Well, all except for his feet being sexy. And the dashing hero act when she’d crashed into him—which totally hadn’t been her fault. Yes, she’d smashed into Sam. And true, he’d caught her when her damn leg had betrayed her by buckling. But instead of flirtation, there’d been a look of almost…disgust…in his eyes while he steadied her—at arm’s length, certainly not in some movie-hero embrace. It was a look that had wounded Merry more than she liked to admit.
I know I’m big and clumsy, she’d wanted to scream at him. I know I’m not exactly a supermodel. And yeah, I’ve invited myself into your world for my own gain, but, damn it, I am doing the work!
Just not to Sam’s satisfaction. Her efforts to get the picnic laid out had clearly not been fast enough. He’d nudged her aside brusquely when the table had proven tricky to set up and her exhausted, trembling hands had fumbled. He’d sighed as if pained when she couldn’t get the llamas’ harnesses switched out on the first try. And he’d snorted with derision when she’d almost tumbled into the brook trying to wedge herself into one of the infernal camp chairs after finally getting everyone served with Dolly’s delicious food, the napkins, and utensils.
Speaking of which…Sam was expecting her to “pull her weight” and get their gear repacked. She saved her unfinished article and powered down the computer Severus had obligingly lugged up the trail for her (at least the beast was good for something other than just slavering all over her neck). It had been important to Merry to get her impressions down while they were still fresh, and besides, it had given her the perfect opportunity to eavesdrop while Sam had his guard down, chatting with the Germans. She’d have to finish the entry and post it when she got to Café Con Kvetch after the tour finished up.
If I make it to the end of this Bataan Death March.
Merry rocked, rolled, and wriggled her way out of the V-shaped seat, glad no one was around to see her flopping like a dying mackerel on the grass. The Germans were posing for one another by the stream now, snapping photos and generally having the time of their lives. As she watched, they trotted off to the meadow to catch up with Sam as he untethered the llamas. Even from twenty yards away, she could make out from their pantomimes that they wanted to get a picture with him.
“Wait, let me,” Merry called, and started after them. Damn well gonna pull my weight, and that means keeping the paying guests happy. She sucked in a breath as her leg locked up, the lunch break having allowed lactic acid to build up in the damaged muscles. She willed the damn thing to obey her, breathing through her teeth, and it was with only a slight hitch in her step that she strode into the meadow.
“Here, guys, smoosh together with Fauntleroy in the middle, and I’ll get you a souvenir your friends back in Bavaria will love.” She took the camera from Birgit’s eager hands, angling to give them a shot worth posting on social media. (Age notwithstanding, the garrulous Muellers were avid Facebookers, and they’d already promised to send her a friend request once they got home.) Sam gently tugged Fauntleroy into frame, then draped his arms across both beast and tourists in an encompassing embrace.
“Excellent,” Karl beamed. “Say käse!”
“Käse!” At the last second Sam turned his face and gave Fauntie a smooch right on the cheek.
Merry checked the instant replay on the camera’s screen. The animal was grinning fiendishly, as was Sam, and even she had to laugh as she handed back their camera.
“How about one with the two of you?” Karl suggested. “You make such a lovely young couple.”
“Oh, we’re not—”
“She’s not my—”
Merry and Sam spoke simultaneously, and she saw his tanned face was so suffused with color his blue eyes fairly glowed by contrast. Yeah, with devil fire, she thought. She had a feeling her own blush was amply evident on her fair, freckled cheeks.
“No?” Birgit said, sounding surprised. Her gaze moved between the two of them, eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Well, maybe not yet, but I think soon, ja?” She gestured for the two of them to step closer together. “Kiss, you two. For the picture.”
“I’d rather French-kiss Fauntleroy,” Merry muttered, but she moved closer.
“Better him than me,” said Sam, out of the corner of his mouth. He was careful to keep four hundred pounds of llama between the two of them, she noticed, and that was just fine with her.
“Eins, zwei, drei!”
Merry and Sam both moved to kiss the llama’s cheeks. But Fauntie wasn’t having any of it. He reared his head back…
And the tourists got a picture of a very surprised-looking Sam Cassidy and Merry Manning, kissing smack on the lips.
The only one grinning after that was his lordship, who hummed proudly at his bit of mischief and went back to munching grass as if he had not just dropped a nuclear bomb upon his human handlers.
Whoa. Merry’s lips were tingling. I need some antibacterial Chapstick, she thought, or maybe a visit to a Voodoo priestess. I’m surely hexed for life.
Sam cleared his throat as if expelling some of that same bad juju. “Okay, guys,” he said, clapping his hands together. He was still smiling for the benefit of the tourists, though it looked forced now. “Just a couple more miles to the top, and I promise you it’ll be worth it. Everyone feeling refreshed and ready to go?”
“Ja!”
“Jawohl!” The couple trotted off to reunite with their llamas.
Um…no?
Sam wouldn’t look at Merry. But he gave her orders just fine. “Wookiee, go make sure Snape’s pack is strapped on securely while I finish breaking down camp. He likes to blow out his belly sometimes to keep it loose, and you have to let him think he’s gotten away with it until he forgets and his guard’s down. Just don’t, for the love of God, get all up in his grille again. I already stowed the paper towels and I haven’t got time for another spit-take.”
“I’m not sure who’s spittier, the llama or the wrangler,” she groused. Which wasn’t really fair—Sam’s lips hadn’t been at all slobbery. A bit chapped, maybe. And surprisingly warm…
Sam was scrubbing his hand across those warm lips right now, as if trying to erase all trace of their lingual collision. “Just get Snape, would you? And do me a favor: Let’s forget that…er…accident ever happened.”
“Sure thing,” Merry said. She found herself enjoying his discomfiture perhaps more than she ought. “Nothing worth remembering, anyhow. Here, Snapey! Here, Snape-Snape-Snape!” she called. “Jersey Boy over here says it’s time to decamp.” Hoping the slight hitch in her step looked more swagger than stagger, she headed back to their lunch site, where Severus was stripping the last leaves off the sapling he was tied to. She whistled a fair rendition of “Living on a Prayer” as she walked.
“Heard that, did you?” A resigned expression on his face, Sam followed Merry back to their camp, leading Fauntleroy in tow. The two animals chortled to one another in greeting, then parted to seek more tender shoots to nibble. Sam sighed as he wrapped the last of the long leads into a neat bundle and stuffed them into his animal’s pannier. “I thought you were deep in cyber trance or I’d have been more discreet.”
“There’s no shame in being from the birthplace of Bon Jovi,” Merry said, quirking her pirate brow and stuffing her tongue firmly in her cheek. Yep. I’m loving Uncomfy Sam. She located her sore-abused hat by the stream bank and stuffed it over her braid—the braid Sam had inflicted on her without so much as a by-your-leave—then busied herself checking Snape’s pack straps. Despite Sam’s warning, they seemed snug enough—though who could tell beneath three feet of matted wool? “Lots of people loved Slippery When Wet.”
“I don’t…Well, okay, I kind of do…but…” Sam stopped, smiling reluctantly. “Just don’t post that on your blog, okay?”
“Column.”
“Whatever you call it. I have a reputation to maintain.”
“Sam Cassidy, Sullen Mountain Man?”
He looked up, blue eyes flashing in surprise. “Is that how you see me
? Sullen?”
“If the shoe fits…” Merry didn’t want to poke the bear too much, but really, did he think he was Mr. Cute-and-Cuddly? “Oh, wait, I forgot, you’re too close to nature to wear shoes.”
Sam scrubbed one leathery paw down his face. “I probably deserved that. I’m sorry, Miss Manning—”
“You can call me Merry already. We’ve practically swapped spit. And it’s better than Wookiee.”
“Merry then. Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been kind of an ass. It’s just that, when I look at you, I can’t help seeing every big-city princess…”
“Princess?”
“Would you let me finish?”
Merry nodded tightly. Much as she wanted to sock him in the jaw, she needed to know what it was about her that so chapped his troll ass.
“Maybe I got the wrong impression. But when you swanned your way onto our ranch in that prissy white coat that probably cost more than all my aunt’s alpacas together, scaring Buddha and squawking like a chicken over a little spit—”
“A little spit? I’ve seen drier geysers—”
“Anyway, I got my back up, is all. I’ve known a few women like you in my time—”
“Women like me?”
Sam ignored her indignant sputter, setting his teeth as if determined to plow through a vicious headwind. “And I…well, maybe I overreacted. I can see you’re trying, even if you are hopeless.” He reached out, and for a breathless second Merry thought he was going to stroke her cheek, but he just snicked her hat out of the way of Snape’s questing mouth.
I’m not hopeless, Merry wanted to say. I’m crippled.
Pride stopped the words in her throat.
“We’ll see who’s hopeless, Sam Cassidy,” she said tightly, snatching back the abused hat and squashing its brim between white-knuckled hands. “This princess can take anything you dish out, and hand it back with ice cream on top. So if you’re finished insulting me, I have a mountain to summit.”
* * *
Music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was playing in Merry’s head. Not the theme song, but the part of the score that accompanied the scene where Eli Wallach drags Clint Eastwood, stumbling and half dead, across a wide and inhospitable desert. The music undulated, wavering from crescendo to low point as Merry trudged the switchbacks toward Wheeler Peak, single-mindedly focused on one thing. Not being left behind.
Step.
Ow.
Step.
Ow.
After a while the focus shifted from “not being left behind” to “not dying,” but Merry didn’t stop. She would not stop.
She wasn’t pausing to admire the majestic trees flanking the trail, nor the clouds scudding across the achingly blue sky. She wasn’t writing any odes to the chipmunks and Steller’s jays that flicked in and out of her peripheral vision. Wheeler Peak was no more than a taunting mirage in the distance—glimpsed only in those few moments when she found the strength to glance up from the rock-strewn track—never seeming any closer than it had the last time she looked. She could hear Karl and Birgit’s exclamations of awe and delight ahead of her like the twittering of birds—far away and hazy in some realm where people were having fun instead of suffering the torments of hell. Her heart was hammering somewhere at the base of her skull, and the thin air wheezed in and out of her laboring lungs. Worst of all, each breath, each desperate beat of her pulse sent a spiral of shame radiating through her mind.
How did I let myself get like this?
Mountains used to quiver beneath her feet. She’d been a freaking Amazon on the slopes. Over and over, Merry’s agent had fielded requests for her to appear in magazines from Sports Illustrated to Maxim (though she’d politely turned down the latter’s request to pose in just ski boots and a thong). She’d done countless interviews with top women’s fitness magazines, had even been asked if she’d endorse some new exercise machine whose inventors had wanted to call the Merry-Go-Round. But now? Merry had to admit it wasn’t just her injuries that had brought her to this nadir. It was the pathetic way she’d given up on any semblance of recovery, of ever being active again.
It’s my own fault.
She’d gone through the required physical therapy after her accident. But once Merry was on her feet and it had become apparent that her skiing days were over, all motivation to keep fit had simply vanished. Her body had become a stranger, and a not-very-welcome one at that. Where once she’d been in peak condition, lifting weights, running, doing yoga to keep limber—and that was on top of the actual skiing, which occupied several hours out of each day—after the accident everything had changed.
So had the expectations.
That fact had been made exquisitely clear when she’d been released from the final rehab center and, with help from her brother, finally headed home to the beautiful little condo she rented in Vail…
Only to find all her gear had vanished. From poles to goggles, boots to bindings, all of it was just…gone.
“Marcus, call the police!” Merry remembered telling her brother, as she’d crutched her way from the foyer to the living room. The hall closet, which had been bursting with skis, poles, and team jackets, was wide open and empty. The place on the wall above the mantel where she’d hung the set of skis that had taken her to a new record in last year’s world championships—bare. The team jumpers, the sponsor-emblazoned clothes had all been removed from her drawers. And it wasn’t just her equipment. Her medals were gone. Trophies, vanished.
“I can’t believe this! I’ve been robbed!” Merry had hobbled all around the little condo, searching frantically, forgetting for the moment how much her injuries still hurt. What the fuck? Her iPod dock was still there. Her flat-screen TV, untouched. Jewelry—what little she wore—undisturbed in its box. Clothes, appliances, all good.
But every trace of her life as a skier had gone up in smoke.
“Why aren’t you doing anything?! Jesus, Marcus, can’t you see…”
But the look in Marcus’s eyes had told her he saw more than she did. “No one robbed you, Sis,” he’d said quietly, fine gray eyes brimming with compassion. “Mom and Dad were here while you were still recovering, and they cleared everything out. They thought…I guess they thought it would hurt less if you didn’t have to see reminders everywhere.”
The message had been clear. You’re not a winner anymore. You’re nothing, just a hole where a winner used to be.
After that, Merry found herself hailing cabs instead of walking, going to movies rather than out for hikes. Working out, painful in its own right, was worse because it reminded her that she’d never compete again. So she’d stopped.
What’s the point, when I can never hope to win?
Merry paused on the trail, both to let the hammering of her heart die down, and to have a huge fucking moment of revelation.
That’s my mother’s voice. Not mine.
In her heart, Merry knew there was more to being a competitor than playing to win. And there was more to life than competition. I mean, c’mon. What am I supposed to do now that I can’t be the best? Crawl under a rock and die? Gwendolyn Manning might not have objected—at least it would keep her daughter’s shame out of the public eye—but, to Merry’s surprise, she found she wasn’t ready to give up quite yet.
Neither, fortunately, was Severus Snape.
Over the painful thrumming of her pulse, Merry could hear Snape’s regular exhalations, feel them snorting softly against her be-slobbered neck. Having been so lost in her own misery, she was surprised now to find the llama had moved up beside her, crowding close to her left side instead of poking at her back. She tried to push him away, but when he wouldn’t give ground, she looked at him—really looked at him.
Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought the llama bore a look of compassion. His ears were cocked forward, eyes liquid black and heavy-lidded. He twitched his lips, cocked his head, and shook his forelock. And then, tongue darting out, he gave her cheek a sluuuurp!
What the hell, I�
��m coated in black death anyway, Merry thought. “You’re trying to help, aren’t you, boy?”
Severus hummed, an inquisitive sound like a kitten assessing its welcome in a new environment.
“Blink once for ‘You’re crazy, lady.’ Blink twice for ‘Yes, I’m making nice.’”
Severus blinked slowly…once…twice.
Merry’s eyes welled. She told herself it was just the exhaustion, the pain from her worn-out leg. She wasn’t softening toward the spitty beast. She wasn’t. But this time, when the llama leaned in to nibble her hat, she just snuffled a watery laugh and plopped the battered bit of felt atop Snape’s head. She’d have to cut holes for his ears when she got a chance. “You win, my friend. Take it. Now, how about you give me a hand up this bastard mountain?”
By the time the switchbacks petered out and the gradient leveled out a bit above the tree line, Merry and Snape were old chums. They’d been through “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and moved on to “The Banana Boat Song,” Miley Cyrus’s latest cry for attention, and even a little ditty she’d made up in her own fevered brain. By now Karl and Birgit had gotten so far ahead of her—curse their healthy Germanic hides—they couldn’t have heard her even if she hadn’t been singing in a half-delirious mumble. Sam, she assumed, must be up there with them, but she couldn’t spare the energy to find out where.
Suddenly, Snape lollopped to a halt. Merry looked up, and her heart stopped. Snape flicked his ears back and forth, as if waiting for her to catch up mentally as well as physically. Well, we’re here, he seemed to be saying.
And here was a glorious place.
How long had it been since she’d stood at the top of a mountain? Duh, two years, dummy, she thought. Once they’d been everything to her—from her first trip to the Alps with her family as a small child to the years she’d spent skiing the most extreme slopes her sport had to offer. High altitude was like a drug to her, the feeling of being above it all, able to see—just see everything, unimpeded—a fix she could not resist. It might be cheesy, but yeah, hell yeah, she felt like the queen of the world when she was up high. She’d talked about taking up mountain climbing when her skiing career ended—until it had ended the way it had. And during that career she’d tried every kind of skiing there was, from off-trail and out-of-bounds to heli-skiing, and not just because she liked the rush. She’d liked the scenery too.
Last Chance Llama Ranch Page 12
