Falling for Mr. Wrong (14 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Ross stepped over the mess of sleeping bags, water bottles, and headlamps, and zipped the tent flap closed behind him. He pulled his new fleece jacket over his head as he straightened. Thank goodness Kelsey had told them it would be cold at night, or they would have been woefully underdressed. The high temperatures in Denver had been in the nineties for days; now, it couldn’t be more than sixty.

“Are they asleep already?” Kelsey straightened abruptly. She had been reclining against a log in their makeshift kitchen area a few feet away from the tent. He wondered if she would have remained there, had she known the kids would be out so quickly.

“Dead to the world.” He smiled, rubbing his head. “I guess all that hiking finally caught up with them.”

It was Saturday, and they’d been on the trail since Friday afternoon. The first night, they’d pitched their tents a bare mile from the small gravel lot where they’d parked, in a clearing off to one side of the trail. The site was quiet and private, far enough off the highway to feel like it was smack in the middle of nowhere, but close enough that even the kids couldn’t bring themselves to complain about the walk in.

Despite the quiet, or perhaps because of it, the kids had had a terrible time getting to sleep that first night. After the thrill of the hike, the experience of cooking on a camp stove, and the fun of setting up sleeping bags and pads in their brand-new tent, they’d been wound up so tightly it had been well after ten before they’d been able to get to sleep. Kelsey had brought along her own single-person tent, and by the time Ross poked his head out of the large family one, she had disappeared inside it, cutting off any possibility of a private tête-à-tête.

He couldn’t say he was surprised. After the encounter with her father, she’d closed her walls so tightly she might have been a medieval castle—complete with moat. All the pleasure of the moment, all the giddy, delicious energy of their naked bodies, had disappeared when he heard her father’s angry words. Thinking Kelsey was confronting a burglar, he’d stopped on the way into the shower, ready to rush out, buck naked, in her defense. But his hand had caught on the door when he heard the conversation that followed.

Kelsey’s father, full of disapproval and anger.

Kelsey, sounding guilty, repentant. Shuttering her eyes afterward, making it clear that she had no intention of explaining what had just happened.

“It’s always hard to sleep the first night on the trail. The brain has to adjust to the quiet and the dark.” She tipped her head back to look up at the stars. Ross found himself copying her gesture, and he caught his breath at the beauty of it. A deep, pitch-black sky hung low over their heads, framed by shadowy pine trees. A dusting of stars brushed across the stretching darkness like the glitter Julia loved to sprinkle on her pictures. The only noise was the soft rustle of a nearby stream, and the breath of the breeze through the trees.

Had he ever been far enough from a city to escape the distant glow of its lights? Had he ever experienced this…
absence
…of sound? No, that wasn’t quite right. This place was by no means silent. But in his experience every moment had an underlying current of noise; distant sirens, honking horns, cars rushing past. Here, the world started with quiet and then added back the dim echo of water. Trees. Wind.

He sank down on the ground beside her. “I suppose. Julia was asleep before I finished reading her book, and Matt wasn’t long after that. Luke managed to read for a few minutes, but even he was exhausted. The hike was just right—long enough to tire them out, but not so long that they didn’t have time to relax and play in the afternoon.”

Kelsey picked up a silver-handled mug that she’d filled with tea just before he went into the tent with the kids. She took a sip before she spoke. “I remember hiking when I was a kid,” she said. “It’s fun for a few hours, but then you just want to take off your backpack and explore. I figured three miles was plenty of ground to travel. And besides, I knew the kids would love the waterfall.”

She had been to all these places many times before, Ross realized. No wonder this all seemed so comfortable to her. “How long have you been coming here?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “As long as I can remember. My mother loved this place.”

Surprised she had shared even that much, Ross didn’t press her when she trailed off into silence. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “I had no idea it would feel like this. I can’t thank you enough for bringing us here. I know it’s hard for you to take the time out.”

“I was planning on coming out this weekend anyway. I got in my run this afternoon. It’s not a bother.”

That afternoon, after they’d pitched the tent and had a snack, she had laced up a pair of trail shoes and taken off, returning several hours later with her shirt soaked against her skin, cheeks flushed and red. Then she’d led them all to the stream and the waterfall, and they’d laughed and doused themselves in the chilly water.

Beside him now the long honey-colored curtain of her hair gleamed faintly in the darkness, her face obscured by the night. He was half expecting her to get up then, make some apology or excuse and hide herself away from him. Instead she stayed, drinking her tea and looking up at the sky.

“I never feel as comfortable in the city as I do out here,” she said finally. “It’s like there’s space out here for my thoughts. When I’m in the city, I’m always worried about something I did or didn’t do. Out here, I feel like I’m always doing the right thing.”

Ross settled his back against the log. He didn’t really know what it would mean to feel that comfortable in the outdoors—his back was still adjusting to the first night on the ground—but he understood a little of what she meant about relaxing. This was the first night since he’d arrived in Denver that he wasn’t going to bed mentally ticking off items on his to-do list.

“I’m sorry you had to overhear that thing with my dad,” she said after a pause. “He can be a little bossy, especially when it comes to my seeing someone.”

“I guess that’s one way to put it.” Ross didn’t look at her, but he moved a few inches closer, so their thighs and hips touched. He wasn’t sure what had inspired this confession, but he suspected it was something to do with the stars and the quiet.

“He never really bounced back after my mother died,” she added, almost apologetically. “He has the best intentions, he really does. He thinks he’s doing it for my own good.”

Ross was withholding judgment on that count, but realized Kelsey probably wouldn’t appreciate his saying so. “Is that why you let him talk to you that way?” He half expected her to change the subject then, or protest, but she didn’t. She just paused, running her hands back and forth around the base of her mug.

“I’m all he has left,” she said. “He was never much of a social person to begin with, and after my mother died, he sort of…” She held her hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “Well, he changed. Became more moody. Stopped trying to talk to other people. I became his connection with the rest of the world.”

“And it’s been this way since you were thirteen?”

“Basically. It isn’t as if I don’t have my own life,” she added hastily. “I do. We just do the big climbs together.”

“But he doesn’t like to see you dating,” Ross concluded.

“It doesn’t come up very often,” she said, a smile not quite reaching her eyes. “I don’t usually entertain in the middle of the afternoon.”

He didn’t laugh in response.

“Look, you’ve got responsibilities to your kids, right? Well, I’ve got my father. He’s challenging, but what can you do? I love him. And it isn’t as if it’s some kind of terrible burden. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have accomplished half as much as I have, or seen half as much of the world. We get along much better than it seems. I just have to keep him from flying off the handle sometimes.”

Ross breathed in the cool air. Pieces were falling into place. He imagined a girl of thirteen, her mother dying on the way back to see her, and he thought about her father, stuck in some kind of self-destructive need to go back to the mountain that had claimed his wife. For the first time, he thought he might be starting to understand her. “When did you start climbing the big mountains?” he asked.

She flashed a smile. “When I was born. My mom had this crazy wrap thing that she used to tie me onto her back.”

“Did it ever occur to you not to do it? I mean, I understand that it’s something you’ve always done, but why keep it up?” He struggled to find a way to word the question so that it wouldn’t upset her or set off her alarms. “You don’t seem…
suited
for it, somehow.”

She paused, and he could feel the muscles of her leg tighten where they leaned against his. “I love being outside. I love hiking and seeing things no one else has ever seen. I love using my body and challenging myself to go beyond my limits.”

“But you don’t have to climb Annapurna to do that,” he pointed out, knowing he was wandering into dangerous territory.

“He’ll die if I don’t go.”

She spoke so softly, he wasn’t sure if he had heard her correctly. “What? You mean your father? Why?”

“Normal people have a voice in their head that tells them when to turn around. When it’s not safe. My father doesn’t have that—at least, not anymore. He won’t believe anyone who tries to tell him to turn around or go back. Anyone but me.”

Ross had to take in a breath and wait for a moment to let the magnitude of those words wash over him. All this time he’d been thinking Kelsey had a death wish. But she didn’t. It was her father who did.

“That’s crazy.”

As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them. She turned her head quickly away from him, sending a wave of hair tumbling over one shoulder. “Right. I’m crazy. And you’d let your father walk off a cliff, even if you could steer him away from the edge.”

He put a hand on her leg. “Kelsey, that’s not what I meant. It just doesn’t seem fair to me. That you’re living this life because of your father. What if you’re the one who dies? The mountain doesn’t care why you’re up there, does she?”

“People make all sorts of sacrifices for their families. Marie gives up half of what she earns to her mother, who promptly throws it away on whoever she’s infatuated with at the time. Hope is buried under thousands of dollars of debt thanks to her mother’s cancer. We’re all just doing the best we can.”

“But you could die,” he said, unable to shake the possibility from his head.

She stood up and walked over to the tiny stove that was still set up on a patch of bare earth. Methodically, with motions he was sure she had made thousands of times, she took the pot off the top and set it to the side, then began to dismantle the stove. “You’re making it sound like I hate climbing. That’s not the case. The thought of a desk job and a nine-to-five life leaves me cold. I didn’t climb the fourteeners because I had to. I did it because I wanted to. Because I love it.”

He couldn’t seem to stop pressing. “But Annapurna?”

“He’s determined to summit it, and I’m not letting him go back there alone.”

Ross shivered. “Kelsey—”

She cut him off with a firm voice. “I’ve known for a long time that I might die on the mountain, and I won’t say it doesn’t scare me. But I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve gotten to travel all over the world and spend most of my life doing exactly what I want.” She laughed, quiet and self-deprecating. “I’m not good for anything else at this point.”

“What about a family?” Ross asked, struggling to take in all that he was hearing. “What about kids of your own?”

She put the pieces of the stove into a small bag and zipped it closed. “That’s not in my future. I’m going to attempt to summit a mountain that is a climber’s dream. It’s breathtakingly beautiful up there. I can’t possibly describe it but it’s stark and haunting and gets inside of you like nothing else. My mother is up there. I’m not ready to walk away from it. Especially knowing that my dad can’t.”

There was nothing he could say to that. A fire had begun, deep in his belly, as he thought about Kelsey’s father and what he had done to his daughter. He supposed he should feel sympathy for the other man, for the loss of his wife and the way it had changed him. But he couldn’t. All he could think of was Kelsey. The life she had lived. The sacrifices she was willing to make.

It was all he could do not to curse Mick Hanson out loud.

For a long time they were silent. Kelsey bustled around the campsite, leaving everything organized and tidy for the morning. He had expected her to say good-night then, and head into her tent when she paused to look at him, her face a ghostly shadow in the light of the stars.

“What if you can’t do it?”

The question caught him by surprise, interrupting the thread of his thoughts. “What do you mean?”

“What if this land crawls into your heart the way it has Mr. Stagefeather’s, and mine, and you can’t bear the thought of asking him to sell it?”

He blinked, trying to bring his mind back to the present. “I don’t have a choice.” Cold fingers tickled the edges of his spine as the question slowly sank in. He struggled to shake them off, defensive anger surging in their place. “You know that. I wouldn’t be here if I did.”

“But that’s not really true, is it?” she pushed. “I get the feeling you’re a pretty well-off guy. Are you sure you couldn’t survive a few lean years while you rebuild your business here in Denver? You could just fly under the radar. Start small and build your reputation bit by bit. Herriot doesn’t control everything.”

“My job doesn’t work that way,” he said, the words feeling too easy, too blasé, even to his own ears. He had enjoyed this conversation much more when it had been about Kelsey, not him. “You can’t just go from developing huge housing complexes to building a few houses.”