Heartbreaker

by Karen Robards

  If anything, Lynn thought, the change rendered him more attractive—at least in her eyes. She doubted that Rory would agree.

  The way he looked now, he was candy for grown women, not young girls.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, passing the bottle back to Lynn, who returned it to her pack. “Hear the river?”

  “I don’t hear anything.” Rory slumped dispiritedly, bringing Lynn’s attention back to her. “My head hurts.”

  “You can’t take another Tylenol; you’ve had four in the last hour.” Lynn crouched beside Rory, her arm sliding around her daughter’s shoulders. Like Jess, they were both zipped up in jackets. Hers was gray, Rory’s navy blue. Before setting out that morning they had traded jeans. Lynn wore her own slim Levi’s 501s, while Rory’s were looser, a trendy, baggy cut. Beneath the jackets were the turtlenecks they had worn the day before, Lynn’s white, Rory’s butter yellow. Now that Rory no longer needed it Jess had reclaimed his flannel shirt to replace his ruined T-shirt. Its soft red was the only touch of color about him that morning.

  It was frightening to realize anew that, besides the blisters on her heels and the slight ache in her shoulder, she was the only whole member of their party.

  What would she do if either of the others was unable to go on?

  In Jess’s case the only viable option was to go for help. In Rory’s—she would die before she would abandon Rory.

  “The Tylenol isn’t helping anyway,” Rory said.

  Now that she was listening for it Lynn realized she could hear the river. Its muted roar was disguised by other sounds closer at hand. The forest echoed with every imaginable bird call, from the croaking of ravens to the fluting cry of a hermit thrush. Branches swished high and low. Insects droned, and small mammals scurried. The air was damp, dense, with a strong scent of pine sap. Mist wafted toward treetops hundreds of feet high, glistening in places as angular shafts of sunlight began to penetrate the canopy. The soft green velvet of the moss cover was intermittent now; huckleberry bushes, denuded of fruit, were conspicuously bare. Earlier, Lynn had almost stepped in a pile of smelly, purple-colored poop. “Grizzly,” Jess had explained, not even slackening stride. Lynn assumed that grizzlies were responsible for the moss-free berry bushes and hoped she didn’t get to meet any face to face.

  Though she would rather come face to face with a dozen grizzlies than their pursuers from the night before.

  “If you can make it another five minutes to the riverbank, you can rest there while your mom and I go get the kayak,” Jess promised Rory.

  “By myself?” Like Lynn, Rory cast an uneasy glance around. Lynn’s arm tightened around her daughter. She looked up at Jess in alarm.

  “I won’t leave her,” Lynn said.

  “We’ll be back in a half hour.”

  “If I go with you how far do I have to walk?” Rory asked.

  “Once we get to the river about twenty minutes more. It’s rough going.”

  Rory’s head drooped. “I can’t do it.”

  Lynn glanced up at Jess. “I’ll wait with her.”

  “I’m going to need your help with the kayak.” That was the closest Jess had come to admitting that he, too, was at less than full strength. A glance at his body confirmed it: His right arm hung straight down at his side, and he held his upper torso stiffly as if it hurt him to move.

  Lynn glanced back at Rory, biting her lip.

  “We’ll hide her,” Jess said. “She’ll be all right. I wouldn’t suggest leaving her if I wasn’t sure of it. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of anyone this morning.”

  That was true.

  Rory settled it. “I feel sick to my stomach,” she said. “I’d rather wait for the kayak. Honestly, Mom. I don’t think I can walk another twenty minutes.”

  Lynn had no choice but to agree. Rory couldn’t walk; Jess, with his injury, couldn’t carry her; Lynn hadn’t been able to carry her since she was four years old. Fetching transportation to ferry her out of danger was the best available option.

  Once they reached the river, a narrow expanse of swiftly moving brown water, it was a simple matter to tuck Rory out of sight under a thick drift of feathery ferns. With both packs at her disposal (there was no point in carrying the packs when they would soon be back, Jess pointed out) they contrived a cozy nest. When the fronds were shaken back into place, not even Lynn’s critical eye could find her daughter.

  “She’ll be all right,” Jess assured Lynn, raising his voice to be heard over the rushing water. To Rory he added, “We’ll be back in thirty minutes, tops.”

  “Stay put, baby,” Lynn instructed, trying not to sound as anxious as she felt. Armed with beef jerky, a bottle of water, and pepper spray (included in the packs as—and Jess swore this was the truth—grizzly repellent), Rory was as comfortable and secure as it was possible to make her under the circumstances.

  Nevertheless, Lynn could not help glancing back more than once as she followed Jess upstream. The riverbank was steepsided and choked with an almost impenetrable tangle of willow and alder thickets. Lynn stumbled and clawed her way through them. Her hair and clothes caught repeatedly on branches, which jerked out strands of the first and snagged the second. Itchy and dirty to start with, she was soon drenched in sweat and irritable to boot.

  “You ever kayaked before?” Jess asked over his shoulder as Lynn battled her way out of the latest thicket.

  “No.”

  “Figures.”

  They were wading through a tangle of knee-high brambles at that moment, with Jess about an arm’s length ahead. Lynn was panting with exertion, dying for a cigarette, and willing to admit that leaving Rory had probably been the smart thing to do. Hurt and exhausted, Rory could have climbed Mount Everest with less effort than it was taking to reach the kayak, Lynn thought. Under the circumstances Jess’s air of macho-man superiority hit her the wrong way.

  “You ever spent a ten-hour workday in three-inch high heels?” she asked tartly.

  “No.” Jess glanced around at her in surprise.

  “You ever written a news story on a deadline?”

  “No.”

  “You ever given birth?” Lynn produced the clincher.

  “No.” He was grinning now.

  “Figures,” Lynn said, the word dripping with all the disdain she could muster.

  Jess laughed out loud. “Okay, so we each have our specialties. If I offended you I apologize.”

  “You did. And I accept.”

  “The thing is, kayaking’s a little tricky, and I’ve got a bad arm. You may have to paddle.”

  “How hard can paddling a boat be?”

  “A kayak,” Jess corrected, stopping beneath a spreading pine. “Like I said, it’s a little tricky.”

  “I’m sure I can manage.” The claim was pure bravado. In fact, Lynn wasn’t sure of any such thing, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

  “We’ll find out. Thar she blows.” Jess pointed to a long, cigar-shape craft overturned beneath a drift of bushes just ahead. A froth of intertwined weeds and brambles nearly hid it from view. Jess moved toward it. Lynn followed.

  “It’s kind of like a canoe, right?” Lynn eyed the kayak askance as Jess dragged it out into full view and flipped it right side up. It was a flimsy-looking contraption of bright yellow plastic, with two padded, blue-rimmed holes for seats. A pair of double-bladed oars were hooked to the sides.

  “Kind of. Grab that end, and we’ll carry it down to the river.”

  Lynn did as directed. The kayak was surprisingly lightweight. If Jess had had the use of both arms he would have had no trouble managing alone. As it was she slipped and slid down the steep riverbank holding on to a strap at one end of the craft, ending up ankle-deep in oozing silt through no fault of her own.

  She felt lucky that she had landed upright.

  “Good job.” Jess was at the other end of the kayak, positioning it and steadying it against the current. Because he was a kayak-length farther out into the river, the water rose
above his knees, wetting his jeans. As Lynn watched, he balanced storklike on one leg and pulled off a boot.

  She noted that he wore an athlete’s thick white cotton tube sock.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as he emptied the boot of water.

  “What does it look like? Taking off my boots.” He tossed the emptied boot into the kayak’s rear seat and repeated the operation, appearing to experience no hesitation about plunging his stocking feet into the river.

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re full of water, and they’re weighing me down. I suggest you do the same.”

  “Mine aren’t full of water.”

  “They will be.” An evil smile accompanied this. “Trust me.”

  Judging by how deep the water was on him only about a yard away, it was clear that he was right: Two more steps and her boots would be awash.

  Lynn stood first on one foot and then the other to tug off her boots. She wore thin nylon trouser socks on her feet. The icy water was a shock to her toes. The gritty silt immediately sifted inside her socks. Pebbles on the river bottom poked her soles. She dropped her boots into the rear seat beside Jess’s.

  “Shove ’em as far down into the cockpit as you can.”

  Lynn did, realizing in the process that the keyhole-shape seat was far smaller than the space actually provided for a human body.

  Jess paused in the act of snapping the oars free of their clips to glance at her. “You can swim, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can swim.”

  His grunt said there was no of course about it, but since he was smart enough not to put the sentiment into words, Lynn let it pass.

  “Okay, the thing about a kayak is, it requires a little balance, sort of like riding a bike. You can ride a bike?”

  “Of course I can ride a bike.”

  Jess didn’t even grunt this time. He didn’t have to. His expression said it for him.

  “For your information I’m also very good at softball, tennis, table tennis, and soccer. I can ski. I can water ski. I can do all kinds of things that might surprise you. It just so happens that I have never before had occasion to ride a horse, climb down a mountain, or row a kayak.”

  “Paddle,” Jess said.

  “What?” She glared at him. The constant eddy and flow of the silt beneath her feet made it hard to maintain her balance. She was glad for the kayak to hang on to.

  “You don’t row a kayak, you paddle it. These are paddles, not oars.” His tone was semiapologetic. A lurking grin came and went on his face.

  “Whatever.”

  “An athletic woman like you shouldn’t have any trouble then. Hop in.” He maneuvered the craft so that it was parallel to his body and patted the front seat.

  “Hop in?” Lynn cast a quick glance up and down the kayak. It was nothing more than a canoe with a top on it. She could do this. “Fine.”

  Lynn sloshed through the water—it was cold—until it was thigh-deep and she stood beside the front seat. For a moment she looked at the craft consideringly. It sat low in the river. She realized that, once in her seat, the lower half of her body would be below the water line. She glanced up at Jess, who was steadying the nose of the craft, and discovered the fugitive grin playing around his mouth. The muddy brown river swooshed past, moving very fast in the center.

  “What about life jackets?”

  “Honey, I didn’t exactly plan on taking a river excursion when you fell over that cliff and I went down it after you. I didn’t bring any life jackets with me. Ditto for helmets. We’re just going to have to wing it. So would you please go ahead and get in?”

  His patronizing tone irritated Lynn. “We didn’t fall over a cliff—the cliff broke. And if you’d warned us that it might, we never would have been standing on it in the first place. That we are here at all is a case of pure negligence on the part of Adventure, Inc. And don’t call me honey.”

  “Not very appropriate, come to think of it. Vinegar is more like it. Will you get in? Please?”

  Getting in proved surprisingly easy. Lynn shot a triumphant glance at Jess as she slid her feet down inside the boat shell and wriggled her hips into the seat. Padded areas provided unexpected comfort for her back and legs. The plastic enclosed her to the waist when she was settled. It was kind of like wearing a mermaid tail, she thought.

  “Here’s your paddle,” Jess said.

  “Thank you.” Lynn reached for it. As she moved, the kayak flipped.

  Nothing could have shocked her more. One second she was sitting there smirking at Jess, and the next she was underwater!

  Icy water. Completely and totally submerged. Upside down. Trapped in that mermaid tail of a boat.

  In the first instant Lynn swallowed about half the river.

  Choking, panicking, arms flailing wildly, legs kicking against the rigid polyethylene in which they were trapped, she fought to free herself from the kayak, to get to the surface, to reach air.

  25

  THROUGH NO EFFORT of her own, Lynn came back up as suddenly as she had gone under.

  Gasping for breath, coughing, spluttering, she wiped the streaming water from her face with both hands and opened her eyes.

  Jess was standing directly in front of her, not even a foot away, the craft’s nose clamped between his body and his good arm. He was laughing so hard he was choking.

  “You … you!” Lynn sputtered furiously, slinging droplets of muddy brown water at him. “You did that on purpose!”

  “I meant to tell you—kayaks—have a tendency to roll,” he gasped.

  “A tendency to roll!” The paddle she’d been reaching for when it had happened floated in the water next to the kayak. She grabbed it, swung it at him. “A tenden—”

  That was as far as she got. The kayak rolled again.

  This time her stay underwater couldn’t have lasted five seconds. And this time she had enough presence of mind to hold her breath.

  “Sit still!” His face was right in front of hers as he leaned over the kayak to steady it. He was laughing so hard he seemed to be having trouble standing upright. “Or you’ll roll again. Do you hear me? Sit still!”

  “Sit still yourself!” Lynn snarled, and aimed a roundhouse punch at his nose. It never connected. The kayak rolled.

  This time when he flipped it upright she sat still, rigid with temper and cold, muddy brown water pouring off her in streams. Her soaking hair was plastered to her skull. Her goose-down jacket had absorbed more water than a Bounty paper towel. She was drenched, drowned, freezing, and furious.

  The only movement she dared make was a reflexive one to push the hair out of her eyes.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he groaned, in apparent pain from having laughed so hard. Lynn eyed him with longing. He was dangerously close—but the thought of another icy submersion dissuaded her. He wasn’t worth it.

  “Shut up,” she said through her teeth.

  “That was the funniest thing I ever saw.”

  “You don’t get out much, do you?”

  “Just sit still until I can get in.” He was beside her, his good hand on the yellow plastic right in front of her, snickering as he pushed the kayak to shore, back end first. Lynn’s fists clenched. Just let her get her feet planted on dry land again and she would give him something to laugh about.

  “Did anybody ever tell you you’re cute when you’re mad?”

  “No, and nobody better unless he has a death wish.” Lynn clutched both sides of the cockpit and wished that looks could kill. If they could, he’d be toast.

  “Now, temper, temper.”

  “Screw you.”

  He chuckled. She fumed. Had she really, just a little while before, imagined she liked him? She must have been nuts. She had never disliked anyone more.

  She had never been attracted to anyone less. Handsome or not.

  The back of the kayak touched shore, and they stopped moving except for the bobbing of the craft caused by the current. Lynn sat motionless, almost afraid to breat
he.

  “If you want to take off that wet jacket real quick, I’ll hold the kayak steady.”

  Her jacket was soaked, icy wet, and felt like its stuffing had turned to lead. Pride dictated that she sit in it and sulk. Common sense—and considerations of both health and comfort—told her to take it off.

  “You just want to dunk me again.”

  “I won’t let it roll, I swear.”

  “Like I really trust you.”

  “Come on, Lynn.” He smiled at her, coaxingly, apologetically, the skin around his eyes crinkling. He was so close she could see every individual whisker sprouting on his unshaven cheeks, count every line in his face. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was unkempt, and she’d be willing to bet he had morning breath.

  Even dirty and smelly, he was handsome, whether she liked to admit it or not.

  “Don’t be childish,” he said. “I didn’t do it on purpose. You moved so fast I couldn’t hold on. Only having one working arm takes some getting used to, you know.”

  Lynn gave him a skeptical look, but she took off the jacket.

  “Now what do you suggest I do with it?” Not yet appeased, she held the dripping garment out by its collar like a grimy dog. She was shivering, still awash in muddy water.

  “Leave it. There’s no chance it’ll dry within the next few hours, and we’ll be out of here by then.”

  “So I freeze because of your sick sense of humor.” She tossed the sodden jacket toward the bank. It missed, landing half in and half out of the water, one sleeve stretched along the silt. The current caught it, pulling it out until it sank.

  “No, I freeze. I deserve it. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

  She glanced back at him to find that he was shrugging out of his jacket. He had to lift his hand from the kayak to get the jacket all the way off. Lynn stiffened, eyes widening as she clutched the cockpit’s padded sides.

  It didn’t roll.

  His jacket dropped in front of her, and his hand returned to the plastic. She breathed again.

  “It really was an accident.” He sounded semi-remorseful. She looked up at him with suspicion. He spoiled it by grinning.