Footprints in the Snow
Footprints in the Snow
Cassie Miles
COLORADO DESTINYIt was a powerful Rocky Mountain blizzard that caught scientist Shana Parisi unawares and threw her into the arms of a mysterious man in uniform. Luke Rawlins rescued her from danger, but it was the mesmerizing look in his eyes that captured her heart…and forged their destiny.Luke knew bringing the beautiful Shana home posed a threat to his secrets, but a foreign enemy was hot on their trail and Shana's snowy footprints were all they needed to track her down. Once entrenched in his world, Luke urged her to remain silent about what she saw. Because the alternative could be deadly….
This is my destiny.
Through the swirling eddies of snow, she saw him. A man dressed in white from head to toe—camouflaged in the storm. Though he was skiing uphill against the pelting wind, he moved with great speed, driving his long skis forward. His technique amazed her.
“Who are you?” Shana asked once he’d approached.
“Sergeant Luke Rawlins.”
A soldier? Though she was dizzy and weak, she cracked a smile. It seemed that the cavalry had skied over the hill and come to her rescue. All she could see of his face was a firm, stubborn jaw.
With a huge effort, she stood upright, knee-deep in snow. Her legs felt like rubber. The cold had drained the last bit of strength from her muscles.
Before she could tell him that she was fine, her eyelids closed. She was falling through the swirling snow into unconsciousness.
Footprints in the Snow
Cassie Miles
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To the brave men and women of the
10th Mountain Division. And, as always, to my
favorite Marine sergeant, Rick Hanson.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cassie Miles lives in a Denver high-rise with a view of the Front Range through her office window—a huge temptation to get outside and play. After a broken ankle a few years ago, she hung up her skis, but still enjoys hiking, climbing and sitting in a grove of aspen, reading a book.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Shana Parisi—An exploration geologist on vacation in Colorado when she’s swept up in a surprise blizzard.
Luke Rawlins—A sergeant in the 10th Mountain Division who has already seen action on the front lines.
Enrico Fermi—Nobel Prize–winning physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.
Dr. Douglas & Dr. Schultz—Coworkers with Dr. Fermi.
Verne Hughes—Captain in charge of operations at Camp Hale.
Henry Harrison—Private First Class, conscripted into the 10th.
Edward Martin—Private First Class in the 10th.
Jack Swenson—Expert ski instructor and mountain man from Aspen.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter One
Shana Parisi knew better than to leave the well-marked cross-country ski trail in the mountains outside Leadville. Above all, she believed in following the rules. Her logical, predictable nature served her well in her work as an exploration geologist for AMVOX Oil.
But today was somehow different. Acting on impulse, she’d stepped off the marked trail and gone exploring. Ignoring the beginning twinges of a headache, she’d skied from one interesting geological feature to another. These mineral-rich mountains were like a trip to Disneyland, especially since she’d spent the past year and a half on assignment in Kuwait. Colorado felt so clean, so fresh, so incredibly all-American.
She poked around the edges of an open pit mine. Studied the striation on a granite cliff. And entered a natural cave pocked with dark crystals, several of which found their way into her pocket along with an unusual shard of glassy green that looked like trinite.
Outside the cave, she slipped her boots into the bindings of her short backcountry skis, fastened the tethers and inhaled a gasp of the thin mountain air. Her lungs burned. Glancing at her wristwatch, she saw that she’d been out here for over three hours. Too long. Her slight headache had turned into a real killer.
Adjusting her goggles, she peered downhill at a wide slope bordered by thick pine forest on either side and tried to remember where she’d left the cross-country trail. Downhill to the left. Or to the right? Every year dozens of people got lost in these mountains. Some were never found.
Surely, she hadn’t gone too far off track. Reaching up, she tightened the scrunchie that held her thick black hair up in a ponytail. Earlier, she’d taken off her heavy gloves and parka; the May weather was warm enough for skiing in just a down vest and turtleneck.
It was colder now. Heavy gray clouds roiled overhead, and darker clouds were coming in behind them. Snowflakes fell in nasty little sputters. Should she dig her warmer gear out of her backpack? Making that simple decision seemed difficult; the inside of her head was fuzzy. Something was wrong with her. Maybe altitude sickness. She was near the Continental Divide, over ten thousand feet. She needed to get off this mountain.
Though tempted to tuck into a ball and schuss downhill like an Alpine skier, she wasn’t that skilled. Carefully, she traversed the ridge above the snow-covered slope. It took all of her concentration to coordinate thrusting with her skis and picking with her poles.
A fierce wind gusted around her, taking her breath away. A strange glow surrounded her—like a spotlight from the heavens. The wind became a deafening roar. Her body was weightless, disconnected. What’s happening? She blinked slowly and everything returned to normal.
Then, the storm hit hard. An instant blizzard. The heavens split open and dumped a truckload of snow on her head.
Her goggles smeared with moisture, and she could barely see. The freezing cold sank through her turtleneck and into her bones as she kept going. Though she was skiing furiously across the ridge, it felt as if she was standing still, suspended in the storm.
Turning to dig in with her edges, her skis stuttered across a patch of ice then slipped out from under her. A scream wrenched from her throat as she went flying. Her boots broke free from the bindings, and she released the poles. In a somersault, she landed on her backpack and slid downhill. Her skis, still attached by tethers, crashed beside her. She dug in the heels of her boots, fighting until finally she came to a stop.
When she struggled to stand, her feet sank deep into the snowpack, and she sprawled backward. With her heart beating rapidly, she couldn’t catch her breath. She was dizzy, light-headed. The entire world was shrouded in white. And cold. God, it was cold.
Forcing herself up, she lurched and stumbled again, falling forward on her hands and knees. A wave of nausea surged in her belly. She vomited into the snow.
She needed to pull herself together, but she couldn’t move. Did she hit her head when she fell? Was she paralyzed? More likely, she was in early stage hypothermia. A seductive lassitude. This is what happens when you break the rules.
It occurred to her that she might die. Alone. Unmarried and without children. There would be no one to mourn her passing except for her globe-trotting diplomat father whose greatest concern would be to choose the most appropriate coffin.
She lay back in the snow, too cold to care what happened to her. The roaring winds swept over her. In their wake came confusion. And then, a strong sense of certainty. She was meant to be here at this place and in this time. This is my destiny.
Through the swirling eddies of snow, she saw him. A man dressed in white from head to toe—camouflaged in the storm. Though he was skiing uphill against the pelting wind, he moved with great speed, driving his long skis forward. His technique amazed her. This guy was an incredible Nordic skier. A real athlete.
By the time she forced herself to sit up, he was beside her. She peered up at him. “Who are you?”
“Sergeant Luke Rawlins, 10th Mountain Division.”
A soldier? Though she was dizzy and weak, she cracked a smile. It seemed that the cavalry had skied over the hill and come to her rescue. His head was covered by the white hood of his fur-lined parka. His eyes were hidden behind goggles. All she could see of his face was a firm, stubborn jaw.
With a huge effort, she stood upright, knee-deep in snow. Her legs felt like rubber. The cold had drained the last bit of strength from her muscles.
Before she could tell him that she was fine, her eyelids closed. She was falling through the whirling snow into unconsciousness.
IN HIS ONE-ROOM CABIN, Luke pulled the wet turtleneck up and over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Though his purpose in stripping off her wet clothes was to get her dried off and warmed up, he couldn’t help looking. Her body was slim, but she curved in all the right places. The flare from her slender waist to her hips was sheer perfection. Her olive skin was smooth and unblemished except for three little moles that formed a triangle above her hip bone. Her breasts were small but exquisite—more beautiful than the marble statues he’d seen in Italy.
It had been a long time since he’d been with a naked woman. Nearly half a year. Before he shipped out for the front lines. Before he’d been wounded.
The woman he held in his arms groaned. Her head lifted for a moment before lolling forward. He tugged one of his army-issued T-shirts over her head and shoulders, then stretched her out on the bed and pulled up the covers to her chin.
Sitting beside her on the edge of the bed, he held her wrist to check her pulse. The beat was steady and stable; she was going to be all right after she warmed up. Though she’d taken one hell of a fall, she had no broken bones. Tomorrow, she’d feel the bruises.
Her nose wiggled as she stirred in her sleep. Then she sighed and went quiet again. She was beautiful, a regular sleeping beauty. Her thick black hair framed her face. Delicate eyebrows arched above her full lashes. Her best feature was her full, pouty lips. She had the kind of mouth that begged to be kissed.
When he’d rescued her from the blizzard, she’d looked like hell with snow matting her hair, her complexion drained and her lips tinged with blue. What had she been doing out here? This wasn’t a sanctioned area; she shouldn’t have been up here, but he was glad she’d broken the rules. This pretty lady—whoever she was—made a good diversion.
Only a few hours ago, Luke had received his orders to return to the front lines of battle. In less than a week, he’d be shipped back to hell. He wasn’t a coward, but the order scared him. He remembered too well. Too many scenes of carnage were burned in his memory. When he closed his eyes, he saw the blood and the devastation. Buildings shattered. People torn apart. His ears still echoed with the cries of dying men and women. He felt the pain of his own wounds and relived the moment when he had been shot, when he saw his own death and welcomed it.
He didn’t want to go back. Except for one thing.
He glanced toward the snapshot on the table. A picture of an eight-year-old boy with thick, curly black hair. His skinny chest thrust proudly as he waved to the camera. Roberto. Though Luke needed no reminder of the boy, he always carried that photo with him. He’d made a promise to Roberto. I’ll come back for you. That solemn vow was more important to him than the war or his dedication to the 10th Mountain Division or even his own survival. Roberto was the reason Luke would return to the front. Though it seemed impossible to find one small boy among the multitude of orphans left by the war, he had to try.
When Luke came to the cabin tonight, he’d been hoping to find his sense of purpose. Because he was going to need every bit of his strength and courage to find Roberto and make everything turn out okay, he needed a reason to believe in himself again. And the storm had brought this strange woman to him.
He hadn’t noticed her on the slope until he heard a yelp and saw her crashing out of control. She’d been a long way uphill from where he’d been standing, and he had to backtrack and circle around before he could reach her. She was damned lucky that he’d shown up when he did.
He’d saved her life. The odds against him being nearby at the exact moment when she crashed were a million to one. And if he hadn’t been here, she would have frozen to death in this freak spring blizzard. Lucky for her. And for him, too.
The fact that he’d been there—at the right place and in the right time to save her—gave him satisfaction. It was almost enough to renew his spirit, almost enough to make him believe in the possibility of redemption.
Leaving her bedside, he went to the table and poured a double shot of Jack Daniel’s into a mug. Holding the cup aloft, he toasted her. “Here’s looking at you.”
She groaned. Her eyelids fluttered.
Luke savored his whiskey and waited patiently.
When she finally wakened, she bolted upright to a sitting posture. Her dark brown eyes were huge and luminous. “Where am I?”
“One of the mountain huts constructed by the 10th Mountain Division.”
Though she nodded in apparent understanding, he saw confusion in her rapidly darting gaze. Her lips worked before forming words. “I’ve always wanted to stay in one of these huts. It’s almost impossible to get a reservation.”
Though her words didn’t make sense—a reservation?—she was relatively coherent. He nodded toward a cup of water on a chair beside the bed. “You should drink something.”
“Right. I’m probably dehydrated.”
As she sipped the water, his gaze went again to those full, ripe lips. His temperature rose. The memory of her lush naked body lingered in his mind.
He reached for the opened pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes on the table. “Smoke?”
“I quit, but I don’t mind if you do. You’re Luke. Is that right?”
He nodded. “And you are?”
“Shana Parisi.”
“Nice to meet you, Shana Parisi.” He liked the way her name rolled off his tongue. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, except for the headache from hell.”
“I assessed your physical condition. Your vitals are strong. I got you warmed up before you went into hypothermia, but you probably have altitude sickness. I’m guessing you haven’t been at this elevation for more than a day or two.”
“Your guess is correct.”
“Where are you from?”
“Most recently, Kuwait. Before that, Thailand.”
He hadn’t expected that response. Kuwait? Thailand? She was turning into a very interesting diversion. “What brings you to Colorado?”
With a frown, she rubbed at her temple. “I’m a geologist. I work for AMVOX Oil, and we’re looking into an oil shale operation on the western slope.”
A geologist. That explained the rock samples he’d found in her pockets. Luke finished off the dregs of his Jack Daniel’s, glad for the whiskey warmth that spread through him and lightened his mood. He sure as hell hadn’t expected to be smiling tonight.
She eyed him curiously. “You knew exactly what was wrong with me. Are you a doctor?”
“Trained as a medic,” he said. “But it wasn’t a complicated diagnosis to figure out that somebody who was turning into a human Popsicle might be going into hypothermia.”
“When does the headache go away?”
“After a couple of aspirin. First, you need to eat something to elevate your blood sugar.”
He crossed the two steps from the table to the bed and held out a Baby Ruth. When she took it from him, their hands touched. An electric spark shot up his arm.
She’d felt it, too. A gasp escaped her lips. Her dark brown eyes widened in surprise.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For the chocolate.”
Shana couldn’t quite believe the explosion of energy and awareness that came when they accidentally touched. That electric sensation was almost enough to make her forget that her head ached and her body was stiff and sore. Luke Rawlins was quite a man.
Immediately she knew that she needed to be careful around him. He reminded her of a lot of the guys she’d worked with on exploration and drilling sites. They fancied themselves to be superstuds, and she’d learned long ago to keep her distance. She didn’t want to be just another notch on the bedpost.
Purposefully, she looked away from Luke and concentrated on the tangible facts. She was glad to be here and to be warm, blessedly warm. A cast-iron potbellied stove stood near the door where their parkas hung on hooks. There were no extra frills in this small, one-room cabin lit by the amber glow of lanterns. A hut. She knew a bit about this system of simple log cabins that had been constructed in the 1940s by the 10th Mountain Division. In Leadville, there were dozens of memorials to these World War II heroes. “Didn’t you say that you were with the 10th Mountain Division?”
“That’s right.”
“Those guys were supposed to be the best skiers, mountain climbers and sharpshooters in the world. Elite commandos.”
“We still are.”
As she peeled the wrapper off her Baby Ruth, she dared to study this soldier in his army-green fatigues—kind of a weird outfit for somebody who was on vacation at a mountain hut. But she was willing to excuse this minor eccentricity. The man had saved her life. Also, he was remarkably good-looking with deep-set blue eyes and the tanned complexion of an outdoorsman. His brown hair was short in a no-nonsense military cut that worked for him. She guessed that he was in his early thirties. If she’d been in the market for a man, he’d be the right age.
But she wasn’t looking. Or was she? There was a sense of destiny about being here, being with him. Destiny? Yeah, sure. She believed in science, not kismet. Trying to ignore the twinges of pain inside her head, she nibbled at her candy bar and sipped the water. Rehydration was important.
He tapped a cigarette from the pack, flipped open a Zippo lighter and lit up. Though she hated the tobacco smell, she was pleased. The fact that he had at least one disgusting habit was proof that he wasn’t perfect. Not the right guy for me.
When he stood, she realized how tall he was—at least four inches over six feet. His body was lean but muscular with square shoulders, and he was obviously in excellent condition. Even in his poorly fitted fatigues, his muscular thighs bulged.
“I should thank you again,” she said. “You saved my life.”
“My pleasure.” He went to the potbellied stove, opened the latched door and laid another piece of wood on the fire.
His pleasure? A shiver of awareness rippled through her. Beneath the quilts and blankets on the bed, she wore nothing but an oversize olive-drab T-shirt. Near the door, she saw her ski pants and her turtleneck hung up to dry. But she didn’t remember getting undressed. Her fingers plucked at the cotton fabric of T-shirt. “Is this yours?”
“I had to strip off those wet clothes so you could warm up. But don’t worry. I kept my eyes closed.”
Stripped naked by a stranger. She should have been humiliated, wildly embarrassed. Kept his eyes closed? Yeah, right.
When she gazed accusingly into his coolly assessing blue eyes, she saw a hint of approval. Then he grinned. Apparently, he’d been pleased by what he’d seen when he changed her clothes.
In normal circumstances, she would have lashed out, making it very clear that he would never ever see her naked again. Instead, a lovely warmth blossomed inside her. She could do a lot worse than being swept off her feet by Luke Rawlins. “I’ll have that aspirin now.”
He tossed her a small glass bottle and returned to the chair where he sat and stretched out his long legs. Leaning back, he took a puff on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.
Slightly mesmerized, she watched. He even made smoking look sexy. Quickly, she gulped down three aspirin. She really ought to get out of here before she did something she’d regret. Like throwing herself into his arms. Or ripping off her T-shirt. Or, better yet, tearing off his clothes piece by piece. “I should go now. I’ve already imposed too much on your hospitality.”
“It’s late, Shana. Almost dark. You’re going nowhere tonight.”
She peered through the frost-rimed glass of the only window in the cabin. Outside, it was heavy and gray but the blizzard seemed to have stopped. She was aware of the wind whistling through the branches of the pine trees and sweeping against the log walls of the cabin. “Do you have a car? Or a snowmobile? Some kind of transportation?”
“Just my skis.”
“Maybe I could call for help. Do you have my pack?”
He went toward the door, picked up her pack and set it on the bed beside her. She sifted through the contents until she found her cell phone, which was totally dead. “Broken. I must have landed on it when I fell.”
She was stranded. Tucked away in a cozy, warm cabin with the sexiest man she’d ever seen. This felt like a fantasy. A dream. But he was here and real—far too potent to vanish when she blinked her eyes.
Needing to assess the situation, she threw off the blankets and climbed out of the bed. In a few strides, she crossed to the door and pulled it open. A blast of cold hit her bare legs. Though the snow had stopped, a drift came all the way up to the cabin’s door and trickled inside. They were in the forest at the edge of a clearing. She saw no sign of other houses. No lights. No roads. Nothing but complete isolation.
Luke came up behind her and shoved the door closed. “You’re here for the night.”
When she looked up into his face, she didn’t want to leave. Wearing only his T-shirt, she should have been cold. Instead, a glowing heat churned through her veins. Strange. She was light-headed, oddly disconnected.
He touched her forehead. “You’re hot.”
“So are you,” she said. “If we rub together, maybe we’ll start a forest fire.”
A smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “I meant to say that you might have a fever.”
“But I don’t feel sick. Not really sick.” But not herself. Her common sense seemed to have vanished, whisked away by the swirling snows on the mountain. She’d been transported to a magical place where normal concerns and hesitations did not apply.
Reaching out, she placed her palm flat against his chest. Through his army fatigues, she felt the steady, strong beating of his heart. The rhythm echoed through her and synchronized perfectly with her own pulse—two hearts beating as one. She was a part of him. Inseparable and needing a deeper connection.
She tilted her chin up. Her lips parted.
When he kissed her, he took his time. She tasted whiskey on his mouth. Slowly, he deepened the kiss.
His arms surrounded her, supporting her. His body pressed against hers. She seemed to rise off the floor, floating on a cloud. A spiral of tingling sensation unfurled and spread from her head to her heart to every intimate part of her.
When his lips left hers, she gazed up at his ruggedly handsome face. Her vision went hazy. Her headache became a steady pulse. Throbbing, but not painful.
She couldn’t believe this was really happening. A strong, gorgeous man had appeared from nowhere to sweep her into his arms and rescue her from certain death. He was her knight in shining ski gear.
Though she barely had the strength to stand, she knew his strong arms would never let her fall. Dazed and in shock, she abandoned herself to this swirling fantasy.
Chapter Two
Shana stumbled off balance. Her back rested against the cabin wall. The cold from outside crept through the logs and chilled her spine, contrasting the fire that burned inside her—an intense heat generated by his kiss.
“Shana,” he whispered, “are you all right?”
She wanted to say yes, but her head was spinning and her knees were weak. “I need to sit down.”
He guided her the few paces to the narrow bed and helped tuck her bare legs under the covers.
Stretched out on the bed, she looked up at him. So handsome. So gentle. This man had saved her life. He was her real-live hero, and he kissed like an expert.
She wanted more kisses, a lot more. This was crazy. Making love to a total stranger? Shana knew better. Years of working in the field, mostly with men, had taught her self-control. But she wasn’t at a job site. This cabin, tucked away in the mountains, was a different reality. Regular rules and restrictions did not apply.
When he started to rise from the bed, she sat up and caught hold of his arm. “Don’t go.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you need something?”
You. I need you. She wanted him to stay close beside her, to kiss her again.
“This doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “I’m nearly naked, and you’re wearing all those clothes.”
She raised her arm and stroked the bristly stubble on his jaw. With a fingertip, she traced a line from his mouth to his chin and down his throat. Aware that her behavior was utterly inappropriate, she began to unbutton his shirt. The effort took all her concentration. Her fingers lacked dexterity.
“Shana, I don’t think this is—”
“Don’t think.” Never before had she been so bold. She must be delirious. “I want this shirt off.”
“Let me.”
He unfastened the buttons and slipped off his shirt, then he pulled his T-shirt over his head. His arms and shoulders were lean yet muscular. A sprinkle of dark hair coated his chest. Below his collarbone, she saw a ragged scar. The suturing had been rushed, clumsy. Another scar crossed his rib cage.
She ran her thumb across the mark on his chest. “What happened?”
“The war happened.”
He’d been injured in battle. He really was a hero. That fact jolted her back toward reality, reminding her that there was a real world outside this cabin. “I’m sorry, Luke.”
“Don’t cry for me. I survived.”
He wasn’t being macho. Just stating a fact.
She held the dog tags that hung around his neck. “Name, rank and serial number,” she said. “Blood type O negative. You’re a universal donor.”
“That’s right.”
“What does the P stand for?”
“Protestant.”
“Or maybe,” she said, “the P stands for Perfect.”
“If you knew me better, you wouldn’t say that.”
“What’s your fatal flaw?”
“Right now? I’m thinking how good it would be to make love to you.”
She nodded, and her brain rattled painfully. She winced. Though she desperately wanted to stay alert, her eyelids drooped. “Making love,” she murmured. “Not a problem.”
“You need to rest. You’re already half-unconscious. I won’t take advantage of you.”
“Rest.” That sounded good. “Sleep.”
He leaned her back, laid her down on the pillow. Though she still had the urge to make love, her body was limp. So tired.
As she closed her eyes, she felt Luke lightly kiss her forehead. He was moving away from her. Yet, in her mind, she could feel his strong arms wrapped tightly around her. The heat of his body permeated her flesh.
She might be dreaming, but this was the most realistic fantasy she’d ever had. She could smell him. Her nostrils flared. A musky scent.
Their clothing melted away, and she experienced the amazing moment when their naked bodies met. The hair on his chest rubbed against her breasts, and her nipples tightened. She groaned with anticipation.
If she opened her eyes, she was certain to see his smile. His firm, stubborn jaw. The shining, intoxicating blue of his eyes.
She was ready for him. Her legs parted, welcoming him. Needing him. She never wanted to wake up. Being with Luke was the right thing. The only thing. She had to have this man. This snow-driven, crystalline fantasy was her destiny.
THE NEXT MORNING, sunlight poured through the window of the small cabin and slanted across the blankets that covered Shana on the narrow bed. Her body ached from injuries she suffered when she crashed down the slope, but she wasn’t complaining. Last night had been fantastic, even if it was only a dream. She lay very still, not really wanting to face the reality of a new day.
Slowly, she opened her eyelids and saw Luke, fully dressed and tending to the fire in the potbellied stove. Though he was the same handsome man who had rescued her, she sensed that today was far different from yesterday and last night. Also, her headache had returned.
“Aspirin,” she croaked.
At the sound of her voice, he turned toward her. His smile was polite but wary. “Aspirin and water are on the chair beside the bed.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected him to say, but that wasn’t it. Vaguely irritated, she reached for the mug, downed three aspirin and lay back on the pillows. Beneath the sheets she was naked and terribly aware of her vulnerability.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Last night, she’d been starving…but not for food. She craved him. Of course, that wasn’t what he was talking about. “I could eat something.”
“My supplies are sparse.” He reached up to a high shelf and grabbed an opened cardboard box that he placed on the table. “I’ve got a couple of K rations I swiped from the quartermaster.”
“K rations?”
“Survival food to carry in combat. If the enemy doesn’t kill you, this stuff will.”
“You’re talking about an MRE, meal ready to eat. When I was in Kuwait, some of the soldiers had them.”
When he placed the box on the bed in front of her, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. The prepackaged energy food had all the appeal of eating tree bark, but she needed to build her strength if she hoped to ski back to civilization. After peeling off the wrapper, she forced herself to bite into the square chunk of tasteless calories. It crumbled in her mouth like sand.
“How about coffee?” Luke asked.
“Oh, yes.”
He went to the potbellied stove. Using a dish towel, he lifted a metal pot from the burner and poured steaming liquid into a mug that looked like vintage Fiestaware. A quaint touch, she thought. These mountain huts had been built in the 1940s and the crockery matched that era. So did the furniture. The Formica table with aluminum legs and matching chairs looked almost new thanks to the retro craze.
When he handed her the mug, there was no spark of electricity. No special thrill. They were strangers again. So that’s the way it’s going to be. Well, fine.
With a dispassionate gaze, she studied him. Still gorgeous, but there was something odd about the way he was dressed. His fatigues were the old-fashioned army drab instead of the usual beige or green camouflage. The fabric seemed stiff and heavy. “You mentioned that you were in the army.”
“Stationed at Camp Hale. Or Camp Hell, as we like to call it.”
“From the 10th Mountain Division.”
He pointed to the crossed sword insignia on the sleeve of his white parka, which hung from a peg near the door. “We climb to conquer.”
Shana took a sip of the bitter coffee, which was nothing like the thick, rich espresso she’d grown to adore while in Kuwait. “Tell me about Camp Hale.”
“Construction started in 1942 under Charles Minnie Dole who started the 10th to train for cold weather warfare. At the high point, there were ten thousand men stationed here. Now, most everybody has shipped out.”
She was no World War II buff, but Shana was certain that Camp Hale no longer existed. In the hotel where she was staying in Leadville, there were several black-and-white photos of the historic Camp Hale site and the famous troops who had fought bravely in Europe at the end of the war. A long time ago. “What are you doing here?”
“Me and a skeleton crew pulled guard duty for a government project.” He checked his wristwatch. “I need to report back real soon.”
“You’re leaving me here?”
“The rest will do you good,” he said. “I’ll come back this afternoon and help you get into town.”
She tasted disappointment with her coffee. Last night, he’d been clear about making no promises that they’d be together. But she expected more from him. Something. Anything.
She glanced toward the cabin door. Her short metallic skis were propped against the wall beside his long wood skis. Hickory skis with old-fashioned cable bindings? The laminated wood shafts of his ski poles were equally antiquated with a twisted bamboo basket.
A rifle also stood near the door. “What kind of gun is that?”
“A .30 caliber Garand with an eight round clip. Standard issue.”
“Not really.” In the Middle East, she’d become familiar with the weaponry used by U.S. troops. “What about the M16? Or the M4 Carbine? The .50 caliber sniper rifle?”
“A .50 caliber?” He scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”
“Every soldier in Iraq carries at least one of those weapons.”
“Iraq?” His eyebrows lifted. “Yeah, I remember now. You were in Kuwait. The Middle East.”
“I know a little bit about military equipment.”
“So you’re an expert.”
“I didn’t say that.” Why was he so cranky? “I was just noticing that you have some old-fashioned equipment. Like those wood skis.”
He fired a glare in her direction but said nothing. If she’d been smart, Shana would have followed his example and kept her mouth shut, but she continued, “I didn’t even know they made bindings like that anymore.”
“Now you’re an expert on ski equipment.” He looked down at her from his towering height. “I should have guessed from your skill on the slopes when you slid halfway down the mountain on your butt.”
“That wasn’t my fault. How could I know a blizzard was coming?”
“A sky full of snow clouds should have been a clue.”
“I get your point.” She adjusted the blankets around her. “I wasn’t being careful. Maybe because of the altitude sickness.”
“Maybe,” he conceded.
“I’m usually a rational, logical person.” At her new assignment in Rifle, she’d be the project manager. “I’m very responsible.”
When she stared directly into his intense blue eyes, she saw a brief spark. A flicker of memory from last night?
“I guess,” he drawled, “I’ll have to take your word about being responsible.”
While she groped in her mind for a snappy comeback, he pulled his snow pants over his fatigues and sat on the chair to lace up his boots, which were also old-fashioned in design. She tried to imagine why Luke—who was obviously an experienced skier—would be using such antiquated equipment.
“I know,” she said. “You’re doing some kind of historical reenactment. Something about the early days of the 10th Mountain Division. Am I right?”
“I don’t have time to play games, and the 10th isn’t history.” He frowned. “Are you feeling okay? You sound a little Looney Tunes this morning.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “As soon as possible, I’m out of here.”
“Whatever you say.”
Wrong! He was supposed to tell her that he’d enjoyed their kiss last night. At the very least, he should offer a couple of light compliments. “I know you enjoyed it. Last night was every man’s fantasy. Being trapped in a cabin with a naked woman.”
“Depends on the woman,” he said.
“Are you telling me I’m not your type?” If she hadn’t still been nearly naked, she would have leaped from the bed and smacked him. “I suppose you prefer brainless blondes.”
“Not really. I wouldn’t kick Betty Grable out of the sack, but Rita Hayworth is my pinup. You’d look a little bit like her if you’d—”
“Stop it,” she snapped. “Rita Hayworth. Camp Hale. Wood skis. Exactly what year do you think it is?”
He slipped on his parka, grabbed his skis and opened the cabin door. “It’s 1945.”
Her jaw dropped. “What?”
“I’ll be back this afternoon. Rest easy, Shana.”
The door closed firmly behind him.
This was just typical of her luck. She finally let down her guard and allowed herself to experience the fantasy of the moment, and the guy was certifiably insane.
She pushed aside the K rations. That was another 1945 term—K ration instead of MRE. Did he really believe it was over sixty years ago?
Did it matter if he did? His message was pretty darn clear. He was done with her. Well, fine. She was done with him, too. No way was she going to wait around in this dinky little cabin for him to come back. Shana could find her own way back to the ski trails and the parking lot where she’d left her rental car.
When she crawled out of the bed, it felt as if every muscle in her body had been strained. A gigantic purple bruise decorated her thigh. She stretched and took a couple of cleansing breaths, hoping to move beyond the pain.
While she dressed, she forced down another cup of coffee, more water and another few bites of the disgusting K ration food substitute. What a lousy way to start her time in Colorado!
Even though Luke had been utterly obnoxious, she probably ought to leave him a note, explaining that she’d decided not to stick around. As she poked around on the table looking for a paper and pencil, she found a black-and-white photograph of a young kid with curly hair. Luke’s son? On the back of the picture was a note written in fountain pen. “Roberto. Christmas, 1944.”
The edges of the photo were frayed, indicating that it had been handled a lot. Carefully, Shana returned the picture to the table.
In her pack, she found a confirmation for her hotel room and scribbled a note on the back.
Thanks for saving my life. Going to town.
Goodbye forever, Shana.
Before leaving, she glanced around the cabin. So much for windswept fantasies. It was time to get back to the real world. She grabbed her skis and trudged out the door.
As if to compensate for her dark mood, the weather was spectacular. Brilliant sunlight illuminated clear blue skies and sparkled like diamonds on the new-fallen snow that decorated the pine trees surrounding the forest. Yesterday’s blizzard was already beginning to melt.
She shoved her boots into the bindings and fastened the tethers. Her first gliding step was agony. When she got back to the hotel in Leadville, Shana intended to spend the rest of the day soaking in the tub, healing her physical wounds.
She followed the tracks of Luke’s skis through the forest. The more she moved, the more her muscles loosened up. Except for the bruise on her hip and the remnant of a headache, she was okay. Slowly, she made her way through the forest to an open slope that seemed familiar. Was this where she’d fallen yesterday?
Though she wasn’t sure which direction led back to the marked cross-country ski trails, she figured that if she kept heading downhill, she’d eventually find her way. She’d barely eased the tip of her ski onto the slope when she heard a gunshot.
Startled, she pulled back and hid in the trees. Why would anybody be shooting up here? It wasn’t hunting season. She thought of Luke and his rifle. He’d claimed to be doing guard duty on a government project. War games? Glancing back over her shoulder, she thought of returning to the cabin and barring the door. Then she saw them.
About twenty yards downhill, two men dressed in black skied across the slope, moving fast and ducking down. One of them turned and fired wildly with a handgun.
Shana ducked. This was crazy. His bullet could have gone anywhere.
Luke appeared. Clad in his all-white parka and ski pants, he was camouflaged against the glittering white snow, but nothing could hide his skill and dexterity on his long, wood skis. He moved fast, bursting out of the forest and onto the open slope. Halfway across, he swooshed to a halt, sending up a spray of powder snow. He dropped to one knee. With one smooth move, he flipped his Garand rifle from a sheath on his back into his gloved hands. Sighting down the barrel, he fired. Once. Then again.
One of the men Luke had been pursuing gave a pained shout. He was hit, but he didn’t go down. He and his partner disappeared into the trees on the opposite side of the slope.
Luke set off in single-minded pursuit.
Shana couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but she was dead certain that she wanted no part of this violence. What she needed was to get the hell away from here.
Desperately, she edged uphill, away from the fight. As she crested the slope, she found herself looking down into a wide valley. There were over a hundred rectangular barracks arranged in neat rows—housing for ten thousand men.
Smoke rose from some of the chimneys, and she saw a soldier leading a mule across the hard-packed snow. An old army jeep chugged on a snow-covered roadway in front of a large two-story house with two separate wings. There was a mess hall. Other administrative buildings. A barn.
This was Camp Hale. From 1945.
Chapter Three
This huge army base hadn’t been here yesterday. It hadn’t been here for the past fifty years. It didn’t exist anymore.
Shana blinked furiously, hoping to erase the visual evidence. When she stared down the slope, nothing had changed. Camp Hale spread out before her like a black-and-white photograph come to life. Apparently, Luke wasn’t crazy. She was.
Her mind searched for a logical explanation.
Possibly, the site had been recreated as a historical place. With all those barracks? Housing for ten thousand troops? The cost of running the base would be too high.
If someone had rebuilt Camp Hale, they had to have a lot of cash. A movie? That made more sense. Hollywood people might be extravagant enough to reconstruct the base to make a movie about the legendary 10th Mountain Division.
But when she peered down toward the camp, she saw nothing resembling the lights and cameras needed by a movie crew. Instead of a movie crew led by Steven Spielberg, there were soldiers in fatigues. The only vehicles were vintage army jeeps. And mules.
More gunfire echoed behind her, and she startled. The obvious escape led straight down the hill into the camp, but she didn’t want to go there. Once she entered that 1945 world, she might never be able to return to her own time, her own millennium. She didn’t want to be swallowed up by the past.
This vision had to be an illusion, an aftereffect of altitude sickness. Luke had told her it was 1945. His suggestion must have triggered this fantasy from the photographs she’d seen in Leadville.
A fantasy? That wasn’t the way her mind worked. Shana was a scientist. Her life was based on rock-solid facts and rational analysis. She didn’t believe in fairy tales and had very little need for imagination. Last night with Luke was the closest she’d ever come to a fantasy.
Did their kiss even happen? Or was that a part of this winter mirage? Think, Shana. Somehow this had to make sense. Maybe she’d died on the slopes and Camp Hale was limbo. She wasn’t someone who…traveled backward through time.
This wasn’t happening; she refused to accept Camp Hale no matter how real it looked. The important thing was to find her way back to reality. Forcing her legs to move, she turned away from the encampment. Ignore it. Pretend that you never saw Camp Hale. Ski back to the rental car, back to Leadville.
“Halt,” came a shout from down the hill.
Two men—dressed like Luke in all-white snow gear—charged up the slope toward her. Their movements seemed labored; neither of them were as proficient on skis as Luke. While one man continued to approach, the other dropped to one knee and leveled a rifle at her chest.
“Raise your hands above your head.”
Shana did as she was told. Even in an imaginary world, she had no desire to be shot.
“You’re a girl,” said the guy who reached her first. He turned and waved to his partner. “Lower your weapon.”
He did as ordered and came toward them.
The first man asked, “What the hell are you doing up here, girlie?”
Though her mouth was dry, Shana forced words past her lips. “I’m with Luke. Luke Rawlins.”
“No kidding?” He turned back to his partner again. “She says she’s with Sergeant Rawlins.”
The second man joined them. When he pushed back the fur-lined hood of his parka, she was surprised to see how young he looked. This tall, lanky kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He frowned at her. “I don’t believe it. The sergeant isn’t a womanizer, and he knows better than to bring a girl up here.”
“She could be a spy. Take a look at her skis. I’ve never seen anything like those before. They’re made out of plastic.”
“Fiberglass,” Shana said. She’d spent enough time on drilling sites to know how to deal with men who didn’t trust her opinions and skills. It was important to immediately establish that she wasn’t a brainless twit. She kept her voice calm. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for everything, gentlemen. May I lower my hands?”
“Not yet,” said the young guy. He came close and patted her down in a clumsy frisk. “Take off that knapsack and hand it to me.”
She obeyed his order and watched as the two of them pawed through the contents of her pack. The younger man flipped open her wallet. “International Driver’s License,” he said accusingly. “Your name is Shana Parisi?”
“Yes. And you are?”
“Private First Class Henry Harrison.”
She turned to the other man. “And you?”
“I don’t have to tell you my name.”
He pushed back his hood, revealing black hair in a bowl cut like one of the Three Stooges. She decided to think of him as Moe. He took the wallet from Henry and studied her license. “Parisi, huh? Are you Italian?”
“My grandparents were from Italy. Naples.”
“The land of Mussolini.”
Moe and Henry exchanged a meaningful glance and nodded. The land of Mussolini? Oh, please. Anger surged through her veins. “I’m not a spy.”
“Then what are you?” Moe demanded. “You’re not one of those Mafiosos, are you? A girlfriend of Al Capone?”
Could he possibly be more stereotypical and insulting? Obviously, “political correctness” had not been part of the vocabulary in 1945. “Not all Italians are part of the Mafia.”
Young Henry thrust her cell phone toward her. “What’s this thing?”
“A telephone. It’s not working right now.”
“That’s a load of malarkey.” He gave a snort. “A telephone without wires. Like a walkie-talkie. This looks like spy equipment to me.”
Moe snapped her wallet closed. “This license is a bad forgery. They got your birthday wrong. Says here that you were born in 1974. That’s almost thirty years from now.”
Because it’s 1945. That idea was beginning to sink into her consciousness. These two men—Henry and Moe—were clearly from a bygone era.
“You got one more chance,” Moe said, “And you better be telling me God’s own truth. Why are you here in this restricted area?”
“If you talk to Luke,” she said, “he can explain.”
Moe scowled as he shoved her belongings into her backpack and tossed it toward her. “We’ll take her to Luke,” he said as if it was his very own idea. “Come on, Henry. Let’s escort Miss Parisi into camp.”
FRUSTRATION BOILED in Luke’s blood. The men he’d been chasing had gotten away clean. He’d failed in his pursuit.
When he’d spotted them, they were peering down at Camp Hale with binoculars. They fled when he approached, then opened fire with their handguns. Luke was sure he’d winged one of them before they skied out of range and hopped into a waiting vehicle. He should have had them, should have aimed more carefully, should have skied faster.
Though Captain Hughes hadn’t reprimanded him, Luke knew he’d screwed up a simple mission of protecting the perimeters at Camp Hale. After his years of training in mountain combat, he should have been more effective.
And now, he had Shana to deal with.
He stormed into the vacant office where she was being held. Closing the door behind him, he said, “I told you to wait for me at the cabin.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“Maybe you should. You’re in serious trouble, lady.”
As she stood and faced him, he realized that this was the first time he’d seen her fully dressed and in control. She was impressive, very composed. Her confidence was high, and her bearing reminded him of the lady officers in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.
With her thick black hair tamed in a knot at the nape of her neck and her maroon turtleneck tucked neatly into her black ski pants, she looked nothing like the passionate woman from last night…until she smiled with those full, ripe, kissable lips.
Calmly, she said, “I might have stayed in the cabin if you’d told me there were gunmen wandering the slopes. Or that I might be in danger.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“You should have explained.”
She was right. He should have taken the time this morning to tell her that Camp Hale was heavily guarded while the scientists from Project Y were on the premises. Instead, he’d allowed his emotions to overrule his common sense.
When he woke up this morning and realized that he’d rescued such a beautiful woman, something inside him shifted. Their kiss reminded him that he was still alive, still capable of passion. Still a man.
He hadn’t felt that way since his tour of duty in Italy when he saw the devastation of battle firsthand. Small villages shattered under the boot heel of war. Families torn asunder. The suffering. The pain.
Luke was a soldier; his duty was to follow orders. But the first time he’d looked into the eyes of a German soldier and pulled the trigger, the first time he saw a man die, he was changed. He’d gone numb inside. Become a hollow man.
Roberto had given him a reason to hope, but he had to leave the boy behind. The emptiness consumed him. He’d felt nothing until last night with Shana. This morning, he should have been thanking her instead of running away in confusion.
She cocked her head and looked up at him. “Why do your men think I’m a spy?”
“Are you?”
Her beautiful brown eyes narrowed to angry slits. “Of course not.”
He shrugged. “If you were a spy, you wouldn’t tell me.”
Henry and Martin were convinced that she was Mata Hari. They’d waved her International Driver’s License in front of his face, pointed to her weird fiberglass skis and the little mechanical device she claimed was a telephone. However, Henry and Martin were idiots. Luke didn’t put much stock in their opinion.
He has suspicions of his own. Yesterday, she’d appeared out of nowhere. Last night, she attempted to seduce him. “You’re pretty enough to be a spy.”
“Give me a break.” She scowled. “I work for AMVOX Oil. I’m a geologist. Remember?”
Though he didn’t want to believe that she was spying, her profession dovetailed with the work of the government scientists he was here to protect. It would be a hell of a thing if she turned out to be the enemy. “We’ve had intruders in the vicinity. I don’t suppose you were up here with anyone else.”
“I saw you chasing two men. Shooting at them.” She shook her head. “I have nothing to do with them.”
Her beautiful dark eyes regarded him steadily and seriously. If she was lying, she was damn good at it. “I have to detain you, Shana. It’s procedure. You’ll have to stay here until we check out your background.”
“That doesn’t work for me. My project in Rifle starts in five days. I need to be there.”
“This won’t take long,” he promised. “Just give me the name of someone I can call, someone who can verify that you’re an innocent geologist on a ski trip.”
“There isn’t anyone I can call.” Before his eyes, her composure crumbled. Her gaze dropped to the floor and stuck there. “I don’t know anybody.”
“Your supervisor,” he suggested. “Or a family member.”
“There’s no one.” She sank into the hard-backed chair beside the cleared desk, doubled over and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t think.”
The enormity of her situation weighed on her shoulders like a ten-ton boulder. How could she explain? Of course, Shana knew people, important people. Her father was a career diplomat with connections in high places. She knew the CEO for AMVOX. But none of those people were available. In 1945, her father would have been two years old.
She looked up at Luke. He leaned his hip against the wooden desk in this plain square office that was cleared of all paperwork. His arms folded across his chest. He’d been right when he said she was in serious trouble.
She was stranded here. Without a bank account. Neither her credit cards nor her ATM card would work. She was homeless, completely without resources.
“I don’t have anyone I can contact.” Not here. Not in 1945. “I can’t remember…”
“Are you telling me that you have amnesia?”
She seized on this excuse. “That’s right. I can’t remember anything.”
“Except that you were in the Middle East.” His tone was suspicious. “You told me that last night.”
What else had she said? Last night, they hadn’t done much talking. Between her headache and her intense attraction to him, she hadn’t told him much. Now, his lack of information might work to her advantage.
“I have amnesia.” She rose to her feet to emphasize her words. “I need to get to a doctor in Leadville.”
“We have medical personnel here on base.”
But she didn’t want to stay here, trapped in 1945. If she left Camp Hale, she might be able to find the way back to her own millennium. “I need a specialist, a psychiatrist. Or a neurologist. Please, Luke.”
His jaw set in a firm, stubborn line that made her think he had little intention of accommodating her wishes. “Where were you staying in Leadville?”
“A hotel.”
“Which hotel?”
Her lodging probably didn’t have the same name as it did in 1945. It might not have even existed. “I don’t remember the name. I left the receipt in your cabin. I wrote a goodbye note on the back.”
“You must have driven to get up here. Where’s your car parked?”
“When I was skiing, I got lost. I don’t know where my car is.” That much was true. “You have to take me to Leadville. From there, I can find my way back to Denver. Or I might find a specialist in Aspen.”
“Aspen?” He gave her a puzzled look. “You won’t find much of anything in that sleepy little town.”
Of course not. The development of Aspen into a glittering, world-class ski resort took place after World War II. If she remembered correctly, returning soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division were largely responsible for that growth.
The door to the office swung open and a stocky man dressed in old-fashioned ski knickers strode inside. “I have been looking for you, Luke. You promised to show me the best trails.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We will leave soon. Very soon.” His accent was Italian. His dark eyes sparkled when he noticed Shana. “But first I must meet this charming young lady. You are?”
“Shana Parisi,” she said. “Buon giorno.”
Obviously delighted, he responded in Italian. Shana used rudimentary Italian she’d learned from her grandmother to make polite conversation about the weather and the scenery.
He took her hand and lifted it to his lips in a courtly gesture. “I am Enrico Fermi.”
“The Nobel Prize winner?”
“You know my work?”
“Absolutely.”
He was one of the most brilliant physicists of all time, the father of nuclear fission. She’d studied his theories, seen his face in textbooks. Fermi worked on the Manhattan project and had been at Los Alamos where the atom bomb was developed.
A realization struck her. The first atomic bomb test had taken place in 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Shana even recalled the date because it was the same as her sister’s birthday, and their father always called her sister a bombshell. July 16, 1945.
“What’s the date today?”
“May seventh,” Luke said.
In two months, Dr. Enrico Fermi and the other scientists at Los Alamos would change the world.
Chapter Four
In the back of her mind, Shana heard the wail of a siren. An ambulance. Though faraway, the scream was all-consuming, echoing inside her skull.
She wanted to reach up and touch her head, but her arm wouldn’t move. There were loud voices. Slamming doors.
Then a terrible silence.
IN THE OFFICE at Camp Hale, Shana glanced from Dr. Fermi to Luke. Had she heard an ambulance? How did she get here?
Coldly, Luke asked, “How do you know Dr. Fermi’s work?”
Brushing aside her strange auditory hallucination, she tried to focus on an explanation. She reminded herself that this was 1945, and very few people were aware of the top secret Manhattan Project. No one—not even Fermi himself—had witnessed the mushroom-shaped cloud that would loom forever across political horizons. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not yet taken place.
The importance of those earthshaking events made her own predicament seem light as a Nerf ball. Still, she had to choose her words carefully. Or else she might find herself locked up in a prison, accused of treason. She avoided looking directly into Luke’s honest blue eyes as she said, “Anyone who’s studied physics knows Dr. Fermi. He won the Nobel.” She turned to him. “Which year?”
“Nineteen thirty-eight,” he said. “When I went to Sweden to collect my prize, I emigrated to the United States. Italy under the dictator, Mussolini, was unsafe for my family. My wife is Jewish.”
“Our country is lucky to have you, sir.” If Fermi had stayed in Europe, his work in nuclear fission might have led to another nation being the first to develop the atom bomb. “May I ask what you’re doing at Camp Hale?”
“I am here with a team to explore some of the mining operations.”
The logical deduction was that Fermi had come to Leadville to test the quality of uranium ore being mined in this area. A high grade of enriched uranium was needed to make yellow cake for the reactors.
“Perhaps I can help,” she offered. “I’m a geologist.”
“Bella e brillante,” he said.
“Beautiful and smart?” she translated. “I don’t know how true that is.”
“No need for modesty.” He tucked her arm through his. “Come. You will meet the rest of my team.”
Luke cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Dr. Fermi. Shana isn’t feeling well. We were on our way to the infirmary.”
“I feel much better,” she said quickly. Fermi was offering her a way around Luke’s difficult questions, and she’d be a fool not to take advantage. “I’d be delighted to meet the rest of Dr. Fermi’s crew.”
As they walked through the door, Luke leaned close and whispered, “I’m not letting you out of my sight. Not for one damn minute.”
“Lucky you,” she whispered back.
Shana knew her behavior was suspicious. If she actually had been a secret agent, her first order of business would be to get close to Dr. Fermi, to encourage him to trust her so she could kidnap him. But a far different agenda was taking form in her mind. There had to be a scientific explanation for how she’d traveled back in time. What could be better than to have one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time helping her figure out the process? Unfortunately, she didn’t think time travel and relativity were Fermi’s specialty. “Do you know Dr. Einstein?” she asked.
“Albert? Sure, I do.”
“What do you think of his theories of speed and time?”
Fermi gave an elaborate shrug, a gesture that reminded her of her Italian grandfather. “Until we are able to exceed the speed of light, his ideas will be untested. This is not to say they are untrue. Physics shows us that almost anything is possible.”
“I like the way you think.” Nothing was impossible. She’d shot backward in time. Reversing the process ought to be within the realm of possibility.
“You are an interesting woman, Shana Parisi. Bella e brillante.”
She tossed a glance over her shoulder at Luke, who was positively fuming. His tense jaw made it look as if he was grinding his rear molars together. Too bad! If she had Dr. Fermi on her side, she didn’t need Luke’s approval.
They left the long whitewashed administrative building and stepped onto the sanded, hard-packed pathway that led through the snow. Dr. Fermi directed her toward the large two-story house where he and his crew were staying.
As they walked, two soldiers in full battle gear fell into step behind them. She assumed that their assignment was to protect Dr. Fermi, but they could also be keeping an eye on her because she was so terribly suspicious. The thought made her grin. Her personality had always been straightforward, direct and responsible. Hardly a woman of mystery.
In spite of the size of the camp and the number of barracks, there were only a few soldiers on the pathway. She asked, “How many men are stationed here?”
“There are only a couple of administrative types and four rifle squads left. About sixty people altogether,” Luke said. “Everybody else has shipped out to Italy. The Po Valley.”
Dr. Fermi’s fingers tightened on her arm. “The Apennine Mountains. In better days, it was a magnificent place for skiing and climbing.”
“The war will be over soon,” she promised. In May of 1945, it was almost a year since the D-day invasion. The Allied Forces were close to victory in Europe.
“Not soon enough.” He turned to Luke. “In the meantime, we ski. Yes?”
“We will try to accommodate your request, sir.”
“Tonight, I will commandeer the kitchen and make pasta for everybody. My wife’s recipe is—” Fermi kissed his fingertips “—perfecto.”
“Down!” Luke shouted.
Before she had a chance to react, he’d thrown himself on top of her and Fermi, dragging them both to the snow and covering them with his body.
From faraway, there was the sharp crack of a rifle being fired. She heard the thud of a bullet hitting the barracks behind them.
The two soldiers who had been guarding them moved into position and returned fire.
Cautiously, Shana lifted her chin from the snow and peered up into the forested slope leading into camp. She couldn’t see the person who’d fired at them. When she tried to rise, she couldn’t move. Luke ordered, “Keep your head down.”
His muscular thigh pinned her to the ground. He had saved her life. Again. Rescuing her was turning into a full-time occupation for him.
While barking orders at his men, he yanked her and Fermi to their feet and hustled them into the main building. Inside, he brushed the snow from her shoulders. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, aware that her heart was beating faster. Camp Hale was turning out to be a dangerous place for her. Either she was going to be locked up as a spy or someone was going to shoot her.
They rushed up a staircase to the second floor and entered a large room with a conference table. Two other men stood in front of a blackboard that was covered with mathematical equations. Their eyes were watchful. Their manner, tense. One of them asked, “What happened?”
“Sniper,” Luke said. “Don’t leave this room. Stay away from the windows.”
As he turned on his heel and left, the enormous implications of the sniper attack sank into Shana’s consciousness. What if Fermi had been shot? Or killed? The Manhattan Project was only a few months away from the first test in Alamogordo. If Fermi wasn’t there to oversee the final stages, the project might fail. History would be changed.
Fermi smoothed his thinning hair across his forehead. He seemed little affected by the fact that someone had been shooting at him. In Italian, he muttered a curse. “I suppose this means there will be no skiing today.”
“Probably not,” Shana said. “The risk is too great.”
He led her toward the other two men and introduced them: Dr. Schultz and Dr. Douglas. Both wore thick glasses. Both had the distracted air of men who spent more time thinking than working out.
Fermi added, “Dr. Douglas is a physicist. He is very interested in theories of time.”
A shy grin twitched the corner of his mouth, and his long face brightened as he shook her hand. “Call me Dougie.”
“Tell me, Dougie. What do you think of time travel?”
“Interdimensional reality.” He gave a curt nod. “Relative planes of existence. And psychology.”
“Okay.” She had no idea what he was talking about. “How does psychology relate to time travel?”
“You’ve heard the phrase living in the past,” he said. “Sometimes, when we think about past events, they seem real. We recall details—very specific sounds and smells—that were not evident at the time they happened.”
“But those are memories,” she said.
“Are they? Isn’t it possible that we have actually returned to a prior event?”
With a glance toward Dr. Fermi, she said, “Anything is possible.”
Dougie nodded. “There’s so much more to learn. We haven’t yet begun to explore the nonlinear functions of the brain.”
Though Shana didn’t exactly understand, she was encouraged. The sheer brainpower generated among the three men in this room was enough to move mountains and possibly return her to her own century.
“Good news,” Dr. Fermi announced to his colleagues. “We no longer need to wait for the geologist from Denver. Miss Parisi can take his place.”
“Excellent,” Schultz said. “We can complete our analysis of tuballoy from the four sites and return to Los Alamos by the weekend.”
“I’ve never heard of tuballoy,” she said. “Is it a mineral?”
Fermi studied her intently for a moment before he spoke. “Tuballoy is a code name. I wonder how much I can trust you, Miss Parisi.”
Again, she was faced with the dilemma of having no one in this time period who could vouch for her. She could only rely on herself. Shana straightened her shoulders and spoke in a clear voice. “If there’s anything I can do to help you in your work, to help you end this terrible war, I’m ready, willing and able.”
He glanced at the other two men, then back to her. “I believe you.”
His vote of confidence touched her. Unfortunately, she didn’t think it would be so easy to convince Luke.
LUKE STALKED DOWN the second-floor corridor of the main house with Shana following close behind. They turned the ninety-degree corner leading to the uninhabited south wing.
He had a couple of hard decisions to make. Fermi had outlined his plan to use Shana to provide the expert geological analysis at the four mine sites. If she was a spy, they’d be handing over valuable information to her. But Shana’s involvement wasn’t the worst of Luke’s worries. He couldn’t think of a safe way to transport Fermi across the open countryside to the mines while there was a sniper in the area. “This is one hell of a SNAFU,” he muttered.
“A what?”
“SNAFU,” he repeated. “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up.”
Shoving open the door to a bedroom, he marched inside and unceremoniously dumped Shana’s knapsack and skis on the floor beside the three-drawer knotty pine dresser. “You’ll be staying here.”
She glanced at the bare whitewashed walls of the small square room. The only window was covered with blinds. “Am I a prisoner?”
“You’ll be watched.” He didn’t like having her here. She was a problem, a possible security risk. And he was damn sure she didn’t have amnesia.
Casually, she sauntered over to the bed, leaned down and pushed against the mattress with both hands. She frowned. “Hard as a cement slab.”
“Government issue,” he said. “In case you haven’t heard, there’s a war going on. Luxury is not a top priority.”
She perched on the edge of the bed, crossed her long legs and looked up at him though her thick black lashes. Though he doubted that her intentions were sexual, his mind went in that direction. Their night together had been unforgettable. Too easily, he remembered her arms wrapped tightly around him, could almost see the way she’d leaned toward him, filled with longings and desires as great as his own.
“Thank you,” she said, “for saving my life again.”
“The sniper wasn’t aiming at you.”
Twin frown lines creased her brow. “Do you think he was after Dr. Fermi?”
“Yes.”
“Luke, it’s very important that you protect him.”
Just what he needed. More of her so-called “expert advice.” For a woman, she was damned pushy, not a bit hesitant to give orders. “Do me a favor, Shana. Don’t tell me how to do my job.”
“If anything happens to Fermi, the course of history will be forever changed.” There was an urgency in her voice. “Don’t ask me how I know, but I do.”
Her dark eyes glittered with a passion that had nothing to do with sex. This fire came from the soul of a true believer. A fanatic. Who was she? Why had she come here?
He took out his pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and tapped one out. Before he could light up, she said, “I’d appreciate if you didn’t smoke in my bedroom.”
“Fine.” He returned the cigarette to the pack. “If I’m going to give the go-ahead on Fermi’s plan to take you along on his visits to the mine, I’m going to need some answers, Shana. And I need them now.”
“There’s only one thing that’s important. I promise that we’re on the same side.”
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Cassie Miles
COLORADO DESTINYIt was a powerful Rocky Mountain blizzard that caught scientist Shana Parisi unawares and threw her into the arms of a mysterious man in uniform. Luke Rawlins rescued her from danger, but it was the mesmerizing look in his eyes that captured her heart…and forged their destiny.Luke knew bringing the beautiful Shana home posed a threat to his secrets, but a foreign enemy was hot on their trail and Shana's snowy footprints were all they needed to track her down. Once entrenched in his world, Luke urged her to remain silent about what she saw. Because the alternative could be deadly….
This is my destiny.
Through the swirling eddies of snow, she saw him. A man dressed in white from head to toe—camouflaged in the storm. Though he was skiing uphill against the pelting wind, he moved with great speed, driving his long skis forward. His technique amazed her.
“Who are you?” Shana asked once he’d approached.
“Sergeant Luke Rawlins.”
A soldier? Though she was dizzy and weak, she cracked a smile. It seemed that the cavalry had skied over the hill and come to her rescue. All she could see of his face was a firm, stubborn jaw.
With a huge effort, she stood upright, knee-deep in snow. Her legs felt like rubber. The cold had drained the last bit of strength from her muscles.
Before she could tell him that she was fine, her eyelids closed. She was falling through the swirling snow into unconsciousness.
Footprints in the Snow
Cassie Miles
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To the brave men and women of the
10th Mountain Division. And, as always, to my
favorite Marine sergeant, Rick Hanson.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cassie Miles lives in a Denver high-rise with a view of the Front Range through her office window—a huge temptation to get outside and play. After a broken ankle a few years ago, she hung up her skis, but still enjoys hiking, climbing and sitting in a grove of aspen, reading a book.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Shana Parisi—An exploration geologist on vacation in Colorado when she’s swept up in a surprise blizzard.
Luke Rawlins—A sergeant in the 10th Mountain Division who has already seen action on the front lines.
Enrico Fermi—Nobel Prize–winning physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.
Dr. Douglas & Dr. Schultz—Coworkers with Dr. Fermi.
Verne Hughes—Captain in charge of operations at Camp Hale.
Henry Harrison—Private First Class, conscripted into the 10th.
Edward Martin—Private First Class in the 10th.
Jack Swenson—Expert ski instructor and mountain man from Aspen.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter One
Shana Parisi knew better than to leave the well-marked cross-country ski trail in the mountains outside Leadville. Above all, she believed in following the rules. Her logical, predictable nature served her well in her work as an exploration geologist for AMVOX Oil.
But today was somehow different. Acting on impulse, she’d stepped off the marked trail and gone exploring. Ignoring the beginning twinges of a headache, she’d skied from one interesting geological feature to another. These mineral-rich mountains were like a trip to Disneyland, especially since she’d spent the past year and a half on assignment in Kuwait. Colorado felt so clean, so fresh, so incredibly all-American.
She poked around the edges of an open pit mine. Studied the striation on a granite cliff. And entered a natural cave pocked with dark crystals, several of which found their way into her pocket along with an unusual shard of glassy green that looked like trinite.
Outside the cave, she slipped her boots into the bindings of her short backcountry skis, fastened the tethers and inhaled a gasp of the thin mountain air. Her lungs burned. Glancing at her wristwatch, she saw that she’d been out here for over three hours. Too long. Her slight headache had turned into a real killer.
Adjusting her goggles, she peered downhill at a wide slope bordered by thick pine forest on either side and tried to remember where she’d left the cross-country trail. Downhill to the left. Or to the right? Every year dozens of people got lost in these mountains. Some were never found.
Surely, she hadn’t gone too far off track. Reaching up, she tightened the scrunchie that held her thick black hair up in a ponytail. Earlier, she’d taken off her heavy gloves and parka; the May weather was warm enough for skiing in just a down vest and turtleneck.
It was colder now. Heavy gray clouds roiled overhead, and darker clouds were coming in behind them. Snowflakes fell in nasty little sputters. Should she dig her warmer gear out of her backpack? Making that simple decision seemed difficult; the inside of her head was fuzzy. Something was wrong with her. Maybe altitude sickness. She was near the Continental Divide, over ten thousand feet. She needed to get off this mountain.
Though tempted to tuck into a ball and schuss downhill like an Alpine skier, she wasn’t that skilled. Carefully, she traversed the ridge above the snow-covered slope. It took all of her concentration to coordinate thrusting with her skis and picking with her poles.
A fierce wind gusted around her, taking her breath away. A strange glow surrounded her—like a spotlight from the heavens. The wind became a deafening roar. Her body was weightless, disconnected. What’s happening? She blinked slowly and everything returned to normal.
Then, the storm hit hard. An instant blizzard. The heavens split open and dumped a truckload of snow on her head.
Her goggles smeared with moisture, and she could barely see. The freezing cold sank through her turtleneck and into her bones as she kept going. Though she was skiing furiously across the ridge, it felt as if she was standing still, suspended in the storm.
Turning to dig in with her edges, her skis stuttered across a patch of ice then slipped out from under her. A scream wrenched from her throat as she went flying. Her boots broke free from the bindings, and she released the poles. In a somersault, she landed on her backpack and slid downhill. Her skis, still attached by tethers, crashed beside her. She dug in the heels of her boots, fighting until finally she came to a stop.
When she struggled to stand, her feet sank deep into the snowpack, and she sprawled backward. With her heart beating rapidly, she couldn’t catch her breath. She was dizzy, light-headed. The entire world was shrouded in white. And cold. God, it was cold.
Forcing herself up, she lurched and stumbled again, falling forward on her hands and knees. A wave of nausea surged in her belly. She vomited into the snow.
She needed to pull herself together, but she couldn’t move. Did she hit her head when she fell? Was she paralyzed? More likely, she was in early stage hypothermia. A seductive lassitude. This is what happens when you break the rules.
It occurred to her that she might die. Alone. Unmarried and without children. There would be no one to mourn her passing except for her globe-trotting diplomat father whose greatest concern would be to choose the most appropriate coffin.
She lay back in the snow, too cold to care what happened to her. The roaring winds swept over her. In their wake came confusion. And then, a strong sense of certainty. She was meant to be here at this place and in this time. This is my destiny.
Through the swirling eddies of snow, she saw him. A man dressed in white from head to toe—camouflaged in the storm. Though he was skiing uphill against the pelting wind, he moved with great speed, driving his long skis forward. His technique amazed her. This guy was an incredible Nordic skier. A real athlete.
By the time she forced herself to sit up, he was beside her. She peered up at him. “Who are you?”
“Sergeant Luke Rawlins, 10th Mountain Division.”
A soldier? Though she was dizzy and weak, she cracked a smile. It seemed that the cavalry had skied over the hill and come to her rescue. His head was covered by the white hood of his fur-lined parka. His eyes were hidden behind goggles. All she could see of his face was a firm, stubborn jaw.
With a huge effort, she stood upright, knee-deep in snow. Her legs felt like rubber. The cold had drained the last bit of strength from her muscles.
Before she could tell him that she was fine, her eyelids closed. She was falling through the whirling snow into unconsciousness.
IN HIS ONE-ROOM CABIN, Luke pulled the wet turtleneck up and over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Though his purpose in stripping off her wet clothes was to get her dried off and warmed up, he couldn’t help looking. Her body was slim, but she curved in all the right places. The flare from her slender waist to her hips was sheer perfection. Her olive skin was smooth and unblemished except for three little moles that formed a triangle above her hip bone. Her breasts were small but exquisite—more beautiful than the marble statues he’d seen in Italy.
It had been a long time since he’d been with a naked woman. Nearly half a year. Before he shipped out for the front lines. Before he’d been wounded.
The woman he held in his arms groaned. Her head lifted for a moment before lolling forward. He tugged one of his army-issued T-shirts over her head and shoulders, then stretched her out on the bed and pulled up the covers to her chin.
Sitting beside her on the edge of the bed, he held her wrist to check her pulse. The beat was steady and stable; she was going to be all right after she warmed up. Though she’d taken one hell of a fall, she had no broken bones. Tomorrow, she’d feel the bruises.
Her nose wiggled as she stirred in her sleep. Then she sighed and went quiet again. She was beautiful, a regular sleeping beauty. Her thick black hair framed her face. Delicate eyebrows arched above her full lashes. Her best feature was her full, pouty lips. She had the kind of mouth that begged to be kissed.
When he’d rescued her from the blizzard, she’d looked like hell with snow matting her hair, her complexion drained and her lips tinged with blue. What had she been doing out here? This wasn’t a sanctioned area; she shouldn’t have been up here, but he was glad she’d broken the rules. This pretty lady—whoever she was—made a good diversion.
Only a few hours ago, Luke had received his orders to return to the front lines of battle. In less than a week, he’d be shipped back to hell. He wasn’t a coward, but the order scared him. He remembered too well. Too many scenes of carnage were burned in his memory. When he closed his eyes, he saw the blood and the devastation. Buildings shattered. People torn apart. His ears still echoed with the cries of dying men and women. He felt the pain of his own wounds and relived the moment when he had been shot, when he saw his own death and welcomed it.
He didn’t want to go back. Except for one thing.
He glanced toward the snapshot on the table. A picture of an eight-year-old boy with thick, curly black hair. His skinny chest thrust proudly as he waved to the camera. Roberto. Though Luke needed no reminder of the boy, he always carried that photo with him. He’d made a promise to Roberto. I’ll come back for you. That solemn vow was more important to him than the war or his dedication to the 10th Mountain Division or even his own survival. Roberto was the reason Luke would return to the front. Though it seemed impossible to find one small boy among the multitude of orphans left by the war, he had to try.
When Luke came to the cabin tonight, he’d been hoping to find his sense of purpose. Because he was going to need every bit of his strength and courage to find Roberto and make everything turn out okay, he needed a reason to believe in himself again. And the storm had brought this strange woman to him.
He hadn’t noticed her on the slope until he heard a yelp and saw her crashing out of control. She’d been a long way uphill from where he’d been standing, and he had to backtrack and circle around before he could reach her. She was damned lucky that he’d shown up when he did.
He’d saved her life. The odds against him being nearby at the exact moment when she crashed were a million to one. And if he hadn’t been here, she would have frozen to death in this freak spring blizzard. Lucky for her. And for him, too.
The fact that he’d been there—at the right place and in the right time to save her—gave him satisfaction. It was almost enough to renew his spirit, almost enough to make him believe in the possibility of redemption.
Leaving her bedside, he went to the table and poured a double shot of Jack Daniel’s into a mug. Holding the cup aloft, he toasted her. “Here’s looking at you.”
She groaned. Her eyelids fluttered.
Luke savored his whiskey and waited patiently.
When she finally wakened, she bolted upright to a sitting posture. Her dark brown eyes were huge and luminous. “Where am I?”
“One of the mountain huts constructed by the 10th Mountain Division.”
Though she nodded in apparent understanding, he saw confusion in her rapidly darting gaze. Her lips worked before forming words. “I’ve always wanted to stay in one of these huts. It’s almost impossible to get a reservation.”
Though her words didn’t make sense—a reservation?—she was relatively coherent. He nodded toward a cup of water on a chair beside the bed. “You should drink something.”
“Right. I’m probably dehydrated.”
As she sipped the water, his gaze went again to those full, ripe lips. His temperature rose. The memory of her lush naked body lingered in his mind.
He reached for the opened pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes on the table. “Smoke?”
“I quit, but I don’t mind if you do. You’re Luke. Is that right?”
He nodded. “And you are?”
“Shana Parisi.”
“Nice to meet you, Shana Parisi.” He liked the way her name rolled off his tongue. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, except for the headache from hell.”
“I assessed your physical condition. Your vitals are strong. I got you warmed up before you went into hypothermia, but you probably have altitude sickness. I’m guessing you haven’t been at this elevation for more than a day or two.”
“Your guess is correct.”
“Where are you from?”
“Most recently, Kuwait. Before that, Thailand.”
He hadn’t expected that response. Kuwait? Thailand? She was turning into a very interesting diversion. “What brings you to Colorado?”
With a frown, she rubbed at her temple. “I’m a geologist. I work for AMVOX Oil, and we’re looking into an oil shale operation on the western slope.”
A geologist. That explained the rock samples he’d found in her pockets. Luke finished off the dregs of his Jack Daniel’s, glad for the whiskey warmth that spread through him and lightened his mood. He sure as hell hadn’t expected to be smiling tonight.
She eyed him curiously. “You knew exactly what was wrong with me. Are you a doctor?”
“Trained as a medic,” he said. “But it wasn’t a complicated diagnosis to figure out that somebody who was turning into a human Popsicle might be going into hypothermia.”
“When does the headache go away?”
“After a couple of aspirin. First, you need to eat something to elevate your blood sugar.”
He crossed the two steps from the table to the bed and held out a Baby Ruth. When she took it from him, their hands touched. An electric spark shot up his arm.
She’d felt it, too. A gasp escaped her lips. Her dark brown eyes widened in surprise.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For the chocolate.”
Shana couldn’t quite believe the explosion of energy and awareness that came when they accidentally touched. That electric sensation was almost enough to make her forget that her head ached and her body was stiff and sore. Luke Rawlins was quite a man.
Immediately she knew that she needed to be careful around him. He reminded her of a lot of the guys she’d worked with on exploration and drilling sites. They fancied themselves to be superstuds, and she’d learned long ago to keep her distance. She didn’t want to be just another notch on the bedpost.
Purposefully, she looked away from Luke and concentrated on the tangible facts. She was glad to be here and to be warm, blessedly warm. A cast-iron potbellied stove stood near the door where their parkas hung on hooks. There were no extra frills in this small, one-room cabin lit by the amber glow of lanterns. A hut. She knew a bit about this system of simple log cabins that had been constructed in the 1940s by the 10th Mountain Division. In Leadville, there were dozens of memorials to these World War II heroes. “Didn’t you say that you were with the 10th Mountain Division?”
“That’s right.”
“Those guys were supposed to be the best skiers, mountain climbers and sharpshooters in the world. Elite commandos.”
“We still are.”
As she peeled the wrapper off her Baby Ruth, she dared to study this soldier in his army-green fatigues—kind of a weird outfit for somebody who was on vacation at a mountain hut. But she was willing to excuse this minor eccentricity. The man had saved her life. Also, he was remarkably good-looking with deep-set blue eyes and the tanned complexion of an outdoorsman. His brown hair was short in a no-nonsense military cut that worked for him. She guessed that he was in his early thirties. If she’d been in the market for a man, he’d be the right age.
But she wasn’t looking. Or was she? There was a sense of destiny about being here, being with him. Destiny? Yeah, sure. She believed in science, not kismet. Trying to ignore the twinges of pain inside her head, she nibbled at her candy bar and sipped the water. Rehydration was important.
He tapped a cigarette from the pack, flipped open a Zippo lighter and lit up. Though she hated the tobacco smell, she was pleased. The fact that he had at least one disgusting habit was proof that he wasn’t perfect. Not the right guy for me.
When he stood, she realized how tall he was—at least four inches over six feet. His body was lean but muscular with square shoulders, and he was obviously in excellent condition. Even in his poorly fitted fatigues, his muscular thighs bulged.
“I should thank you again,” she said. “You saved my life.”
“My pleasure.” He went to the potbellied stove, opened the latched door and laid another piece of wood on the fire.
His pleasure? A shiver of awareness rippled through her. Beneath the quilts and blankets on the bed, she wore nothing but an oversize olive-drab T-shirt. Near the door, she saw her ski pants and her turtleneck hung up to dry. But she didn’t remember getting undressed. Her fingers plucked at the cotton fabric of T-shirt. “Is this yours?”
“I had to strip off those wet clothes so you could warm up. But don’t worry. I kept my eyes closed.”
Stripped naked by a stranger. She should have been humiliated, wildly embarrassed. Kept his eyes closed? Yeah, right.
When she gazed accusingly into his coolly assessing blue eyes, she saw a hint of approval. Then he grinned. Apparently, he’d been pleased by what he’d seen when he changed her clothes.
In normal circumstances, she would have lashed out, making it very clear that he would never ever see her naked again. Instead, a lovely warmth blossomed inside her. She could do a lot worse than being swept off her feet by Luke Rawlins. “I’ll have that aspirin now.”
He tossed her a small glass bottle and returned to the chair where he sat and stretched out his long legs. Leaning back, he took a puff on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.
Slightly mesmerized, she watched. He even made smoking look sexy. Quickly, she gulped down three aspirin. She really ought to get out of here before she did something she’d regret. Like throwing herself into his arms. Or ripping off her T-shirt. Or, better yet, tearing off his clothes piece by piece. “I should go now. I’ve already imposed too much on your hospitality.”
“It’s late, Shana. Almost dark. You’re going nowhere tonight.”
She peered through the frost-rimed glass of the only window in the cabin. Outside, it was heavy and gray but the blizzard seemed to have stopped. She was aware of the wind whistling through the branches of the pine trees and sweeping against the log walls of the cabin. “Do you have a car? Or a snowmobile? Some kind of transportation?”
“Just my skis.”
“Maybe I could call for help. Do you have my pack?”
He went toward the door, picked up her pack and set it on the bed beside her. She sifted through the contents until she found her cell phone, which was totally dead. “Broken. I must have landed on it when I fell.”
She was stranded. Tucked away in a cozy, warm cabin with the sexiest man she’d ever seen. This felt like a fantasy. A dream. But he was here and real—far too potent to vanish when she blinked her eyes.
Needing to assess the situation, she threw off the blankets and climbed out of the bed. In a few strides, she crossed to the door and pulled it open. A blast of cold hit her bare legs. Though the snow had stopped, a drift came all the way up to the cabin’s door and trickled inside. They were in the forest at the edge of a clearing. She saw no sign of other houses. No lights. No roads. Nothing but complete isolation.
Luke came up behind her and shoved the door closed. “You’re here for the night.”
When she looked up into his face, she didn’t want to leave. Wearing only his T-shirt, she should have been cold. Instead, a glowing heat churned through her veins. Strange. She was light-headed, oddly disconnected.
He touched her forehead. “You’re hot.”
“So are you,” she said. “If we rub together, maybe we’ll start a forest fire.”
A smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “I meant to say that you might have a fever.”
“But I don’t feel sick. Not really sick.” But not herself. Her common sense seemed to have vanished, whisked away by the swirling snows on the mountain. She’d been transported to a magical place where normal concerns and hesitations did not apply.
Reaching out, she placed her palm flat against his chest. Through his army fatigues, she felt the steady, strong beating of his heart. The rhythm echoed through her and synchronized perfectly with her own pulse—two hearts beating as one. She was a part of him. Inseparable and needing a deeper connection.
She tilted her chin up. Her lips parted.
When he kissed her, he took his time. She tasted whiskey on his mouth. Slowly, he deepened the kiss.
His arms surrounded her, supporting her. His body pressed against hers. She seemed to rise off the floor, floating on a cloud. A spiral of tingling sensation unfurled and spread from her head to her heart to every intimate part of her.
When his lips left hers, she gazed up at his ruggedly handsome face. Her vision went hazy. Her headache became a steady pulse. Throbbing, but not painful.
She couldn’t believe this was really happening. A strong, gorgeous man had appeared from nowhere to sweep her into his arms and rescue her from certain death. He was her knight in shining ski gear.
Though she barely had the strength to stand, she knew his strong arms would never let her fall. Dazed and in shock, she abandoned herself to this swirling fantasy.
Chapter Two
Shana stumbled off balance. Her back rested against the cabin wall. The cold from outside crept through the logs and chilled her spine, contrasting the fire that burned inside her—an intense heat generated by his kiss.
“Shana,” he whispered, “are you all right?”
She wanted to say yes, but her head was spinning and her knees were weak. “I need to sit down.”
He guided her the few paces to the narrow bed and helped tuck her bare legs under the covers.
Stretched out on the bed, she looked up at him. So handsome. So gentle. This man had saved her life. He was her real-live hero, and he kissed like an expert.
She wanted more kisses, a lot more. This was crazy. Making love to a total stranger? Shana knew better. Years of working in the field, mostly with men, had taught her self-control. But she wasn’t at a job site. This cabin, tucked away in the mountains, was a different reality. Regular rules and restrictions did not apply.
When he started to rise from the bed, she sat up and caught hold of his arm. “Don’t go.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you need something?”
You. I need you. She wanted him to stay close beside her, to kiss her again.
“This doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “I’m nearly naked, and you’re wearing all those clothes.”
She raised her arm and stroked the bristly stubble on his jaw. With a fingertip, she traced a line from his mouth to his chin and down his throat. Aware that her behavior was utterly inappropriate, she began to unbutton his shirt. The effort took all her concentration. Her fingers lacked dexterity.
“Shana, I don’t think this is—”
“Don’t think.” Never before had she been so bold. She must be delirious. “I want this shirt off.”
“Let me.”
He unfastened the buttons and slipped off his shirt, then he pulled his T-shirt over his head. His arms and shoulders were lean yet muscular. A sprinkle of dark hair coated his chest. Below his collarbone, she saw a ragged scar. The suturing had been rushed, clumsy. Another scar crossed his rib cage.
She ran her thumb across the mark on his chest. “What happened?”
“The war happened.”
He’d been injured in battle. He really was a hero. That fact jolted her back toward reality, reminding her that there was a real world outside this cabin. “I’m sorry, Luke.”
“Don’t cry for me. I survived.”
He wasn’t being macho. Just stating a fact.
She held the dog tags that hung around his neck. “Name, rank and serial number,” she said. “Blood type O negative. You’re a universal donor.”
“That’s right.”
“What does the P stand for?”
“Protestant.”
“Or maybe,” she said, “the P stands for Perfect.”
“If you knew me better, you wouldn’t say that.”
“What’s your fatal flaw?”
“Right now? I’m thinking how good it would be to make love to you.”
She nodded, and her brain rattled painfully. She winced. Though she desperately wanted to stay alert, her eyelids drooped. “Making love,” she murmured. “Not a problem.”
“You need to rest. You’re already half-unconscious. I won’t take advantage of you.”
“Rest.” That sounded good. “Sleep.”
He leaned her back, laid her down on the pillow. Though she still had the urge to make love, her body was limp. So tired.
As she closed her eyes, she felt Luke lightly kiss her forehead. He was moving away from her. Yet, in her mind, she could feel his strong arms wrapped tightly around her. The heat of his body permeated her flesh.
She might be dreaming, but this was the most realistic fantasy she’d ever had. She could smell him. Her nostrils flared. A musky scent.
Their clothing melted away, and she experienced the amazing moment when their naked bodies met. The hair on his chest rubbed against her breasts, and her nipples tightened. She groaned with anticipation.
If she opened her eyes, she was certain to see his smile. His firm, stubborn jaw. The shining, intoxicating blue of his eyes.
She was ready for him. Her legs parted, welcoming him. Needing him. She never wanted to wake up. Being with Luke was the right thing. The only thing. She had to have this man. This snow-driven, crystalline fantasy was her destiny.
THE NEXT MORNING, sunlight poured through the window of the small cabin and slanted across the blankets that covered Shana on the narrow bed. Her body ached from injuries she suffered when she crashed down the slope, but she wasn’t complaining. Last night had been fantastic, even if it was only a dream. She lay very still, not really wanting to face the reality of a new day.
Slowly, she opened her eyelids and saw Luke, fully dressed and tending to the fire in the potbellied stove. Though he was the same handsome man who had rescued her, she sensed that today was far different from yesterday and last night. Also, her headache had returned.
“Aspirin,” she croaked.
At the sound of her voice, he turned toward her. His smile was polite but wary. “Aspirin and water are on the chair beside the bed.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected him to say, but that wasn’t it. Vaguely irritated, she reached for the mug, downed three aspirin and lay back on the pillows. Beneath the sheets she was naked and terribly aware of her vulnerability.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Last night, she’d been starving…but not for food. She craved him. Of course, that wasn’t what he was talking about. “I could eat something.”
“My supplies are sparse.” He reached up to a high shelf and grabbed an opened cardboard box that he placed on the table. “I’ve got a couple of K rations I swiped from the quartermaster.”
“K rations?”
“Survival food to carry in combat. If the enemy doesn’t kill you, this stuff will.”
“You’re talking about an MRE, meal ready to eat. When I was in Kuwait, some of the soldiers had them.”
When he placed the box on the bed in front of her, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. The prepackaged energy food had all the appeal of eating tree bark, but she needed to build her strength if she hoped to ski back to civilization. After peeling off the wrapper, she forced herself to bite into the square chunk of tasteless calories. It crumbled in her mouth like sand.
“How about coffee?” Luke asked.
“Oh, yes.”
He went to the potbellied stove. Using a dish towel, he lifted a metal pot from the burner and poured steaming liquid into a mug that looked like vintage Fiestaware. A quaint touch, she thought. These mountain huts had been built in the 1940s and the crockery matched that era. So did the furniture. The Formica table with aluminum legs and matching chairs looked almost new thanks to the retro craze.
When he handed her the mug, there was no spark of electricity. No special thrill. They were strangers again. So that’s the way it’s going to be. Well, fine.
With a dispassionate gaze, she studied him. Still gorgeous, but there was something odd about the way he was dressed. His fatigues were the old-fashioned army drab instead of the usual beige or green camouflage. The fabric seemed stiff and heavy. “You mentioned that you were in the army.”
“Stationed at Camp Hale. Or Camp Hell, as we like to call it.”
“From the 10th Mountain Division.”
He pointed to the crossed sword insignia on the sleeve of his white parka, which hung from a peg near the door. “We climb to conquer.”
Shana took a sip of the bitter coffee, which was nothing like the thick, rich espresso she’d grown to adore while in Kuwait. “Tell me about Camp Hale.”
“Construction started in 1942 under Charles Minnie Dole who started the 10th to train for cold weather warfare. At the high point, there were ten thousand men stationed here. Now, most everybody has shipped out.”
She was no World War II buff, but Shana was certain that Camp Hale no longer existed. In the hotel where she was staying in Leadville, there were several black-and-white photos of the historic Camp Hale site and the famous troops who had fought bravely in Europe at the end of the war. A long time ago. “What are you doing here?”
“Me and a skeleton crew pulled guard duty for a government project.” He checked his wristwatch. “I need to report back real soon.”
“You’re leaving me here?”
“The rest will do you good,” he said. “I’ll come back this afternoon and help you get into town.”
She tasted disappointment with her coffee. Last night, he’d been clear about making no promises that they’d be together. But she expected more from him. Something. Anything.
She glanced toward the cabin door. Her short metallic skis were propped against the wall beside his long wood skis. Hickory skis with old-fashioned cable bindings? The laminated wood shafts of his ski poles were equally antiquated with a twisted bamboo basket.
A rifle also stood near the door. “What kind of gun is that?”
“A .30 caliber Garand with an eight round clip. Standard issue.”
“Not really.” In the Middle East, she’d become familiar with the weaponry used by U.S. troops. “What about the M16? Or the M4 Carbine? The .50 caliber sniper rifle?”
“A .50 caliber?” He scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”
“Every soldier in Iraq carries at least one of those weapons.”
“Iraq?” His eyebrows lifted. “Yeah, I remember now. You were in Kuwait. The Middle East.”
“I know a little bit about military equipment.”
“So you’re an expert.”
“I didn’t say that.” Why was he so cranky? “I was just noticing that you have some old-fashioned equipment. Like those wood skis.”
He fired a glare in her direction but said nothing. If she’d been smart, Shana would have followed his example and kept her mouth shut, but she continued, “I didn’t even know they made bindings like that anymore.”
“Now you’re an expert on ski equipment.” He looked down at her from his towering height. “I should have guessed from your skill on the slopes when you slid halfway down the mountain on your butt.”
“That wasn’t my fault. How could I know a blizzard was coming?”
“A sky full of snow clouds should have been a clue.”
“I get your point.” She adjusted the blankets around her. “I wasn’t being careful. Maybe because of the altitude sickness.”
“Maybe,” he conceded.
“I’m usually a rational, logical person.” At her new assignment in Rifle, she’d be the project manager. “I’m very responsible.”
When she stared directly into his intense blue eyes, she saw a brief spark. A flicker of memory from last night?
“I guess,” he drawled, “I’ll have to take your word about being responsible.”
While she groped in her mind for a snappy comeback, he pulled his snow pants over his fatigues and sat on the chair to lace up his boots, which were also old-fashioned in design. She tried to imagine why Luke—who was obviously an experienced skier—would be using such antiquated equipment.
“I know,” she said. “You’re doing some kind of historical reenactment. Something about the early days of the 10th Mountain Division. Am I right?”
“I don’t have time to play games, and the 10th isn’t history.” He frowned. “Are you feeling okay? You sound a little Looney Tunes this morning.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “As soon as possible, I’m out of here.”
“Whatever you say.”
Wrong! He was supposed to tell her that he’d enjoyed their kiss last night. At the very least, he should offer a couple of light compliments. “I know you enjoyed it. Last night was every man’s fantasy. Being trapped in a cabin with a naked woman.”
“Depends on the woman,” he said.
“Are you telling me I’m not your type?” If she hadn’t still been nearly naked, she would have leaped from the bed and smacked him. “I suppose you prefer brainless blondes.”
“Not really. I wouldn’t kick Betty Grable out of the sack, but Rita Hayworth is my pinup. You’d look a little bit like her if you’d—”
“Stop it,” she snapped. “Rita Hayworth. Camp Hale. Wood skis. Exactly what year do you think it is?”
He slipped on his parka, grabbed his skis and opened the cabin door. “It’s 1945.”
Her jaw dropped. “What?”
“I’ll be back this afternoon. Rest easy, Shana.”
The door closed firmly behind him.
This was just typical of her luck. She finally let down her guard and allowed herself to experience the fantasy of the moment, and the guy was certifiably insane.
She pushed aside the K rations. That was another 1945 term—K ration instead of MRE. Did he really believe it was over sixty years ago?
Did it matter if he did? His message was pretty darn clear. He was done with her. Well, fine. She was done with him, too. No way was she going to wait around in this dinky little cabin for him to come back. Shana could find her own way back to the ski trails and the parking lot where she’d left her rental car.
When she crawled out of the bed, it felt as if every muscle in her body had been strained. A gigantic purple bruise decorated her thigh. She stretched and took a couple of cleansing breaths, hoping to move beyond the pain.
While she dressed, she forced down another cup of coffee, more water and another few bites of the disgusting K ration food substitute. What a lousy way to start her time in Colorado!
Even though Luke had been utterly obnoxious, she probably ought to leave him a note, explaining that she’d decided not to stick around. As she poked around on the table looking for a paper and pencil, she found a black-and-white photograph of a young kid with curly hair. Luke’s son? On the back of the picture was a note written in fountain pen. “Roberto. Christmas, 1944.”
The edges of the photo were frayed, indicating that it had been handled a lot. Carefully, Shana returned the picture to the table.
In her pack, she found a confirmation for her hotel room and scribbled a note on the back.
Thanks for saving my life. Going to town.
Goodbye forever, Shana.
Before leaving, she glanced around the cabin. So much for windswept fantasies. It was time to get back to the real world. She grabbed her skis and trudged out the door.
As if to compensate for her dark mood, the weather was spectacular. Brilliant sunlight illuminated clear blue skies and sparkled like diamonds on the new-fallen snow that decorated the pine trees surrounding the forest. Yesterday’s blizzard was already beginning to melt.
She shoved her boots into the bindings and fastened the tethers. Her first gliding step was agony. When she got back to the hotel in Leadville, Shana intended to spend the rest of the day soaking in the tub, healing her physical wounds.
She followed the tracks of Luke’s skis through the forest. The more she moved, the more her muscles loosened up. Except for the bruise on her hip and the remnant of a headache, she was okay. Slowly, she made her way through the forest to an open slope that seemed familiar. Was this where she’d fallen yesterday?
Though she wasn’t sure which direction led back to the marked cross-country ski trails, she figured that if she kept heading downhill, she’d eventually find her way. She’d barely eased the tip of her ski onto the slope when she heard a gunshot.
Startled, she pulled back and hid in the trees. Why would anybody be shooting up here? It wasn’t hunting season. She thought of Luke and his rifle. He’d claimed to be doing guard duty on a government project. War games? Glancing back over her shoulder, she thought of returning to the cabin and barring the door. Then she saw them.
About twenty yards downhill, two men dressed in black skied across the slope, moving fast and ducking down. One of them turned and fired wildly with a handgun.
Shana ducked. This was crazy. His bullet could have gone anywhere.
Luke appeared. Clad in his all-white parka and ski pants, he was camouflaged against the glittering white snow, but nothing could hide his skill and dexterity on his long, wood skis. He moved fast, bursting out of the forest and onto the open slope. Halfway across, he swooshed to a halt, sending up a spray of powder snow. He dropped to one knee. With one smooth move, he flipped his Garand rifle from a sheath on his back into his gloved hands. Sighting down the barrel, he fired. Once. Then again.
One of the men Luke had been pursuing gave a pained shout. He was hit, but he didn’t go down. He and his partner disappeared into the trees on the opposite side of the slope.
Luke set off in single-minded pursuit.
Shana couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but she was dead certain that she wanted no part of this violence. What she needed was to get the hell away from here.
Desperately, she edged uphill, away from the fight. As she crested the slope, she found herself looking down into a wide valley. There were over a hundred rectangular barracks arranged in neat rows—housing for ten thousand men.
Smoke rose from some of the chimneys, and she saw a soldier leading a mule across the hard-packed snow. An old army jeep chugged on a snow-covered roadway in front of a large two-story house with two separate wings. There was a mess hall. Other administrative buildings. A barn.
This was Camp Hale. From 1945.
Chapter Three
This huge army base hadn’t been here yesterday. It hadn’t been here for the past fifty years. It didn’t exist anymore.
Shana blinked furiously, hoping to erase the visual evidence. When she stared down the slope, nothing had changed. Camp Hale spread out before her like a black-and-white photograph come to life. Apparently, Luke wasn’t crazy. She was.
Her mind searched for a logical explanation.
Possibly, the site had been recreated as a historical place. With all those barracks? Housing for ten thousand troops? The cost of running the base would be too high.
If someone had rebuilt Camp Hale, they had to have a lot of cash. A movie? That made more sense. Hollywood people might be extravagant enough to reconstruct the base to make a movie about the legendary 10th Mountain Division.
But when she peered down toward the camp, she saw nothing resembling the lights and cameras needed by a movie crew. Instead of a movie crew led by Steven Spielberg, there were soldiers in fatigues. The only vehicles were vintage army jeeps. And mules.
More gunfire echoed behind her, and she startled. The obvious escape led straight down the hill into the camp, but she didn’t want to go there. Once she entered that 1945 world, she might never be able to return to her own time, her own millennium. She didn’t want to be swallowed up by the past.
This vision had to be an illusion, an aftereffect of altitude sickness. Luke had told her it was 1945. His suggestion must have triggered this fantasy from the photographs she’d seen in Leadville.
A fantasy? That wasn’t the way her mind worked. Shana was a scientist. Her life was based on rock-solid facts and rational analysis. She didn’t believe in fairy tales and had very little need for imagination. Last night with Luke was the closest she’d ever come to a fantasy.
Did their kiss even happen? Or was that a part of this winter mirage? Think, Shana. Somehow this had to make sense. Maybe she’d died on the slopes and Camp Hale was limbo. She wasn’t someone who…traveled backward through time.
This wasn’t happening; she refused to accept Camp Hale no matter how real it looked. The important thing was to find her way back to reality. Forcing her legs to move, she turned away from the encampment. Ignore it. Pretend that you never saw Camp Hale. Ski back to the rental car, back to Leadville.
“Halt,” came a shout from down the hill.
Two men—dressed like Luke in all-white snow gear—charged up the slope toward her. Their movements seemed labored; neither of them were as proficient on skis as Luke. While one man continued to approach, the other dropped to one knee and leveled a rifle at her chest.
“Raise your hands above your head.”
Shana did as she was told. Even in an imaginary world, she had no desire to be shot.
“You’re a girl,” said the guy who reached her first. He turned and waved to his partner. “Lower your weapon.”
He did as ordered and came toward them.
The first man asked, “What the hell are you doing up here, girlie?”
Though her mouth was dry, Shana forced words past her lips. “I’m with Luke. Luke Rawlins.”
“No kidding?” He turned back to his partner again. “She says she’s with Sergeant Rawlins.”
The second man joined them. When he pushed back the fur-lined hood of his parka, she was surprised to see how young he looked. This tall, lanky kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He frowned at her. “I don’t believe it. The sergeant isn’t a womanizer, and he knows better than to bring a girl up here.”
“She could be a spy. Take a look at her skis. I’ve never seen anything like those before. They’re made out of plastic.”
“Fiberglass,” Shana said. She’d spent enough time on drilling sites to know how to deal with men who didn’t trust her opinions and skills. It was important to immediately establish that she wasn’t a brainless twit. She kept her voice calm. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for everything, gentlemen. May I lower my hands?”
“Not yet,” said the young guy. He came close and patted her down in a clumsy frisk. “Take off that knapsack and hand it to me.”
She obeyed his order and watched as the two of them pawed through the contents of her pack. The younger man flipped open her wallet. “International Driver’s License,” he said accusingly. “Your name is Shana Parisi?”
“Yes. And you are?”
“Private First Class Henry Harrison.”
She turned to the other man. “And you?”
“I don’t have to tell you my name.”
He pushed back his hood, revealing black hair in a bowl cut like one of the Three Stooges. She decided to think of him as Moe. He took the wallet from Henry and studied her license. “Parisi, huh? Are you Italian?”
“My grandparents were from Italy. Naples.”
“The land of Mussolini.”
Moe and Henry exchanged a meaningful glance and nodded. The land of Mussolini? Oh, please. Anger surged through her veins. “I’m not a spy.”
“Then what are you?” Moe demanded. “You’re not one of those Mafiosos, are you? A girlfriend of Al Capone?”
Could he possibly be more stereotypical and insulting? Obviously, “political correctness” had not been part of the vocabulary in 1945. “Not all Italians are part of the Mafia.”
Young Henry thrust her cell phone toward her. “What’s this thing?”
“A telephone. It’s not working right now.”
“That’s a load of malarkey.” He gave a snort. “A telephone without wires. Like a walkie-talkie. This looks like spy equipment to me.”
Moe snapped her wallet closed. “This license is a bad forgery. They got your birthday wrong. Says here that you were born in 1974. That’s almost thirty years from now.”
Because it’s 1945. That idea was beginning to sink into her consciousness. These two men—Henry and Moe—were clearly from a bygone era.
“You got one more chance,” Moe said, “And you better be telling me God’s own truth. Why are you here in this restricted area?”
“If you talk to Luke,” she said, “he can explain.”
Moe scowled as he shoved her belongings into her backpack and tossed it toward her. “We’ll take her to Luke,” he said as if it was his very own idea. “Come on, Henry. Let’s escort Miss Parisi into camp.”
FRUSTRATION BOILED in Luke’s blood. The men he’d been chasing had gotten away clean. He’d failed in his pursuit.
When he’d spotted them, they were peering down at Camp Hale with binoculars. They fled when he approached, then opened fire with their handguns. Luke was sure he’d winged one of them before they skied out of range and hopped into a waiting vehicle. He should have had them, should have aimed more carefully, should have skied faster.
Though Captain Hughes hadn’t reprimanded him, Luke knew he’d screwed up a simple mission of protecting the perimeters at Camp Hale. After his years of training in mountain combat, he should have been more effective.
And now, he had Shana to deal with.
He stormed into the vacant office where she was being held. Closing the door behind him, he said, “I told you to wait for me at the cabin.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“Maybe you should. You’re in serious trouble, lady.”
As she stood and faced him, he realized that this was the first time he’d seen her fully dressed and in control. She was impressive, very composed. Her confidence was high, and her bearing reminded him of the lady officers in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.
With her thick black hair tamed in a knot at the nape of her neck and her maroon turtleneck tucked neatly into her black ski pants, she looked nothing like the passionate woman from last night…until she smiled with those full, ripe, kissable lips.
Calmly, she said, “I might have stayed in the cabin if you’d told me there were gunmen wandering the slopes. Or that I might be in danger.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“You should have explained.”
She was right. He should have taken the time this morning to tell her that Camp Hale was heavily guarded while the scientists from Project Y were on the premises. Instead, he’d allowed his emotions to overrule his common sense.
When he woke up this morning and realized that he’d rescued such a beautiful woman, something inside him shifted. Their kiss reminded him that he was still alive, still capable of passion. Still a man.
He hadn’t felt that way since his tour of duty in Italy when he saw the devastation of battle firsthand. Small villages shattered under the boot heel of war. Families torn asunder. The suffering. The pain.
Luke was a soldier; his duty was to follow orders. But the first time he’d looked into the eyes of a German soldier and pulled the trigger, the first time he saw a man die, he was changed. He’d gone numb inside. Become a hollow man.
Roberto had given him a reason to hope, but he had to leave the boy behind. The emptiness consumed him. He’d felt nothing until last night with Shana. This morning, he should have been thanking her instead of running away in confusion.
She cocked her head and looked up at him. “Why do your men think I’m a spy?”
“Are you?”
Her beautiful brown eyes narrowed to angry slits. “Of course not.”
He shrugged. “If you were a spy, you wouldn’t tell me.”
Henry and Martin were convinced that she was Mata Hari. They’d waved her International Driver’s License in front of his face, pointed to her weird fiberglass skis and the little mechanical device she claimed was a telephone. However, Henry and Martin were idiots. Luke didn’t put much stock in their opinion.
He has suspicions of his own. Yesterday, she’d appeared out of nowhere. Last night, she attempted to seduce him. “You’re pretty enough to be a spy.”
“Give me a break.” She scowled. “I work for AMVOX Oil. I’m a geologist. Remember?”
Though he didn’t want to believe that she was spying, her profession dovetailed with the work of the government scientists he was here to protect. It would be a hell of a thing if she turned out to be the enemy. “We’ve had intruders in the vicinity. I don’t suppose you were up here with anyone else.”
“I saw you chasing two men. Shooting at them.” She shook her head. “I have nothing to do with them.”
Her beautiful dark eyes regarded him steadily and seriously. If she was lying, she was damn good at it. “I have to detain you, Shana. It’s procedure. You’ll have to stay here until we check out your background.”
“That doesn’t work for me. My project in Rifle starts in five days. I need to be there.”
“This won’t take long,” he promised. “Just give me the name of someone I can call, someone who can verify that you’re an innocent geologist on a ski trip.”
“There isn’t anyone I can call.” Before his eyes, her composure crumbled. Her gaze dropped to the floor and stuck there. “I don’t know anybody.”
“Your supervisor,” he suggested. “Or a family member.”
“There’s no one.” She sank into the hard-backed chair beside the cleared desk, doubled over and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t think.”
The enormity of her situation weighed on her shoulders like a ten-ton boulder. How could she explain? Of course, Shana knew people, important people. Her father was a career diplomat with connections in high places. She knew the CEO for AMVOX. But none of those people were available. In 1945, her father would have been two years old.
She looked up at Luke. He leaned his hip against the wooden desk in this plain square office that was cleared of all paperwork. His arms folded across his chest. He’d been right when he said she was in serious trouble.
She was stranded here. Without a bank account. Neither her credit cards nor her ATM card would work. She was homeless, completely without resources.
“I don’t have anyone I can contact.” Not here. Not in 1945. “I can’t remember…”
“Are you telling me that you have amnesia?”
She seized on this excuse. “That’s right. I can’t remember anything.”
“Except that you were in the Middle East.” His tone was suspicious. “You told me that last night.”
What else had she said? Last night, they hadn’t done much talking. Between her headache and her intense attraction to him, she hadn’t told him much. Now, his lack of information might work to her advantage.
“I have amnesia.” She rose to her feet to emphasize her words. “I need to get to a doctor in Leadville.”
“We have medical personnel here on base.”
But she didn’t want to stay here, trapped in 1945. If she left Camp Hale, she might be able to find the way back to her own millennium. “I need a specialist, a psychiatrist. Or a neurologist. Please, Luke.”
His jaw set in a firm, stubborn line that made her think he had little intention of accommodating her wishes. “Where were you staying in Leadville?”
“A hotel.”
“Which hotel?”
Her lodging probably didn’t have the same name as it did in 1945. It might not have even existed. “I don’t remember the name. I left the receipt in your cabin. I wrote a goodbye note on the back.”
“You must have driven to get up here. Where’s your car parked?”
“When I was skiing, I got lost. I don’t know where my car is.” That much was true. “You have to take me to Leadville. From there, I can find my way back to Denver. Or I might find a specialist in Aspen.”
“Aspen?” He gave her a puzzled look. “You won’t find much of anything in that sleepy little town.”
Of course not. The development of Aspen into a glittering, world-class ski resort took place after World War II. If she remembered correctly, returning soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division were largely responsible for that growth.
The door to the office swung open and a stocky man dressed in old-fashioned ski knickers strode inside. “I have been looking for you, Luke. You promised to show me the best trails.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We will leave soon. Very soon.” His accent was Italian. His dark eyes sparkled when he noticed Shana. “But first I must meet this charming young lady. You are?”
“Shana Parisi,” she said. “Buon giorno.”
Obviously delighted, he responded in Italian. Shana used rudimentary Italian she’d learned from her grandmother to make polite conversation about the weather and the scenery.
He took her hand and lifted it to his lips in a courtly gesture. “I am Enrico Fermi.”
“The Nobel Prize winner?”
“You know my work?”
“Absolutely.”
He was one of the most brilliant physicists of all time, the father of nuclear fission. She’d studied his theories, seen his face in textbooks. Fermi worked on the Manhattan project and had been at Los Alamos where the atom bomb was developed.
A realization struck her. The first atomic bomb test had taken place in 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Shana even recalled the date because it was the same as her sister’s birthday, and their father always called her sister a bombshell. July 16, 1945.
“What’s the date today?”
“May seventh,” Luke said.
In two months, Dr. Enrico Fermi and the other scientists at Los Alamos would change the world.
Chapter Four
In the back of her mind, Shana heard the wail of a siren. An ambulance. Though faraway, the scream was all-consuming, echoing inside her skull.
She wanted to reach up and touch her head, but her arm wouldn’t move. There were loud voices. Slamming doors.
Then a terrible silence.
IN THE OFFICE at Camp Hale, Shana glanced from Dr. Fermi to Luke. Had she heard an ambulance? How did she get here?
Coldly, Luke asked, “How do you know Dr. Fermi’s work?”
Brushing aside her strange auditory hallucination, she tried to focus on an explanation. She reminded herself that this was 1945, and very few people were aware of the top secret Manhattan Project. No one—not even Fermi himself—had witnessed the mushroom-shaped cloud that would loom forever across political horizons. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not yet taken place.
The importance of those earthshaking events made her own predicament seem light as a Nerf ball. Still, she had to choose her words carefully. Or else she might find herself locked up in a prison, accused of treason. She avoided looking directly into Luke’s honest blue eyes as she said, “Anyone who’s studied physics knows Dr. Fermi. He won the Nobel.” She turned to him. “Which year?”
“Nineteen thirty-eight,” he said. “When I went to Sweden to collect my prize, I emigrated to the United States. Italy under the dictator, Mussolini, was unsafe for my family. My wife is Jewish.”
“Our country is lucky to have you, sir.” If Fermi had stayed in Europe, his work in nuclear fission might have led to another nation being the first to develop the atom bomb. “May I ask what you’re doing at Camp Hale?”
“I am here with a team to explore some of the mining operations.”
The logical deduction was that Fermi had come to Leadville to test the quality of uranium ore being mined in this area. A high grade of enriched uranium was needed to make yellow cake for the reactors.
“Perhaps I can help,” she offered. “I’m a geologist.”
“Bella e brillante,” he said.
“Beautiful and smart?” she translated. “I don’t know how true that is.”
“No need for modesty.” He tucked her arm through his. “Come. You will meet the rest of my team.”
Luke cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Dr. Fermi. Shana isn’t feeling well. We were on our way to the infirmary.”
“I feel much better,” she said quickly. Fermi was offering her a way around Luke’s difficult questions, and she’d be a fool not to take advantage. “I’d be delighted to meet the rest of Dr. Fermi’s crew.”
As they walked through the door, Luke leaned close and whispered, “I’m not letting you out of my sight. Not for one damn minute.”
“Lucky you,” she whispered back.
Shana knew her behavior was suspicious. If she actually had been a secret agent, her first order of business would be to get close to Dr. Fermi, to encourage him to trust her so she could kidnap him. But a far different agenda was taking form in her mind. There had to be a scientific explanation for how she’d traveled back in time. What could be better than to have one of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time helping her figure out the process? Unfortunately, she didn’t think time travel and relativity were Fermi’s specialty. “Do you know Dr. Einstein?” she asked.
“Albert? Sure, I do.”
“What do you think of his theories of speed and time?”
Fermi gave an elaborate shrug, a gesture that reminded her of her Italian grandfather. “Until we are able to exceed the speed of light, his ideas will be untested. This is not to say they are untrue. Physics shows us that almost anything is possible.”
“I like the way you think.” Nothing was impossible. She’d shot backward in time. Reversing the process ought to be within the realm of possibility.
“You are an interesting woman, Shana Parisi. Bella e brillante.”
She tossed a glance over her shoulder at Luke, who was positively fuming. His tense jaw made it look as if he was grinding his rear molars together. Too bad! If she had Dr. Fermi on her side, she didn’t need Luke’s approval.
They left the long whitewashed administrative building and stepped onto the sanded, hard-packed pathway that led through the snow. Dr. Fermi directed her toward the large two-story house where he and his crew were staying.
As they walked, two soldiers in full battle gear fell into step behind them. She assumed that their assignment was to protect Dr. Fermi, but they could also be keeping an eye on her because she was so terribly suspicious. The thought made her grin. Her personality had always been straightforward, direct and responsible. Hardly a woman of mystery.
In spite of the size of the camp and the number of barracks, there were only a few soldiers on the pathway. She asked, “How many men are stationed here?”
“There are only a couple of administrative types and four rifle squads left. About sixty people altogether,” Luke said. “Everybody else has shipped out to Italy. The Po Valley.”
Dr. Fermi’s fingers tightened on her arm. “The Apennine Mountains. In better days, it was a magnificent place for skiing and climbing.”
“The war will be over soon,” she promised. In May of 1945, it was almost a year since the D-day invasion. The Allied Forces were close to victory in Europe.
“Not soon enough.” He turned to Luke. “In the meantime, we ski. Yes?”
“We will try to accommodate your request, sir.”
“Tonight, I will commandeer the kitchen and make pasta for everybody. My wife’s recipe is—” Fermi kissed his fingertips “—perfecto.”
“Down!” Luke shouted.
Before she had a chance to react, he’d thrown himself on top of her and Fermi, dragging them both to the snow and covering them with his body.
From faraway, there was the sharp crack of a rifle being fired. She heard the thud of a bullet hitting the barracks behind them.
The two soldiers who had been guarding them moved into position and returned fire.
Cautiously, Shana lifted her chin from the snow and peered up into the forested slope leading into camp. She couldn’t see the person who’d fired at them. When she tried to rise, she couldn’t move. Luke ordered, “Keep your head down.”
His muscular thigh pinned her to the ground. He had saved her life. Again. Rescuing her was turning into a full-time occupation for him.
While barking orders at his men, he yanked her and Fermi to their feet and hustled them into the main building. Inside, he brushed the snow from her shoulders. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, aware that her heart was beating faster. Camp Hale was turning out to be a dangerous place for her. Either she was going to be locked up as a spy or someone was going to shoot her.
They rushed up a staircase to the second floor and entered a large room with a conference table. Two other men stood in front of a blackboard that was covered with mathematical equations. Their eyes were watchful. Their manner, tense. One of them asked, “What happened?”
“Sniper,” Luke said. “Don’t leave this room. Stay away from the windows.”
As he turned on his heel and left, the enormous implications of the sniper attack sank into Shana’s consciousness. What if Fermi had been shot? Or killed? The Manhattan Project was only a few months away from the first test in Alamogordo. If Fermi wasn’t there to oversee the final stages, the project might fail. History would be changed.
Fermi smoothed his thinning hair across his forehead. He seemed little affected by the fact that someone had been shooting at him. In Italian, he muttered a curse. “I suppose this means there will be no skiing today.”
“Probably not,” Shana said. “The risk is too great.”
He led her toward the other two men and introduced them: Dr. Schultz and Dr. Douglas. Both wore thick glasses. Both had the distracted air of men who spent more time thinking than working out.
Fermi added, “Dr. Douglas is a physicist. He is very interested in theories of time.”
A shy grin twitched the corner of his mouth, and his long face brightened as he shook her hand. “Call me Dougie.”
“Tell me, Dougie. What do you think of time travel?”
“Interdimensional reality.” He gave a curt nod. “Relative planes of existence. And psychology.”
“Okay.” She had no idea what he was talking about. “How does psychology relate to time travel?”
“You’ve heard the phrase living in the past,” he said. “Sometimes, when we think about past events, they seem real. We recall details—very specific sounds and smells—that were not evident at the time they happened.”
“But those are memories,” she said.
“Are they? Isn’t it possible that we have actually returned to a prior event?”
With a glance toward Dr. Fermi, she said, “Anything is possible.”
Dougie nodded. “There’s so much more to learn. We haven’t yet begun to explore the nonlinear functions of the brain.”
Though Shana didn’t exactly understand, she was encouraged. The sheer brainpower generated among the three men in this room was enough to move mountains and possibly return her to her own century.
“Good news,” Dr. Fermi announced to his colleagues. “We no longer need to wait for the geologist from Denver. Miss Parisi can take his place.”
“Excellent,” Schultz said. “We can complete our analysis of tuballoy from the four sites and return to Los Alamos by the weekend.”
“I’ve never heard of tuballoy,” she said. “Is it a mineral?”
Fermi studied her intently for a moment before he spoke. “Tuballoy is a code name. I wonder how much I can trust you, Miss Parisi.”
Again, she was faced with the dilemma of having no one in this time period who could vouch for her. She could only rely on herself. Shana straightened her shoulders and spoke in a clear voice. “If there’s anything I can do to help you in your work, to help you end this terrible war, I’m ready, willing and able.”
He glanced at the other two men, then back to her. “I believe you.”
His vote of confidence touched her. Unfortunately, she didn’t think it would be so easy to convince Luke.
LUKE STALKED DOWN the second-floor corridor of the main house with Shana following close behind. They turned the ninety-degree corner leading to the uninhabited south wing.
He had a couple of hard decisions to make. Fermi had outlined his plan to use Shana to provide the expert geological analysis at the four mine sites. If she was a spy, they’d be handing over valuable information to her. But Shana’s involvement wasn’t the worst of Luke’s worries. He couldn’t think of a safe way to transport Fermi across the open countryside to the mines while there was a sniper in the area. “This is one hell of a SNAFU,” he muttered.
“A what?”
“SNAFU,” he repeated. “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up.”
Shoving open the door to a bedroom, he marched inside and unceremoniously dumped Shana’s knapsack and skis on the floor beside the three-drawer knotty pine dresser. “You’ll be staying here.”
She glanced at the bare whitewashed walls of the small square room. The only window was covered with blinds. “Am I a prisoner?”
“You’ll be watched.” He didn’t like having her here. She was a problem, a possible security risk. And he was damn sure she didn’t have amnesia.
Casually, she sauntered over to the bed, leaned down and pushed against the mattress with both hands. She frowned. “Hard as a cement slab.”
“Government issue,” he said. “In case you haven’t heard, there’s a war going on. Luxury is not a top priority.”
She perched on the edge of the bed, crossed her long legs and looked up at him though her thick black lashes. Though he doubted that her intentions were sexual, his mind went in that direction. Their night together had been unforgettable. Too easily, he remembered her arms wrapped tightly around him, could almost see the way she’d leaned toward him, filled with longings and desires as great as his own.
“Thank you,” she said, “for saving my life again.”
“The sniper wasn’t aiming at you.”
Twin frown lines creased her brow. “Do you think he was after Dr. Fermi?”
“Yes.”
“Luke, it’s very important that you protect him.”
Just what he needed. More of her so-called “expert advice.” For a woman, she was damned pushy, not a bit hesitant to give orders. “Do me a favor, Shana. Don’t tell me how to do my job.”
“If anything happens to Fermi, the course of history will be forever changed.” There was an urgency in her voice. “Don’t ask me how I know, but I do.”
Her dark eyes glittered with a passion that had nothing to do with sex. This fire came from the soul of a true believer. A fanatic. Who was she? Why had she come here?
He took out his pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and tapped one out. Before he could light up, she said, “I’d appreciate if you didn’t smoke in my bedroom.”
“Fine.” He returned the cigarette to the pack. “If I’m going to give the go-ahead on Fermi’s plan to take you along on his visits to the mine, I’m going to need some answers, Shana. And I need them now.”
“There’s only one thing that’s important. I promise that we’re on the same side.”
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Cassie Miles
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: COLORADO DESTINYIt was a powerful Rocky Mountain blizzard that caught scientist Shana Parisi unawares and threw her into the arms of a mysterious man in uniform. Luke Rawlins rescued her from danger, but it was the mesmerizing look in his eyes that captured her heart…and forged their destiny.Luke knew bringing the beautiful Shana home posed a threat to his secrets, but a foreign enemy was hot on their trail and Shana′s snowy footprints were all they needed to track her down. Once entrenched in his world, Luke urged her to remain silent about what she saw. Because the alternative could be deadly….