Heartbreaker

by Karen Robards

  Huge blisters.

  If Adventure, Inc.’s to-bring list had not specified boots as the only acceptable kind of footgear, she would be wearing comfortable sneakers right now, not shiny English riding boots that were devilish to walk in. Everyone else had opted for cowboy boots, including Rory, whose I-told-you-so had been the first words she had said to her mother when the group all met up at the corral for their initial ride.

  And that was Adventure, Inc.’s fault too, for not being specific enough. If they had been she’d have been spared embarrassment and blisters, and the tight, tall leather shanks would not be chafing the area just below her knees with every step she now took.

  Lynn dwelt on that too.

  From there she dwelt on her tired knees, her sore back, the stinging in her palms.

  She dwelt on her shoulder, which ached where it had slammed into the cliff.

  She dwelt on her antipathy for the man she had—for the moment—no choice but to follow.

  She dwelt on her anxiety about Rory. But that was so acute that it produced an even greater craving for a nicotine fix.

  She needed a cigarette!

  It was growing dark. Whether she disliked Jess or not was soon beside the point when there were things all around them in the shadows. Things that rustled. Things that slithered. Things that squeaked. She picked up her pace, trying to close the distance between herself and Jess’s unyielding back, with little success.

  Even with his pack, which had to weigh at least as much as hers, and Rory in his arms, he was moving faster than she thought she could ever move again.

  She was so tired. What she needed was a rest—and a cigarette.

  “Wait!” bubbled to her lips more than once as the distance between them gradually increased, but Lynn forced it back. She would ask for no quarter from Jess Feldman, ever.

  “Whooo-ooo!” The sharp flutter of wings near at hand accompanied the cry and almost surprised a scream out of Lynn. It was an owl, of course, she told herself, as brilliant reflective eyes in a pale round face swooped past her to vanish again in the dark. Nothing but an owl.

  Up ahead Jess stopped, waiting. With a feeling of relief Lynn tromped over roots and rocks and miscellaneous debris littering the path to his side.

  “Get the flashlight out, will you?”

  With a brusque jerk of his head he indicated his backpack. Get it yourself, Lynn almost said, but to be fair, with Rory in his arms he didn’t have a hand free.

  “How’s Rory?” Gritting her teeth, Lynn unzipped his backpack and foraged for the flashlight.

  “She’s all right, I think. She was murmuring something a while back. She seems comfortable enough.”

  A glance at Rory confirmed that. Her head lay on Jess’s shoulder, and her body was curled high against his chest. Zipped into a goose-down jacket—like the ones she and Jess wore, courtesy of the cliff rescue line—and wrapped in a silvery space blanket, she looked toasty warm and just a tad too cozy for her mother’s peace of mind.

  A suspicious glance at Jess’s expression reassured her somewhat. At the moment he did not look like he had a sexual thought in his head. What he did look was very tired.

  Lynn found herself wishing there was someone to carry her. She was tired too, so tired she could drop where she stood and sleep for a thousand years.

  Jess had even more reason to be tired than she did. Rory weighed less than a hundred pounds, but even so, carrying her for so long must have required considerable strength. He was holding her in his arms too, like an infant, in deference to her injured state, instead of hauling her slung over his shoulder or in some other masculinely efficient way.

  If Lynn hadn’t been feeling so out of sorts, she might have felt a glimmer of gratitude toward him for his care of her daughter.

  But she was feeling out of sorts. No, out of sorts was too mild a way to put it. What she was feeling was downright mean.

  The smooth, cool plastic of a disposable lighter touched her probing fingertips. Lynn almost wept. What good was a lighter without cigarettes?

  “Why would anybody pack a lighter and no cigarettes?” she demanded of no one in particular. It was a question she’d asked before, both out loud and silently, from the time she’d discovered the lighter in one of the packs when she had first searched them and concluded that cigarettes must be in there too, only to have her hopes dashed.

  “Maybe to start a fire with, so we won’t freeze.” This was the first time Jess had answered a question he must have recognized as purely rhetorical, and Lynn would just as soon he hadn’t bothered. His sarcasm did nothing to improve her mood.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said.

  “Mom?” Rory’s voice, thin though it was, was more welcome than even a cigarette would have been.

  “Baby, are you awake? How do you feel?” Lynn abandoned her search of the backpack to come around to look at her daughter. Rory’s forehead was shiny with salve from the first-aid kit in one of the packs. Lynn hoped that the shine magnified the degree of discoloration; half of Rory’s forehead looked black. If not, the injury was growing worse—but then, bruising usually did get worse before it got better, she reminded herself.

  Lynn prayed that bruising was all it was.

  “My head hurts.” Rory paused, looking as if she had to work to collect her thoughts. “What happened?”

  “We fell off the cliff.” Lynn smoothed her daughter’s hair away from the greasy salve, touched her cheek, and smiled at her.

  “I thought so. Jess saved us, didn’t he? Or at least me. He brought me down the cliff. I thought it was a dream.”

  “It wasn’t a dream,” Lynn said sourly.

  “Then he saved my life. That makes him a hero, doesn’t it? Thanks, Jess.”

  Rory smiled up at him, her arms curling close around his neck, then planted a quick kiss on the underside of his jaw. The kittenish performance sent quivers of alarm through Lynn. Unable to do anything more constructive, she glared ferociously at Jess, who just happened to be looking right at her.

  Did she read guilt in his expression? Or something more sinister?

  “My pleasure.” Dismissing Lynn with a glance, Jess smiled back at Rory. “You are very welcome.”

  His gaze moved back to Lynn’s face. This time she had no trouble reading the silent mockery in his eyes. “Hey, Mom, do you think you could hurry with that flashlight?”

  “I’m doing my best.” Gritting her teeth against responding to that Mom—she knew perfectly well he had called her that just to irritate her—Lynn went back to fishing for the flashlight. Her fingers found the distinctive shape at last, and she pulled it out. Sized to fit in a palm, it was small and lightweight but powerful. Unfortunately, the net effect when Lynn turned on the light was to make the deepening shadows around them seem even darker in comparison. She glanced around uneasily.

  “Do you think you can stand up?” Jess said to Rory. Before she could answer he was setting her on her feet.

  Rory swayed and put a hand to her head. “I feel dizzy.”

  Jess’s arm was still around her, supporting her, as she sat cross-legged on the path.

  “Let’s take a break,” he said.

  “Here?” Lynn asked.

  The forest seemed to be coming alive as night fell. The flashlight was no help whatsoever. It was no more than a tiny pinprick of light doing battle against a looming, ever-deepening darkness. Red fir and ponderosa pines lent their distinctive scent to the rapidly cooling air. A mule deer, identifiable by its rabbitlike ears, was caught in the flashlight’s beam. It turned to stare at the human intruders for a frozen instant before leaping out of sight. The crash of its passing alerted other nocturnal creatures. The light picked up a half-dozen pairs of eyes glowing at them from the ground and the trees and everywhere in between. At least, Lynn thought, shivering, they looked too small to belong to bears.

  “No, at that Hilton over there.” Jess’s voice had an edge to it. He eased the pack off his back and crouched beside it and Ror
y as he spoke. “Could I have the flashlight?”

  Lynn gave it to him, shed her own pack, and dropped down beside Rory, trying not to imagine exactly what kind of things were out there going bump in the night. Jess rummaged in his pack, coming up with green plastic bottles of spring water and packaged strips of beef jerky.

  “I can’t believe Adventure, Inc. doesn’t have some kind of plan in place for when something like this happens!” she groused, accepting the water and jerky he passed her with a scowl. Anxiety and exhaustion—to say nothing of nicotine withdrawal—combined to make Lynn feel as if she wanted to jump out of her skin.

  “Next time we will. Isn’t there a famous saying to the effect that you can never go broke overestimating the stupidity of the American tourist?” Jess was still rummaging in his pack.

  “No, there’s not.” Lynn twisted the cap from Rory’s water bottle, passed it to her daughter, and with her teeth attacked the plastic wrap guarding the beef.

  Jess glanced up. Their gazes clashed. “There should be.”

  “Go to hell.” Lynn caught Rory’s eye and wished the words unsaid. She forced what felt like an unconvincing smile as she passed the open packet of jerky to her daughter. Under the circumstances the last thing she wanted to do was upset her child.

  “You don’t have any cigarettes, do you, Mom?” Rory asked with an air of weary resignation.

  “How can you tell?” Jess spoke before Lynn could reply.

  “She gets really crabby when she’s out of cigarettes. It’s the only time she ever swears.” Rory took a swallow of water.

  “You mean she’s not always crabby?” Jess asked, glancing at Lynn and feigning surprise as he started in on his own snack.

  “Well, usually she is, kind of. Grandma says it’s a mid-life thing. But she doesn’t usually swear.” Rory tore off a tiny piece of jerky and chewed it.

  “What!” Lynn interrupted this unflattering two-way conversation, feeling as if she had been blind-sided by her own mother’s perfidy. A mid-life thing, indeed! Just like Rory was going through a teen thing? When she got home she was going to have to inform her mother that she had outgrown phases.

  “Does she get hot flashes too?”

  Jess was laughing at her. Lynn sent him a killing glare and took a big bite out of her own food. The spicy beef—not something that she would normally eat—felt dry and unpleasant in her mouth. She ate it anyway.

  “Not that I know of.” Rory’s reply was serious. Her gaze shifted to Lynn. “Do you, Mom?”

  “No!” Lynn stopped herself, then continued in a more even tone. “I’m only thirty-five, Rory. That’s way too young for the symptoms you’re talking about. I am not going through a mid-life thing. Grandma was mistaken.”

  “She says you’re in a funk about your job.”

  “Grandma says too darned much.” Lynn managed a smile to take some of the sting out of this—Rory adored her grandmother, and Lynn usually did too—but it was an effort. She felt—admit it—crabby. Mondo crabby.

  “So,” Lynn changed the subject brightly, addressing Jess, “are we going to spend the night in the woods? Or are we just going to keep walking until we drop?”

  The questions had an acidic tone that Lynn regretted. She should have been more matter-of-fact. After all, sniping at Jess while they were wandering the wilderness together was probably not smart. He was the only one who knew how to get where they were going.

  To compensate, she smiled reassuringly at her daughter. Rory’s nose was wrinkled in distaste, but she was eating her jerky. The silver Mylar blanket was around her shoulders now, and it rustled every time she moved. It should be very effective, Lynn thought, in frightening away predators. Rory looked, and sounded, like something from outer space.

  “There’s a old mining camp a few miles farther up this trail,” Jess said. “It’s got a couple of cabins, kind of tumbledown but better than nothing. I thought we’d spend the night there. If we start walking from there pretty early in the morning, we should be on track to rendezvous with Tim about lunchtime tomorrow.”

  “That soon, huh?” Lynn couldn’t help the caustic note in her voice. It was not something she was doing purposely. She was just so tired and aggravated at the whole situation that she couldn’t control herself.

  And she needed a cigarette!

  “If we’re lucky.”

  Jess’s refusal to be riled had the effect of making Lynn feel crabbier than ever. He finished his water, screwed the lid back on the bottle, and stood up. “Ready to go?”

  They were. Jess gathered up water bottles and trash, storing them in his pack. Lynn struggled into her own pack, resenting the ease with which he donned his.

  He caught her gaze. Shifting so that his body blocked Rory’s view, he whispered to Lynn, “What do you say, Mom? Do we let your hurt little girl walk, or does the big bad wolf carry her?”

  Lynn cast a quick glance beyond him at Rory, who was still seated on the ground.

  “Carry her,” she muttered, tight-lipped.

  “Sure?”

  “Yes!”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Rory sounded peevish. Stepping around Jess, who turned as she did so, Lynn smiled down at her daughter. Rory’s glance up at her was bright with suspicion.

  Uh-oh, Lynn thought, her sweet child was metamorphosing again; the alien was on its way back.

  “Grown-up talk,” Lynn said, reaching a hand down to Rory. Rory allowed herself to be pulled into a standing position, then swayed, clapping a hand to her head with a degree more drama than Lynn thought was called for.

  Lynn steadied her, glancing around for Jess.

  “Quit talking to me like I’m some kind of baby,” Rory whispered to her mother, her arms sliding around Jess’s neck as he picked her up. Then, louder, “I’m almost fifteen.”

  “Not quite grown up yet,” Jess observed.

  Lynn, tucking the space blanket snugly around Rory, was surprised at his response. She would have expected him to side with Rory.

  “And you won’t be fifteen for six months,” she felt compelled to add. Not that fifteen was any better than fourteen where Rory’s interest in a man like Jess Feldman was concerned. If the child had to be boy-crazy, why couldn’t she at least fixate on specimens near her own age? Lynn wondered with exasperation. While Rory liked teenagers, every male she had had a serious crush on, from her physics teacher to her dentist, had been way too old for her. But at least the others had been lusted after from afar. Rory seemed determined to get up close and personal with Jess—and Jess didn’t seem particularly intent on discouraging her.

  Whoever had coined the phrase the joy of motherhood must not have had a pubescent daughter.

  “Four and a half months,” Rory corrected bitterly; “November nineteenth, remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” Lynn said. “I was there.” Rory’s hostility was returning by leaps and bounds, and Lynn was not up to dealing with it at the moment. In her present frame of mind she was not up to dealing with much. She just wanted to get out of the woods—and smoke a cigarette.

  “Get the flashlight.” Holding Rory, Jess nodded toward where it sat on the ground, tiny gray moths fluttering along the length of its beam.

  Smack!

  In a reflex reaction Lynn slapped the bare skin at the side of her neck even as she reached for the flashlight. Something had bitten her. A mosquito? A no-see-um! Of course, with the coming of night the little bloodsuckers were once again on the warpath, adding one more layer to her cocoon of misery.

  Happy, happy, joy, joy.

  Hunching her shoulders to give the vampires as small a target as possible, Lynn picked up the flashlight. Jess made a gesture that indicated she should precede him.

  “Shine the light on the path, will you?”

  This came as Lynn swept the forest with the beam.

  “You want me to lead the way?” Lynn asked, with no small amount of concern.

  “You’ve got the light.”

 
Rats! Curses! He made the suggestion deliberately, she thought, to pay her back for all the things she had said to him earlier. He knew she felt intimidated—all right, scared—by what might be lurking in the woods at night. But she’d be hanged by her heels before she’d acknowledge that fear. Ninety percent of life, she had learned, was putting on a good front.

  Lynn squared her shoulders and started walking, shining the light mostly on the path and only occasionally, when she just couldn’t help it, into the über-blackness that was the forest. Something slithered out of the way at the edge of the light, too quick for Lynn to identify it, though she suspected it was a snake. More than once she crunched a beetle underfoot. They were the size of her thumb as they scurried across the path, their shells black and shiny. A brown hare hopped for safety as she touched it with the light.

  All around them insects buzzed and whirred. Frogs sang. Rodents rustled and occasionally shrieked. A bird of prey screeched.

  A sharp crack behind her made Lynn jump a foot straight up in the air.

  “Ow! Shit! Damn it to hell!” Jess cried.

  Lynn whirled, focusing the flashlight in time to catch Jess reeling backward, one hand clapped to his forehead.

  “Jess! Oh, Jess!” Rory hung from his neck, legs dangling, as he staggered. Clearly, if it had not been for her grip on his neck, she would have been dropped.

  “What on earth?” Lynn shone the light in Jess’s face. He cursed again, baring his teeth, lifting his hand from his head to shield his eyes from the glare.

  “What are you trying to do, blind me?”

  “Sorry.” Lynn lowered the beam.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” It was a growl. He shook his head as though to clear it, then picked Rory up again.

  “Oh, poor you!” Rory crooned, stroking his forehead. To Jess’s credit he jerked his head away from her hand.

  “About what?” Lynn was mystified.

  “The branch!” From the way Jess was talking through his teeth, he must have thought she should know what he was referring to. She didn’t.