around, giving one last mighty bellow into the wind, before he finally nodded grudgingly, and to her relief came back to where she was. She was up like a shot, grabbed his hand, and practically pulled him down the trail as fast as they could go, sliding on the wet rock, until they were down under the cover of trees again.

Once they were on reasonably level ground, Nick motioned her beneath the overhang of a boulder, where they hunkered down side by side at least partially out of the rain, and he flicked on the walkie talkie. “Ranger Donnell?” he said into the mouthpiece. “You there? Anybody find anybody yet?”

The unit crackled, and then Onyx’s voice came over the line. “Nobody,” she said, sounding remarkably cheerful for somebody who must be getting beaten up by the storm as badly as they were. “We saw a deer, though.”

“Good for you,” said Nick wryly. But he didn’t get to say anything more.

The wind gave a sudden shriek, shifting direction wildly.

And the hail Ranger Donnell had been predicting burst loose from the sky.

Even with the boulder at their backs, Nick and Amber got hammered, the hail hitting like a thousand tiny fists, fierce little ice-rocks pummeling their arms and legs and faces hard enough to leave bruises.

It had a furious, malevolent feel to it.

It
hurt
.

Nick rolled sideways on his knees, shielding Amber as best he could, hoisting the backpack up on his shoulders Atlas-style to protect their heads. “Are you all right?” he yelled over the clattering and hissing of the falling ice. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She knew Nick couldn’t be, though, with his back taking the brunt of the impact. She remembered Ranger Donnell saying something about a tarp in the backpack, to be used in case of hail. Stretching up, she unzipped the pack and pulled out the big blue sheet of plastic. “Hang in there, cowboy.”

“I’m okay.” Nick grimaced, and curled in tighter. “Glad I wore jeans.”

She shook the tarp out over the pack so it draped down Nick’s back, and gripped the near edge tight in her fists. With her heels, she managed to catch the flapping far corners that hung over Nick’s legs and dragged the corners down against the ground.

Keeping the corners pinned, she slid her feet out as far as her legs could extend, her hands pulling the other direction, drawing the tarp over the curve of the pack. Stretched taut, the tarp made a crude sort of tent above them, with a few inches of air space above Nick’s back. Hail struck it as if it were a drum skin, making quick little dents in the surface, but the worst of it bounced off without touching Nick.

“Thanks,” he said, gasping. “For a minute there I felt like I was getting mugged by a gang of really sharp-knuckled fourth graders.”

“No problem,” she said, though her arm and back and stomach muscles burned trying to hold her spread-eagled position, and several key pieces of her spinal column seemed on the verge of popping loose. “On the plus side, I think we’ve created a new couples-yoga pose.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” he said, smiling. “I’m about to lose my balance as it is.”

His green eyes looked down at her brightly, their corners crinkling in an utterly adorable way. Even beneath the razor stubble on his cheeks, she could see the slight indent of his dimple, and she felt a pang inside—half tenderness, half a wild desire to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him.

Not something she should be thinking about right now.

Hastily, she broke the eye contact and looked sideways instead, at the world beyond the edges of the tarp. It was an eerie fog of white as far as she could see, with balls of ice bouncing and piling up like snow, and torn leaves and snapped twigs sailing by in the hard wind.

It was strange and fascinating in a way, surreally beautiful—and an almost-effective distraction from the magnetic tug of Nick’s body.

Had she always been so sensitive to the details of the physical world, or had Nick brought that out in her, with his extraordinary eye for visual detail? The first scripts she’d tried to write back in college were all about the words, until she started to work with him. Now the films they made together were known for their visual intensity. She
saw
the world differently, because of him. Their artistic vision was a synergy—their minds working together.

It truly was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

But what if they couldn’t make things work out now? What if this was the last film they’d make together?

Her heart ached at the thought.

She felt the warmth of Nick’s breathing as he crouched above her. The world under the tarp seemed close and small and quiet, the yellow of their ponchos making a soft golden glow, almost like firelight. Despite the onslaught of the hail and the ache in her muscles, their little corner of the planet felt...
snug
.

She didn’t want it to end. It felt safe, and right.

And it was probably a good thing Nick was busy holding up the backpack, because she was sorely tempted all of a sudden to reach up and pull him down on top of her, and try to kiss him into seeing how right it was for them to be together.

But that would be a mistake, of course. It would be pushing him too hard, when clearly something deep inside him feared the intensity of what happened any time they touched. Not to mention that pulling him down would make her lose the tarp and him drop the pack, and they’d both probably end up getting clonked in the head by ice.

So she kept her hands off him, just let her breathing fall into rhythm with his. She wasn’t sure how many minutes they held still, but gradually, the clattering of the hail shifted to a softer splashing, and the ice gave way to rain again.

“I think we’re clear,” said Nick at last. With a groan, he shifted his shoulders and the pack slid off, taking the tarp down with it, and he fell forward slightly, his palms striking the ground as he caught himself.

Which meant, of course, that his hands were on either side of her hips and his body was between her thighs, his chest inches from hers. For an instant their eyes met again, an electric shock, and in the space of a breath, the world went from snug to swelteringly hot.

All she wanted was to twine her arms around his neck and pull his mouth against hers. And his gaze swept down to her lips, his body tensing, as if he wanted exactly the same thing.

But Nick was apparently made of sterner stuff than she was—he tore his attention from her face, drew his body back, and rolled to an innocent sitting position next to her. Only a slight rhythm change in his breathing testified to how close he’d come to succumbing once more.

“Well, that was fun,” he said, in an overly jocular tone, kicking his heels against a spit of rock to knock the ice off his boot soles.

Not to be outdone in the cavalier attitude department, Amber wrapped her arms around her knees and stretched her spine, trying to uncramp her aching shoulders and back. “I wish I’d gotten some of that on film. Wouldn’t it be amazing to shoot a scene in a hailstorm?”

“Not if you wanted to have working cameras afterward. Save up for some CGI for your budget next time.”

“If there is a next time.” She flinched a little when she realized what she’d just said. She hadn’t meant to say it, though the thought had been running in a constant loop in the back of her brain.

Nick turned his head away from her, shuttering himself off.

He must be coming to the same conclusion she was—that it was going to be much harder than either of them had first realized to put the pieces of their relationship back together, if the two of them wanted such very different things, and if they couldn’t control their physical reaction to each other.

He got to his feet again, quickly, hoisting the pack. “Let’s hope Ruby found some shelter from that hailstorm,” he said gruffly. “If she didn’t, we need to find her fast. And who the hell knows where she went.”

Amber stood, too, brushing wet leaves and pine needles from her legs, and trying to brush away the tug of longing as well. “I doubt she even has a clue. She just
ran
.”

“Donny Lempert said something about cops,” said Nick, his expression darkening. “From the look on her face, it scared the crap out of her.”

A cold feeling went down Amber’s spine that had nothing to do with the ice around them. “She told me yesterday the press learned something. Something bad. From when she was young—
ancient history
, she said. She didn’t tell me what.”

“Who knows,” said Nick, setting off down the path again. “And who cares. Everyone screws up when they’re young.” His voice had a weight to it that suggested he felt he was speaking from experience. “But the tabloid-buying public doesn’t pay to hear success stories. They want to hear how fucked up the rich and beautiful really are.”

She glanced over at Nick’s face, at the tension in his features, and felt a rush of tenderness. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Tabloids suck.”

“Hollywood sucks,” Nick growled. “You’re from the Midwest. You wouldn’t understand.” He shook his head in frustration. “I wish we’d find Lempert out here—we could arrange a little accident for him. A nice ‘lightning strike.’”

“Might be hard to make that look convincing. How about we just push him in a creek?”

“Excellent idea. Little cockroach like that, I bet he can’t swim.”

“Though that could get us brought up on charges for dumping toxic waste. I’m sure the EPA frowns on tabloid reporters in the water supply.”

“True,” said Nick, smiling wryly. “Then how about we just find Ruby before he does?”

“Deal,” said Amber.

They trudged down the hill slowly, skidding on the coating of ice, clinging to one another for balance. Amber tried not to pay attention to the strength of Nick’s forearms under her fingers or the occasional brush of his thigh muscles against hers.

At least the rain was falling much more softly now, the energy of the storm apparently having been dissipated by the fury of the hail. Just as Ranger Donnell had warned them, though, the temperature had chilled dramatically, blotting out the memory of early summer heat.

Without proper clothes or shelter, Ruby was going to be in bad shape soon.

It didn’t help that Nick’s mood was clearly chilling as quickly as the air. Even with his hand still in hers, he seemed to have drawn up tight within himself, every muscle tense, hiding his face beneath the hood of his rain poncho. She knew perfectly well what he was thinking, though—the more he thought about the tabloid reporters, and Los Angeles, and what kind of person he thought he was, the more he was beating himself up inside.

And she wanted to grab him and shake him.

Whenever Nick mentioned L.A., it sounded like he was talking about the sixth circle of hell.
Cheap, plastic, soulless
, he always said—it was hard to imagine someone like him growing up there. She’d met his mom a few times, and could hardly believe Nick actually sprung from her leopard-print-mini-skirted loins.

For Nick’s birthday one year, the three of them had dinner at some hip L.A. hot-spot his mother recommended, and within the first half hour, the woman downed three mojitos, then wandered to another table to flirt with a TV producer she knew. She came back eventually, but only to give Nick a giggly, sloppy goodbye kiss on the cheek, slur her way through a “I’m really sorry, Nicky,” and go stumbling out the door with the producer’s hand on her ass. The cake Amber had ordered hadn’t even arrived at the table yet.