Stranded with a Stranger

by Frances Housden

  “Here, let me.” Kurt held out his hand and, fool that she was, Chelsea took it in hers. The world blurred at his touch. He pulled her to her feet and released his hold. And with its loss she felt nothing would ever be the same again.

  He was dressed in the same casual outdoorsy style as most of the guides she’d met in Namche Bazaar—sun-faded khakis topped by a checked shirt under a black anorak. On him it had a style she hadn’t perceived last night. The long stretch of muscled legs moved with a singularity that made him stand out in a crowd. She took a drawn-out look, knowing something was different.

  Sure, he’d shaved, she’d give him that. But it wasn’t simply that the razor had highlighted the dimple on his chin that made her stomach flip over, or the fact that the touch of his hand had sent an icy shiver down her spine.

  No, it was in his eyes and the way he held himself. He reminded her of someone, but for the life of her she couldn’t say whom. She returned his gaze and recognized awareness in his eyes, a knowing that hadn’t been there before, as if in a past life they might have been lovers.

  Flustered, she bent to flick the creases out of her skirt till it swung lightly from her hips, skimming the tops of her calves. When she had picked out the light cream cashmere top and natural linen skirt, she hadn’t considered its subtle sexiness as part of her plan to get her own way. Now she realized that like everything she had done since their first meeting, it had been part of her strategy, part of her seduction.

  Too bad she hadn’t reached a definite conclusion on how to go about this master plan.

  Just when it counted most, she was going to have to wing it.

  Chelsea was used to controlling her own life, and it showed as soon as they entered the restaurant.

  On the other hand, weighing in at 220 and standing at least three inches above most other men, as well as running the kind of enterprise he did, Kurt had become used to commanding attention, not being superseded. He didn’t remember Atlanta being so bossy. She and Bill had always consulted each other, but then they had been a couple, two halves of one whole.

  Kurt turned his attention to Chelsea, who had already picked her selection from the menu, told him he would enjoy it and informed their server they’d have two of everything.

  The sibilant lisp of the sommelier did nothing to smooth Kurt’s ruffled feathers. “Your meals will be here directly. Meanwhile if I can suggest a good wine to accompany them…” The wine list was fluttered at Kurt’s face like a fan.

  He scowled his annoyance at the undeserving sommelier, then asked Chelsea, “You want some wine?”

  “Yes, I’d like that.” She smiled at the sommelier and held out her hand for the wine list. “Do you have a—”

  “I think a Pinot Gris will go best with what we’ve ordered,” Kurt said before Chelsea had a chance to pipe up. He took the list, glanced over it, then pointed. “This one.”

  It paid to have a brother who was a Master of Wine and made his living tasting and writing books about the fermented juice of the grape. Drago was the eldest of the Jellic boys—men. He’d been out on his own a lot longer than the rest of them.

  Circumstances of late had wrought a change in their slightly dysfunctional family, starting with the marriage of Jo, his younger sister. Since then, Franc, his genius kid brother, had found a great job, with loads of responsibility, in one of his new brother-in-law’s firms. The family ties were now less fractured than they had been since the day his father, Milo Jellic, committed suicide.

  His sister had married a man with money to burn, probably with the same kind of class Chelsea had. Not that he had aspirations in that direction—not even as a solution to his problems. Didn’t matter that one glance at her sexy body had his insides turning every which way.

  No, he was sure his twin brother, Kel, would agree with him that one millionaire per family was enough.

  Kurt glanced around the almost empty dining room as the sommelier left. They’d been the center of attention as waiters vied to pass them menus and then take their orders.

  “So where did you learn so much about wine?” Chelsea leaned across the table, one hand toying with her empty glass.

  The movement emphasized the lush curve of her breasts where her cashmere sweater clung to them. He had to admit she had style. It didn’t matter that her hair looked as if she’d cut it by herself without the aid of a mirror. He guessed it was the latest trend, but all it did was make her look younger, more vulnerable. He hardened his heart and refused to fall for it.

  “I don’t spend all my life on top of a mountain. New Zealand may be a small country, but it’s big on wine.”

  That said, he tried to shrug off the feeling he’d made a mistake coming here. The contrasting digs they’d chosen—the tavern he’d shacked up in and this upmarket hotel where the cheapest room cost five hundred dollars a night—escalated his estimation of the class barrier he’d sensed looming between them.

  It wasn’t anything that had required much thought with Atlanta. She had been a friend; he hadn’t been attracted to her. But with Chelsea, the attraction presented itself like a minefield in no-man’s-land.

  The quickest and easiest way out was to say no.

  Chelsea’s eyes lit up as she smiled at him. “Alone at last.”

  Kurt had an unwelcome impression that her eager eyes saw him as a parcel, tied with a big blue bow that she couldn’t wait to hack into with her scissors.

  He glanced over his shoulder, totaling the number of stares from hovering waiters focused in their direction. “I’ve felt more alone in Grand Central Station.”

  “They do pride themselves on exemplary service here. At least, that’s what it said on the hotel Web site. But it isn’t quite so overpowering at dinnertime when the restaurant is busier.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for that. This isn’t the style I look for when I’m thinking of climbing a mountain. Although a certain amount of comfort between climbs is attractive to people with money. At least, that’s what I had in mind when I started converting an old farmhouse near Aoraki National Park into a lodge.”

  He could see Chelsea was dying to question him about the place that had been a huge drain on his purse for the past year, but the sommelier beat her to the draw.

  He held out a bottle so Kurt could read the label. French. This far from New Zealand he’d known he couldn’t expect everything. Meaning a bottle marked Marlborough, one of New Zealand’s top wine districts. He nodded his acceptance and an opener materialized from the guy’s pocket.

  “Aoraki? Where is that?” Chelsea asked.

  He briefly lifted a hand to signal her to hold a moment.

  “Let me taste this, then I’ll tell all.” Kurt swirled the wine in his glass the way Drago had shown him, took a sniff and then tasted the wine. It had the pearlike aroma but not the rich, ripe fruitiness he’d expect if it had been a New Zealand wine. Still, it would pass muster. He glanced up at the patient sommelier. “Excellent. Thank you.”

  It was apparent that Chelsea agreed. Her gray eyes seemed to lift at the corners smiling at him over the rim of the glass as she took her first taste. “I’m pleased to know your taste in wine exceeds your choice in whiskey.”

  “I’m versatile. I use what’s on hand. Sometimes a compromise is necessary.” But there would be no compromising where Chelsea’s safety was concerned.

  “You wanted to know about Aoraki. It’s the Maori name for Mount Cook. It translates as cloud piercer.”

  “I like that. Much more romantic than Mount Cook.”

  Trust a woman to find the romance in a hunk of rock. After last month’s accident he was having trouble finding anything vaguely quixotic in his chosen field. It had become a means to an end—that end being his lodge. “I’d be telling a lie if I said there was any fairy-tale romance connected to my lodge. It used to be a sheep station, but it’s years since anyone lived there. Most of the land was ceded to the state in lieu of back taxes. The land itself is pretty barren, a flat valley
scooped out at the foot of the Southern Alps by glaciers during the ice age. My interest in it is its accessibility to the Alps and Aoraki. It’s close enough to the township of Lake Tekapo not to be completely isolated. Lots of tourists pass by on the way to Queenstown.”

  “But it must be exciting making a project like that come to life.”

  “Exciting would be good, but when I think about the lodge, all I see ahead of me is hard work and lots of it.”

  “Why aren’t you there now working on your property instead of climbing Mount Everest?”

  “I need the money. Besides, it’s winter in New Zealand, lots of snow and rain—better for skiing than climbing, though there are plenty of fools who still want to risk it. My aim is to build up a training establishment attached to the lodge where I can teach guests to climb safely.”

  Kurt cleared his throat in an attempt to dislodge the lump that had settled in his craw. “You might not believe it, but I had one of the best safety records going until last month. Hell, they do say pride comes before a fall, but I’d rather have died myself than lose anyone on my watch, especially Bill and Atlanta.”

  “I know that feeling well. It’s called guilt. No wonder we’re together. They say misery loves company.”

  Kurt’s mind latched on to only one portion of her last sentence. “But we’re not together. After we’ve eaten I’ll go my way and you’ll go yours. Tell me something. When you were trying to hire a guide, did you give them all your name and your reasons for going up Everest?”

  Chelsea leaned back in her chair as if distancing herself from him. Hardly worth the effort, given they were already sitting at opposite ends of a table for two. “Yes. Why not?”

  “No reason.” He gave her the lie, knowing after today he wouldn’t see her again.

  He watched her lift her glass and pour some wine into her mouth as if she were drinking straight courage.

  He tried some of his own, just a sip, and waited. He wasn’t lacking in courage, but something told him if he didn’t keep his wits about him, Chelsea would try to tie him in knots.

  His stomach had already taken a few twists and turns since he’d arrived. Sexual attraction could steal a man’s soul. Look at Adam. Even he wasn’t immune to the allure of a good-looking woman. But then, he’d had only one to choose from. Why, out of all the women Kurt had met, was Chelsea the one to stir feelings that had lain dormant since he’d given his love to the mountains?

  He wasn’t the type to court danger and leave a family at home. No, there was nothing of his old man in him, except maybe going for the thrill. He couldn’t see why, as a cop, his late father had taken to dealing drugs. It couldn’t have been for the money. None of it ever appeared on their table. They’d been a big family, and after his mother died, Grandma Glamuzina had managed the way she had in the old country, working on a shoestring budget.

  After his father drove his car off a cliff, the fat hit the pan and the truth came out—or what had passed as the truth. He’d come to think that his need to climb stemmed from being able to get above everything else, up high where the stench of corruption couldn’t taint him.

  His sister and her husband, Rowan McQuaid Stanhope, were now in the process of trying to unravel the mystery of who’d done what. It was after he heard about their efforts that he’d decided to start work on the lodge. Even to himself he hadn’t admitted that maybe this had been the catalyst for thinking he could settle down at last, maybe find himself a wife.

  Yeah. That explained this sudden rush of testosterone to the brain; he’d given his instincts permission to find some woman attractive. But why Chelsea?

  She was the last person he could have a relationship with.

  “I could fix your money problems.”

  “Whoa, back up there. That wasn’t why I mentioned them. If I was into borrowing money I would have asked Bill—I’d known him a lot longer than I’ve known you.” This woman’s mind worked faster than a black cat disappearing at night.

  She was hard to keep up with and knew exactly which buttons to push. He’d have to learn to keep his mouth shut and not give her another opening. He polished off the rest of his wine in one gulp.

  Chelsea signaled the sommelier to refill Kurt’s glass, but kept her smile tucked inside her mind as she did it. She’d learned negotiating on her daddy’s knee and knew not to blow the deal by letting the other side recognize you could see the winning post streaking toward you. “I’m not talking about a loan. You have something I want and I have something you need. Fair exchange is no robbery. Let’s parler.”

  Her mind clicked to possibilities that hadn’t entered her plans when she sat outside on the veranda. Now it took shape, a plan she hadn’t considered before. “I think the least you can do is give me a trial. I deserve at least that. I believe I can cope. You don’t. Take me up there and give me a chance to prove what I can do.”

  She saw Kurt’s lips quirk, pulling his mouth up at one side. The action emphasized the depth of the dimple in his chin and distracted her attention from his words for a moment, but only a moment.

  “You really think you can take the leap from a climbing wall to the highest mountain in the world in one go?” He gave the question a facetious quality with the lift of one eyebrow.

  Chelsea wasn’t used to being talked down to, even by men who were six inches taller. But she now knew she had an edge. Seduction and feminine wiles didn’t have to come into her proposition. This was business. Her territory. “I’ll never know unless I’m given the chance to try. Look at it this way—you’re here, you’re available and you need the money. I have money, I want to find my sister’s body and you have the opportunity to make sure I’ll be safe before you take me on. Or rather take me up the mountain.”

  “Why don’t you just pay me to go up and recover the bodies and bring them down to Namche Bazaar?”

  “No… Definitely not. That isn’t the way it’s going to go down. I have to be there.” She couldn’t take the chance on someone else finding the key before her.

  His dark eyes glinted as if he sensed she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. She was right. “What’s so important about you being there?”

  She rolled her eyes at him and thought fast. “If this is the moment when you expect me to spill all my guilty little secrets about my relationship with Atlanta, forget about it. I don’t remember what I told you last night, but that was whiskey-on-an-empty-stomach talking. All I’ve had today is a few sips of wine and a big breakfast.”

  The mention of food appeared to trigger the arrival of their first course—corn and feta fritters, layered with bacon strips and vegetables. It had sounded good on the menu, but at the moment it had lost its appeal by slowing the momentum of their conversation. Kurt had already made it clear that he didn’t care to have a discussion in front of any of the dining-room staff.

  It didn’t matter to her who knew she wanted to go up Mount Everest after her sister’s body. There was only one secret she needed to keep, apart from her connection to IBIS, and that was the whereabouts of the key. This was the first time in her twenty-eight years that she had felt the lives of thousands of employees lay in the palm of her hand.

  She didn’t look on it as a burden. All she knew was there was no way she wanted to let them down. She hadn’t even stopped long enough to check out wills or anything. Maybe someone from Bill’s family owned part of Tedman Foods. She didn’t give a hoot. As a Tedman, Chelsea was the last of that name, Arlon Rowles being her father’s first cousin only because their mothers had been sisters.

  The server left and Chelsea picked up her knife and fork, but didn’t use them. She wasn’t able to start eating. Getting her own way was more important than food, even if she had been starving.

  She watched Kurt cut into a fritter and layer it with bacon and tomato on his fork. Once his mouth was full and he had no choice but to listen, she made her move.

  “If you’re worried about my safety, don’t be. It won’t make any difference. I will g
o up there, either with you or someone else, even if I have to fly an experienced guide in from the States. They can’t all be in Namche Bazaar right now.

  “What you have is a chance to make sure I can make it. I’m fit. I have some experience with ropes, knots, carabiners and ascenders. Teach me enough to get me up to where Atlanta and Bill are lying. I know you trust yourself. Well, forget about the accident. I trust you enough to get me up there and back again in one piece. So what do you say? Have we got a deal?”

  She gripped her eating utensils hard.

  Not that that would stop her hands shaking, or dissipate the sense of urgency coursing through her veins as if her life was at stake. She thought of Maddie and knew that it could be, if knowledge of the key Atlanta had been carrying got out.

  The sooner they did this the better.

  Chelsea meant what she’d said. She trusted Kurt Jellic with her life, only she couldn’t tell him that her life was more likely to be in danger from an external force, not the mountain that had taken her sister.

  Kurt’s face was grim. Did he consider that what she asked amounted to blackmail? But like it or not, fate had linked them in this endeavor. And like it or not, there was no going against fate. The monks in the temples of this high mountain stronghold would be the first to agree with the supposition that it was already written in the sands of time.

  “Since you put it like that, you leave me no choice.”

  He took a sip of wine while Chelsea held her breath.

  “I know someone who owns a place we can use. It’s not on Everest, but it’s within four days’ walk from here, maybe three depending on your stamina. The mountain it’s close to isn’t anything like as high as Everest, so we won’t have to worry about oxygen. We won’t need tanks where you want to go, in any case. We don’t have to climb to the top.

  “What Ama Dablam does have is a glacier, an icefall that’s easier to reach than any of the others. And if you can’t make it on this one, you’ll never be able to reach the couloir where their bodies fell.”