Forget Me Not (Golden Falls Fire Book 4)
Page 4
Now here Sean Kelly was again, and he remained the most dizzyingly attractive person she’d ever met, rendering her just as tongue-tied.
The last decade had been kind to Sean’s already-handsome visage—his face was leaner, more chiseled, and there were subtle smile lines around his eyes and mouth. His light brown hair didn’t have gray in it yet, but it was cut shorter than before. And he rescued people for a living. How hot was that? Here I am to save you. Oh, you’re impressed I can handle myself here, in a life-or-death situation? Just wait until I take you home and show you how I can handle a woman’s body in the bedroom. You won’t be disappointed.
Annabelle was very much aware of how she must look—pale, windblown, with not a stitch of makeup on her face because of her missed morning alarm. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d plucked her eyebrows.
To make matters worse, he was staring at her. Any minute now he’d remember Annabelle Keith, the frizzy-haired, braces-wearing science dork who’d silently sat next to him for four years, showing no personality whatsoever.
He hadn’t noticed her then because, honestly, she hadn’t been worth noticing.
Minutes later, Annabelle was safe.
The other rescuer, a tall dark-haired man who later introduced himself as Tom Steele, pulled her and Sean into the helicopter before closing the door to provide relief from the frigid winds.
Sean and Tom then strapped her into a stretcher on the floor of the rescue chopper. The back of the stretcher elevated so she was in a seated, legs-extended position. As they helped her out of her backpack, she caught one last glance down into the black depths of the crevasse in which she’d been trapped and shivered.
It had been the closest of close calls.
Sean took a seat and strapped in next to her. “Are you comfortable? Anything hurting other than your ankle?”
My heart, she thought.
“No,” she managed to say.
They turned and headed back down the glacier, behind the other helicopter that was carrying the rest of Annabelle’s team. The turbulent weather rocked them from side to side until the pilot turned into the wind.
Sean placed his hand on her shoulder, and Annabelle shivered again, though for a much different reason. “We’re going to take vital signs now. Make sure you’re warm enough. Do you feel like you need pain relief for your ankle?”
“No, thank you.” The last thing Annabelle wanted was to be drugged up. Who knew what she might accidentally say? “It hurts, but I can manage it.”
Sean put a heart rate monitor on her finger. “Your heart rate’s a little elevated.”
No kidding, she thought. You’ve always been able to make my heart race.
“You’ve been through a rough time today,” he said.
There was that, too.
“It’s going to be hard to go back out on the glacier again,” she said, knowing the memory of falling into oblivion would be imprinted on her forever. “I was being safe, and I’ve had training. I don’t know what I could have done differently.”
“Sometimes these things just happen,” Sean said. “But there’s that saying, lightning never strikes the same place twice. Hopefully this was your one time.”
She looked at him, suddenly bursting with a sense of wonder that of all the possible outcomes of her situation, ending up next to Sean Kelly again was the last one she would have guessed. Honestly, in spite of being obsessed with him back when she was a teenager, she hadn’t thought of him in years.
An electric shock shimmered down Annabelle’s spine as she looked at him now.
“But lightning does strike the same place twice,” she said, taking in his unforgettable green eyes. They had a maturity about them now, a knowing about life’s difficulties, and a deeper kindness, too, more than the teenage exuberance she remembered. “It’s a scientific inevitability.”
His gaze was on her lips, and the realization made her run her tongue over them, self-conscious because they were probably chapped and ugly, although her mother had once told her that her lips were her best feature, full and sultry.
“Inevitable, huh?” He nudged her teasingly. “Then I guess you’d better just give up your research. Call it a day. Leave the discoveries to some other scientist.”
Annabelle couldn’t help smiling at the ridiculous idea. Like that was ever going to happen. “You clearly don’t know me very well,” she said.
“Good point,” Sean said. “I don’t even know your name.”
Her heart rate kicked up again, and she glanced at her finger monitor. Now he’ll remember.
“I’m Annabelle,” she said, waiting for his recognition.
But nope. Nada. Nothing.
“I’m Sean.”
“Of course you are.”
You’re Sean Kelly, she almost said, but why go there? Why put herself through the humiliation of being so utterly forgettable to the only guy who’d ever really mattered to her?
“That’s Tom there.” Sean gestured to Tom, who was seated at her feet and gave Annabelle a wave. “As soon as we land in Golden Falls, we’ll get you to the ER for that ankle.”
“I don’t think it’s as bad as I thought,” Annabelle said. “I couldn’t have landed directly on it, so maybe it’s not broken.”
“You’re extremely fortunate to have only an ankle injury,” Tom said. “Our last several missions out here have been body recoveries.”
“Believe me, I know how lucky I am,” she said. “I had a lot of time to consider it while I was on that ledge waiting for you!”
“I’m sure a million thoughts were going through your head,” Sean said.
If you only knew, Annabelle thought. I was thinking of you.
“A million and one,” she said. “A lot of them were random, like how I wanted chocolate and did I pay my electric bill and also how I can’t wait for summer.”
“It makes sense you’d think of summer, being so cold and trapped in the absolute depths of winter.”
“I kept thinking of June, when the forget-me-nots bloom, and how they smell so fragrant at night but not at all during the day, and how that’s fitting with their name, as if they’re saying, ‘I’m still here even though it’s dark and you can’t see me. Don’t forget me!’”
Suddenly self-conscious, she felt like she was talking too much, and nonsense at that. But Sean looked at her intently and nodded encouragingly, like he knew just what she meant and wanted her to go on.
And so she went on.
“And then I thought about how it’s the state flower and how Alaska is so blue. The skies, the ice, the lakes. And I thought about the wavelength of blue-violet, and how the hottest stars burn blue, and how it’s the most intense color we can see. The color of forget-me-nots.”
“Damn, you’re smart,” Sean said. “If it was me down there, probably all I’d think about was whether the Blackhawks or Red Wings won the hockey game this afternoon. And if my cat, Samwise, would give a shit if I never came back. I already know the answer to that—he wouldn’t.”
Annabelle laughed. “Aw! I’m sure he would.”
“No,” Sean said, grinning. “He really wouldn’t.”
Annabelle liked the image of a manly man with a cat. Same for a manly man with a baby. She pictured Sean holding a tiny little baby in his big strong arms, soothing it from crying. He’d be a fantastic dad, and a sexy one.
Get that fantasy right out of your head, she lectured herself. He might already have a baby, for all you know. And a wife, too. A sexy cheerleader-type wife, which was always his type.
You, she reminded herself, are not his type.
They flew over the bright tents of yellow, red, and blue at Denali Base Camp and continued down the glacier as the sky darkened to a hard steel gray. Annabelle peered out the window and watched the dense bank of clouds marching toward them, looming so close she felt she could reach out and touch them.
Sean, too, was looking out the window, his brow furrowed. He lowered the boom mic on his headset and spok
e, Annabelle presumed, to the pilot. “How about this weather?” he said.
By the expressions on Sean’s and Tom’s faces, Annabelle could see that the pilot was relaying an update. It didn’t look like good news.
Sean said, “Roger that,” and pushed the mic back up.
“Please don’t tell me I got rescued from the crevasse only to die in a helicopter crash,” Annabelle said. “The irony would be too much.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Sean said, and the certainty in his voice reassured her. “But because this is such a huge storm system, rising high against the mountain, and our safety ceiling is only fifteen thousand feet, the pilot’s telling us we’ll have to set down in Talkeetna and wait it out. There’s a clinic there, and we’ll get you stabilized and then fly back to Golden Falls in the morning.”
Does he live in Golden Falls? Has he been this close to me the entire time I’ve been here?
The thought of being stuck overnight in Talkeetna with Sean sent the butterflies in her stomach into a whirlwind of anticipation. It was a tiny old mining village just outside Denali National Park and was now primarily a tourist stop for summertime visitors.
“That’ll work!” she said.
“Have you got any pets?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Anyone you need to notify—boyfriend, husband—that you won’t be home until tomorrow?”
“Smooth, Sean,” Tom said.
Not used to being flirted with, Annabelle wasn’t sure if that’s what Tom was implying. Probably not. Alpha men like Sean didn’t flirt with geeky women like her.
“There’s no one to notify,” Annabelle said, knowing Derrick would be remaining overnight in Talkeetna, too. Would she have notified him otherwise? Would he have even noticed her absence? Would he have cared?
You shouldn’t have to ask these questions, she told herself, and her resolve strengthened to end it with Derrick.
Whatever it was, it was over.
First, though, she had to survive the helicopter flight. With the suddenness of curtains being drawn across a window, they were in the thick of the snowstorm. It shuddered against the windows, and although the rotors sounded regular and untroubled, Annabelle was more tense than she’d ever been on a helicopter before. She told herself that she was in a rescue helicopter with an experienced pilot, and closed her eyes for a moment in an effort to calm herself.
When she opened them again, Sean was watching her. Without saying a word, he pulled off the heart rate monitor from her index finger and took her hand, holding it.
The gesture on his part showed that he recognized the trauma she’d just gone through and that he understood the value of the human touch. He was giving her a sign that she wasn’t alone anymore, and she appreciated it more than he could ever know.
Plus, she was holding hands with Sean Kelly! Instead of pinching herself to see if it was real, she squeezed his hand once, and he pressed back.
His touch excited her in places it shouldn’t. She’d almost just died, after all, and she had a giddy desire to throw her wallflower-caution to the wind and go in for a kiss. To part his lips with hers and offer the warmth of her tongue to his. Time would stand still, and they’d be landed safely by the time the kiss ended.
Don’t be a fool, Annabelle thought and immediately leaned back from him. He’s just doing his job.
“The pilot says we’re about ten minutes out,” Sean said to her after hearing it on his headset. “Should be on the ground before the worst of it hits, according to the radar. Hang in there.”
From the other seat, Tom smiled at her. “Hell of a day, isn’t it?”
“Hell of a day,” she said, thinking, You have no idea.
In one way, it felt like the worst day ever, but then Sean had shown up all sexy and heroic.
He was her silver lining.
He was still the hottest guy around, and she was still a nerd, but his very presence—his very touch—sent shocks of wanting through her body, tingles of yearning she hadn’t experienced since high school.
It felt very much like lightning striking twice.
6
For the remainder of the flight, Sean stole glances at Annabelle whenever he had the chance.
She seemed uneasy, and he assumed the after-effects of the adrenaline rush she must have had while lying precariously on the ice ledge waiting must be taking their toll. She held tightly to his hand, but she looked out the window and seemed mesmerized by the powerful force of the coming storm.
There was something vaguely familiar about her, but he couldn’t place her. Maybe they’d both been at the North Star Café at the same time, or perhaps they’d passed in the aisles of CoCo’s Food Emporium, the gourmet grocery store on Main Street. She definitely hadn’t been to one of Hayley March’s Singles Nights, held each Thursday at the Sled Dog Brewing Company, because he would have noticed her if she had. He went to them as a favor to Hayley’s boyfriend Josh, and to Cassie Holt, Cody’s fiancée, who was friends with Hayley and had promised to bring single firefighters as a draw for the single women in town. But as was often the case, no one Sean met there had held his interest for long.
This one, he thought, looking at Annabelle, could hold my interest for a good long while, maybe even forever.
She was pretty enough to be an actress, with smooth, perfect features and a depth to her intelligent blue eyes that drew him in and made him want to discover what was behind them. When he wasn’t surreptitiously gazing at her face, he looked at her hand, safely ensconced in his. It was feminine and dainty, tidy but utilitarian: no jewelry and no manicure.
A ring would look nice on her, he thought, looking at her bare left-hand ring finger, followed by, Where did that come from?
Sure, a ring would look nice on her, but so would a necklace or earrings. Anything would look good on her. Or nothing.
Nothing would look the best of all.
The helicopter rocked back and forth as the pilot made a hasty landing at Talkeetna Airport, the helipad already covered in several inches of snow. A short distance away on the porch of the small terminal building, the others from the research expedition waited for Annabelle, huddling in a tight group of three as thick, relentless snowflakes pelted them.
Annabelle waved to them through the window, and Sean caught a sense of unease from her as he and Tom hopped out of the helicopter.
“Annabelle?” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“You bet,” she said. “How can it not be when you just saved my life?”
The worry in her eyes faded when she looked at him, and Sean felt buoyed by the fact that he could put her at ease. It felt good to be useful to her. Good to be thought well of by her.
“All in a day’s work,” Sean said, deflecting the heroism of his efforts as he always did.
He and Tom unloaded Annabelle’s stretcher from the helicopter as quickly as possible. The pilots and ground crewmen would then bring the helicopters into the hangar to protect them from the intense winds of the blizzard.
Sean stayed by Annabelle as they pushed the stretcher across the tarmac toward the waiting ambulance, which would take her to Talkeetna’s health clinic.
“Can I try walking?” she asked. “I don’t want my team to worry more than necessary.”
“Let’s get you checked out first,” Sean said. “You took a hard fall.”
The scientists joined them at the ambulance, along with Cody and Josh who’d been on the other rescue helicopter.
“This weather is too inclement to get back to Golden Falls tonight,” Cody said. “We’re gonna have to stay overnight.”
“I went ahead and booked that big cabin we’ve stayed in before,” Josh said. “Enough room for us and the scientists, too. And Dr. Eubanks here insists on paying for it.”
“Least I can do,” said the older scientist, a black man with lively eyes, white hair and mustache, and a deep, lyrical voice. He extended a hand. “Peter Eubanks. Thank you all, truly.”
“Let’s get out of this rotten weather,” Derrick grumbled.
“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Annabelle said, giving Derrick a disappointed look.
Sean’s radar went off. He hoped there was nothing between them, because he had definite intentions of getting to know Annabelle better, plus Derrick seemed like a loser. Sean got along with most people, but complainers, whiners, and otherwise negative people rubbed him the wrong way.
“We’ll get her going,” said the ambulance medic, who also looked eager to be out of the bad weather.
“I’ll go inside and arrange transportation to take everyone else into town,” Josh said.
“He just wants to call Hayley,” Cody said as Josh went inside the tiny shack of a terminal building. “They probably had a hot date planned for tonight.”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you guys,” Annabelle said.
“It’s not an inconvenience at all,” Sean said. “Josh’s idea of a hot date is taking a bubble bath.”
Annabelle laughed. “I’d be lying if I said that didn’t sound like heaven right now.”
“You and me both,” Sean said.
A quick fantasy sprung to his mind involving Annabelle, a bubble bath, and nakedness. She’d been understandably tense from the moment he’d met her, and the idea of watching her mind and body relax—and her clothes come off—was so enticing that he struggled to pull his thoughts back to reality.
The medics got Annabelle loaded into the ambulance, and Sean watched as the vehicle drove away, wishing he could go with her.
Josh emerged from the terminal building. “The Sheriff’s Department is sending a couple of vehicles to take us to the cabin. They should be here in about two minutes.”
A few minutes later, they helped the scientists load their gear into the police SUVs and then set off for the rental cabin. The deputy who was driving put on his toplights, and the vehicle made its careful, slow way down the snowdrift-filled street into the tiny center of the tiny village. Signs and streetlights were barely visible in the cold gloom, but Sean knew the area well. Anyone attempting to climb Denali came through Talkeetna, and Sean had done his fair share of rescue training based from there.