He sat up suddenly and without answering her question, removed his coat and tossed it to her. “Put this on,” he ordered.
“Oh, no. I can use—”
“Look, lady,” he said, breaking in on Leslie’s objection in his usual discourteous way, “I don’t plan to argue with you everytime I say something. Just leave me alone and do what I say and we’ll get along fine.”
Shocked by his sudden outburst, Leslie watched as Joe got to his feet. He looked as though he was as stiff and sore as she was, and it made her heart glad. As to how to react to his disposition, she wasn’t sure. If she were a man, she’d punch him in the nose. But his superior strength was too obvious for her to entertain that notion for long. And she certainly didn’t want to push him over the edge if he was, indeed, mentally unstable. Her best course of action, she decided, was to try to get along with him.
Wordlessly she sat up and put the man’s coat on. It retained some of his body heat and felt wonderful, but she was certain he didn’t want to hear about it.
She saw him nod his satisfaction and watched as he picked up the pan and canning jars they’d used the night before, then stomped off into the woods, taking the blanket with him.
Leslie sighed her disappointment. Aside from his rather queer personality, Joe Bonner was a very physically appealing man. His long, thick legs and broad, muscled shoulders held a certain fascination for her and initiated the oddest sensation deep in her abdomen. And she found she was growing quite used to his “un” appearance. Leslie laughed softly. It was a good description for Mr. Bonner. He was untailored, unclipped, unshaven, and … unusual to her.
Joe Bonner was an odd man indeed, Leslie decided as she got to her feet and began stretching her aching muscles. The previous night he’d seemed genuinely interested in her plight. The best part of him, his eyes, had shown his concern. They’d shown his wonder and surprise. She’d seen warmth and understanding in their depths and that had made it easier for her to talk to him. This morning, he appeared distant, guarded, and hostile again.
“And they say women have severe mood swings,” Leslie muttered ironically.
“As long as we’re up, we might as well get started,” Joe said, making his announcement a short while later as he strode back into their campsite. He obviously had been to his truck, as the blanket he now carried over one shoulder was tied like a knapsack and filled to the point of bulging.
“What about breakfast?” Leslie asked, not as hungry as she was reluctant to start hiking.
“I don’t eat breakfast,” he said.
“Well, I do.”
Joe considered this for several seconds, then said, “There’s dry cereal and milk or another peanut butter sandwich. Do you need coffee too?”
“If it’s no bother.”
“It’s a hell of a lot of bother, but if it’ll keep you from whining all the way up the mountain, we’ll make some.”
“I don’t whine,” Leslie said, not really arguing, just stating a fact.
“Are you used to hiking?”
“No, but I jog at my health club, and I’m strong,” she said in self-defense. “Besides, I’m just not the whiny type.”
“There’s that ‘type thing’ again,” he said. “I suppose you have everyone you meet tucked into nice, neat little stereotypes, huh?”
“No, not exactly. I think there are certain basic types of people, but I also believe people are very different from one another,” Leslie said. She wanted to tell him that she’d started a whole new category just for him but thought better of it.
Joe tilted his head to one side, a slow sly grin spreading out across his face. “In that case. I’ll make you a little wager.”
“What?”
“I’ll bet you another long, juicy kiss—with cooperation this time—that before the day is over, you’ll find something to whine about.”
Leslie swallowed hard. “What do I get when you lose?”
“Anything you want,” he said confidently—too confidently.
“You’re on.”
“What are you planning to do with all of that?” he asked, changing the subject rather quickly as he indicated the large pile of firewood Leslie had gathered during his absence. “Build a rescue fire?”
“No. It’s for the fire. I was trying to be helpful,” Leslie said, keeping her voice low and humble on purpose, trying to shame him for his ingratitude.
Joe cast Leslie a calculating glance, and right away she knew she hadn’t fooled him. “Cereal or sandwich?” he asked in a very dry tone of voice.
“Sandwich, I guess.” She wanted something that would stick to her ribs.
“Good.”
“Why good?” she asked, curious.
“Well, I forgot to take a spoon with me when I went shopping yesterday. I was having visions of your having to eat with your fingers and my having to hear about it all day.”
Leslie was getting very tired of his verbal abuse and wasn’t sure how much more of it she was going to take. But for the moment, she was determined to get along with him. Keeping her mouth firmly closed, she made and ate her breakfast while Joe made coffee.
There was silence throughout the meal. Leslie was beginning to think she could learn to enjoy the whispering of the wind through the trees and the occasional birdcall. They weren’t the city noises she was more familiar with, but they had a sort of intimate and reassuring quality of their own.
Leslie looked up to find her companion holding a very lethal looking knife. It was eight to ten inches long and two inches wide. It glimmered in the sunlight. She could feel all the blood draining from her face; her heart stopped, then kicked into a wild, erratic rhythm. The man was a maniac. Of all the times in her life to be right in her thinking, she wished this hadn’t been one of them.
“Oh, no.” She gasped in horror as Joe stood and advanced toward her. “Please don’t.”
“It has to be done,” he said calmly, his attitude determined.
“No. No, it doesn’t. We can work something out,” Leslie said, her voice pleading. She would have given anything to see her parents just one more time.
“I can’t see any other way around this. If you don’t make a big fuss about it, it’ll be a lot easier for both of us.”
“A big fuss?” she repeated in amazement, staring up at him as he stood before her, his gaze firm and calculating. Was she supposed to sit placidly and let him kill her, she wondered in a daze.
Coming to her senses, Leslie bolted away from him. But he was as quick as he was strong. He grabbed at the silk and lace of her skirt and held on, impeding her escape. Leslie took a hard fall to the ground but immediately turned to face him. Tears welled in her eyes as a very strange expression formed on his face.
“Dammit. I’m trying to help you. It’s only a dress. You can buy yourself ten more just like it when you get home, but you’ll never make it up that mountain unless we cut it off,” Joe said, amazed and very put off by her reaction.
“Oh,” she said, her voice cracking as her emotions drained away leaving her feeling weak and very much like a fool. “Yes. I see what you mean.”
Joe frowned, his eyes wary as he watched her for several seconds. Then leaving her on the ground, he gathered up a length of material and began to cut off nearly two feet of it all the way around.
“Do you want to save the slip or do you want me to cut it too?” Joe asked Leslie, who had been watching him silently with a dull expression on her face.
“I … I’ll take it off.”
“Are you sure? The more layers you have on, the warmer you’ll be, you know,” he told her, extending a hand to help her up when she made no effort to help herself.
Leslie came to a sitting position on her own, and holding her hand out, she said, “I’ll cut it off myself, then, if you’ll loan me your knife.”
Taking a careful assessment of her emotional state, Joe finally handed the knife to her, handle first. Leslie could hardly look him in the eye. If she had no emotions
as some people claimed, how could she have acted so stupidly, she wondered. Joe Bonner was probably thinking she was as mentally unstable as she had thought he was.
Joe walked back down to his truck while Leslie finished redesigning her clothing. Just as she finished, he returned carrying a large cooler. She stood idly by, not knowing what to do to help, while he divided his perishable groceries between the blanket and the tarpaulin. The blanket contained the least of the supplies. He laced a short length of rope through the holes in the tarp and then gathered them like purse strings. He then tied two of the corners of the blanket together and stopped.
He appeared to be having a serious mental debate as he sat very still, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. Eventually he looked up at Leslie and said, “You have another major decision to make. I want you to try and remain calm, okay?”
A sense of foreboding washed through Leslie. “I’ll try,” she said bravely in a small voice, even though the fact that he was treating her like a brainless idiot rankled her.
Joe held up a pair of worn sneakers that Leslie hadn’t noticed had been lying on the ground beside him. “I found these in the truck. If they’ll stay on your feet, you can wear them, or I can break the heels off your shoes.”
Leslie looked from his shoes to hers and then back again. The relief she felt was short-lived as her temper began to boil.
“Even if I get the heels off those, they’ll be uncomfortable and hard to walk in. And although these aren’t very fashionable, I thought you might not get as bent out of shape if we could save your shoes,” he said.
Feeling extremely indignant and infuriated, and well aware of what he must be thinking of her, Leslie smiled stiffly and said, “Thank you. It was very thoughtful of you.”
Joe shrugged off her gratitude and tossed her the shoes. “I brought your purse up from your car. There wasn’t much else there. Do you want it, or should I put it in your pack?”
“My pack, please,” she told him, as she finished tying the second sneaker. They were several sizes too big, but laced tightly, they did stay on her feet. “Will we be dressing for dinner at your cabin?”
Joe turned to face her. “Hardly,” he said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in his voice.
“Good,” she said cheerfully. “Then I won’t be needing these.” As a gesture to show him she wasn’t as vain and impractical as he had misjudged her to be, Leslie threw her high-heeled shoes far into the bushes. She was very proud of herself when she turned back to Joe.
Instead of approval, however, she saw that Joe was even more confused and wary of her than before.
“I don’t care about the shoes or the dress,” she said with feeling. “I behaved badly before, but it wasn’t because of the dress. I didn’t know what you were planning to do with that knife.”
Joe searched her face long and hard, then he laughed. “Lady, you take the cake,” he said. “If I was going to kill you, why didn’t I do it last night?”
It was Leslie’s expression more than her silence that told him she had no idea as to what motivated an unstable personality, let alone what motivated Joe Bonner. “Okay,” he said, “I admit I don’t always act and sound as reasonable as I should, and you’ll soon discover I am very hard to live with, like I told you before, but I can assure you that I’m as rational as … ,” he paused, “Well, I’m not a lunatic. You’re perfectly safe with me.”
Even with his assurances that no harm would come to her, Leslie still had her doubts about her safety. It was the second time she’d seen him with a genuine smile on his face and heard him laugh in a way that wasn’t meant to be a form of mental torture. Her skin prickled and little chills of excitement raced up and down her spine.
His merriment and then his smile faded away as they stood several feet apart reevaluating one another. Long, intense moments passed by before Joe finally broke the silence. He cleared his throat loudly and said in a thick, strained voice, “We’d better go.”
He bent to gather up the two untied ends of the blanket and began to tie the supplies to Leslie’s back. “We’ll carry the cooler between us, but if it gets too heavy, let me know,” he said.
“I’ll manage,” she said.
Joe stood back to examine his morning’s work. He took in Leslie’s rumpled mass of dark hair, her eyes, and the bruise on her left temple. Then his gaze moved lower to his too big and bulky down jacket and to the ragged-edged, pale blue silk and lace that hung below it. And there was no missing the bruises and scratches on her legs—or the huge clownlike shoes.
“Lord. You look horrible,” he said, chuckling.
Leslie didn’t have to look to know he was speaking the truth. She could well imagine how awful and ridiculous she looked. “This is what I’ve come to in less than a day at your hands,” she said.
“No wonder you don’t trust me.” Joe picked up his tarpaulin knapsack and threw it over his shoulder. He took one handle of the cooler and waited for Leslie to take the other. With a teasing grin, he said, “Come on, Bozo. Let’s stop clowning around and get this show on the road.”
Leslie groaned at his play on words, but she lumbered faithfully alongside him as he led her deeper into the heart of the Colorado Rockies, her shoes flopping rhythmically as she went.
Four
“I … DON’T … WHINE. I … don’t … whine,” Leslie repeated to herself in time with each grueling step she took.
Hours that seemed more like weeks had passed, and not once had this extremely irritating man, Joe Bonner, offered to stop so she could rest.
The first couple of miles hadn’t been too bad. Still well below the timberline, the terrain was rough and rocky and would have been much harder to traverse if not for the old logging road. She found the mountains breathtakingly beautiful, with every gap in the dense virgin forest revealing a new and unique glimpse of their splendor. Above them loomed snowcapped peaks and jagged rock formations that looked extremely treacherous for all their magnificence. She took comfort in knowing she didn’t have to go anywhere near them.
She’d had a lot to think about in the first few hours. Picking up where she’d left off the day before, she still couldn’t justify in her heart the destruction of the mountain for the sake of progress. It wasn’t even for progress, she decided despondently. It was for the entertainment of those who could afford it. For fun.
Her stomach grew tight and began to burn at the thought that once violated, the slopes and valleys before her, never before touched except by the hands of God and a few lumberjacks, would fall prey to countless more abuses. It made her sick to think that simply because the numbers added up correctly and the facts supported the theory and she had been foolishly ambitious, a chain of ecological changes had been set into motion that could never be reversed. Once destroyed, this land could never be duplicated.
For a while it was hard for her to remember how much her Chinese art collection meant to her or why she had bought into a co-op instead of renting an apartment. Had the money, the recognition, and the prestige from a job well done been worth it?
She couldn’t bring herself to answer. Instead she’d come to a standstill and put down her end of the cooler. Wordlessly, without giving her companion the slightest bit of attention, she removed the down jacket and tied the sleeves around her waist. The cool mountain air felt glorious as it fluttered across her bare shoulders and upper chest, which had grown flushed and overheated in her efforts to keep up with Joe’s unmercifully long strides.
When she bent to pick up the cooler and resume the trek, she found that Joe had unburdened himself as well. She watched as he removed his flannel shirt. She sucked in a deep breath and felt a rush of heat pass through her as he stood before her in a bright white T-shirt pulled taut over flesh and muscle that bulged beneath it and anchored into jeans that hung low on his narrow hips. When he held the flannel shirt out to her, she just stared at him, her heart racing uncontrollably.
“Here,” he said, indicating she was to put it on.<
br />
“Oh. Thanks, but I’m fine. The cool breeze feels great,” she said on a shuddering breath.
“Put it on. The weather up here is deceptive. The sun’ll fry you like bacon, and you won’t even feel it until tonight. And,” he added, his eyes lowering and lingering on the soft upper slopes of her breasts, “you don’t want to ruin all that beautiful white skin of yours.”
As if on cue, her chest rose and fell under his gaze as she automatically drew in a deep gulp of air. His insolence was wearing on her nerves, but she knew he was telling the truth about the sun—not because she knew it to be true, but because she was beginning to understand him. He wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of removing his shirt for her if he didn’t have a good reason. And she’d have bet her new pasta maker that his reason wasn’t concern for her. He was ensuring himself against a night of having to listen to her whine about her sunburn—as if she would.
With the shirt on Leslie’s back and the cooler in tow, they continued their hike. They didn’t speak and rarely looked at each other directly, but they were both aware of the other, of being alone together in the forest.
Ignoring her peripheral vision and keeping her eyes trained straight ahead, Leslie focused her mind on a few of her other problems at hand: Her job, or rather what she’d done as part of her job for one.
She disliked being called a yuppie, but she had to admit she did fit the bill. She liked to work and enjoyed the power and money that it brought her. She couldn’t bring herself to feel shame for her whole career. She worked hard and took great pains to make sure her efforts were as flawless as possible. When Leslie Rothe made a recommendation in a room full of wealthy investors and entrepreneurs, her judgment was no longer questioned. She’d proved herself over and over again to be someone who knew her facts inside out and who could back up every contention with a clear logical answer or solution.
Thousands of dollars and countless man hours went into the preparation of the reports she submitted before permits could be obtained to start a new project. An error was not only costly but could ruin the proposal altogether. It was her awareness of the potential hazards and her determination to avoid them that had won her the reputation of being one of the more reliable and thorough analysts in her field. She had a lot to be proud of, and for the most part, she was. But in this particular case …
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