Stranded with a Stranger

by Frances Housden

  As the dam inside her cracked, she clamped her teeth into her bottom lip to stop the flood waiting to be let loose.

  “That was a low blow, Teddy. I might feel content, but happiness isn’t an emotion I’ve scheduled into my future plans. That doesn’t mean I expect you to go around in sackcloth and ashes. All I ask is you don’t let Bill’s and Atlanta’s deaths go to waste. That you build them a memorial that will outlive the monument I’ll have built for them here.”

  She managed a smile. It was amazing how often she and Kurt thought along the same lines. “I’d thought of scholarships and maybe a climbing school where kids from the city can spend a little time learning to see more than skyscrapers—up here they have the originals. I thought we could give them a chance to care more for the beautiful world we all share. You know what I mean? Sometimes you have to see the reality to learn how to cherish it. I’ve learned all that up here in the Himalayas.”

  And more. She had learned how to cherish a man.

  “Mac is waving to you. Looks like you need to leave.” Kurt’s mouth was as flat as his voice, his control absolute.

  She cast a swift glance over her shoulder. Mac was indeed signaling for her to board the helicopter. “Yes, looks…like this is it,” she whispered, her voice husky with the strain of the moment. But if he thought she would take her leave without a kiss he was wrong. No one could read anything into a goodbye kiss. It was what people did at airports.

  Chelsea stretched up, hooked one arm around Kurt’s neck and pressed her lips to his, pouring her heart into her kiss.

  For a moment the world stood still as he relaxed into it. The next moment he was pushing her away. “Don’t do this. You’re killing me, Teddy bear.”

  “You haven’t heard the last of me, Kurt Jellic, not by a long shot.” She turned and ran for the helicopter. As soon as she was strapped in her seat with her headphones on, she looked out the window and saw Kurt walking away. With her heart in her throat, she made him a quiet promise. “I mean it. We’ll meet again. I’m a fighter. You proved that by showing me I could reach the heights. This is not the end.”

  The helicopter rose. Out the window Kurt grew smaller and Mount Everest overshadowed Sagarmatha National Park. Before Mallory vanished in 1924 he had likened it to a prodigious white fang in the jaw of the world. And that was true. Being on the mountain had pierced her heart.

  Beside her, Mac’s voice came through her headphones. “Did you say something?”

  “Just goodbye.”

  Till we meet again.

  The sound of the departing helicopter was still hanging in the air like a frozen shower of sound when Kurt realized he’d made the worst mistake of his entire life. He’d let Chelsea go.

  He turned to face the fading whir of blades until he could no longer pick out the black speck flying between two of the mountains.

  After all his protestations that he was doing what was best for Chelsea, he’d been wrong. Though his reasons were as valid now as when he’d quoted them that morning, there was one exception, a big one.

  Living in two separate hemispheres could never be what was best for them both.

  If knowing he’d made a mistake was one side of the coin, working out a way to rectify his blunder was the other.

  Sure, she loved him, but what did he have to offer her? Nothing but a half-built lodge in one of the most beautiful but least populated parts of New Zealand. He needed to finish the project. And he would, if he had to mortgage his soul to get it done.

  It wasn’t going to happen in a day, or even sixty, but then look at all the business Chelsea had to sort out. Surely he could have the lodge finished by the time she was free to join him?

  Next problem—how to explain his about-face without looking a complete jerk.

  It would take a certain amount of subtlety.

  What the hell? He could do subtle.

  Unlike his father, Kurt Jellic wasn’t completely irredeemable.

  He could learn from his mistakes.

  Chapter 16

  Aoraki, New Zealand

  The following February

  Kurt looked at the people seated around the great room of his soon-to-be-opening lodge. It felt like a hundred years since all his family had been in the same place at the same time. And how the family had expanded. Only he and Drago were still unattached. Jo had Rowan, Kel had Ngaire and little brother Franc had Maria.

  Molly, his housekeeper, was handing out beer and wine to toast the success of his new venture. Her husband, Hemi, was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Once Molly had left the great room with its soaring windows that framed the view of Mount Aoraki, Kurt offered up a toast. “To Namche Bazaar Lodge.”

  Everyone concurred with his sentiment and drank up. “So what do you think of the lodge now you’ve had the ten-cent tour?” he asked.

  Drago answered first, and since he was the eldest brother, everyone else gave way. “I think you’ve made a good choice. Maybe I can stop worrying about you falling off the top of a mountain.”

  “I haven’t retired completely. I’ll still be doing a bit of guiding, but I also have another guide with local experience starting with the lodge soon.”

  Franc rubbed his hand on the arm of the love seat he and Maria were sharing. “This place is comfortable, and there is no denying everything about the place is first-class.”

  “I love it,” chimed in Maria.

  Kurt had heard Maria’s story and couldn’t believe she could look so relaxed after recently going through a harrowing kidnapping. And good on his brother for rescuing her.

  Kurt felt a twinge of conscience. He hadn’t handled his own love life as well as Franc had. Each and every day Chelsea was on his mind. He thought of her first thing each morning, and her name was on his lips every night as his head hit the pillow. He might be thirty-four years old, but there was still a Teddy bear he wanted to take to bed.

  He smiled at his family, hoping none of them recognized that it pained his heart. “I can’t take all the glory. I did have an interior decorator. I took her advice, for I wouldn’t have a clue what goes together.”

  Damn, he could say that again. If he’d ever had a clue about life he would have kept Chelsea glued to his side.

  But his youngest brother hadn’t finished with him. “Mountain climbing must pay, Kurt. I bet it cost you a bomb to bring this place up to scratch.”

  Franc’s question gave him the opening he’d been looking for to mention Chelsea, even if obscurely. “I have a silent partner.”

  “The best kind to have,” said Kel. Pulling Ngaire to him, he planted a kiss on her lips. “This is how to do it,” he finished, fending off his wife’s fainthearted slaps. Ngaire was a hapkido master and could have put her husband on the floor with a flick of her wrist.

  While all the teasing was going on Kel looked from him to Rowan. Kurt knew what he was asking—had his sister’s wealthy tycoon husband, Rowan McQuaid Stanhope subsidized him? He shook his head. He hadn’t told a soul who his partner was, though he wished like hell he could. In his own small way he was still doing his best to protect Chelsea until the time was right.

  “Okay, you lot, listen up,” Jo announced. His sister made it hard to forget she was a detective sergeant. “Rowan and I have some news regarding our inquiries into Dad’s death.”

  Everyone went quiet. Until a few months ago Kel would have walked out of the room the moment their father’s name was mentioned, but marriage seemed to have mellowed him.

  “We’ve found the woman Dad was having an affair with. He should have known better. Her ex-husband is a drug lord that Dad had put inside. Since his release from prison, this guy has developed one of the largest crime syndicates in New Zealand. I hate to say it, but we haven’t been able to touch him. He has a hidey-hole on Great Barrier Island that is protected from all sides. And as with Dad’s murder, he pays others to do his dirty work.”

  Jo tucked her long dark hair behind one ear and took her husband’s hand. The look she ca
st Rowan’s way said it all. Theirs was a love for the ages.

  Refreshed from that glance, Jo went on. “His ex-wife swears that her husband put out a contract on Milo Jellic from inside prison, and she knows for certain through another woman that Rocky Skelton was paid to plant dope in Dad’s car and to start the rumor that ruined Dad’s reputation.”

  God, it hurt that even Milo had had more guts than him. At least he’d gone after the woman he wanted even if it had cost him his life. Damn it, he wasn’t going to sit around any longer for someone to give him the okay to have a life with Chelsea.

  Subtle hadn’t worked. He was going to have to go with caveman.

  His skin prickled with the need to go and call Chelsea immediately. Better still, he could check the times of the flights out of Christchurch to Los Angeles and then to Philadelphia. He had Chelsea’s address.

  The excitement was almost more than he could contain. If everything went according to the plans he was developing in the back of his mind while the others were talking about Milo, there could be more in his future than running a lodge and guiding people up the Southern Alps. He would have someone to share it with.

  Kurt crashed out of his dream. His little sister was waiting for an answer. “That’s great news, Jo. You and Rowan have done a great job—”

  “But I’m not finished,” she interrupted him. “There’s more news, and in a way it’s even bigger. We have a half brother.”

  The great room was silent for a second after Jo dropped her bombshell, then the talk started. Everyone turned to Jo, demanding to know who he was. All except Kel, whose face had turned white under his usual tan. Kurt knew his brother’s pain, felt it as if it were his own. That’s how it was with twins bound as closely as they were. He was probably the only one who realized that Kel’s need to make up for Milo’s wrongs stemmed from the great love he’d had for their father.

  Jo had the floor again. “Okay, okay, give me a break and I’ll tell you all I know. It appears we were all pretty clueless about the life our father led away from us. The affair that got him killed must have started a few months after Mom died and gone on for years.”

  That brought out a few grumbles, which Jo cut dead. “I know. I felt the same when I first heard, but we have to remember Dad wasn’t the god we thought of him as kids, or the villain they tried to turn him into. He was just a man, like most of you.”

  Kel answered for them all. “Nailed it in one, Jo, as usual. Just don’t tell me it was the brat who lived next door to us.”

  “She had him adopted. Having no illusions about the man she’d married, she knew he would have the baby killed if he found out, just like he did Milo. It was a private adoption through a lawyer. She never knew the couple’s names. The only thing she cared about was that they were American and would take the baby out of New Zealand. But she did say she thought the adoptive father was coming to the end of his term at the American embassy. And that is where we start.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Everyone looked at Kel. “Let’s face it, I have more contacts in the States than anyone else through working for GDEA. Anyway—” he shrugged “—it’s about time I lent a hand. Just tell me the year and I’ll get onto it as soon as we get back to the agency.”

  After that it was a free-for-all as the talk went back and forth. He didn’t know about Drago, but now that most of the others were married, he was starting to feel like a fifth wheel in his own family.

  But as soon as everyone went to dress for the celebration dinner, he’d book his flight, then get on the phone to the U.S. and let Chelsea know when he’d be arriving. He hoped he would find her at home. It would be getting late on the East Coast—what if she’d gone out with someone?

  Another man echoed through his tortured thoughts.

  After she’d paid more money than he thought he knew what to do with into the Aoraki Expeditions account, he’d had his lawyer draw up a partnership agreement. He’d sent her the legal partnership papers, hoping she wouldn’t send them back unsigned, but he hadn’t received even a few personal lines scratched on paper.

  That didn’t mean he hadn’t sent her progress reports on the lodge. He had. And finally he’d sent her a copy of a magazine carrying an advertisement for the lodge’s opening.

  He had to admit he’d hoped she’d show up, but now it looked as if he’d have to get down on his knees and beg. And he would do it. He’d also have to admit to her he’d been wrong, but what the hell—she knew he wasn’t perfect, knew he’d been wrong before.

  When Kel finished, Rowan carried on where he left off. “It’s agreed, then—we leave the half-brother business to Kel. Here’s what else Jo and I want to do, but since it concerns the whole family, we need your agreement. Through certain sources that Jo and I have acquired through working in the New Zealand police force, we want to put out the word that we’ll pay a reward of fifty thousand dollars for information on the guy who killed your father. We know who he is, but we need proof.”

  Kurt said, “I’ll chip in for that.”

  A rumble of assent went around the room.

  But Rowan wasn’t having any of it. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to cover the reward myself. This is part of my wedding present to Jo. I told her I’d help her prove Milo was framed. We just didn’t realize it would lead to a search for a murderer. All I need is the family’s agreement and I can present Jo with the rest of her bride’s gift.”

  Chelsea turned her rental car into the driveway of Namche Bazaar Lodge. If anything could show her Kurt had a sentimental streak it was the name he had chosen for his—their—lodge.

  The red gravel crunched under the tires on her slow ride up to the door as she surveyed all the work he’d had done. The place was nothing like the half-built farmhouse he’d described to her on those long nights in Nepal. His way of keeping his hands off her had been to tell her stories of Atlanta and Bill and what he was going to do one day back at Aoraki, New Zealand.

  After she had paid the money into his bank account she had been pleasantly surprised to receive the partnership papers in the mail. And when the progress reports began to arrive she had smiled, knowing her wishes were going to come true. The magazine he had sent had clinched the deal. It had turned up in her mail just as she’d finalized the deal that would free her from Tedman Foods forever. They could keep her name, but they couldn’t have her. She belonged with Kurt. She had taken the magazine to be his way of issuing an invitation. In a few minutes she would know if she had been correct.

  Darn it, she hoped so. She had missed the big idiot who had thought the way to make her happy was to deprive her of the one thing she wanted most in this world.

  The moment she’d stepped on the plane to New Zealand, she had felt an uplifting of her spirits as if the worst was behind her—cousin Arlon was in jail.

  Her debriefing from IBIS had been harder than anything. She had made friends there, and if she knew Jason, he would still keep her under his watchful eye. That was only natural, considering the secrets she held. Secrets that could affect global security.

  She looked at Mount Aoraki. If she had thought of it, she might have brought some barley flour to cast to the wind and juniper to burn. The mountains backing the lodge looked big enough for their own mother goddess, and maybe if Chelsea had asked nicely, she would have looked kindly on her.

  But it was too late—she’d arrived and she would have to do it off her own bat, as usual. Though if she got her own way in this, maybe not for much longer.

  Jo and Rowan had given them all plenty to talk about, and for a minute Kurt didn’t notice Molly had entered the room. “Mr. Jellic,” she said, and four pairs of eyes focused on her. She laughed and looked behind her. “I rather think that it’s Mr. Kurt Jellic the lady’s looking for.”

  Kurt was sitting with his back to the entrance to the great room, but he could tell from the smiles on the other faces that it would be worth his while turning around.

  His heart thundered in his ears a
s he picked up a vibration from Kel. Who else knew whom he was pining for…?

  “Chelsea.” He leaped from his chair, feeling clumsy in his rush to her side. Without speaking he touched her, ran the back of his knuckles down her face. She was real. His mind went blank. All he could think to say was “I didn’t think you’d got my messages.”

  “Of course I did. I love you, silly.”

  He cradled her face between his palms. She was more beautiful than he remembered, and he had some wonderful memories of her.

  “Welcome home, Teddy bear.”

  Her chin rose until her lips were a mere heartbeat away. He closed the distance in less time than that. Never had a woman tasted so good. He drank from her lips, thirsting for her the way a man needs water to survive in the desert, knowing that his life had been a wasteland without her to share it.

  The catcalls from the gallery reminded him they weren’t alone. “This will only take a minute. Some people never grow up.”

  He turned her around to face his family, proud to be able to introduce her to such a crowd of generous and handsome people. “Everyone, I’d like to introduce you to my silent partner, Chelsea Tedman.” Soon to be my wife.

  Chelsea made no protest when Kurt hurried her out of the room with his arm around her after the introductions were over. It had been rather overwhelming being surrounded by five large men, all of whom were taller than her five foot eleven.

  He showed her into the wide hallway that led from the entrance. A few steps into the corridor she started to say, “I like your fam—”

  She got no further. Kurt turned, backing her against the wall. The smiles he had shown the others were gone. His face was a mask of concentration.

  The unwelcome thought that he didn’t really want her there spiked painfully into her thoughts, leaving her with a nervous sense of failure. Fear took its place as he roughly grabbed her wrists, raising them high, higher than her head as he flattened her against the wall with the weight of his body.