by Norah Wilson
As he moved closer, a mental picture of him taking her face into his hands to warm those chilled cheeks flashed through his mind. His lips tightened at the thought, which was not put there by his wilderness survival training. It might be cool out, but there was zero risk of frostbite. No need in the world for him to touch her. Irritated, he pushed the image away. He had a job to do.
By the time he reached her, she’d slid down off the rock.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Are you hurt in any way?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“Cold?”
“Not overly. I’m dressed in layers, and I’ve been moving.”
“Hat and gloves.” He approved.
“Of course. Wouldn’t leave home without them.”
Titus nodded. At least she’d known enough to dress properly. And to move around to stay warm. The temperature was sure to drop even further as the sun moved through the afternoon sky and evening set in.
“I’m surprised to find you here.”
Ocean blinked. “Not too surprised, surely? I mean, you were calling my name, right?”
Smart ass.
“Surprised that someone—especially someone from Harkness—would be foolish enough to go hiking on this mountain without telling anyone.”
Immediately, her eyes narrowed. “How did you even know I was here?”
“Your mother called.”
“So she did hear me. I didn’t think she could. The connection was terrible, and then when I lost it, I couldn’t get a signal again.”
“Dad didn’t mention anything about a phone conversation,” Titus said. “But I gather you left a map of the trail system on your bed.”
“Ah, that’s where I left it. You didn’t happen to bring another one with you, did you?”
Of course he had an extra map with him. In fact, he had two of them, neatly zipped into a protective water-proof map holder in his backpack. The latest edition, complete with all the trail warnings highlighted in yellow—his own personal touch. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. He didn’t like the wild and quick hope he’d seen in her eyes when she’d asked.
“Well, do you have one?”
“Don’t need one,” he said. “I know my way around the mountain. It doesn’t change much from year to year.”
“Or at all.”
He shrugged. “Just like the town. Some things never change.”
She held his gaze for long moments before she looked away. He felt something in his gut stir with that blue-eyed scrutiny.
Yes, Harkness was the same.
The same stores lined the town streets, and though there might be a new coat of paint on some of the old buildings, they were painted the exact same colors as before. Buzz Adams was still chief of police. Trinity Delong ran the town’s only bed and breakfast. Her husband, Jeremy, ran the bar out back, whenever he was sober enough.
And despite all his grand plans, Titus Standish was still at the family farm.
“What brings you back to town?” he said. “The last I heard, you were living the high life in New York City. Writing the next big Broadway hit.”
She cringed.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Not at all.” She forced a smile. “But contrary to popular belief—or not so popular belief—the producers of Mama Mia have nothing to fear from me.”
Ah, hell. He usually knew enough to keep his foot out of his mouth. Well, he’d opened the subject now. Might as well follow through.
“New York didn’t work out the way you wanted?”
“Not even close. I’m home to stay this time.”
The sudden silence was broken by a raucous cawing. Titus glanced up to see a crow, large and black, making its way from tree to tree. He watched it until it was lost in the shadows and silence.
Shadows. It was getting late. Afternoon would be giving way to night before too long.
Fortunately, he had enough daylight left to get her back down the mountain. But damned if he was in a hurry to get going. If he had his druthers, he’d stay here and talk to this grown-up Ocean, maybe find out why that look had flashed in her eyes when he’d asked about New York.
But he knew his responsibility. He had to get her back down to safety, back to her car and home to her mother.
He had to do that now.
“I’ve an extra canteen of water if you need—”
She waved off his offer. “I’m fine. I brought water.”
“How’s your energy level?”
“Energy level?” A frown drew her dark brows together. “I don’t know—average?”
He suppressed a smile. “I meant, when was the last time you ate?”
“Minutes ago. I had some chocolate dirt.”
“Um…what?”
A faint smile returned to her face. “Energy bar,” she clarified, as she picked up her pack and shrugged it back onto her shoulders.
He snorted, then adjusted his own pack. “We’ll start down then. I’ll have you back to the car by six-thirty and home with your mother by seven.”
“Excuse me?”
He could have sworn the temperature dropped another five degrees at the sound of her voice. When he met her gaze, those soft eyes had turned to stone.
“What do you mean, you’ll have me back?”
Titus ran a hand over his stubbled chin. If looks could kill, Scott would have to climb this mountain after all, if only to retrieve his body.
“Is there a problem?”
Apparently, there was, judging by the way she was gaping at him.
“Unbelievable.” She shook her head. “Just like that, you think I’m going to follow you down the mountain?”
He had, actually.
He did not like the way this was suddenly going. What had just happened here? Usually when he rescued someone, they were grateful. It wasn’t like he was looking for a round of applause, but a little less hostility would be nice.
“Ocean, we have to go now,” he said. “We have to make our way back to Yasmine—”
“But we’re so close to Angel Trail.”
“We are, but—”
“Yes!” She did a fist pump. “I knew it! How close am I?”
Titus pressed his lips firmly together.
He was the authority here. He had to maintain that. There were times for negotiation, and times when there was no room for argument. This was the latter. He couldn’t leave her blundering around the mountainside with night approaching.
“There are dangers up here, Ocean. Hidden cliffs with some pretty long drops. The darker it gets, the more dangerous the traveling will become. We’re going back to Yasmine, then down, and it’s not up for debate.”
“Well, you’re right about one thing,” she said. “There won’t be any debate. I’ll just do as I please. No matter what some people might think, you are not the king of this mountain, Titus Standish.”
His pulse leapt. “We’re going back, now, even if I have to carry you every step of the way.”
She paled at his words, but then her face suffused with color again. “So, what? You’re going to manhandle me, Titus?”
Her voice was low, and he was pretty sure her words weren’t meant to sound like a sexual challenge. But damned if his body didn’t respond that way.
“Only if I have to,” he said softly.
Her eyes widened.
And for the briefest, stupidest moment, he thought the matter was settled. That he’d won this battle of wills.
Then she leveled him with a gaze that surprised him—and scared him. “I’m heading up to White Crow Cliff. Nothing’s going to stop me, Titus. Not even you. I’m going to where Lacey died.”
Where Lacey died.
The words hit him like a sharp jab to the solar plexus. One he hadn’t braced himself for. Yet one he’d spent the last six years bracing against.
It threw him off balance for a moment, long enough for Ocean to turn on her heel and march away
.
He blinked, bringing her back into focus as she put more distance between them. “Ocean, come back here. Don’t be crazy. We need to head down.”
She turned around, but kept backing away from him. “I told you, I’m going up.”
“Not that way,” he said. “Seriously, Ocean. Stop.”
She stopped and turned back toward him, but only to say, “Not the boss of the mountain, Titus. Remember?”
Grinning, she lifted her hand and mimed dropping a mic, like she’d just demolished him or something. He’d have laughed, under different circumstances. On this mountain, it wasn’t funny. And it really wasn’t funny when she took another backward step.
“Christ, Ocean! Watch out!” He started toward her, his body filling with liquid dread. “There’s a drop off behind you.”
Heeding his urgency, she did turn around then. She should have had plenty of time to stop. But as she turned, the toe of her boot caught an exposed root and she stumbled headlong. He raced toward her while she fought to regain her balance. For a fleeting second, it looked like she’d righted herself and checked her momentum in time, but then she just started sliding over the edge, either losing her footing on the slippery mat of pine needles or because the earth gave way.
“No!” He lunged for her, managing to grab the hood of her bomber jacket. It separated from the coat with a tearing sound that ripped right through to his soul.
Chapter 7
SCOTT STANDISH was sitting in Titus’s pickup, listening to Motörhead and cursing his brand new cell phone. Wasn’t it supposed to do everything but let you know when the coffee was ready? Apparently, he’d missed two calls. Two of them. He hadn’t heard the phone’s ringer or felt the vibration in his pocket.
Dammit.
If either Ember or Titus had run into trouble…
He scrolled through the missed calls. Unknown caller, both times. He had Ember and Titus programmed in, so it couldn’t have been either of them.
Which pretty much left the rest of the world.
Or it could be her.
He felt his jaw tighten.
Didn’t matter. Whoever it had been, they hadn’t left a message.
He killed the music, pulled the key from the ignition, and got out of the truck. Slamming the door behind him, he hit the auto-lock and pocketed the keys. Titus and his trucks. He was crazy good with bikes, but always had to have his big, ready-for-anything pickup. Not Scott. If it wasn’t for the Canadian winters, he’d never put his bike away. Mind you, by the look in his cousin’s eyes when Scott had pulled in the yard on his Triumph, Titus would probably love tearing up the highway himself on that machine.
Except Titus would wind it out, have some fun, then come back.
Every time Scott got on a machine, he thought about maybe never going back…
He couldn’t help it. Nor could he help the twinge of guilt that always came with that feeling.
Sighing, he checked the settings on his new phone again, making good and sure the volume was cranked high for calls and the vibration set for messages. Then he shoved it into his inside jacket pocket, close to his chest.
As planned, Ember and Titus had checked in one hour after each had started out. At the time, Ember had almost reached her destination—had it in her sights. She hadn’t sounded a bit exhausted from the arduous trek, but there had been an edge to her tone. Nervousness? Ember? That didn’t seem possible. But something was off. He hadn’t voiced that thought. Even if she was nervous, his rock-solid kid cousin would never admit it. Then she’d give him hell for calling her kid. And she’d give him hell again for calling her “cousin.” Both Titus and Ember counted him their brother. Just as Uncle Arden and Margaret—or Mom, as he’d let himself call her—had embraced him as a son, from the moment he’d come to live with them at the farm.
But he knew the difference. Felt the difference.
Titus had checked in less than five minutes after Ember had ended her call. He had been pretty sure Ocean Siliker was heading from Yasmine over to Angel. Yes, dammit, that shortcut at Marker 32.
Scott remembered Ocean from high school. She’d been one of the cute girls who had no idea she was one of the cute girls. He’d shared quite a few classes with her at their small school. They’d been in the same English class all four years and he remembered how animated the normally quiet girl had become when they discussed any kind of literature. Scott had always dreaded the writing assignments, while Ocean had practically jumped out of her seat when Mrs. Knappe put one up on the board.
It hadn’t surprised him when he’d heard she’d become a writer. Hell, it probably hadn’t surprised anyone.
Of course, it likely hadn’t surprised anyone in town to learn what he’d become either. The footloose, rambling, unreliable one of the Standish Clan.
Here one day, and gone the next.
Scott had headed out west for a while, taking on different jobs in northern Alberta and British Columbia. The physical labor suited him, and the money had been nice. He’d socked away a fair chunk of change over the years. His needs had been few, his indulgences fewer. Some of those jobs had been so well paid that his bosses had laughed when he’d handed in his notice, genuinely believing no one could forsake their golden handcuff. But forsake it he had. Long term jobs just didn’t work for him. He usually avoided them in favor of project work.
Though his last stay in Montreal had been different. It had started to feel like he might be able to stay…
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. Another reason for getting out of Titus’s truck to stretch his legs. He didn’t smoke often, just once in a while. Quiet times, like this. Contemplative times. He lit the cigarette, took a long haul, then let the smoke out slowly.
He was home. And it wasn’t even Christmas.
Uncle Arden had been genuinely happy to see him this morning. Ember had hugged him within an inch of his life, and even Titus had given him a manly back thump. When he went to park his stuff, his bedroom door was wide open and welcoming, just as it had been when he’d arrived from Silver Bay, Minnesota, mere days after he’d been orphaned. And when he’d thrown his gear into his old room, he’d seen that nothing had changed since his last visit. Which was to say, it was exactly the same as he’d left it when he’d lit out after graduation. His Minnesota Vikings posters were still on the walls, though they were yellowing at the edges now. And no doubt the sweater his mother had knitted for him the Christmas before she took sick again still hung in the closet, in all its Vikings’ purple and gold glory.
He smiled now as he thought of it.
Dare he say he’d missed being home? Missed his cousins? Missed Harkness. The town that never seemed to change, with Harkness Mountain perpetually looming over it.
Even now, he felt the familiar ambivalence…that chill that seemed to settle right square in his gut. And dammit, he was no closer to being able to explain it now than he’d been as a scared kid. It wasn’t like things hadn’t been good for him here. The tightly-knit town had made room for him. The Harkness Standishs had enfolded him completely. Yet it hadn’t been enough to…
No. He wasn’t going there.
He took another hard haul off the cigarette, then dropped it on the ground and tamped it out with his booted foot. He was bending to retrieve the cold butt for the litter barrel when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He reached into his jacket and grabbed it immediately.
It was a text from Ember. Still w/patient. E.
Why hadn’t she phoned? Was it simply because she didn’t want to have an audible conversation in front of her patient? Or maybe she just had her hands full and couldn’t take the time for more than a quick text.
Scott looked at the time display. He waited a few more minutes, then looked again. Titus should have checked in by now. No he wasn’t overly late in calling, but still, it wasn’t like him to divert from plans.
To hell with waiting. He hit Titus’s contact number, and listened as the call rang through.
And rang, and rang and rang.
Titus wasn’t answering.
And the chill that Scott felt deepened a little bit more.
Chapter 8
WHERE DOES it hurt?
If Ocean could have answered that ghostly voice, she would have said, “Everywhere.” But as it happened, she was too busy fighting to breathe.
She knew what this was. She’d just had the wind knocked out of her. It had happened before, when she was a kid. Titus had accidentally flattened her with a seventy-five-pound bale of hay he was tossing onto the wagon. She’d tried to slip between him and the wagon at just the right moment, but it had been completely the wrong moment. She’d been knocked to the ground. The whole haying operation—most notably Titus himself—had come to a standstill while she gasped like a fish. And it was her first and last day of haying that summer.
Spasm of the diaphragm, she told herself now. The sooner you relax, the sooner it’ll pass.
She stopped struggling. Ignoring the pain signals and the panic, she tried to consciously let go of the tension in her muscles. After what seemed like forever but was probably just a handful of seconds, the paralysis let go and she was able to drag in a lungful of sweet air. And another and another.
She lay there on her back, trying to do a mental check of her body parts. Which was surprisingly hard while she was sucking air and fighting the urge to curl up into a ball. She was pretty sure she had no broken bones. She wasn’t bleeding. Beyond that, she was probably in for some bruising.
The worst injury was to her pride. It was going to be black and blue to match her backside.
“Ocean! Are you all right?”
Titus. She considered not answering. If she held him off a while longer, she could at least compose herself. But when he called her name a second time, his voice was sharp with fear.
