Hiking for Danger (3 page)
Authors: Capri Montgomery
She took another look and she realized a few people had separate packs and she wondered what was in those, but she didn’t ask. Clearly Parker was going one way with the overnight campers and Cody was going the other way—at least she hoped he was coming with her group—whoever was actually in her group because right now she was the only person sitting there with one bag.
Cody came to stand in front of them. He seemed to be doing a check to make sure they still had everybody with the group as Parker joined them. Sahara sat there looking around at the beautiful surroundings, the mountains were high and the valley they were sitting in had gorgeous wild flowers growing. She could build a cabin here and love it—peaceful, beautiful, devoid of her crazy family. She shrugged; perhaps she shouldn’t want a break from them. They were still her family after all.
She took a slow survey of the area around them once again before returning her attention to the two hiking guides in front of them. Eventually they were going to all get on the way to wherever they were going and she might really want to pay attention to whatever last minute details Cody was planning to give before they set out. This was her first hiking adventure ever, so paying attention would definitely be a good thing.
“Can anybody tell me why we need to buddy up?” Cody looked around at the faces. None of them seemed to be willing to answer, and then he caught site of a little hand barely inching above her waist. “You,” he said as he looked at Sahara. She frowned and he could only guess it was because he was still calling her “you” instead of by her name.
“Well if we keep an eye out for each other then we’ll always know if somebody needs attention, or if they’re hurt or falling behind. There are only two guides and eleven of us, so it kind of helps you all out.”
“Exactly. Now, we’re going to partner up, so if you came with somebody –” He hadn’t finished his sentence before people started calling off their partners as if they were calling shotgun on a long car ride.
Stacey and Nikki wanted to partner up. Shell and his father were obviously going to partner. The husband and wife team, Julian and Debbie, were bound to be together. Misty partnered with Georgia and Jack called dibs on Riley before Riley could partner up with anybody on his own. For that, Cody was grateful because finding a reason for not allowing Riley to partner with Sahara would be rather difficult without giving away his possessive streak. The woman was gorgeous. When she had backed into him while trying to get away from Riley, and he had caught her before she could fall, he had held her against his chest longer than he needed to because her body felt so good pressed against his own. He didn’t get involved with any of the hikers he took out here, but this was one woman he could see himself getting involved with for more than just the hike.
“You’ll partner with me, Sahara.” Cody noticed the slight singe of disappointment on Stacey’s face. He was thankful he wouldn’t have to partner with that girl, but he would admit that if she hadn’t been the first to say, “I have my partner,” with more pride than was really necessary then he might have been stuck with her. It wasn’t a popularity contest and already that’s what she had turned it into.
Cody looked to Parker, “You’ll be okay keeping an eye on this side,” he pointed, “and I’ll keep track of everybody over here,” that made the work easier. “Now everybody check with your partners, see what they’re packing and what they’re missing.” Parker handed out a small card with a checklist to everybody while Cody went over to check on Sahara. He already knew his pack was in order; it was time to check on hers. He was on his way when he got distracted yet again. He had to go answer a couple questions from Stacey and Nikki. He shook his head, wishing Parker could have been the one to field the questions, but he was busy with Don and Shell so Cody had to suffer the two divas. Boy, he had a load this time around. Some were going to be fine, but others…well, some of them were going to be a hard bunch to keep moving. He knew what he was doing and he knew he could get them through their journey safely, but that didn’t mean he was going to like everybody in the group. He didn’t have to like them; he just had to get them from point A to point B alive and preferably without injury.
Sahara had been so engrossed in watching everything going on around her that she hadn’t realized Cody had finished dealing with Stacey and Nikki and had already started his approach to where she was.
“You,” he said, and she finally realized he was talking to her.
“My name is Sahara,” he looked at her funny, “as opposed to “you”.” She smiled, but being called “you” was right up there with being called babe, doll, sweetie, and all those other annoying terms that people used when they didn’t care enough to remember the other person’s name.
“Let’s see what you have.” He hadn’t even mentioned his own bag. She figured it was because he had everything, and already, he was looking at her as if she were lacking. She started calling off her supplies and he frowned.
“Two bottles of water, no sleeping bag, no real food and no real change of clothes.”
“Well it’s only a four hour hike…”
“It’s a four day hike. And on that fourth day of hiking we’ll be going down trail to get to the lake where we’ll camp for the night before finishing off the trip.”
“No, it’s a four hour hike,” she said as if that would change his mind.
He took in a deep breath as if he were trying to calm his voice. “We leave today,” he said as if he were explaining to a child. “Thursday, half day hike to stopping point one—where we camp for the night. Then we leave Friday morning for a full hike to stopping point two—where we also camp for the evening. Then we leave Saturday morning for a full day hike before reaching the next stopping ground and camping for the night. We get up Sunday morning and hike another full day. And then, on Monday morning we get up pack up our gear and take to the lake where we take the raft for four hours downstream to our final port, you get on the bus and go back to your hotel, where you camp for the night.”
“Oh, no. The lady said it was four hours,” she was sure of that.
“How much did you pay?”
Normally that would annoy her. “Three seventy-five,” she said.
“Right, and that didn’t strike you as high for a four hour hiking trip?”
Okay, now he was being condescending again. “No, it didn’t.”
“Well, it’s not a four hour hike, so you’re missing some essentials.”
“So get the bus back here, I can’t hike for four days. And I certainly can’t do white water rafting. I can’t even swim!”
“Can’t, once it’s gone that’s it.” He seemed to be fighting to hold back laughter. She didn’t like that at all. It really wasn’t funny. Her reaction might have been borderline hysterical, but this wasn’t funny. “Look, I’ll share my food with you and you’ll get through until we can get to a natural spring and refill your water bottles.”
“I don’t swim,” she said absently. Never mind the fact that she had left her meds at the hotel. Of course she could do without them for a little while, but she hated to miss a dose.
“You’ll be fine.” He picked up his pack and effortlessly tossed it on his back. “All the supplies we need to go down river are waiting for us, and while it’s not a ride in some amusement park we won’t be taking the advanced rapids. It’s doable.” He assured her before turning and looking at everybody else. “Okay, let’s go people it’s a long hike to our first stopping point.”
Still in shock, Sahara picked up her pack and followed right behind him. They were partners which she assumed meant she needed to stay right on his heels. Well, maybe not right on them, but she guessed that meant she would be in the front of the crowd all the time and not the back—which is where she was more comfortable.
It wasn’t the workout she was concerned with, though she was sure he probably wondered if she were out of shape or something. Curvaceous didn’t mean out of shape it just meant she had bigger curves than some and smaller than others. She had joined the Rock Gym three months ago and that in itself was a kick butt workout. Actually, she had been surprised that she had made it for three months because her fear of heights hadn’t let her past the third step on the ladder and now she was climbing a full scale rock wall. Well, the smallest one, but that was a start. Of course Kallie and Jeffery had said climbing in a gym and doing a nature trek were two different things and they doubted highly if she could make it through ten minutes, let alone a day.
She checked her watch. “Ha, take that you rats.” It had officially been eleven minutes of hiking and she had easily accomplished that.
“What?” Cody asked without looking back.
“Nothing,” she smiled.
They hiked for five hours before making their final stop for the night. The campground sat tucked away in the small clearing of trees. It wasn’t stacked with all the amenities, not like she had thought it would be. After all, she had read the brochures online and some of the trails had campgrounds with restrooms and grills. This apparently was not one of them. Then again, they were higher up than she had imagined they would go.
She had survived the hike so far at least. Now, she just had to make it through three more days of full hiking with one final day of a white water rafting trip down to where they would meet the bus. If she could survive that long then she really would have a story to share when she got back to New Mexico. Of course she might want to leave out the part about how she royally screwed up and misunderstood what trip she was actually booking. Yeah, she would leave that part out for sure.
Chapter Two
“Y
ou can share
with me,” Cody said as he rolled out his sleeping bag. The others were setting up their areas either with sleeping bags or the tents they had brought in their little cases but he had always preferred sleeping out beneath the stars. With the small patches between the trees he could catch a glimpse of a few stars.
ou can share
with me,” Cody said as he rolled out his sleeping bag. The others were setting up their areas either with sleeping bags or the tents they had brought in their little cases but he had always preferred sleeping out beneath the stars. With the small patches between the trees he could catch a glimpse of a few stars.
“Excuse me?” Her voice cracked.
“Well I’m not giving up my bag,” he said as if she had asked.
“No, of course not. That is, I’m not asking you to…”
“So you can share with me. It’ll be a little tight, but it’ll work.” He looked at the hesitation on her face. From the way she had looked at him all day he had thought she might have been feeling some sense of attraction, but maybe he had been wrong.
“You can’t sleep on a rock,” he said. Of course he guessed if she had mastered the art of sleeping while sitting up then maybe she could. “So pull your boots off and get in.”
He tucked himself in as far over as he could, leaving room for her. She hesitated, but obviously decided he was right because she did as he said.
“Take your jacket off and use it under your head.”
She refused. “It’s too cold.”
“It’s not that cold.” He was used to the cooler weather. It was barely down to fifty degrees and everybody else seemed to be managing just fine.
“I’m anemic,” she said as if she had read his mind. “I take medication for it, but every month is a new month if you know what I mean. It just never seems to get where it should be and so I get colder faster than most.”
“I’ll keep you warm.” He was sure his voice had lowered an octave because while he was thinking of their combined body heat warming up his sleeping bag he was also very much thinking about a plethora of ways he would love to warm up that delectable body of hers.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was a little huskier. He would say she understood the double entendre in his words, even if he hadn’t meant to convey them. Either that or she really had her own set of ideas on how he could keep her warm.
“Are you that cold?”
“Yeah, I am. Like I said, I get colder and more tired than the average in-shape person I guess. I think I’m doing all right on the energy level for now, but I really did think this was just a four hour hike. I don’t know how I messed that up.” She crawled into the sleeping bag and tried to stretch out. Of course the jacket wasn’t going to work between the two of them.
“Pull it off. I’ll keep you warm,” he said in a voice that was low and sultry. He was glad her mistake had landed her on his hiking trip. There was a shorter hike set to commence in a week’s time, but he wouldn’t be leading it. He never did the day hikes. He was always the guy leading the three to ten day hikes because he was also a ranger for the park and during his times off from active duty he loved nature enough to get back out in it and open up the glorious possibilities of the wild to other adventurers. It was a nice break, he would say, from his normal activities of making sure the park was safe from day to day. He made sure lost hikers found their way home, animals didn’t get to the humans while raiding the stash of sweets they left out of the bag at their campsite, animals of the two legged persuasion didn’t assault any hikers and overall that the park, its wildlife and its visitors, remained safe and got back to where they belonged safely.
In all his years as a park ranger he had only had five instances where things got out of hand and pointed toward being deadly. The first was a guy hiding from the law. He had taken a woman who wouldn’t give him the time of day hostage from her job at the bank and came out here to hide. Authorities had searched for weeks when Cody came upon signs of human life and then found the lowlife jerk. A week is how long the guy had her. The woman was lucky she wasn’t dead or bodily harmed more than a few bruises.
“She’ll have me willingly,” Eduardo Montabon had said. She hadn’t come willingly so he figured knocking her around would make her change her mind. Cody had his rifle with him and he didn’t hesitate to take the shot when the guy pulled out his pistol. One saved, he had said, and then he went on with his life as a ranger and took joy in the days when the biggest problem was a lost hiker or a drunken hunter. Both situations could be deadly, but at least with those two things he knew what he was dealing with. When it came to men ready to kill to get what they wanted all bets were off and his day of work could end up being his last day of life. He loved his job; he did, but that didn’t mean those times when things went from normal to deadly that he didn’t’ feel the adrenaline kick up a thousand notches. When he was younger maybe he loved that kind of rush, but now he preferred this rush, being in nature enjoying the peace and calm. He liked not thinking about the crazed world around him. He knew it was there, but out here he could see the beauty instead of the pain of the world. He would say it was probably time for him to move on, to maybe kick his profession down to just doing the adventure tours, but then he would miss being a ranger, and since he didn’t like the new management of this company he wasn’t really sure how much longer he would be able to stay on here. He loved what he did, back when what he did meant something. The new owners were changing things, moving the company away from what it was. The bottom dollar was the only concern for them. He understood the need to make money. Everybody had bills to pay and people didn’t go into business for the fun of it—they had every right to make a profit, but the adventure tour company was doing just fine, turning a profit, the largest and most respected in Colorado and here they came, messing things up.
People and safety had to be more important than money. That’s how the company had always been run up until about a year ago when the changes that weren’t supposed to happen started happening. He should have known Derrick Miller had lied when he gathered them all together to introduce himself as one of the new owners and to tell them that things weren’t going to change. Things had changed—a lot.
“You can get closer,” he told Sahara as she shivered beside him.
She did as he said curling close to him. Her legs entwined with his; her arm wrapped around his waist and her chest pressed firmly against him. He zipped the bag as far as he could and then pulled her closer. She was trembling fiercely. “God you really are cold aren’t you?”
“Uh huh,” she shivered again. As if it were possible for her to be any closer, he pulled at her again until it was difficult to tell where he ended and she began. He was tall, and he imagined if she stretched out he would still extend nearly a foot past her body, but he liked where she had placed herself just fine and he hadn’t intended to let her shift either way, except to get closer. She tucked her head to his shoulder and relaxed for the night.
Cody looked up at the sky thinking about the fact that in all his years of pulling double duty being a park ranger and then doing the hiking guide thing on the side, he had never come across a situation where anybody showed up this unprepared for a hike. He had never come across anybody who thought they booked one thing only to find out they hadn’t. There was a first time for everything and he knew that. It worked out to his favor, he thought as he looked down at the woman who had fallen asleep in his arms. Yeah, this definitely had worked out in his favor. She was beautiful. He liked what he saw a lot, but he liked her spirit too. He wouldn’t have thought he would have gone for a novice. He was nature and she was lab. He loved the outdoors and adventure while she seemed to be happy studying her bugs. She was his complete opposite and yet he still wanted to know more about her.
He watched her throughout the day, stealing observatory glances when he could. He knew she was determined, a bit stubborn too he would say, and despite her lack of experience, she seemed to be enjoying nature. He watched the smile that tugged her lips upward as she watched a bird flitter above, or observed a flower, or a bug. He never knew a woman who liked bugs—much like Shell Baker, Cody was impressed.
He really shouldn’t have been thinking about Sahara Daniels so much, but he was. He wondered if his attraction was amplified based on the fact that his friends had found good women. Thomas had Thena. They had just gotten married three months ago. Gavin had London, even if he was going stir crazy at the bed and breakfast. His friend Hollister had Jewels, and his baby brother, Tolan, had just settled down with a smart and enthusiastic woman who shared his passion for adventure. Cody shook his head. Tolan was twenty-eight, living his dream as a nature photographer in the Arctic and his woman, Doctor Justice Caster-Donovan, was leading the exhibition that he had attached himself too.
Justice was thirty-six to his brothers twenty-eight years of life, but they made it work. Nobody would know the difference in age swung the other way because Justice still looked young enough to give any twenty-something a run for her money and his baby brother was far from being a baby. Two mature, adventure loving people had fallen in love on the first Arctic trip and when Tolan brought her home and said she was to be his wife, Cody was shocked. His parents were shocked, but they had all accepted Justice. Now she was family both legally and from the heart. His brother had found love and maybe that was something that had Cody realizing he wanted the same thing. He, of course, thought he would find a woman who liked nature as much as he did; a woman who would go hike in unknown locations and spend days in the wild sleeping, gathering food and living off the land. Sahara didn’t fit that part of the bill, but he was still looking at her as a woman he wouldn’t mind attaching himself to—in every way.
What was it about this woman that had his mind turning to mush around her? What was it about her that pulled him to her? He barely knew the woman and yet here he was trying to figure out how he would see her after this trip ended; here he was thinking about all the things he wished he could do with her right now, tomorrow, the next day and for months or years to come. God he was in trouble if after only a day he wanted to know this woman completely, to have her completely, exclusively.
He sighed as the fog in his head grew thicker. He closed his eyes and let sleep claim him.
Sahara awoke a few hours later, or at least she thought it was a few hours later. She shifted and his grip on her tightened as if he didn’t want her to move from the spot she was in. To be honest, she didn’t want to move either, but when she awakened her body just naturally tried to move away from him. It felt as if it were time to get up and get moving. “Was that thunder?”
“Yeah,” he spoke softly. His words were audible for her and her alone. “It sounds as if it’s over the next stopping range a hike west of us.”
She wondered how he could know that, but then she would guess he had been serving as a tour guide for quite some time. He seemed like he knew the trail better than most people knew their backyard. “It should stay up there and to the west of us, but if it rolls down and over this way we’re going to get a little wet,” he said as if this sort of thing happened all the time. “It’ll make for a difficult hike tomorrow with the ground being soft from the rain. Will you be okay?”
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to be angry that he had to ask, or happy that he cared. All day, every time they stopped for one of their half hour breaks, he kept asking if she were okay. She wondered if he thought she couldn’t handle herself, but then she dismissed it, realizing that her lack of preparedness had pretty much signaled just that.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she said. “Will going up or down be more difficult,” she wanted to keep him talking. His voice was arousing. His touch and closeness was the height of her serenity.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she said. “Will going up or down be more difficult,” she wanted to keep him talking. His voice was arousing. His touch and closeness was the height of her serenity.
“Both.” Which meant they would have to work harder to get up and then even harder to fight gravity on the way down. They wouldn’t be hiking downward for a little while, but if it rained each night then the ground would be too wet and soggy to get good footing which in her mind meant it wouldn’t dry out before their descent and therefore would probably be more dangerous going downward.
They had a long day—long and tiring. With all the stops they made for people to take pictures, relieve themselves or snack on their food they had covered some distance, but not so much that they were likely to get back to civilization earlier than planned. She figured Cody hadn’t expected them to get back early anyway, and even if they did they would still have to wait on the bus. They actually hadn’t hiked for five hours; they had more or less been hiking for four hours after all the breaks were factored in. If tomorrow was anything like today they would have a lot of breaks breaking up their walking time. It wasn’t as if she was in a hurry to get back to her room at the hotel, but she was thinking the longer they stayed out there the more likely she was to do something stupid that would ruin her “I’ll show them” moment and turn it into the next joke of family night.
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