“Don’t walk out on me like that!”
Rex spun her around. “Anyone could’ve been waiting up here for you.”
Her eyes were wide with fear. She was naked under her robe. It splayed open, exposing her full, rounded breasts, nipples dusky, hard and tight. The sight stole his breath, his thoughts. His stomach swooped in a roller-coaster lurch, down, in a hot wave to his loins. Her hands were bound behind her back but it was him held prisoner. Her body trapped his eyes, drawing them down the imperceptible swell of her belly, down to the dark gold delta of hair at the apex of her thighs. Lean, long thighs.
He looked up, mouth dry.
Her lips were parted as she breathed, her breasts rose and fell as if from exertion. He’d shocked her. Yet a fine flush of arousal brushed her cheeks and those cat’s eyes were alight with an untamed fire. They ignited his need. It burned ferocious, hot and out of control, in the crucible of his belly.
His body screamed to take her at once, roughly, savagely, drink her in, feed on his years of pent-up need. He saw the same kind of need mirrored in the strange dark tempest raging through her gold eyes as she challenged him. He saw the way her eyes flicked down to the towel at his waist. And under her gaze he felt himself swell and pulse where he hung hot and heavy between his thighs.
He reached up, reined in his ferocious fire and gently cupped one breast, scraping the hard nub of her nipple with the pad of his thumb. He spoke against the lust thick in his throat. “God, Hannah, you’re beautiful.”
Her breath hitched as he pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He wanted to taste it. Suck it in. He came closer. Her lids flickered, low, her vision swimming. She was delirious, weak with desire. He could see her passion, and it fueled him.
Rex moved his hand up onto her neck. A small sound came from somewhere deep in her throat. He felt as if his knees would buckle under a wave of pleasure that ripped through him. He traced the aristocratic line of her collarbone and let his hand slip down between her breasts, down over her belly to cup the hot mound between her legs. She struggled weakly against the bond at her wrists.
But he didn’t free her. He slowly parted her, held her open, slipping his finger up into her heat. She was slick and swollen with need. Another dizzying wave seared through him. He plunged another finger into her core, moving, stroking, coaxing.
Her legs sagged. She moaned and allowed herself to sink deeper onto his fingers.
The world closed in on them.
“You want me, Hannah?”
She said nothing. Just held his gaze, lips parted, and rocked gently on his hand.
He swallowed an oath and swept her off her feet, carried her in from the cold.
He laid her on the bed, freeing her bonds. And his head swam with the vision before him. She was like an angel, like she had come to him in dreams. Her gold hair, damp, splayed out over the virginal white of the pillow, her tawny, dusky nipples, the dark-gold mystery nestled between her legs, was his for the taking.
She reached up and pulled the towel from his waist. He swelled free into her hands. Her soft hands worked with deft movement, stimulating, tantalizing, coaxing.
His brain unraveled with the sensation. It was so much better than he’d dreamed. His mind lurched back six years.
And he stopped.
Grabbed her hands.
“No.”
Her eyes were wide with surprise, her voice a soft throaty whisper. “Rex?”
He couldn’t. What kind of a man would do this to her? Hurt her like this. Again. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t do this. There was no future. None.
Rex pushed her hands gently aside. “Hannah…I’m sorry.”
Anger, pain flashed in her eyes. She gripped his wrists, fingers digging into his flesh. “Damn you, you bastard.”
“Oh, I want you, Hannah. Like nothing before—”
“You’ve taken me this far. Take me all the way…or has the great hunter lost his nerve? Is he not up for the kill?” She ran her hands down his belly as she spoke, reached between his legs, coaxing the hot life that pulsed there.
Hot ribbons burned, twisted through him. His vision blurred. “I…I can’t promise you anything, Hannah.”
Emotion glistened in her eyes but her voice was a low, throaty growl. “You think I’d be that stupid…twice.” She rubbed, teased. The blood left his head. “I know you won’t stay. I’m not asking for tomorrows. But I need this. Maybe we both need this. Maybe then we can let it all go, finish it. Take me, Rex. I know you want me.”
She opened her legs to him, her lioness eyes calling, bewitching.
His restraint snapped in that instant. He edged himself between her thighs, forcing them wider with his knees, and she reached up with her hips to him. Straining, urgent, demanding.
He rocked into her…slowly. At first just the tip, slipping in. Out. Then each movement plunged him deeper. She was slick, gilded and hot with need. She moved with him, rhythmically, fervently, the friction driving them both higher. He could feel the skin of her inner thighs against him, smooth. Soft. Firm. He drove into her, ground into her. Faster. She bucked under him. Wild. He came closer. Higher. He moved until they were slipping and slick with the heat. Until scarlet waves colored his mind and his nerves sang. Until he wanted to scream, mad and primal, like a conqueror of the night.
She seemed to sense he was on the tip. He could feel she, too, was poised, quivering on the edge. For an instant he paused. He looked into her eyes. They were open wide, dark and carnal. Then they swam blind, lids low, her moans animal. He watched her face as he felt her climax, wave over rippling muscular wave. He felt her erupt hot around that part of him buried deep in her. It was too much. He shuddered and burst into her, spilling himself in exquisite release.
The waves rolled deliriously over him and over him. He wanted nothing more than this woman. He wanted to shelter her, fight for her, love her. He wanted her to bear his children. The tide of thoughts that surged over him, through him, were not coherent but there as a primal need.
He understood need.
He had lived with it.
It didn’t mean it could be fulfilled.
He fell back into her arms. Spent, they lay in silence, the pregnant white drapes billowing softly in the cool night breeze.
When Rex woke, Hannah was nuzzled into the crook of his arm, her breathing soft and rhythmic. He lay there listening to her. His arm went numb, but he didn’t move. He didn’t want to disturb her. He didn’t want to face reality. He’d seen her pain. Things shouldn’t have come to this. It was his fault. Yet she’d blinded him.
They were destroying each other.
* * *
Hannah woke to the warm scents of bacon and coffee. She opened her eyes to a room filling with the yellow gold of morning sun, vaguely aware of a subtle throb between her legs. It had nothing to do with the slight pain in her rib or the stiffness of her limbs. Sex. It had everything to do with a night of hot glorious sex. He was a perfect lover.
But he wasn’t hers.
There was no way she could’ve halted what had surged between them. She had no regrets over their lovemaking. But he still wasn’t hers. At least this time she had no naive expectations. This time she knew he’d walk. And she would accept that, with pain. But could she accept that for her son, for their son?
She turned to find Rex watching her, his eyes, Danny’s eyes, catching the bright clear light of the morning. He needed a shave, but she liked the look. The dark shadow on his jaw offset the sharp whiteness of his teeth as he smiled at her, eyes creasing with warmth. She didn’t think she had noticed it before, that tender warmth in his smile. He was beautiful, in a rough and wild way, like these granite hills. Like the way he’d made love to her.
She couldn’t help but return the affection in his smile. “Good morning.”
“It is a good morning. Coffee?” He held up the pot.
“What, no tea? What have you done with the Brit in you?”
He paused, coffeepot poised above cup. “My dad was the Brit. An English army colonel. But my mother, she liked coffee. Good Italian coffee.”
He poured, steam curling.
He’d never spoken to her about his parents. “Your mother isn’t British?”
“Wasn’t British.”
He stirred in cream and sugar. It pleased her that he remembered how she took her coffee.
“My mother died when I was fifteen. She was Italian, a singer.”
He brought the coffee to her in bed. She accepted the cup, warm in her hands. His fingers brushed against hers. “I guess that’s where your dark looks come from.” Where Danny’s looks come from.
He frowned, turned to pour a cup for himself. “She was dark, with olive skin. A gypsy at heart. I have my father’s eyes.” He turned them on her now. “People say he has cold eyes, that he’s a cruel man.”
She sipped, watching him over the rim of her mug. “Is he? Cruel, I mean?”
He stirred his coffee and dropped the spoon onto the breakfast tray. He walked with his mug to the French doors and looked out at the mountain. “I don’t know if cruel is really the word. He was a damn fine colonel. One of the best. He wasn’t noted for expressing his feelings. He used to say to me, ‘Show your feelings, son, and you give people tools to hurt you.’”
Hannah cradled the mug in her hands. “Did that include showing his feelings to his son?”
He turned to face her. Eyes narrowed, jaw tight. “I never saw much of my father. I bore the Logan name but that was about all. My mother was good enough for a night of hot sex but that was it for the colonel. He already had a wife and four children when I was born. I was the bastard son, the family’s dirty little secret.”
Hannah’s chest felt tight. The words hit home. History was repeating itself in a way. A father, a family, were not part of the deal for Daniel Logan McGuire, either. Danny was her little secret.
Rex turned back to look out the window. “But he did his duty. For the colonel, it was always about duty. Never love. He sent the money regular as clockwork. Visited me from time to time. Never at Christmas or my birthday. I was like a tedious little chore, something that had to be seen to. Then he got mother to agree to send me off to a fine British boarding school. It was supposed to be in preparation for the career in the military he envisaged for me. I saw my mother for holidays. She died after my fifteenth birthday.” His tone was bitter, his words clipped. “From school it was expected I enter the military. I did.” He turned to Hannah. “There you have it.”
Duty.
She did not want Rex to be forced to do duty by his son. She wanted her son to have a dad, to have the genuine love of a father in the home.
Love, not duty. Not some tedious little chore.
Rex had told her he could not promise anything. She accepted that. But did she owe it to Rex to tell him? Did she owe it to Danny? Could she cope with the fallout? Could she cope with a life like Rex’s mother’s, like her own mother’s?
She didn’t think she could, but she had to make a choice. Soon.
Today was Wednesday. Danny was coming home on Friday.
She felt trapped, cornered. Nausea and confusion swept over her.
“Hannah?” He was talking to her. “Hannah, are you okay? You’re pale.”
She set the half-full coffee cup on the bedside table and pushed the tangle of hair out of her face. “I’m fine.” She looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry, Rex.”
“For what?”
“For what you went through as a child. I never knew.”
His face was suddenly wiped clean of emotion. Hannah suspected it was a trick he had learned early in life.
“It’s nothing. Some people are cut out for love and family. Others aren’t.”
She sat forward. “That’s not true.” She didn’t want it to be true. She yearned to reach out to the vulnerable little boy she knew must lurk deep within him. She wanted to comfort him, hold him, tell him everything would be all right. But the man’s eyes were once again as cold as Arctic ice. That little boy must sleep very, very deep within that man, she mused. Frozen in a protective shell. She wondered what it would take to melt it away. Or if anything could.
“Come, have something to eat.” He changed the subject, moving over to the breakfast tray and lifting the silver lid. The warm scents of food curled out from under it.
Hannah felt her stomach clench in response. “No, I’m not hungry right now. I just need a shower.”
She started to throw back the covers and make for the bathroom when she realized she was still buck naked. She pulled the covers back up over her chest.
Rex grinned, lines fanning out from eyes that held a mischievous spark. He was finding her morning-after modesty amusing. She could feel herself starting to bristle.
He could see it. He reached for her white terry robe hanging over the chair and brought it to her.
“I’ll see you in twenty minutes. Dress for the mountain if you’re still up to it.” Rex closed the door to the inter-leading room behind him.
Right. They were going up to Grizzly Hut.
* * *
It was around 10 a.m. when they made their way across the village toward the gondola building, the sun already warm. The day would be hot, but up high where the air was thin, over to the north, Hannah could see fine threads of gathering clouds.
Rex followed her gaze. “The weather today should be good, but there’s a front moving in. Weatherman said it could arrive early in the weekend, possibly as soon as Friday.”
Friday. That was when Danny was due home. Hannah felt a band constrict about her chest. Her time was running out.
They dodged through crowds of tourists gathering in the square, waiting for the clowns to start their acts. The village was getting busier, noisier, people flocking in for the long weekend, for the festival, for the conference.
So, thought Hannah, if the forecast was correct, it would rain on this parade. It would be the first time in years. White River had been unusually blessed with sunshine for at least the past four years over the long weekend that eased August into September, summer into fall. It was traditionally the last holiday fling before schools opened for the year and before locals knuckled down for the busy winter ski season.
Rex had insisted on carrying Hannah’s jacket and water in his backpack because of her rib injury. His pack hulked huge on his back.
“What have you got in there, anyway?” she asked as she led the way into the gondola building.
“Stuff.” He grinned. He was in a good mood this morning despite the sober talk about his family. He was obviously used to sweeping those emotions under the rug. Like his dad, he didn’t give much away when it came to feelings.
And now they’d slept together. Again. Would he sweep that under the rug again, too?
“That’s the boon of staying in a five-star hotel. You tell ’em you’re going on a hike and they organize the backpack and the picnic. Have it ready and waiting in the morning. So, this is where Amy went up?” Rex approached the little glass ticket booth. The hole cut into the glass was designed for a man of average height. He had to bend down to ask the vendor for two lift tickets.
Hannah stopped him. “I have a pass. It’s valid year-round. You only need a ticket for yourself.”
He bought one and signed the waiver absolving the mountain of all responsibility for injury. The lift attendant scanned his ticket and Hannah’s pass as the gondolas swept continuously round, into the building, knocking against metal as they were mechanically guided into the railings, doors opening like little subway trains pulling into the station, closing again as they swept out and were lifted by creaking lines into the sky.
Rex and Hannah allowed the gondola doors to close on a family of five ahead of them, opting for the next car. The doors swung closed as they were rocked free of the moorings and lifted skyward, swaying from side to side.
“Would Amy have had her pass scanned down there?”
“Yes. There’s a computer record kept. Her pass was scanned at 4:30 the afternoon she disappeared. The last gondola ride comes down at 5 p.m. She would’ve just made it to the top before it was time to come right back down.” Hannah watched the town shrink as they climbed. “It takes about twenty-five minutes in total to the top, about fifteen to midstation and then another ten to the peak.”
“She may have had no intention of coming down via gondola.”
“Perhaps not. But she had no gear for an overnight stay.”
“Maybe she was going to hike down.”
Hannah watched a colorful group of hikers making their way up the gravel road below. They were oblivious to a bear grazing just beyond the trees to their right. “Perhaps.” She looked at Rex. “But I doubt it. She would’ve known they were calling for crappy weather that afternoon.”
He was relaxed, leaning against the little seat that ran around the cabin. His limbs were all tanned muscle. He was wearing khaki shorts, hiking boots. He definitely had presence. He filled a vacuum with masculine power, even in repose.
“The weather up here is notoriously fickle as we head into fall. You can have snow up in the Alpine one minute, a heat wave the next. I checked. The freezing level was forecast to plummet the day she went up. Amy would’ve checked, too.”
Hannah rested her head against the glass. It was cool, but the sun was warming her back. “You know, Rex, I can’t help feeling there was a sense of urgency about her movements that day.”
He leaned forward, reached out, took a tendril that had escaped her neat ponytail. He tucked it in behind her ear, the gesture gentle, as if he cared for her deeply.
They were high now, closing in on midstation. The wind at this elevation gently swayed their glass bubble. They were suspended from reality, just the two of them together, a sense of no past, no future, just being.
Hannah felt as if it was possible to just live in the moment up here. Not think, just be.
She closed her eyes, enjoying the sun on her back, drinking in the moment, just being with this man. The man she’d hated and craved all these years. The father of her son.
The crash and bump as the car was rocked and guided into the midstation building jolted her out of her reverie.
The doors of their little cab opened, then as the car moved along its metal moorings, they started to shut again for the second stage of their journey.
Rex sat forward. “How would we know if someone joined Amy here at midstation?”
Hannah hadn’t thought of that. “I guess we wouldn’t. Not unless the lifty saw something.” She pointed to two mountain employees chatting in the sun, just outside of their gondola building posts. “As you can see, not much attention is paid to anything up here, unless it gets really busy or the alarm goes off.”
“Hmm.” Rex reached down, opened the flap of his pack and fished out the reporter’s notebook that had been found on Amy’s body. He flipped it open to the inside cover, where Hannah had discovered the notations about Grizzly Hut.
He studied the scrawl again. “Looks like she was going to meet Grady Fisher up at the hut.” He pointed to the notation. “See, here it says 5 p.m. If she caught a 4:30 gondola ride up from the village, she would have made it up around five, wouldn’t she?”
“Almost. It’s about a ten-minute hike from the gondola station on top to Grizz Hut.”
“And she would’ve used the Grizzly traverse, the path above Grizzly glacier where she was found?”
“Yes.”
“Someone could’ve been waiting,” mused Rex. They were on the last leg of the gondola ride up Powder Mountain. The trees below were getting shorter and stubbier, gnarled from the colder temperatures and shorter summers at the higher elevation. Soon they would be above the tree line, nearing the peak. The air coming through the small window had a different quality. Crisp. Thin.
“But whoever might have been waiting would’ve had to know she was coming.”
“Right. Or lured her up. A trap.”
“Rex, that’s bizarre.”
“Believe me, I’ve seen bizarre. This looks pretty straightforward by comparison.”
“But why would someone want to hurt Amy?”
“Like I said, she was getting too close to something.”
“You think Grady lured her up here?”
“I’m not ruling out anything. Just thinking aloud. He could’ve asked her to meet him. Someone could’ve forced him to ask her up here, or someone might have known of their meeting.”
Hannah could see the blue roof of the gondola station up ahead, the glass and chrome throwing back the cutting glare of the Alpine sun. She put on her sunglasses. “Georgette said Amy got a call at the office that afternoon, before she left. She was the last person to see her alive, apart from the lifty.”
“Any idea where that call came from?”
“Nope. We could check records, I suppose. It’s going back a year now.” Hannah felt her old anger starting to fester. “If the police had only started looking back then we might not be here now.”
Rex caught her chin with his knuckle as their gondola knocked into the station. “I’m kind of glad we are.”
She faced him as the doors swung slowly open. “I’m not so sure it’s a good thing, Rex.” She turned and stepped onto the platform.
He caught his hands around her waist from behind and leaned his chin onto her shoulder. “Sure felt good last night.”
She stopped. A little lick of lust started to unfurl in her belly at the breath in her ear. It twisted with anger and resentment, a complex braid of emotion. She didn’t turn to him. She looked straight ahead, up at the glare coming off old snow in the crevices of the peak. “But where to now, Rex?”
“Let’s take it one step at a time. You lead.” He nudged her gently forward.
Damn him. He was content to just fall into the moment, take it as it came, then part ways, like six years ago. She didn’t know if she could handle that.
She started up the precarious trail.