Strike Zone (7 page)
He’d never seen her cry. She’d never released the sadness that claimed her heart. In the end, she’d taken over the family business, guiding thrill seekers to the most dangerous and remotest places on the planet.
Stryke had held his breath from the second she boarded a plane until she returned. She was often gone for weeks at a time. He’d hoped asking her to marry him would keep her in Richmond.
It had not. She’d planned their wedding between white-water rafting with crocodiles on the Zambezi River and cliff diving in Acapulco. He’d known there was a risk she might be a runaway bride. He hadn’t, however, believed she’d choose paragliding in New South Wales over attending their wedding.
He’d never fully shaken his anger and hurt.
Now, years later, as he sat slouched in the car seat, Stryke hated the fact that Taylor’s memory could still invade his mind.
She’d never looked back.
He’d never wanted to move forward without her.
Until Hilary Talbott. Hilary would never pack an athletic bag in the dark of night and be gone by first light. Nor would she run with the bulls at Pamplona or challenge African game.
Hilary was safe and sane, and would make a good mother.
Stryke wanted a family. And peace in his life.
While Taylor played in his mind, she’d never again have his heart. He wouldn’t allow it.
Couldn’t
allow it.
Starting his SUV, he pulled into the steady stream of late-evening traffic. He could live without the turkey sandwich. Just as he could live without Taylor Hannah.
He left her memory at the curb.
“Memories, huh?” Eve Hannah stared down Sloan McCaffrey with a practiced eye. “Are you looking for a week’s worth of thrills or merely a few days to hit on my sister?”
The eight p.m. closing time had already come and gone when the prospective client had walked through the door, looking for Taylor. He’d introduced himself, then appeared put out to learn Taylor wasn’t available. Despite his disappointment, he’d gone ahead and engaged Eve in a long and in-depth discussion of extreme sports.
It was now eight thirty. McCaffrey was slow to leave. “Well?” she pressed.
“I want both thrills and Taylor.” The man with the shaggy black hair, cut features, and dimple in his chin grinned. An aura of tangible sin surrounded him; the crackle in the air was bold and electric and raised the hair on Eve’s arms. “I want an adventure that will make me look good in Taylor’s eyes.”
Another male infatuated with her sister. Eve refrained from rolling her eyes. Taylor had been and always would be in love with Brek Stryker. She’d made a major mistake in leaving him at the altar. A mistake she’d lived to regret.
In countless sports, Eve had watched Taylor conquer the odds and win. She hoped her sister had one more chance with Stryke. One small, life-altering opportunity that would bring them together again.
She didn’t, however, share her thoughts with Sloan McCaffrey. He looked like the type who’d turn a deaf ear to anything he didn’t want to hear.
Standing near the front windows, she went ahead and closed, then latched the indoor cottage-style blue shutters before turning to Sloan and saying, “Taylor’s adventures are hard-core. You don’t travel to be seen or to show off. What you do on the trip is for you and nobody else.”
She straightened the burgundy leather chairs, then went on to neatly stack the magazines on street luging, mountain biking, and kite surfing. She flicked off the main overhead lights, discouraging anyone else from entering. Six sconces cast Sloan’s shadow and her own on the brick wall.
Their enormous silhouettes flickered and wavered.
And touched.
Eve sidestepped, so there’d be less touching.
Her white gauze skirt swirled about her legs as she crossed to the counter. Leaning on the glass top, she asked, “What are you good at, McCaffrey? So I can spin you in a positive light.”
“No need to spin.” He was anything but humble. “I’m healthy and athletic. And don’t break easily. My adventure needs to be scheduled in the winter. Off-season from the Rogues.”
A Rogue. She should have guessed he played ball. The man had the strut and inflated ego of a jock. His good looks and rippling muscles had gotten him through life.
Eve was not impressed.
Drilling her fingers on the counter, she suggested, “How about rafting? Taylor takes an expedition down the Brahmaputra in November.”
His forehead took on two crease lines.
“India.” She gave him a geography lesson. “Thick jungle, wild elephants, and tribal people.”
“Headhunters?” asked Sloan.
“Not for forty years.”
A third crease deepened as he took it all in.
“Then there’s the river,” she continued. “You’ll learn paddling commands, safety, and self-rescue, in case you’re thrown overboard. You can expect legendary drops, thirty-foot standing waves, rapids, and a short stretch of class-six water.”
He shook his head. “Not my adventure.”
She contained her smile. “There’s cross-country skiing on top of the world. You could test your endurance in Longyearbyen.”
The creases in his forehead dug deeper this time.
“Norway,” she informed him. “You need to be fit enough to draw a sled packed with eighty pounds of equipment. You’ll ski eight to ten hours a day. Over the course of a week, you’ll cover roughly ninety miles. You’ll need to put up with temps forty degrees below zero.”
“Taylor finds this fun?”
“She pushes herself mentally and physically.”
“How would I prepare?”
“Hold a ten-pound frozen sea bass, then smash the backside of your fingers until you can no longer hold the frozen carcass. This prepares you for numbness and shows what little finger dexterity you will have. You can also strip down to your underwear in front of an open refrigerator. Place ten to twelve ice cubes around your testicles, and poor a gallon of cold water over your head, while repeating, ‘I’m a thrill seeker. Greatest adventure of my life.’ ”
One corner of his mouth curved slowly. “I’ve had ice cubes on my testicles. Cubes were in a hot female mouth and melted quickly.”
“At the North Pole, you’ll be lucky if your balls don’t freeze and fall off.”
“I’d like to keep my boys.”
“Perhaps paragliding, then? Taylor glides competitively. Paragliders are fitted with radar equipment to track their global positioning.”
“Radar equipment?” Sloan didn’t sound enthusiastic.
“Your glider needs to be tracked in case of an unexpected thunderstorm. Not too long ago, a male glider got caught up in severe wind currents and was lifted thirty-two thousand feet. He was flying with the jumbo jets. He lost consciousness and control of the glider.”
“Holy shit . . .”
“When the storm subsided, he came to, and eventually landed safely.”
“I don’t do lightning and thunder,” stated Sloan.
“How about snowboarding, waterfall ice climbing, downhill?” she suggested.
“Put me on a mountain. I can downhill.” He looked pointedly at her pale green T-shirt and read the inscription. “I want to ‘Huck It.’ ”
She wanted his eyes off her breasts. Crossing her arms over her chest, she asked, “Do you know what hucking even is?”
He innocently lifted one arrogant brow. “Thought it was a misspelling.”
Why was she wasting her time with this muscle-bound clown? “Hucking is when a skier throws himself off the mountain edge and catches big air. The skier—”
“—hopes to land a jump, especially on a soft-snow day,” he finished for her. He scanned the shadowed posters and pictures on the redbrick walls, all remote yet famed locales to make a man’s blood run cold.
He eventually read the challenge of La Grave. “ ‘Belong to the longer, faster, deeper crowd.’ ” He made the words sound more sexual than adventuresome.
Eve’s heart tripped. And her body flushed. She hated the fact that she’d reacted to this macho jerk. “La Meije isn’t for the vast majority of skiers,” she said, recovering quickly. “It’s an untamed, ungroomed, code-red terrain.”
His gray gaze went wide. “Mountain sounds big, bad, and really, really scary.”
“You’d be a total yard sale.”
“I have no plans of wiping out and leaving my equipment spread out in a trail of mass destruction.”
“Then you’d better pack humility and responsibility,” she warned him. “It’s no place for egos. La Meije has a way of making a man feel very small and very mortal. Get cocky on the mountain and Mother Nature will slap you silly.”
“I can handle Mother Nature,” he bragged. “I’ve got the gear for downhill.”
“Owning gear and knowing how to use it are two completely different things.”
“I’ve skills,” he affirmed. “Chances are good I’ll beat Taylor down the mountain.”
“Hitting the base as a human snowball doesn’t count.”
“Real funny, Eve.”
She’d thought so. Smiling to herself, she reached for the thick brown leather notebook that held Taylor’s travel itinerary. Flipping through the months, Eve noted that her sister had scheduled a trip to La Grave for mid December. Three of the four client slots were already filled.
“There’s only one slot available,” she told him. “The adventure runs five days, right before Christmas. If you’re interested . . .”
He scratched his stubbled jaw. “I’m thinking.”
“If you have to
think
, you don’t want the thrill.” She took a step back from the counter. “Why not just ask Taylor out? Dinner and a movie could save on broken bones. La Meije is treacherous.”
“Your sister likes action.”
“Taylor’s not on the go every second of every day. She exhales, just like everyone else.”
“After we race down the mountain, we’ll exhale together at the hotel, in my suite.”
Wishful thinking on his part. Taylor never got involved with her clients. Her adventures were all business. Eve tapped her gold-link watch, reminding him, “Thrill Seekers closed at eight. It’s now almost nine.”
“It’s been great talking with you too.” His gray eyes laughed at her.
Eve didn’t return his laughter. For some unknown reason, she’d wanted to scare him off any and all adventures. She didn’t know why, but she’d felt a compulsion to do so. Like Taylor, she always went with her gut. “If you’re not in any big hurry to end your life, take all the time you need to make up your mind.”
“No hard sell?” Sloan strolled across the room to an armchair and made himself comfortable. He picked up a skiing magazine displayed on a side table and thumbed through it. “Thought you’d want my business. I expected you to be more persuasive.”
Eve stared after him. The man didn’t understand
business
closed.
He lived life on his own time, and didn’t care whether he inconvenienced others.
Seated now, McCaffrey looked at home among the shadows, his body as solid as the brick wall at his back, a poster boy for fitness. Sadly, he was slow to comprehend that a physique honed for baseball differed greatly from a body ready for downhill. On the mountain, even the most athletic of men discovered muscles he’d never known existed.
“I never push a client to kill himself,” she finally answered. “Once you sign up, there are no refunds.”
He slouched deeper in the chair. “You ever skied La Grave?”
Eve shook her head. “I’m not a thrill seeker.”
“Yet Taylor is. Are you the postman’s baby?”
She’d heard that question a thousand times. It hadn’t bothered her until Sloan McCaffrey asked it. Suddenly prickly, she reached beneath the counter for a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. She sprayed and wiped down the glass countertop, then picked her words carefully.
“Taylor inherited the sporting gene. I have the business sense. I travel with her to scout out locations so I can convey the risk factor to clients. I don’t own equipment, nor do I ever plan to hand my life over to a mountain, wild rapids, or the deep blue sea.”
“Not an ounce of daredevil in your soul?”
“I play it safe.”
“I want to play with Taylor.” Sloan tossed down his magazine, then rose from the leather chair. He crossed back to her, his shadow on the wall big and imposing and once again touching hers. He had an easy roll to his hips. His expression was smug. “How much?” He reached into his back pocket for his wallet. His gray T-shirt separated from his jeans, and Eve caught the number three tattooed over his groin.
Sloan caught her checking out his tat. “A warning to women,” he explained. “Three dates and I’m gone.”
“What if the woman you’re dating has a ‘two’ tattoo rule?”
“Makes it easier on me.”
Eve rolled her eyes. She’d met a lot of men through Thrill Seekers. None were as arrogant and into themselves as Sloan McCaffrey. The man was an ass.
“La Grave will run you ten grand.” She drew an information packet from a drawer behind the counter and handed it to him. “Inside you’ll find a list of equipment as well as names of several insurance companies who offer high-risk policies. Be sure your travel insurance is fully paid up prior to departure. You might want to increase your life insurance as well. The hotel will require that you leave a next-of-kin address and your medical insurance details at the reception desk before you head up the mountain. Makes it easier on Taylor.”
Sloan extracted a check from his black leather wallet and wrote it out for the required amount. He slid it across the counter to Eve. Their fingers brushed, the tips sparking, as if they’d both scuffed their feet across the carpet, producing static electricity.
He looked at her strangely.
She dropped her gaze.
Drawing her hand back, she slipped the check into a bank bag, then shook her head disbelievingly. “The price men pay to be with my sister.”
“Obviously I’m not the first.”
“Nor will you be the last.”
“Taylor’s hot. The trip’s well worth the money.”
“My sister’s an excellent guide. If you listen to her and don’t spit in Mother Nature’s eye, you’ll have the adventure of a lifetime.”
“Why don’t you come along?”
To her surprise, Sloan leaned across the counter, fingering a tendril of hair that had escaped her French braid. Calloused skin brushed against her neck, and she flinched, her breath catching on the way out as he tucked the loose strand behind her ear.