Stranded With A Stranger
Stranded With A Stranger
Frances Housden
Born to luxury and comfort, Chelsea Tedman never expected to be climbing Mount Everest. But her need to solve the mystery surrounding her sister's fatal fall on the mountain had Chelsea in Nepal, determined to climb the unforgiving terrain at all costs.She just needed a guide. Mysterious as he was alluring, Kurt Jellic was the only man for the job, and all she had to do was convince him. But Chelsea didn't know which was more difficult: Everest's brutal climb or her irresistible attraction to Kurt. With danger so near, Chelsea could soon be victim to the mountain…and to her own passion.
Chelsea would never forget the moment when she hung in midair on Mount Everest,
nothing between her and death as she anxiously searched for Kurt against the icy cliff.
When she’d heard him yell her name, she’d been sure he’d fallen. Immediately, she had been stung by pain and guilt. If Kurt died, it would be her fault. She was the one who had hounded him to bring her back to the place where her sister had plunged to her death.
Her heart had rolled over. A useless lump of lead in her chest that refused to beat without knowing Kurt was safe. The moment her eyes had latched on to his red anorak against the gray-blue sky above her, it went into overdrive.
From now on, no matter what Kurt said, or how much he protested that he was no good for her, she knew in her heart she could never love anyone else as much as him.
The difficult task would be convincing him.
Stranded with a Stranger
Frances Housden
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
I’d like to dedicate this book to my original editor at Silhouette, Leslie Wainger, with thanks.
And also to Sir Edmund Hillary, my inspiration for this book, who proved that although Kiwis can’t fly, they can still reach the top of the world.
FRANCES HOUSDEN
has always been a voracious reader, but she never thought of being a writer until a teacher gave her the encouragement she needed to put pen to paper. As a result, Frances was a finalist in the 1998 Clendon Award and won the award in 1999, which led to the sale of her first book for Silhouette, The Man for Maggie.
Frances’s marriage to a navy man took her from her birthplace in Scotland all the way to the ends of the earth in New Zealand. Now that he’s a landlubber, they try to do most of their traveling together. They live on a ten-acre bush block in the heart of Auckland’s Wine District. She has two large sons, two small grandsons and a tiny granddaughter who can twist her around her finger, as well as a wheaten terrier who thinks she’s boss. Thanks to one teacher’s dedication, Frances now gets to write about the kind of heroes a woman would travel to the ends of the earth for. Frances loves to hear from readers. Get in touch with Frances through her Web site at www.franceshousden.com (http://www.franceshousden.com).
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Prologue
Mount Everest
April 20
Dear Chelsea,
I can imagine your astonishment as you open this. I can almost hear you gasp, “A letter from Atlanta!”
How many years has it been? I move around so much I’ve lost count. Far, far too many, though. My fault. As eldest, I shouldn’t have let a childish rift go on for so long. I just hope I haven’t left it too late to set matters right.
What’s it all about?
Well, for a start, I’m worried.
Oh, not over making the climb of Everest I’ll be doing soon. I lost all fear of heights years ago, when I swapped my ballet slippers for climbing boots. It was only to be expected marrying an adventurous man like Bill Chaplin. And when you love someone the way I love Bill, wherever he goes, you follow.
That’s right, I used the L word. No matter what you thought of the arrangement back then, our father never forced me into this marriage. I’ve had fifteen blissful years. Not many people can claim that. You were far too young to understand back then, barely thirteen. I hope time has achieved what I couldn’t, and that you understand at last what it is to truly love another person heart and soul.
But I’m getting off track. It’s not myself I’m worried for—it’s you. Though chances are we might both be in danger, not many people can reach me up here, so I reckon I’m pretty safe. It takes a special kind of man to climb Everest, and I’m certain Arlon Rowles isn’t one of them.
Yes, I’m talking about our cousin Arlon. It seems making him CEO of the business father left us, in order for us to avoid facing each other across a boardroom table, was a huge mistake.
I received a letter yesterday from Madeline Coulter. You remember Maddie? She worked for Father. According to her, Arlon has been siphoning money out of the business for the past five years and salting it away in a Swiss bank account.
Five years. My God, he must have started soon after Father’s death. She says that she has the proof locked away in a safety deposit box. This is the number: 44578—Bank of America, Jamestown. Don’t lose it. It’s in both our names.
Along with the letter, she sent me a key. I’ve decided it will be safer on my person for now. I’m wearing it on a chain around my neck.
But this is where it gets down and dirty. I called Maddie by satellite phone and her sister answered. I couldn’t have been more shocked. Dear old Maddie was shot and killed, in an apparent mugging. It happened not long after she mailed the letter. Coincidence? I don’t think so. She was found in an alley, and the shopping she’d done on her way home from work was scattered all around her, yet they don’t live in a dangerous neighborhood. And if someone was desperate enough to kill her for money, why leave her purse and the shopping behind?
I don’t want to scare you, but I’ve had a dreadful feeling ever since her letter arrived that this situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. So watch your back, sister dearest. I mean it. Watch your back and don’t go out alone at night.
I expect you’re wondering why I’m not coming straight home to help you deal with this. Bill would insist on it. That’s why I haven’t told him. For years he’s wanted to climb Everest. We’ve trained for this moment in Switzerland and in South America, where we met our guide Kurt Jellic, then in New Zealand, where Kurt comes from. Besides, by the time this reaches you, I’ll probably be back from the summit and on my way to the States. It took Maddie’s letter three weeks to reach me. Why should this one be any different?
You’re probably wondering how I found your address. I’ve always made sure I knew where you were. And yes, maybe I should have phoned you, as well. But after all these years of silence I couldn’t be certain you would take my call. Please accept this olive branch and try to forgive me for deserting you. I know you always found Father hard to deal with—and with me gone? Well, enough said for now. Maybe once this is over we can meet up in Paris, now that you’ve made your home there.
Darn, reading back over this I know it sounds slightly paranoid. All I can say is, you’ll probably feel as I do after reading it.
Speaking of paranoid, ever since we climbed back down to Base Camp, even before Maddie’s letter arrived, I’ve felt that someone is watching me. Stupid, huh? I couldn’t be farther from cousin Arlon’s idea of civilization if I tried, but I can’t shake the sensation of being watched.
Tomorrow we go back up. The weather looks good to reach the summit, and we’ve spent a lot of time climbing back and forth between Camps One, Two and Three, acclimatizing to the thin atmosphere. Yet, in a way, I’ll be glad to get back up there.
Everest has a way of making our human troubles appear puny, insignificant. And I really need that right now.
I know I’m thrusting a heck of a lot of responsibility on you, but if we can’t stop Arlon and the company goes belly-up, thousands of people will lose their jobs.
Father must be turning in his grave. Not that you’ll give a damn about that. But if there was one thing that mattered to him, it was the business he built up from nothing. What he really wanted was sons, not daughters.
I’ll call as soon as I make the descent. We can go fetch the papers together and make sure they get to the proper authorities. Or maybe we ought to contact them first and get some protection before we open the safety deposit box.
Take care, and I really do mean watch your back. Maddie was shot from behind.
Your loving sister,
Atlanta
Chapter 1
Namche Bazaar
May
Chelsea watched the guide’s pale blue gaze shift away as if he couldn’t meet her eyes. “Sorry, Ms. Tedman, I can’t help you. Kurt Jellic from Aoraki Expeditions is the one you want to ask. He is the only one who knows exactly where the bodies are hidden…in a manner of speaking.”
Basie Serfontien’s smirk faltered as if the big South African’s harsh-voiced faux pas had just dawned on him.
“Thanks for your help.”
Chelsea began turning away, wanting out of there before Serfontien, the last guide on her list, could get a full view of her trembling lips. Failure. Again.
She wouldn’t cry in front of these hulking great men—not if she could help it—but now she was down to her last and also her best hope, Kurt Jellic. Her mouth twisted in a wry semblance of a smile as she forced herself to turn back. Trust her to forget the most important question. “I don’t suppose any of you know where Jellic is? No one I’ve asked has seen him for days.”
The guide and his team all shook their heads.
It was the fifth time she’d asked someone to guide her up Everest. She had heard rumors about Jellic, and some of the suggestions to look for the man had an if-you-dare quality about them, as if they knew something she didn’t. Too bad. The man could be Frankenstein’s long-lost brother for all she cared, as long as he took her to where the last member of her immediate family—her sister, Atlanta Chaplin—had been killed.
The accident had happened just a few days after she’d received Atlanta’s letter. They had not reached the top as planned. And though that did not seem to matter now, she wished Atlanta and Bill could at least have had their wish before they died.
Atlanta’s letter was tucked in Chelsea’s breast pocket, as if somehow keeping it close to her heart would change the past.
The night when she had caught the news on CNN of another two climbers being lost to Everest had turned her life upside down. She had looked at the screen, taken in the names, but refused to believe. Atlanta and Bill Chaplin?
No, it had to be a mistake. The bodies hadn’t been recovered. She’d held her breath, waiting for better news, even as she had made her arrangements to travel to Namche Bazaar.
Then she’d arrived in Nepal, walked from Lukla to Namche Bazaar, and hope was no longer an option. She touched the letter through her anorak. Its paper had lost its crispness and stopped crackling.
She was sick of getting the same answer to her question. “I’m sorry about Bill and Atlanta. They were a nice couple. But we can’t take our other clients off the beaten track to help you look for their bodies. You want to talk to Kurt Jellic.”
The invisible man. She had begun feeling she was being given the runaround. Chelsea swiveled on her heel, disappointment weighing on her shoulders. Before she could stride off in the direction of her hotel, a hand touched her elbow. “Excuse please, lady.” She turned and the hand dropped away. Its owner, embarrassed and blushing, lowered her dark eyes. The young woman was almost breathtakingly beautiful, the skin of her round face smooth and lustrous. Such a pity that life in the mountains and the wear and tear of this harsh landscape would show on those perfect features before too many years had passed.
“Namaste,” the girl lisped in her delightful accent.
“Namaste.” Chelsea repeated the greeting she had already learned meant “I salute all the divine qualities in you.”
The Sherpa girl fitted the mountain village scene much better than Chelsea did in her pseudomountaineering gear bought in Paris. She’d never been up a mountain in her life.
No matter—she was determined to climb the biggest of them all, or part of it, at least. Leave the summit for those who needed that sort of buzz. She just wanted to find her sister.
“I am Kora. I know where Kurt S’ab is. I saw him yesterday.”
“You did?” Chelsea gasped. Hope at last.
The girl nodded a couple of times from the waist up, her many layers of clothing swaying with her in a rainbow of rusts, browns and blues. “My brother, Sherpa Rei, works for him.”
Chelsea couldn’t restrain her smile. “Good. What is he like? What kind of man is he?”
“Kurt Sa’b is very big man, very big.” Kora drew in the air with her hands, but Chelsea wasn’t sure what to take from that. Was it his stature or large ego that impressed Kora the most?
Yet her heart beat with excitement as she asked, “And where does Kurt Sa’b live? Is it far? Can you take me to him?”
“He lives now in a tavern over in the old town.”
The old town? Chelsea looked around her. Although they were standing on the outskirts of a street market dangerously close to the edge of the terrace, none of the buildings built into the other side looked terribly old. She supposed Namche Bazaar had once been a small, quiet mountain terrace village hanging on the side of a hill. Then hordes of foreigners had disrupted its peace, determined to pit their skills against Everest. Once Sir Edmund Hillary had “knocked the bastard off,” as he had put it, nearly every man and his dog had declared open season on the mountain as if it was some sort of macho ritual. Why else had Bill Chaplin dragged Atlanta up there? Not to get himself and Atlanta killed, that’s for sure.
The girl nodded. “Kora can show you the way.”
“Great, wonderful. Can we go now?”
“Sure ting.” Laughter tinkled out as Kora’s smooth golden face creased into dimples. “Follow me, lady. This way.”
Marketplaces like the one they were walking through were always a good indicator of the culture of a country, the food in particular. The scents here were so different from Paris, where the aroma of freshly baked bread frequently led her by the nose.
They passed a stall, and for all her urgency, Chelsea’s taste buds were stirred by the spicy tang of barbecued meat. Her mouth watered. How long since she’d eaten? Breakfast, at least. She’d been far too busy chasing after mountain guides.
On any day but this she would have let the sounds of the market and unfamiliar accents soak into her mind. She always did this in a new place. Sounds and smells were her way of storing the memory so she wouldn’t lose it.
But the little Nepalese girl was swift on her feet, weaving with ease through the multinational crowd, a mix of locals and tourists, and Chelsea needed to keep up with her. She let the murmur of voices slip past her, although the wind chimes ringing on every stall to keep evil spirits away were a different proposition, as were the birds that sang their hearts out in cages. The sound was lovely. It reminded her of a canary Atlanta had bought her for her fifth birthday.
Oh, God, why couldn’t she have waited for me?
All her life her sister had taken off to places where Chelsea couldn’t possibly follow.
The street opened out onto a small square dominated by a Buddhist temple. Prayer flags flapped overhead in a breeze perfumed with food and incense, and brown hands turned prayer wheels as they passed by. Did those wheels and flags work, or were they just another pretty superstition to ward away evil?
Chelsea wouldn’t have been surprised to discover they were as redundant as her own prayers. She’d said some for Maddie after her sister’s letter arrived. Maddie had been a friend since childhood, a woman who would never have intentionally hurt a soul. She hadn’t deserved to die. Chelsea had called the detective in charge of the case, but had gained no helpful information. Didn’t a woman’s death matter anymore?
Spinning a prayer wheel was probably as useless as the entreaties she had sent upward that Atlanta was really safe. All her hopes of them coming together again, her chance to correct past mistakes, had died on the mountain.
But no prayers would be as profound if she couldn’t find her sister and that key. Too many huge American firms had toppled recently, brought down by creative accounting, and this could be another instance. If only she could be sure what was in the safety deposit box.
Last quarter’s financials had been down again, but if Maddie was correct, she needed to find the proof.
That was the only way to stop cousin Arlon.
Kurt squinted at the figures written in his small accounts book. Not that he thought scrunching his eyes would change the fact that if he didn’t score some work soon, his business would be in the red. It had cost him $65,000 to use the fixed lines and aluminum bridges put out by the Sherpas’ association at the beginning of the season. If he didn’t get more work soon…
The up-front payment he’d received from the Chaplins had been eaten up and then some. And he wasn’t such a boor that he would claim from the estate of a couple of friends who’d been killed on his watch.
“Aargh.” He cleared his throat as if that would get rid of the rumors that had been circulating since he’d come back down the mountain without Bill and Atlanta.
The local magistrate had more or less cleared him. That is to say, nothing could be proved one way or another. All they had was his word. But in a close-knit society, once a rumor took hold it was hard to contradict it.
Bad news always traveled faster than good.
If he could get his hands on the bastard who had started them, he’d kick him to hell and gone. His family knew only too well how rumor and innuendo could ruin a life. But when his father had died it had been Kurt and his brothers and sister who’d been left to deal with the mess. Were still dealing with it.
He looked up from the lined page and realized he should blame the poor light for the problem with his eyes. At five-thirty in the evening his attic room always flooded with gray watery light as the sun dropped behind the Himalayas. He shut the book with a snap. The sound was like a thunderclap in the quiet room.
Though he had taken lodgings on the top floor of a tavern, the old stone walls were two feet thick and swallowed up the noise from the barroom, keeping it to a low murmur he barely noticed.
Kurt scrubbed his hands over his face and combed his untidy hair with his fingers. He needed a shave. His stubble was four days old and as black as his hair. What was the point? He had no one to impress. Clients were staying away in droves.
He pushed up from his cross-legged position on the floor. The wooden boards were ten times more comfortable than any flat spot on Everest. He stretched, his fingers brushing a large beam. The slope of the roof made it necessary to stoop at the far side of the room by his bed, and he had to take care not to knock his head for the first couple of steps after he emerged from the attic.
Running his hands over his pockets, he felt for his matches. Time to light the lamps before he started falling over the furniture and his bags.
A wooden stair cracked outside. The sound of it ricocheted through the silence like a bullet bouncing off the walls. He recognized the sound. That particular step was five from the top.
His hand slid to the knife on his belt. He unsheathed it as he crossed to the door in his sock-cushioned feet and listened for the creak of the step one down from the landing outside his door.
He’d been robbed twice in the short time he’d lived here. The door didn’t have a lock, but then anything of true value he carried on him.
Whoever was climbing the stairs must have been taking them two at a time. The next noise he’d been waiting for didn’t arrive before a gentle tap on the door started it swinging open. Not only did the heavy wooden slab not have a lock, its catch didn’t work worth a damn, losing its grip at the slightest pressure.
There was no announcement. No “Hello, is anyone there?” Only the door moving closer to his shoulder as it was pushed wide. The footsteps were light, as was to be expected in a country where most of the inhabitants were head and shoulders shorter than him.
He let the intruder take no more than two steps into the room, then, knife poised in one hand ready to strike, he wrapped his other arm around the thief from behind. “Don’t move. I have a knife and it’s pointed at your throat.”
The intruder let out a squawk that nearly deafened him. He almost dropped the knife as a padded elbow dug into his ribs. If the aim of the elbow hadn’t warned him his target was taller than he’d imagined, the handful of fluid feminine breast told him he was definitely below the mark by eight inches or more.
It had been so long since he’d touched a woman, touched anything that filled his hand with such soft fullness, that his palm burned through the contact, even through several layers of clothing. Stunned by the unexpected rush to his groin, he grabbed a breath and smelled a floral perfume that clouded his reason and made him squeeze, just once.
As the heel of her boot stomped down painfully on the bony arch of his foot hard enough to make him wince, a second mistake leaped to mind. Her struggles had brought her dangerously close to the blade of his knife. Kurt flung it from him before its sharp edge could slice something a lot more fragile than nylon rope. Before the clatter of metal on wood reached his ears he’d bundled the squirming mass of female body tightly in both arms. “Take it easy, easy. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“All right for you to say now I’ve knocked your knife out of your hand,” she boasted.
Well, at least he now knew she was an American.
She wriggled some more, her butt rubbing against his groin. It reacted accordingly.
“I threw it away,” he growled, unable to stifle his indignation that the woman had laid claim to his act of chivalry.
“So you say now.”
He felt the muscles in her butt tighten against him as she lifted a knee, but he was too busy spreading his legs to avoid her heel to enjoy the sensation. As her foot jarred against the floor its echo went straight from her to him. It was about then she appeared to recognize what was happening behind her, and she squawked once more. “Let me go, you…you lecher.”
The bands of his arms tightened, quelling her renewed struggles. This was getting out of hand. Didn’t she realize this situation was as painful to his ego as it was to her sensibilities? Only one thing for it, he decided.
Letting his arms slip lower without losing their hold, he picked her up. The softest landing place in the room was the bed. No sooner thought than done—he hefted her up and released her onto the mattress.
He could hear her pushing herself backward to the head of the bed, her heels catching on the covers. “Keep away from me. I know karate. No way I’m going to let you rape me.”
“Pity you never got past lesson one, where they taught you to stamp on your opponent’s feet. And while we’re on the subject, who snuck into whose room? Believe me, you couldn’t be safer. I’ve no urge to have sex with a shrew.”
“You should be so lucky.”
“Hold it! Hold it right there. Not another word. If I’m going to be accused of sexual assault, and believe me, I’ve been accused of a lot worse recently, then for a change I want to look my accuser in the eye.” This time the matches sprang to his hold in the first pocket he searched. He lit one, but it didn’t pierce far into the gloom, and the shape on the bed could have been man or woman. But having touched her, he knew better.
“Actually, no one mentioned sexual assault, only…”
He froze, still as a statue, the match flaring in his fingers, as faint and tiny as the light at the end of the tunnel called his future. “Only what?”
“Whatever they say about men like you.”
“Men like me don’t go in for rape either.”
He could tell she’d heard the rumors, but he hadn’t expected her to back down. That made her either a coward or a woman who desperately wanted something he had. And she’d already let him know it wasn’t his body. He blew out the match, then took his ire out on the full backpack he’d left on the floor, kicking it in front of the door to make her escape harder.
The annoyance didn’t go away. Striking another match, he murmured under his breath, “The woman wriggles around against a guy as if she’s giving him a lap dance and she wonders why he gets a hard-on.”
Kurt had done a lot of talking to himself lately. Especially since people he’d once counted as friends had appeared to be avoiding his company. As if they would become guilty by association.
So she’d been asking around, had heard the stories that got worse as they went from mouth to mouth. He could have told her about rumors—that if they won’t go away, you have to learn to live with them.
Without turning his back to her, he lit the first couple of yak-butter oil lamps. Their glow was enough to illuminate long jean-clad legs. The third brought out the curve of her hips. He knew, to his cost, they were softly rounded where his were lean. The lilac anorak was a fashion statement no mountaineer worth his or her salt would wear. Its quilted folds hid the full breasts his palm had lighted on by mistake. He smiled softly as he picked up the next tiny copper bowl filled with oil.
Her hair was black, short, spiky, a match for the dark clumps of eyelashes framing her huge gray eyes. Eyes wide and staring at him as if he were the devil incarnate. As if she too thought him responsible for Bill’s and Atlanta’s deaths.
Sometimes he wondered if maybe he was.
While her expression nagged at his conscience, something in him acknowledged that contempt wasn’t the emotion he wanted to draw from the woman sprawled across his bed. But he wasn’t willing to go deeper into his motives.
With the final lamp lit, a gas cartridge one, the last of the gloom receded to the edges of the attic. Kurt walked up to the bed and looked down at his unexpected guest. Her eyes flashed a warning and her hands bunched up fists of the top cover as if it were the only thing preventing her from leaping at his throat.
“Hi, I’m Kurt Jellic. And you’d be…?”
“One moment you’re threatening to slice my neck, and the next you’re making an introduction as if we’d just met at a garden party,” Chelsea sniped, taking advantage of what seemed to be a truce to push herself into a more dignified sitting position.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m all out of cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey tea, but I can offer you a whiskey. They do say it’s good for shock. Perhaps it would make you remember your name.”
Taking a good look at him in the lamplight, she was left in no doubt that this guy could have killed her if necessary. She’d watched him move from lamp to lamp with lethal grace. Gradually each small increment of light had revealed the man Atlanta and Bill had trusted to get them safely to the summit of Everest and back again.
Why hadn’t that happened?
Oh, yeah, they had fallen. And she’d heard the word accident flung around with abandon. Kurt Jellic had been with them, and like a few other people she wondered how he had survived.
He threw her a grin, quirking his eyebrows as if to say, “Well?” His teeth were a slash of white in a face brushed with the kind of dark stubble film stars affected, as if it made them unrecognizable. His slightly gaunt features were dominated by dark unreadable eyes under black eyebrows, both sitting above an uncompromising straight slide of a nose.
“I’ve no trouble recalling my name. It’s Chelsea Tedman.”
She waited for a reaction, but wasn’t overwhelmed with surprise when she didn’t get one. Why would Atlanta have mentioned an estranged sister she hadn’t seen since before Chelsea entered high school?
He stepped around a heap of red and yellow ropes on the floor in front of a huge old-fashioned chest, then lifted a bottle. The reflection from a butter-oil lamp glimmered through the amber liquid sloshing near the bottom. The bottle had been well and truly broached. Hell, she hoped he wasn’t an alcoholic.
That was all she needed.
“Okay, now the formalities have been taken care of, how do you take your whiskey—straight or straight?”
“I take it in a glass.”
The bottle made a hollow clunk as he set it back down and picked up the glass sitting next to it. He peered into its depths and didn’t look particularly happy with what he saw.
Chelsea almost choked on a breath as he pulled out the tail of his tan-and-brown-checked shirt and proceeded to wipe the glass with it. His glance caught Chelsea’s horrified expression. Kurt’s embarrassed smile was almost boyish, if anyone with bristles could be likened to a boy. “What did you expect? This isn’t the Ritz. No room service. It’s either use what you have to hand or put up with a layer of dust floating on your whiskey.”
Apparently satisfied with his efforts, he poured some liquid into the glass, then opened the top drawer of the chest. He withdrew a blue plastic mug and emptied the rest of the bottle’s contents into it.
Chelsea’s innate fastidiousness made her hesitate to take the tumbler, even considering that alcohol was an antiseptic.
“Will it help if I tell you I put this shirt on clean not more than two hours ago?” He lifted the blue mug as if toasting her. “And you were the one who insisted on a glass.”
She took the tumbler, lifting it by the rim, wary of touching any part of this man whose sexual heat had burned through her as if he hadn’t held a knife against the tender skin of her throat.
He hadn’t actually said she was acting like a wimp, but she certainly felt like one. How had it come to this? Atlanta had been the delicate flowerlike child, while she had been the tomboy. Her sister had gone the ballet-and-piano-lessons route, while she had ridden horses and played basketball. Even at thirteen she’d been two inches taller than her elder sister and had made an ungainly, sulky bridesmaid at Atlanta’s wedding, letting everyone know she was doing it under protest.
When had their roles reversed? Atlanta roughing it on a mountain in boots and anorak, while Chelsea swanned off to watch the ballet in Paris dressed in the latest fashion as if she were a changeling.
And she was. She fluttered around Paris like a dilettante, playing at being a translator at the American embassy. Well, she was a translator for real. Though in truth, she worked in a basement office of the embassy, translating secrets that terrorists would give their lives to get their hands on. That’s if they even knew IBIS, the Intelligence Bureau for International Security, existed. Jason Hart, the bureau chief and initiator of the bureau, had taken extreme measures to insure its anonymity.
Kurt knocked his mug against her glass. “Sláinte.”
“Cheers.” The sip she took burned all the way down, and her face flamed as Kurt Jellic settled his massive frame on the edge of the bed, making the mattress dip. She was honest enough not to blame the blush on the whiskey. It had been a long time since she’d let down her guard enough to get this close to a man on a bed, even fully clothed.
“So what brings you to this neck of the woods, Chelsea Tedman?”
“I want to go up Mount Everest.”
A spark lightened his eyes, but not the intensity of his gaze on her. “And?”
“I was told you were the one to take me.”
He frowned, his black eyebrows coming together, shading his eyes as well as hardening his expression. “So no one but Aoraki Expeditions could fit you into their group?”
“Not where I wanted to go. But they all said you were definitely available.”
He took a slug of whiskey out of the incongruous plastic mug, but if he’d done it to hide his reactions it hadn’t worked. There was nothing enigmatic about the twist of his mouth, or the way his nose flared as he breathed in hard. “Did they tell you why?”
“They didn’t have to. I’m Atlanta Chaplin’s sister. And I already knew you were the one who took her and Bill up Everest.”
Something between a growl and a moan ripped from Kurt’s lips as he sprang to his feet, turning his shoulder to her for a second. She would almost have preferred he’d stayed that way. She wasn’t prepared for his ominous glance.
It was a relief when he tipped back his head and drained the whiskey from the blue mug, a relief to no longer feel like a slug he’d almost stepped on. Finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You took your damn good time before mentioning that. So what’s it to be—pistols at dawn, pushing me down a crevasse when I’m not looking, or are you going to get your lawyer to sue me? I warn you, you won’t get much. Everything I own is tied up in a half-built lodge in Aoraki, New Zealand. And as it stands it’s not worth much.”
“I’ve no intention of suing you. Do you think I’m so stupid I didn’t check out the circumstances of the accident with the local magistrate? I’m not as green as a cabbage.”
“Huh, looks like I passed, or you wouldn’t be here. But anyone less like a cabbage I’ve yet to meet.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, but at the moment I couldn’t give a hoot if you thought I had buck teeth and a squint. All I want from you is your help in recovering my sister’s body.”
“I’m not sure that it can be done. Even if we could reach them and get their bodies out of there, transporting them down the mountain is almost impossible. Anything of any size is transported either up or down on the backs of Sherpas. Climbing takes two hands. Apart from that, a lot of Sherpas believe the bodies of fallen climbers should remain with the mountain goddess.”
Chelsea felt safe to scoot to the edge of the bed. Holding the glass made her efforts awkward but didn’t deter her, not now that she thought her goal was in sight.
“Here, give me that.” Kurt took the tumbler from her and she rose from the bed.
She stood in front of him and found she had to look up. “You don’t look like a superstitious guy.”
“I’m not, but I am cautious. You don’t succeed at mountain climbing by rushing into stuff hell-for-leather.”
“Good. I haven’t got a superstitious bone in my body.” Kurt ran his glance over her as if checking out her bones—or rather what covered them, she decided, as the flame in his eyes took her straight back to that moment when his hand had covered her breast. Fear for her life hadn’t been enough to stifle the arousing quality of his touch, or the discovery that her breast had fit perfectly into his palm.
He took a sip from her glass, but she felt no inclination to mention it, nor do anything to stifle the persuasive power of the whiskey. For all his faults, her father hadn’t raised a fool.
“It won’t be cheap. If we can recover the bodies, we’ll need a large team of Sherpas on the way down to carry them in relays.”
“Money is no object. Getting my sister home is all that matters.” Her statement suddenly felt like a boast, a clunker dropped into this attic where money was obviously scarce.
She kept her eye on Kurt in case he appeared to see it that way, too. He ran his tongue around his teeth as if pondering the situation. Then, as if realizing he was still holding her glass, he thrust it toward her.
“No, you keep it,” she said coolly. “I prefer mine with soda.”
He took her at her word, taking a smaller mouthful than the one that had made his throat work as he swallowed the last of the whiskey in the mug. “Okay. Prepare yourself for it taking a week or more to get everything organized. Where are you staying?”
“At the Peaks Hotel.”
A raised eyebrow was his only acknowledgment that the hotel was the most expensive accommodation in Namche Bazaar.
“Have you done any climbs with Bill and Atlanta? Better tell me what experience you’ve had.” He waited expectantly
This was the crunch moment that would make or break her chance of recovering her sister and the key. “No, I’ve never climbed with my sister and her husband. We didn’t see each other that often. I live in Paris and…well, you know where they lived.”
“So what’s it been—the French Alps, Mont Blanc?”
“None of those. I stayed in Paris mainly, but I belong to this gym with a huge climbing wall and my speeds on that are considered expert level.”
He let out a whoop that ran around the attic, bouncing off the walls and coming back to her more times than she appreciated. What did he know? She was expert level.
He stopped chortling long enough to spit out, “A climbing wall? Lady, you crack me up.” Then he sobered. “No way am I taking a rookie climber up Everest. My reputation is shot as it is. It would be dead in the water if I took up an inexperienced climber. It was hell losing your sister and brother-in-law. If I lost a third one I might as well shoot myself. I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.”
“But—”
“No. Don’t try to persuade me, or bat those eyelashes my way. If you think that would work, then you are greener than a cabbage.”
Chapter 2
She let Kurt lead the way out of the attic, quite content to follow him into the darkness of the stairs instead of tackling them first.
He’d thrust his arms into a red anorak on the way out, a color that would be glaringly obvious against ice and snow. Chelsea had noticed how he automatically angled himself to exit without brushing his shoulders against the doorjambs on each side.
As Kora had said, he was a very big man.
Every few steps Kurt stopped and lit one of the small lamps set into shallow alcoves in the wall.
The creaky steps hadn’t seemed so steeply pitched when she’d climbed up them, and losing her balance on the way down was the last thing she needed. She would never be able to persuade him to take her up Mount Everest if he thought she couldn’t manage a flight of stairs.
No use pretending a few drinks would loosen this guy up. He’d drunk his whiskey, then hers, and it hadn’t affected him one iota.
She might have to use her feminine wiles.
Oh, God! She might be reduced to begging.
Chelsea squared her shoulders before once more measuring the width of Kurt’s, which were so wide, so reassuringly strong and masculine.
Kurt reached the green door leading into the barroom that she had come through earlier. Kora had inquired of the barman as to Kurt’s whereabouts, then hurried away smiling, her fingers curled around the tip Chelsea had slipped her. It was a small price for finding the one man in Namche Bazaar who could help her. As he reached for the handle, Kurt turned and gestured for her to go in front of him. “After you.”
His cheekbones cut two curved slashes of shadow in the hollows of his cheeks, yet the leanness of his face didn’t fool her into thinking that this was anything but a strong man.
A man, a tiny voice told her, who sounded as if he saw things in black and white, right and wrong. Not one to put her in danger no matter how much she pleaded her case.
She should be extremely careful never to get on his wrong side. Thanks to the experience of their first meeting, she knew the man carried a knife and wasn’t afraid to use it. All of that aside, she would do whatever it took to succeed. Beg, cajole, seduce.
Come up with a plan.
More was at stake now than at any other time in her life.
Inside, the tavern walls were lime washed, same as the outside, though around the fireplace, white had given way to smoky gray. Someone had lit the fire since she had stood there with Kora, and now more than ever the place reminded her of an Indiana Jones movie set. More tiny pots of yak-butter oil burned on a ledge that ran around three sides of the room, throwing pockets of light into the gloom. Overhead, the same pots tipped the branches of the wooden chandelier that swung in the breeze they’d brought in with them. Chelsea held her breath waiting for the main door to slam open. Out of the wild and windy landscape Indy would stride into the barroom in all his whip-cracking, world-saving majesty.
She suddenly saw the humor of it. That’s what she’d come to Nepal looking for, hoping for—a man to help her save her world. But was Kurt Jellic that man?
The door shut and Kurt crowded behind her, so close she could feel his deep voice rumble where his chest touched her shoulder. “Live up to your expectations?”
“I don’t know if I had any, but it’s certainly something else. I’m just letting my eyes become accustomed to the light, or lack of it, so I won’t fall over anything.”
“All right by me.”
His breath on her neck caused her to shiver.
Of course he noticed. “If you’re cold we can sit near the fire.”
“No, thank you. Let’s find a happy medium. I would soon get overheated next to the fire and have to start shedding.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied the men sitting around the tables. “I don’t think there are many here who would object, but to be on the safe side we can take that table in the corner.”
As they reached the table he’d pointed out, a gust of wind blew down the chimney, adding to the smoky atmosphere, well aided by two of the older citizenry puffing on their pipes at a table between them and the fireplace. “I take it that this end of town doesn’t have electricity.”
“Scared of the dark?”
She twisted around to answer him. His eyes stared into hers, and there was a question in them she didn’t know how to answer. Not yet. She blinked, hiding her awareness of his gender. He was all predatory male, and it would take a brave woman or a fool to march into his territory and expect to get away scot-free.
She hoped it would be worth her effort.
Her gaze fell and focused on his mouth. She bit her lip and stifled a laugh. Damn, she’d outed herself, but what was she? A fool, or just a woman doing the best she could with what she had?
His hand touched her shoulder as he smiled wryly. “You sit nearest the wall so you can take in the sights.” She did as he suggested, and now she took a good look around the tavern. The sights were on the rough side, and not all the men were Sherpas or Nepalese. One huge man wore a fur hat that screamed of the Russian steppes, an impression colored by the way he was scowling into his glass.
Kurt waited until she was seated. “What can I get you to drink, and how hungry are you?”
“Whiskey, with water this time since I don’t suppose they have soda, and whatever you’re having. I could eat a horse.”
“Be careful what you wish for. I’ll see if they have any lamb or goat kebabs.”
Kurt towered over the bar. The tough-looking guy serving behind it wasn’t nearly as tall, just bulkier, with a neck that overflowed his shirt. As she got her bearings she noticed blue smoke issuing from a door behind the bar. It curled up high and twisted around Kurt’s dark hair like a halo.
A dark angel? No, there was nothing angelic about this guy. He was too big, too tough, too much of everything—overwhelming.
When he’d turned and looked at her on the stairs she could have sworn he could see right through her, see past the front she always wore to the woman underneath. Could she trust him enough to tell him the truth about her quest? That she not only wanted her sister back, but also had to find the key Atlanta had worn around her neck.
Bad idea. Atlanta hadn’t even told Bill, but what if someone had found out? Her sister hadn’t believed in coincidence when Maddie died, and one death plus two others amounted to one huge coincidence that beggared belief. Thank God she’d used IBIS’s facilities to have Jellic checked out before she left Paris. He had come up clean as a whistle, but there had been some blot on his father’s record. She didn’t believe in all that sins-of-the-father rubbish, though.
Her own father, Charles Tedman, had a lot to answer for.
Chelsea sucked in a breath and took in all the flavors of the room right with it. Apart from the butter oil and tobacco there was a definite hint of barbecued meat. The smell made her mouth water. Would it spoil her chances of getting what she wanted out of Jellic when they diluted the effects of the whiskey with food?
On his way back from the bar, Kurt juggled a whiskey bottle, two shot glasses and a jug of water. Although he’d been the one to ask her downstairs for a drink and some food, her ready agreement somehow raised his suspicions that there was more to Chelsea than met the eye. It wasn’t what he’d expected after laughing at her climbing experience. But the moment he’d suggested it and she’d said, “I’m starving—aren’t you?” his stomach had felt as if it was sticking to his ribs.
He began filling their glasses. Chelsea had reassured him that the tavern wasn’t below her standards. But compared to the hotel she’d booked into, this place was in a class of its own. That’s why he’d picked it; no one he knew frequented this type of dump.
“Here’s looking at you.” He lifted his glass and tossed half of it back. The name on the label should have been Rotgut, but he didn’t care. He’d needed the burn lately to prove that, unlike Bill and Atlanta, he was still alive.
“Cheers,” she said, and followed suit. The woman had guts, because once he’d poured her drink the only room for water had been a meniscus on top of the whiskey.
He pulled out the chair kitty-corner to hers and sat letting his long legs sprawl under the table. She pulled hers back out of the way as he invaded her space, again. Chelsea had taken off her lilac anorak and hung it over the back of her chair, and the black sweater she wore under it, though thick wool, assured him that he hadn’t imagined the fullness of the breast he’d cupped. Their greeting hadn’t been as politically correct as a handshake, but it had been a hell of a lot more fun.
He leaned forward while she was busy taking a more wary sip of her drink. “You don’t look anything like Atlanta. I’d never have taken you two for sisters.”
He ruffled the hair above her ears. It was soft, straight and slippery, sliding through his fingers like water. “Where’d you get all this black hair from? Atlanta’s curls were as blond as they come.”
She almost choked on her words as the whiskey went down. “Same father, different mothers. Atlanta’s mother died in a car accident, and mine didn’t fare much better. She fell off a horse and broke her neck.”
“With that kind of history I wonder your father didn’t keep the pair of you wrapped in cotton wool.”
If Chelsea was his, he wouldn’t let her loose around mountains.
Hell, where had that come from? The whiskey must be talking back at him.
“Not so much wrap us in cotton wool, but he made a good show of running our lives. It had to be the best schools, the best clothes. Nothing was too good for us as long as we did everything his way.” Her chin rose and there was a trace of a pout on her lips as she murmured, “I was the rebel of the two, the one who wouldn’t conform, unlike Atlanta.”
He noted the belligerence in her eyes. Kurt gathered she was harboring some held-over resentment from the past. He recognized it easily. Didn’t the same type of emotions emanate from his twin, Kel, the moment their father’s name was mentioned? The trouble with the powerful bond between identical twins was that no words were necessary to know what the other was feeling.
Kel had been the first to call him via satellite phone. Kurt had been back at Camp Three less than half an hour after the tragedy. Dazed with shock, he’d had to force himself to speak to Rei, his head Sherpa, and Paul Nichols, the only other paying customer on their team. He’d never discovered how Kel had found him, but his brother was the twin with connections, working as he did with the Global Drug Enforcement Agency.
“It must have come as a great shock when you heard of your sister’s death.” He said the words gently, for Chelsea’s sake, though part of him still raged inside because of what had happened and the way it had happened. He hadn’t had an accident on any of his climbs until this one. He still could hardly believe it himself, though he had only to shut his eyes at night for the tragedy to start playing over and over in his mind.
Every night, as he lay there in the dark, his own doubt assailed him. Was there anything more he could have done?
What a waste of two good lives.
“I caught it on CNN. I always watch it in the evening to catch up on news from home.” He watched her sigh and wondered if the deep sigh had been dragged up from the same kind of place he kept his regrets.
“I’d received a letter from my sister two or three days before I heard of the tragedy. Her death brought a lot of emotions bubbling to the surface—besides grief, that is. We’d planned a reunion…in Paris.” Chelsea dipped her head, but he could see a sparkle of tears on her lashes. It gutted him that he had to turn her down, but it would be suicide—hers—to take her up a mountain that showed no mercy. Rookie climber or old hand, one wrong move and they fell off the top of the world to their deaths.
Everest took no prisoners.
“If there was any way I could help you, I would do it—you know that, don’t you? I’ll be honest. I need the work. There have been a lot of rumors doing the rounds of Namche Bazaar. Not one of them is true.” Her hand lay on the table, and he reached for it.
To comfort her or himself, he had no answer.
Though she wasn’t a small woman her hand felt tiny, fine boned compared to his. The temptation to cling tightened his grip, a reflex based on the same instincts that had made his palm measure her fullness when she came tiptoeing into his life.
“There’s one way you can help—give me a chance to take my sister home.”
Without preamble he changed the subject. “You still hungry? I’ve ordered a whole swag of food.”
Tears ceased to sparkle on her lashes. He hoped this meant he’d turned her thoughts away from climbing Everest. It had been ages since he’d had a chance to talk to any woman but Atlanta. In the three years since he’d met her and Bill, she’d become like a sister to him, closer than his own sister, Jo, whom he hadn’t seen for years.
One difference—in his exchange with Atlanta he hadn’t gotten the sexual buzz he felt now. Part of him wished he were able to grant Chelsea her wish and take her with him—and not just because of the amount of money involved. Sure, he was practically broke, but he had broad shoulders and knew how to work. He’d be all right someday.
She pulled her hand from his, lifted her glass to her lips and spoke over the rim. “What kind of food?”
“Strips of barbecued lamb and some flat bread to wrap it up in. I thought that would be more filling than kebabs.”
“Great. I seem to have been hungry ever since I arrived in Nepal.” She sipped some more whiskey. He’d bet the shudder went right down to her toes. “Must be all the clean air.”
He found another smile and gave it to her with genuine pleasure as he looked around the smoky room. “You’re easily satisfied.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not one bit satisfied. I won’t be until I get up that mountain and recover my sister’s body.”
He heard undertones of poor-little-rich-girl in the ringing echoes of her empty glass as she slapped it down on the wood.
Bill had been a good friend to Kurt. A rich man in his own right without the added advantage of his wife’s money, he had never made himself out to be better than anyone else. And listening to Chelsea, he didn’t like the fact that she almost never used his name. “I notice it’s always your sister you mention when you talk about retrieving the bodies. What about her husband? Where does Bill’s body figure in your scheme?”
Was she that obvious? Had Kurt looked into her psyche and seen the grudge she’d carried for fifteen years? “All right, you got me. I never liked Bill.”
Kurt drew back and sat up in his chair, as if to get away from her. “What’s not to like? He was a great guy, never harmed anyone.”
“It’s not that I want to leave him up there. It’s just that Bill’s the reason for the gulf between Atlanta and me. Aided and abetted by my father, of course.”
Although Kurt had distanced himself, no longer stretching his legs out under the table at ease, she felt relieved when he propped his elbows on the table and nursed his glass between his hands. “You’ve lost me. Start at the beginning, for we seem to be talking about two different guys. Bill was one of the kindest people I ever met.”
Just as she opened her mouth to begin, Chelsea had a lightbulb moment. She licked her lips, but the words refused to come. In a blinding flash Chelsea had seen how she must appear to Kurt, and the picture wasn’t pretty. She pointed at the bottle. “Can I have another shot?”
“You don’t think you ought to wait until the food arrives?”
“No. I need it now.” She held out her glass.
As he poured, he lifted his eyes so they clashed with hers, and it was as if he could read her mind and knew all her secrets, but all he said was, “Dutch courage?”
“Something like that.” She took a mouthful and threw it back, the burn mellowing the more she drank. Or maybe the first few sips had cauterized her nerve endings. Whatever it was, the whiskey slid down easily.
She’d heard you could tell a stranger things you wouldn’t dare tell a friend. In another moment of revelation, she realized she didn’t have a lot of friends who wouldn’t make some use of her confession if it were told to them. Which didn’t say much for her taste in friends. A pity Kurt didn’t look like a priest. It would make this a whole lot easier.
“You’ve got to remember I was only thirteen—”
She broke off to regroup her thoughts. Had that sounded like an excuse or what? She needed to tell it straight and start at the beginning. “Atlanta would have been four when my mother married Charles Tedman. They had a very short courtship, and I guess she was already pregnant and that hurried things along, because I was a seven-pound premature baby—though who gives a damn about how close the wedding is to the birth these days. Except maybe if you are Argentine, and come from a proud family like my mother did.
“I think I fell in love with Atlanta from the moment I opened my eyes and was able to see her. Even then I recognized our differences. She was so pink, white and gold like a china doll.”
“You’re not without top-notch qualities yourself.”
Chelsea smiled as the memory brought up an image from her childhood. “She was like my little mom, always there when I woke up. My mother was a horsewoman who traveled the world riding in the top events. She was better at schooling horses than children.”
“So, who brought you up? Did you have a nanny?” He reached out and tucked back the strands of black hair that were blocking her view of him, and vice versa, and she wished he hadn’t. Bad enough spilling her guts without catching his expressions of sympathy or otherwise.
Suck it up, Chelsea, she told herself, but as he ran the tip of his index finger around the curve of one ear, his touch made her quiver.
She felt her color deepen, and lowered her eyelids as if that would hide her reaction to him. “No, just a housekeeper and Atlanta. By the time I started kindergarten she was ten and used to boss me around, but at the same time she always made sure no one picked on me. I was the black moth in a field of butterflies, too exotic for most of the cool New England blondes I went to school with. Atlanta had no problem. Her mother had been one of them and Father had loads of money, even if he was a self-made man.”
She flashed a smile meant to say But look at me now—I got by, but sensed that Kurt saw through her bravado.
“How many did you beat up?” he asked.
“Not too many. Remember I had Atlanta.”
“I have a twin. That made fighting our battles easy. Besides which we’re identical and it was difficult to know which of us to blame. Of course, if the crime was too bad, Grandma Glamuzina punished us both.”
“Poor you,” she teased.
“Don’t get me wrong—the punishment rarely fit the crime. But this is your story. What happened when you were thirteen?”
“Atlanta married Bill. She was only eighteen and Bill was almost thirty. God, I’ll be thirty myself soon, but to me he looked like an old man and I couldn’t see how she could love someone that old. I blamed it on my father. He’d made two profitable matches himself, and I knew that if Bill had been poor my father wouldn’t have let him through the door.”
Chelsea laughed as she remembered something else. Another swig of whiskey eased her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked so much straight up. “You should have seen Father when he discovered Bill had decided to give up making money and live on what he had. He went apoplectic. I don’t think my father took a day off work in his life, except to get married. Though I guess you could say that was all part of business. Thank God neither of us took after him. Cousin Arlon is the nearest thing he had to a son.”
Her stomach curdled as she remembered what had brought her to Namche Bazaar, and this tavern, and this man. “It didn’t make any difference, though. Father didn’t believe in leaving money out of the immediate family, not even to a cousin.”
And there of course was the problem. A good-paying appointment wasn’t enough for Arlon. He wanted it all.
Her gray eyes went opaque, making the dark rim around the irises stand out. Kurt wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have poured her that last drink. But she brightened up as their food appeared on a large wooden platter for them to share. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” she said as she grabbed a piece of flat bread before starting in on the barbecued meat. “Ooh, this is hot. Watch your fingers.”
“The tips of my fingers are like asbestos. That’s what years of climbing mountains does for you.” He still felt the heat, though, as he grabbed a few strips from the huge pile of meat, and for a few minutes all they did was chew and moan about how good it tasted.
“Mmm, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. I can’t remember the last time food tasted so great. I must take some of these spices home with me. Think I can buy them in the market?”
“I should imagine so. They sell almost everything else there.” As he spoke he watched her reach for another round of bread and begin filling it with more lamb. The way she ate was very sensual, without a hint of prissiness. She’d chomp down with her white teeth, laughing with sheer enjoyment as the sauce hit her chin. He was amazed how disappointed he felt when she pulled a handkerchief out of the reaches of some pocket to clean her face and hands. She’d only to say the word and he would have licked them clean.
Just the thought of it made him grow hard, and he was glad the table sheltered his problem. Bad enough her knowing that wiggling her butt against him turned him on, without letting her in on the secret of the effect watching her eat had on him.
Time to change the subject and save his hide. “You didn’t finish your story. Tell me what Bill did to create a gulf between you and Atlanta besides being an old man. I mean, you’re what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and I’m past thirty-four. So far this conversation hasn’t done wonders for my ego.”
“Okay.” She put her roll of bread and meat on the edge of the half-empty wooden platter. “Short and sweet this time. Bill took her away clear across the country and I never spoke to her again.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes at him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gulped down all that food. This seems to be turning into a guilt trip. I was a little witch back then, stubborn as they come. After that, everything I did was the opposite of Atlanta. No ballet lessons for me—I rode horses, played basketball. In short, I became a tomboy. My father went ballistic. I didn’t care. He wasn’t turning me into the perfect little daughter so he could marry me off to a rich old man.”
Chelsea sniffed, looked at her small stained handkerchief and rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her hand. “I needn’t have worried. No way did I fit the criteria for a good upper-crust wife…but that’s another story.”
Kurt searched his pocket, then handed her a handkerchief. “Here, take this—it’s clean.” He eyed her warm black sweater. It might be a slightly chunky knit, but that didn’t exclude elegant from its description. “And don’t worry, the tomboy image didn’t take.”
“But it did. I still spend a lot of time at the gym. I’m strong. Want to feel my muscles?” She held out her arm.
Nuh-uh—hands off, boy. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
He wanted to feel a lot more than her muscles, and if he started there he might not stop. From his memory of her pulled against his length there was absolutely nothing hard about her, just soft warmth that fitted against him perfectly.
No point in heading in that direction, though. Even if the unheard-of happened and the attraction did turn out to be mutual, the accident would always come between them. The memory of a tragedy whose edges were as sharp and jagged as the mountain it happened on would be equally difficult terrain to get over. From what he could tell, both of them were carrying a heap of guilt. Not a good thing to have in common.
“Well, for your information, I’m quite the basketball star. We make up a couple of teams from the embassy and play at least once a month—clinging to our roots, don’t you know.”
“The embassy?” Why was he just hearing this?
“Yes.” She looked quite proud. “I’m a translator at the American embassy in Paris. I like to keep busy.”
If ever he needed another reason not to take her up Everest, this was it. She might act as if she were alone in the world now that Atlanta had gone, but he’d met a few of those embassy types and he was certain she’d have more people watching her back than she realized.
Time to bail out. He made a show of looking at his watch, surprised to see that in Chelsea’s company time had actually spun away from him much faster than he’d guessed. “It’s getting late. I ought to walk you back to your hotel.”
Her eyebrows rose and her accent became snotty. “There’s no need. I can take care of myself. You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. You might have noticed this isn’t the most salubrious neighborhood. Why do you think I greeted you with a knife? I’ve been robbed twice, and foiled another attempt before it got started.”
“In that case I accept your company.” Chelsea proceeded to shrug into her lilac anorak, sliding the zip up to her neck. It didn’t make any difference that her curves were covered by a jacket cut in a similar fashion to his; he still couldn’t see her as a tomboy. No, Chelsea was all red-blooded woman. And the pity of it was, after tonight he would never see her again.
In this quarter of town the street lighting was practically nonexistent, but he wasn’t taking her back up to his room to fetch a flashlight. It was too dangerous. Just the thought of being alone in his eagle’s nest with Chelsea gave him a testosterone high.
His luck was in. A three-quarter moon rode in a cloudless sky and was enough to light their way back to her hotel.
“Here, better take my arm. These cobblestones are rough underfoot,” he said, discovering—by letting her come close—masochistic tendencies that had never surfaced before. But then, he’d never claimed to be all wise. If he had been, he would have sent her packing before he decided to feed her. However, after he dropped her at the hotel he never had to see her again.
“Kurt, I’m not ready to give up on this yet. I’m certain that given the chance I can persuade you I’m not a liability. When can I see you again?”
No one was more surprised than Kurt when he heard himself say, “How about lunch tomorrow?”
Chapter 3
Shank’s mare was the main mode of transport in Namche Bazaar, and for once Kurt was glad of it. Walking gave him time to phrase the exact wording of the refusal he meant to hand Chelsea once he reached her hotel. He would hang tough. She wasn’t about to catch him oversexed or underprepared, not this time.
The trouble was he liked her. More than liked—wanted.
Chelsea was something beyond his experience. He couldn’t remember meeting another woman quite so…damn it…intriguing.
Only look at the way they’d met. Their rude introduction hadn’t sent her into screaming fits of hysteria.
He felt a stirring in his groin as he indulged in a wry, one-sided twist of a smile at the memory of those few minutes.
“Hell.” He shook his head. If ever a dame was ballsy.
All kidding aside, he had no intention of taking her anywhere near Everest. Not damn likely. Nothing Chelsea Tedman could come up with would change his stance on that. The bones of his guiding career had been picked clean since the accident. He had nothing left to offer as far as that was concerned.
Besides, turning up at Base Camp with Atlanta’s sister in tow would only add grist to the rumor mill.
He turned a corner and headed up the slope that would take him from one terrace to another. The Peaks Hotel was on the highest terrace looking down on Namche Bazaar, but then that’s what five-star accommodation was all about.
“Hey, Kurt…Kurt Jellic.”
Kurt spun around. He recognized Basie Serfontien and stopped to let him catch up.
“Where have you been hiding, man? There is this woman, a bit of all right. She wants to recover the Chaplins’ bodies for burial, God help her. I told her you were the only mountain guide who wouldn’t be booked solid.”
And I bet you told her why.
“’S okay, mate. She found me.”
Smiling, Basie slapped him on the shoulder. “Good news, man. You need to get back on the horse.”
Kurt shook his head. “Not if it’s likely to take me for a ride. I’m still thinking about it.”
“Ach, you’ll be mad if you don’t, man. She’s easy on the eye, that one. And money is no object for the Tedman woman.”
Kurt shook his head. He couldn’t be like Basie. If a client had money but no experience, the man would just add a couple of extra Sherpas into the equation to drag the wanna-be climber up to the summit. “I’ll probably see you up at Base Camp, either way. Someone has to do more than just leave the Chaplins lying there.”
He waved Serfontien off and carried on his way. The South African’s easy-on-the-eye comment sent his thoughts wandering back to the restless night he’d spent. Hours of half-remembered dreams where Chelsea fitted over or under him, skin to skin, pounding heart to pounding heart in earth-shattering sex.
Kurt let rip a heartfelt groan. It earned him a surprised look from a guy he was about to pass. “What’s up, mate?”
Tourist. Australian. One look was enough to distinguish the climbers from the wanna-bes. Some of them actually climbed as far as Base Camp, using up much-needed space on the rocky lower reaches of Everest, including adding to the horrendous pollution when they left their rubbish behind.
Kurt shook his head. “’S all right, mate. No worries.” He saluted him and walked on. The sight of these pseudoclimbers was so common that the Aussie’s presence evaporated from Kurt’s mind before he’d taken another two strides.
Back to Chelsea.
If only she hadn’t mentioned that one of her pleasures was horseback riding. The vision that had conjured up had played in some of the more erotic fantasies he’d had in the night. Yet he wasn’t so blinded by lust that he couldn’t recognize his dreams were just visions distorted by a bad case of desire. And all of it brought about by wishful thinking.
In other words, it wouldn’t happen in a million years.
For one thing, he dared not let it.
If he felt the rumors about his part in the accident were bad now, no matter what Basie Serfontien thought, getting involved with Chelsea would be like throwing gasoline on a fire to put it out.
At first sight Chelsea had christened her hotel the Raffles of Nepal. The all-white interior, combined with punkah fans that adorned the ceilings of the first-floor rooms as well as the bedrooms, reminded her of a trip she had once taken to Singapore. Everyone ought to experience Raffles Hotel at least once.
But unless the weather improved, she wouldn’t be switching on the fan in her bedroom. She imagined July and August really heated up, but early May was still reliving the crisp spring days of April.
Even so, she’d heard that on Everest it was easy to get sunburned by the reflected rays piercing the thin air. At least, she’d read it in one of the Everest books she’d brought to read on the plane.
“And you’re still a long way from there, bébé,” she mused.
Paris felt like a lifetime ago. Maybe it was? Sooner or later everything was bound to change. Her job at IBIS looked likely to be the first casualty now that her responsibilities to Tedman Foods and its employees had increased ten thousandfold.
A server dressed in a short white jacket appeared in her peripheral vision. “Can I bring you something, lady? A cocktail? Some tea?”
She looked up at the steward. He was very young and no doubt glad of work that didn’t entail carting seventy-five pounds or more up a mountain, strapped to his back with a strip of webbing across his forehead to balance the weight.
“No, thank you. I’m going inside for lunch as soon as my friend arrives.”
The chairs of the veranda weren’t the high-backed cane found at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, but the seating did provide Chelsea with a comfortable spot to formulate her plan of attack while she watched for Kurt to arrive.
What had she just called him? Her friend? She wasn’t certain they could ever be friends. Lovers or enemies? Only time would tell. Her brain said be wary, but her body had a mind of its own.
She rested her head on the back of her chair and let the peace soak into her. The veranda was fairly deserted. Tourists didn’t pay the fortune it cost to get here to waste their time watching Everest from afar. An idea about that had occurred to her that morning over breakfast, but would Kurt go along with it?
Kurt Jellic. Now, there was a man of contrasts. He looked rough, hard-bitten with his unshaven face and dark, almost black Gypsy eyes. Not what she had expected when Atlanta had said in her letter that he was a New Zealander. She tried to picture Kurt, with sun-bleached hair and light blue irises, sliding down a wave on a surfboard, her former stereotypical idea of a New Zealander.
It didn’t take, but she couldn’t discard the impressions that came from being held against his long, lean-limbed body, while her life trembled on the edge of the knife blade in his hand.
Color and heat rushed to her face and scorched her insides with a sudden rush of arousal. He’d certainly proved he was human…and the attraction was mutual.
Would it be an underhanded trick to use that attraction against him? Despite his initially forbidding appearance, Kurt had turned out to be a nice guy. Hadn’t he listened to her without complaining while she provided him with proof positive she had been the kind of spoiled teenage witch he probably hated?
A teenage witch who had fought against losing the closest thing to a mom she had ever known.
Her eyes welled with unshed tears. Damn, Atlanta’s death had made Chelsea’s intentions of saying, “I’m sorry, sis—I didn’t mean it” an impossibility. There was only one thing she could do for her now. One last thing.
Her tear ducts overflowed before she could prevent it.
They had been doing a lot of that lately. Chelsea opened her eyes wide to halt the hot slide of teardrops onto her cheeks, and then changed her mind. Scrunching her eyelids together to form narrow slits, she let her full weight sag against the cushions in an attempt to relax.
The rustle of prayer flags accompanied the sighs that whispered over her lips until a few minutes later she hovered on the edge of sleep and the world around her became a jumble of light and dark shapes.
Bam! She was wide-awake. One of the shapes lost its hazy edges and turned into a living, breathing Kurt Jellic.
“Am I disturbing your beauty sleep?” His voice had the husky edge it had lost when she had imagined him into a nice guy who would jump to do her bidding and give in to her every whim.
But Kurt was more than that. More than she had remembered. He was, first and foremost, disturbingly and attractively, all male.
She pushed against the cushioned seat of her chair to stand up, eager to reach a height where his size wasn’t such a disadvantage. It wasn’t easy.
Her hands sank deep into the pillowy softness that had almost seduced her into sleep. However, the angle of the seat—knees higher than her bottom—made it impossible to stand with any semblance of elegance.
“Here, let me.” Kurt held out his hand and, fool that she was, Chelsea took it in hers. The world blurred at his touch. He pulled her to her feet and released his hold. And with its loss she felt nothing would ever be the same again.
He was dressed in the same casual outdoorsy style as most of the guides she’d met in Namche Bazaar—sun-faded khakis topped by a checked shirt under a black anorak. On him it had a style she hadn’t perceived last night. The long stretch of muscled legs moved with a singularity that made him stand out in a crowd. She took a drawn-out look, knowing something was different.
Sure, he’d shaved, she’d give him that. But it wasn’t simply that the razor had highlighted the dimple on his chin that made her stomach flip over, or the fact that the touch of his hand had sent an icy shiver down her spine.
No, it was in his eyes and the way he held himself. He reminded her of someone, but for the life of her she couldn’t say whom. She returned his gaze and recognized awareness in his eyes, a knowing that hadn’t been there before, as if in a past life they might have been lovers.
Flustered, she bent to flick the creases out of her skirt till it swung lightly from her hips, skimming the tops of her calves. When she had picked out the light cream cashmere top and natural linen skirt, she hadn’t considered its subtle sexiness as part of her plan to get her own way. Now she realized that like everything she had done since their first meeting, it had been part of her strategy, part of her seduction.
Too bad she hadn’t reached a definite conclusion on how to go about this master plan.
Just when it counted most, she was going to have to wing it.
Chelsea was used to controlling her own life, and it showed as soon as they entered the restaurant.
On the other hand, weighing in at 220 and standing at least three inches above most other men, as well as running the kind of enterprise he did, Kurt had become used to commanding attention, not being superseded. He didn’t remember Atlanta being so bossy. She and Bill had always consulted each other, but then they had been a couple, two halves of one whole.
Kurt turned his attention to Chelsea, who had already picked her selection from the menu, told him he would enjoy it and informed their server they’d have two of everything.
The sibilant lisp of the sommelier did nothing to smooth Kurt’s ruffled feathers. “Your meals will be here directly. Meanwhile if I can suggest a good wine to accompany them…” The wine list was fluttered at Kurt’s face like a fan.
He scowled his annoyance at the undeserving sommelier, then asked Chelsea, “You want some wine?”
“Yes, I’d like that.” She smiled at the sommelier and held out her hand for the wine list. “Do you have a—”
“I think a Pinot Gris will go best with what we’ve ordered,” Kurt said before Chelsea had a chance to pipe up. He took the list, glanced over it, then pointed. “This one.”
It paid to have a brother who was a Master of Wine and made his living tasting and writing books about the fermented juice of the grape. Drago was the eldest of the Jellic boys—men. He’d been out on his own a lot longer than the rest of them.
Circumstances of late had wrought a change in their slightly dysfunctional family, starting with the marriage of Jo, his younger sister. Since then, Franc, his genius kid brother, had found a great job, with loads of responsibility, in one of his new brother-in-law’s firms. The family ties were now less fractured than they had been since the day his father, Milo Jellic, committed suicide.
His sister had married a man with money to burn, probably with the same kind of class Chelsea had. Not that he had aspirations in that direction—not even as a solution to his problems. Didn’t matter that one glance at her sexy body had his insides turning every which way.
No, he was sure his twin brother, Kel, would agree with him that one millionaire per family was enough.
Kurt glanced around the almost empty dining room as the sommelier left. They’d been the center of attention as waiters vied to pass them menus and then take their orders.
“So where did you learn so much about wine?” Chelsea leaned across the table, one hand toying with her empty glass.
The movement emphasized the lush curve of her breasts where her cashmere sweater clung to them. He had to admit she had style. It didn’t matter that her hair looked as if she’d cut it by herself without the aid of a mirror. He guessed it was the latest trend, but all it did was make her look younger, more vulnerable. He hardened his heart and refused to fall for it.
“I don’t spend all my life on top of a mountain. New Zealand may be a small country, but it’s big on wine.”
That said, he tried to shrug off the feeling he’d made a mistake coming here. The contrasting digs they’d chosen—the tavern he’d shacked up in and this upmarket hotel where the cheapest room cost five hundred dollars a night—escalated his estimation of the class barrier he’d sensed looming between them.
It wasn’t anything that had required much thought with Atlanta. She had been a friend; he hadn’t been attracted to her. But with Chelsea, the attraction presented itself like a minefield in no-man’s-land.
The quickest and easiest way out was to say no.
Chelsea’s eyes lit up as she smiled at him. “Alone at last.”
Kurt had an unwelcome impression that her eager eyes saw him as a parcel, tied with a big blue bow that she couldn’t wait to hack into with her scissors.
He glanced over his shoulder, totaling the number of stares from hovering waiters focused in their direction. “I’ve felt more alone in Grand Central Station.”
“They do pride themselves on exemplary service here. At least, that’s what it said on the hotel Web site. But it isn’t quite so overpowering at dinnertime when the restaurant is busier.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that. This isn’t the style I look for when I’m thinking of climbing a mountain. Although a certain amount of comfort between climbs is attractive to people with money. At least, that’s what I had in mind when I started converting an old farmhouse near Aoraki National Park into a lodge.”
He could see Chelsea was dying to question him about the place that had been a huge drain on his purse for the past year, but the sommelier beat her to the draw.
He held out a bottle so Kurt could read the label. French. This far from New Zealand he’d known he couldn’t expect everything. Meaning a bottle marked Marlborough, one of New Zealand’s top wine districts. He nodded his acceptance and an opener materialized from the guy’s pocket.
“Aoraki? Where is that?” Chelsea asked.
He briefly lifted a hand to signal her to hold a moment.
“Let me taste this, then I’ll tell all.” Kurt swirled the wine in his glass the way Drago had shown him, took a sniff and then tasted the wine. It had the pearlike aroma but not the rich, ripe fruitiness he’d expect if it had been a New Zealand wine. Still, it would pass muster. He glanced up at the patient sommelier. “Excellent. Thank you.”
It was apparent that Chelsea agreed. Her gray eyes seemed to lift at the corners smiling at him over the rim of the glass as she took her first taste. “I’m pleased to know your taste in wine exceeds your choice in whiskey.”
“I’m versatile. I use what’s on hand. Sometimes a compromise is necessary.” But there would be no compromising where Chelsea’s safety was concerned.
“You wanted to know about Aoraki. It’s the Maori name for Mount Cook. It translates as cloud piercer.”
“I like that. Much more romantic than Mount Cook.”
Trust a woman to find the romance in a hunk of rock. After last month’s accident he was having trouble finding anything vaguely quixotic in his chosen field. It had become a means to an end—that end being his lodge. “I’d be telling a lie if I said there was any fairy-tale romance connected to my lodge. It used to be a sheep station, but it’s years since anyone lived there. Most of the land was ceded to the state in lieu of back taxes. The land itself is pretty barren, a flat valley scooped out at the foot of the Southern Alps by glaciers during the ice age. My interest in it is its accessibility to the Alps and Aoraki. It’s close enough to the township of Lake Tekapo not to be completely isolated. Lots of tourists pass by on the way to Queenstown.”
“But it must be exciting making a project like that come to life.”
“Exciting would be good, but when I think about the lodge, all I see ahead of me is hard work and lots of it.”
“Why aren’t you there now working on your property instead of climbing Mount Everest?”
“I need the money. Besides, it’s winter in New Zealand, lots of snow and rain—better for skiing than climbing, though there are plenty of fools who still want to risk it. My aim is to build up a training establishment attached to the lodge where I can teach guests to climb safely.”
Kurt cleared his throat in an attempt to dislodge the lump that had settled in his craw. “You might not believe it, but I had one of the best safety records going until last month. Hell, they do say pride comes before a fall, but I’d rather have died myself than lose anyone on my watch, especially Bill and Atlanta.”
“I know that feeling well. It’s called guilt. No wonder we’re together. They say misery loves company.”
Kurt’s mind latched on to only one portion of her last sentence. “But we’re not together. After we’ve eaten I’ll go my way and you’ll go yours. Tell me something. When you were trying to hire a guide, did you give them all your name and your reasons for going up Everest?”
Chelsea leaned back in her chair as if distancing herself from him. Hardly worth the effort, given they were already sitting at opposite ends of a table for two. “Yes. Why not?”
“No reason.” He gave her the lie, knowing after today he wouldn’t see her again.
He watched her lift her glass and pour some wine into her mouth as if she were drinking straight courage.
He tried some of his own, just a sip, and waited. He wasn’t lacking in courage, but something told him if he didn’t keep his wits about him, Chelsea would try to tie him in knots.
His stomach had already taken a few twists and turns since he’d arrived. Sexual attraction could steal a man’s soul. Look at Adam. Even he wasn’t immune to the allure of a good-looking woman. But then, he’d had only one to choose from. Why, out of all the women Kurt had met, was Chelsea the one to stir feelings that had lain dormant since he’d given his love to the mountains?
He wasn’t the type to court danger and leave a family at home. No, there was nothing of his old man in him, except maybe going for the thrill. He couldn’t see why, as a cop, his late father had taken to dealing drugs. It couldn’t have been for the money. None of it ever appeared on their table. They’d been a big family, and after his mother died, Grandma Glamuzina had managed the way she had in the old country, working on a shoestring budget.
After his father drove his car off a cliff, the fat hit the pan and the truth came out—or what had passed as the truth. He’d come to think that his need to climb stemmed from being able to get above everything else, up high where the stench of corruption couldn’t taint him.
His sister and her husband, Rowan McQuaid Stanhope, were now in the process of trying to unravel the mystery of who’d done what. It was after he heard about their efforts that he’d decided to start work on the lodge. Even to himself he hadn’t admitted that maybe this had been the catalyst for thinking he could settle down at last, maybe find himself a wife.
Yeah. That explained this sudden rush of testosterone to the brain; he’d given his instincts permission to find some woman attractive. But why Chelsea?
She was the last person he could have a relationship with.
“I could fix your money problems.”
“Whoa, back up there. That wasn’t why I mentioned them. If I was into borrowing money I would have asked Bill—I’d known him a lot longer than I’ve known you.” This woman’s mind worked faster than a black cat disappearing at night.
She was hard to keep up with and knew exactly which buttons to push. He’d have to learn to keep his mouth shut and not give her another opening. He polished off the rest of his wine in one gulp.
Chelsea signaled the sommelier to refill Kurt’s glass, but kept her smile tucked inside her mind as she did it. She’d learned negotiating on her daddy’s knee and knew not to blow the deal by letting the other side recognize you could see the winning post streaking toward you. “I’m not talking about a loan. You have something I want and I have something you need. Fair exchange is no robbery. Let’s parler.”
Her mind clicked to possibilities that hadn’t entered her plans when she sat outside on the veranda. Now it took shape, a plan she hadn’t considered before. “I think the least you can do is give me a trial. I deserve at least that. I believe I can cope. You don’t. Take me up there and give me a chance to prove what I can do.”
She saw Kurt’s lips quirk, pulling his mouth up at one side. The action emphasized the depth of the dimple in his chin and distracted her attention from his words for a moment, but only a moment.
“You really think you can take the leap from a climbing wall to the highest mountain in the world in one go?” He gave the question a facetious quality with the lift of one eyebrow.
Chelsea wasn’t used to being talked down to, even by men who were six inches taller. But she now knew she had an edge. Seduction and feminine wiles didn’t have to come into her proposition. This was business. Her territory. “I’ll never know unless I’m given the chance to try. Look at it this way—you’re here, you’re available and you need the money. I have money, I want to find my sister’s body and you have the opportunity to make sure I’ll be safe before you take me on. Or rather take me up the mountain.”
“Why don’t you just pay me to go up and recover the bodies and bring them down to Namche Bazaar?”
“No… Definitely not. That isn’t the way it’s going to go down. I have to be there.” She couldn’t take the chance on someone else finding the key before her.
His dark eyes glinted as if he sensed she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. She was right. “What’s so important about you being there?”
She rolled her eyes at him and thought fast. “If this is the moment when you expect me to spill all my guilty little secrets about my relationship with Atlanta, forget about it. I don’t remember what I told you last night, but that was whiskey-on-an-empty-stomach talking. All I’ve had today is a few sips of wine and a big breakfast.”
The mention of food appeared to trigger the arrival of their first course—corn and feta fritters, layered with bacon strips and vegetables. It had sounded good on the menu, but at the moment it had lost its appeal by slowing the momentum of their conversation. Kurt had already made it clear that he didn’t care to have a discussion in front of any of the dining-room staff.
It didn’t matter to her who knew she wanted to go up Mount Everest after her sister’s body. There was only one secret she needed to keep, apart from her connection to IBIS, and that was the whereabouts of the key. This was the first time in her twenty-eight years that she had felt the lives of thousands of employees lay in the palm of her hand.
She didn’t look on it as a burden. All she knew was there was no way she wanted to let them down. She hadn’t even stopped long enough to check out wills or anything. Maybe someone from Bill’s family owned part of Tedman Foods. She didn’t give a hoot. As a Tedman, Chelsea was the last of that name, Arlon Rowles being her father’s first cousin only because their mothers had been sisters.
The server left and Chelsea picked up her knife and fork, but didn’t use them. She wasn’t able to start eating. Getting her own way was more important than food, even if she had been starving.
She watched Kurt cut into a fritter and layer it with bacon and tomato on his fork. Once his mouth was full and he had no choice but to listen, she made her move.
“If you’re worried about my safety, don’t be. It won’t make any difference. I will go up there, either with you or someone else, even if I have to fly an experienced guide in from the States. They can’t all be in Namche Bazaar right now.
“What you have is a chance to make sure I can make it. I’m fit. I have some experience with ropes, knots, carabiners and ascenders. Teach me enough to get me up to where Atlanta and Bill are lying. I know you trust yourself. Well, forget about the accident. I trust you enough to get me up there and back again in one piece. So what do you say? Have we got a deal?”
She gripped her eating utensils hard.
Not that that would stop her hands shaking, or dissipate the sense of urgency coursing through her veins as if her life was at stake. She thought of Maddie and knew that it could be, if knowledge of the key Atlanta had been carrying got out.
The sooner they did this the better.
Chelsea meant what she’d said. She trusted Kurt Jellic with her life, only she couldn’t tell him that her life was more likely to be in danger from an external force, not the mountain that had taken her sister.
Kurt’s face was grim. Did he consider that what she asked amounted to blackmail? But like it or not, fate had linked them in this endeavor. And like it or not, there was no going against fate. The monks in the temples of this high mountain stronghold would be the first to agree with the supposition that it was already written in the sands of time.
“Since you put it like that, you leave me no choice.”
He took a sip of wine while Chelsea held her breath.
“I know someone who owns a place we can use. It’s not on Everest, but it’s within four days’ walk from here, maybe three depending on your stamina. The mountain it’s close to isn’t anything like as high as Everest, so we won’t have to worry about oxygen. We won’t need tanks where you want to go, in any case. We don’t have to climb to the top.
“What Ama Dablam does have is a glacier, an icefall that’s easier to reach than any of the others. And if you can’t make it on this one, you’ll never be able to reach the couloir where their bodies fell.”
She wanted to punch the air and shout Yes! Her next reaction was to tell him I’m glad you see things my way, but they were still in Namche Bazaar and neither reaction was what she would call politic. Also, Kurt’s face looked carved out of the ice he’d told her about.
But she couldn’t hide the excitement fizzing through her veins. She could make this happen. Hard work, danger—hah, she laughed in their faces. She would do this. “When do we start?”
“As soon as we’ve got you kitted out and I’ve instructed Sherpa Rei to rehire one of his cousins and some more Sherpa porters to carry our gear.”
“Good. I can’t wait.”
The sooner the better.
She flashed him a smile that had nothing to do with getting her own way and everything to do with knowing she was going to spend some quality time with this guy. “Eat up, then let’s get out of here. I don’t know about you, but suddenly I’m filled with energy.”
Chapter 4
They spent three nights on the trail to Ama Dablam, sleeping in tourist lodges on the way, their first stop at Tengboche within sight of the great Buddhist monastery.
The distance wasn’t great, but the path rose and fell steeply, winding between tall, leafy, scented trees, some of them seemingly growing straight out of the rocks. But once their path branched away from Mount Everest and Base Camp, their height above sea level rose and the green shade was left behind.
At Ama Dablam, one look was enough to tell Chelsea that when Kurt said, I know someone who owns a place we can use he wasn’t talking about the type of mountain lodge you might find at Aspen, or near the standard of the lodges dotting Sagarmatha National Park.
The almost squalid little shack was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Its owner, whom Kurt knew well enough to ask a favor from, was a Sherpa, another relative of Kora’s brother.
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Frances Housden
Born to luxury and comfort, Chelsea Tedman never expected to be climbing Mount Everest. But her need to solve the mystery surrounding her sister's fatal fall on the mountain had Chelsea in Nepal, determined to climb the unforgiving terrain at all costs.She just needed a guide. Mysterious as he was alluring, Kurt Jellic was the only man for the job, and all she had to do was convince him. But Chelsea didn't know which was more difficult: Everest's brutal climb or her irresistible attraction to Kurt. With danger so near, Chelsea could soon be victim to the mountain…and to her own passion.
Chelsea would never forget the moment when she hung in midair on Mount Everest,
nothing between her and death as she anxiously searched for Kurt against the icy cliff.
When she’d heard him yell her name, she’d been sure he’d fallen. Immediately, she had been stung by pain and guilt. If Kurt died, it would be her fault. She was the one who had hounded him to bring her back to the place where her sister had plunged to her death.
Her heart had rolled over. A useless lump of lead in her chest that refused to beat without knowing Kurt was safe. The moment her eyes had latched on to his red anorak against the gray-blue sky above her, it went into overdrive.
From now on, no matter what Kurt said, or how much he protested that he was no good for her, she knew in her heart she could never love anyone else as much as him.
The difficult task would be convincing him.
Stranded with a Stranger
Frances Housden
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
I’d like to dedicate this book to my original editor at Silhouette, Leslie Wainger, with thanks.
And also to Sir Edmund Hillary, my inspiration for this book, who proved that although Kiwis can’t fly, they can still reach the top of the world.
FRANCES HOUSDEN
has always been a voracious reader, but she never thought of being a writer until a teacher gave her the encouragement she needed to put pen to paper. As a result, Frances was a finalist in the 1998 Clendon Award and won the award in 1999, which led to the sale of her first book for Silhouette, The Man for Maggie.
Frances’s marriage to a navy man took her from her birthplace in Scotland all the way to the ends of the earth in New Zealand. Now that he’s a landlubber, they try to do most of their traveling together. They live on a ten-acre bush block in the heart of Auckland’s Wine District. She has two large sons, two small grandsons and a tiny granddaughter who can twist her around her finger, as well as a wheaten terrier who thinks she’s boss. Thanks to one teacher’s dedication, Frances now gets to write about the kind of heroes a woman would travel to the ends of the earth for. Frances loves to hear from readers. Get in touch with Frances through her Web site at www.franceshousden.com (http://www.franceshousden.com).
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Prologue
Mount Everest
April 20
Dear Chelsea,
I can imagine your astonishment as you open this. I can almost hear you gasp, “A letter from Atlanta!”
How many years has it been? I move around so much I’ve lost count. Far, far too many, though. My fault. As eldest, I shouldn’t have let a childish rift go on for so long. I just hope I haven’t left it too late to set matters right.
What’s it all about?
Well, for a start, I’m worried.
Oh, not over making the climb of Everest I’ll be doing soon. I lost all fear of heights years ago, when I swapped my ballet slippers for climbing boots. It was only to be expected marrying an adventurous man like Bill Chaplin. And when you love someone the way I love Bill, wherever he goes, you follow.
That’s right, I used the L word. No matter what you thought of the arrangement back then, our father never forced me into this marriage. I’ve had fifteen blissful years. Not many people can claim that. You were far too young to understand back then, barely thirteen. I hope time has achieved what I couldn’t, and that you understand at last what it is to truly love another person heart and soul.
But I’m getting off track. It’s not myself I’m worried for—it’s you. Though chances are we might both be in danger, not many people can reach me up here, so I reckon I’m pretty safe. It takes a special kind of man to climb Everest, and I’m certain Arlon Rowles isn’t one of them.
Yes, I’m talking about our cousin Arlon. It seems making him CEO of the business father left us, in order for us to avoid facing each other across a boardroom table, was a huge mistake.
I received a letter yesterday from Madeline Coulter. You remember Maddie? She worked for Father. According to her, Arlon has been siphoning money out of the business for the past five years and salting it away in a Swiss bank account.
Five years. My God, he must have started soon after Father’s death. She says that she has the proof locked away in a safety deposit box. This is the number: 44578—Bank of America, Jamestown. Don’t lose it. It’s in both our names.
Along with the letter, she sent me a key. I’ve decided it will be safer on my person for now. I’m wearing it on a chain around my neck.
But this is where it gets down and dirty. I called Maddie by satellite phone and her sister answered. I couldn’t have been more shocked. Dear old Maddie was shot and killed, in an apparent mugging. It happened not long after she mailed the letter. Coincidence? I don’t think so. She was found in an alley, and the shopping she’d done on her way home from work was scattered all around her, yet they don’t live in a dangerous neighborhood. And if someone was desperate enough to kill her for money, why leave her purse and the shopping behind?
I don’t want to scare you, but I’ve had a dreadful feeling ever since her letter arrived that this situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. So watch your back, sister dearest. I mean it. Watch your back and don’t go out alone at night.
I expect you’re wondering why I’m not coming straight home to help you deal with this. Bill would insist on it. That’s why I haven’t told him. For years he’s wanted to climb Everest. We’ve trained for this moment in Switzerland and in South America, where we met our guide Kurt Jellic, then in New Zealand, where Kurt comes from. Besides, by the time this reaches you, I’ll probably be back from the summit and on my way to the States. It took Maddie’s letter three weeks to reach me. Why should this one be any different?
You’re probably wondering how I found your address. I’ve always made sure I knew where you were. And yes, maybe I should have phoned you, as well. But after all these years of silence I couldn’t be certain you would take my call. Please accept this olive branch and try to forgive me for deserting you. I know you always found Father hard to deal with—and with me gone? Well, enough said for now. Maybe once this is over we can meet up in Paris, now that you’ve made your home there.
Darn, reading back over this I know it sounds slightly paranoid. All I can say is, you’ll probably feel as I do after reading it.
Speaking of paranoid, ever since we climbed back down to Base Camp, even before Maddie’s letter arrived, I’ve felt that someone is watching me. Stupid, huh? I couldn’t be farther from cousin Arlon’s idea of civilization if I tried, but I can’t shake the sensation of being watched.
Tomorrow we go back up. The weather looks good to reach the summit, and we’ve spent a lot of time climbing back and forth between Camps One, Two and Three, acclimatizing to the thin atmosphere. Yet, in a way, I’ll be glad to get back up there.
Everest has a way of making our human troubles appear puny, insignificant. And I really need that right now.
I know I’m thrusting a heck of a lot of responsibility on you, but if we can’t stop Arlon and the company goes belly-up, thousands of people will lose their jobs.
Father must be turning in his grave. Not that you’ll give a damn about that. But if there was one thing that mattered to him, it was the business he built up from nothing. What he really wanted was sons, not daughters.
I’ll call as soon as I make the descent. We can go fetch the papers together and make sure they get to the proper authorities. Or maybe we ought to contact them first and get some protection before we open the safety deposit box.
Take care, and I really do mean watch your back. Maddie was shot from behind.
Your loving sister,
Atlanta
Chapter 1
Namche Bazaar
May
Chelsea watched the guide’s pale blue gaze shift away as if he couldn’t meet her eyes. “Sorry, Ms. Tedman, I can’t help you. Kurt Jellic from Aoraki Expeditions is the one you want to ask. He is the only one who knows exactly where the bodies are hidden…in a manner of speaking.”
Basie Serfontien’s smirk faltered as if the big South African’s harsh-voiced faux pas had just dawned on him.
“Thanks for your help.”
Chelsea began turning away, wanting out of there before Serfontien, the last guide on her list, could get a full view of her trembling lips. Failure. Again.
She wouldn’t cry in front of these hulking great men—not if she could help it—but now she was down to her last and also her best hope, Kurt Jellic. Her mouth twisted in a wry semblance of a smile as she forced herself to turn back. Trust her to forget the most important question. “I don’t suppose any of you know where Jellic is? No one I’ve asked has seen him for days.”
The guide and his team all shook their heads.
It was the fifth time she’d asked someone to guide her up Everest. She had heard rumors about Jellic, and some of the suggestions to look for the man had an if-you-dare quality about them, as if they knew something she didn’t. Too bad. The man could be Frankenstein’s long-lost brother for all she cared, as long as he took her to where the last member of her immediate family—her sister, Atlanta Chaplin—had been killed.
The accident had happened just a few days after she’d received Atlanta’s letter. They had not reached the top as planned. And though that did not seem to matter now, she wished Atlanta and Bill could at least have had their wish before they died.
Atlanta’s letter was tucked in Chelsea’s breast pocket, as if somehow keeping it close to her heart would change the past.
The night when she had caught the news on CNN of another two climbers being lost to Everest had turned her life upside down. She had looked at the screen, taken in the names, but refused to believe. Atlanta and Bill Chaplin?
No, it had to be a mistake. The bodies hadn’t been recovered. She’d held her breath, waiting for better news, even as she had made her arrangements to travel to Namche Bazaar.
Then she’d arrived in Nepal, walked from Lukla to Namche Bazaar, and hope was no longer an option. She touched the letter through her anorak. Its paper had lost its crispness and stopped crackling.
She was sick of getting the same answer to her question. “I’m sorry about Bill and Atlanta. They were a nice couple. But we can’t take our other clients off the beaten track to help you look for their bodies. You want to talk to Kurt Jellic.”
The invisible man. She had begun feeling she was being given the runaround. Chelsea swiveled on her heel, disappointment weighing on her shoulders. Before she could stride off in the direction of her hotel, a hand touched her elbow. “Excuse please, lady.” She turned and the hand dropped away. Its owner, embarrassed and blushing, lowered her dark eyes. The young woman was almost breathtakingly beautiful, the skin of her round face smooth and lustrous. Such a pity that life in the mountains and the wear and tear of this harsh landscape would show on those perfect features before too many years had passed.
“Namaste,” the girl lisped in her delightful accent.
“Namaste.” Chelsea repeated the greeting she had already learned meant “I salute all the divine qualities in you.”
The Sherpa girl fitted the mountain village scene much better than Chelsea did in her pseudomountaineering gear bought in Paris. She’d never been up a mountain in her life.
No matter—she was determined to climb the biggest of them all, or part of it, at least. Leave the summit for those who needed that sort of buzz. She just wanted to find her sister.
“I am Kora. I know where Kurt S’ab is. I saw him yesterday.”
“You did?” Chelsea gasped. Hope at last.
The girl nodded a couple of times from the waist up, her many layers of clothing swaying with her in a rainbow of rusts, browns and blues. “My brother, Sherpa Rei, works for him.”
Chelsea couldn’t restrain her smile. “Good. What is he like? What kind of man is he?”
“Kurt Sa’b is very big man, very big.” Kora drew in the air with her hands, but Chelsea wasn’t sure what to take from that. Was it his stature or large ego that impressed Kora the most?
Yet her heart beat with excitement as she asked, “And where does Kurt Sa’b live? Is it far? Can you take me to him?”
“He lives now in a tavern over in the old town.”
The old town? Chelsea looked around her. Although they were standing on the outskirts of a street market dangerously close to the edge of the terrace, none of the buildings built into the other side looked terribly old. She supposed Namche Bazaar had once been a small, quiet mountain terrace village hanging on the side of a hill. Then hordes of foreigners had disrupted its peace, determined to pit their skills against Everest. Once Sir Edmund Hillary had “knocked the bastard off,” as he had put it, nearly every man and his dog had declared open season on the mountain as if it was some sort of macho ritual. Why else had Bill Chaplin dragged Atlanta up there? Not to get himself and Atlanta killed, that’s for sure.
The girl nodded. “Kora can show you the way.”
“Great, wonderful. Can we go now?”
“Sure ting.” Laughter tinkled out as Kora’s smooth golden face creased into dimples. “Follow me, lady. This way.”
Marketplaces like the one they were walking through were always a good indicator of the culture of a country, the food in particular. The scents here were so different from Paris, where the aroma of freshly baked bread frequently led her by the nose.
They passed a stall, and for all her urgency, Chelsea’s taste buds were stirred by the spicy tang of barbecued meat. Her mouth watered. How long since she’d eaten? Breakfast, at least. She’d been far too busy chasing after mountain guides.
On any day but this she would have let the sounds of the market and unfamiliar accents soak into her mind. She always did this in a new place. Sounds and smells were her way of storing the memory so she wouldn’t lose it.
But the little Nepalese girl was swift on her feet, weaving with ease through the multinational crowd, a mix of locals and tourists, and Chelsea needed to keep up with her. She let the murmur of voices slip past her, although the wind chimes ringing on every stall to keep evil spirits away were a different proposition, as were the birds that sang their hearts out in cages. The sound was lovely. It reminded her of a canary Atlanta had bought her for her fifth birthday.
Oh, God, why couldn’t she have waited for me?
All her life her sister had taken off to places where Chelsea couldn’t possibly follow.
The street opened out onto a small square dominated by a Buddhist temple. Prayer flags flapped overhead in a breeze perfumed with food and incense, and brown hands turned prayer wheels as they passed by. Did those wheels and flags work, or were they just another pretty superstition to ward away evil?
Chelsea wouldn’t have been surprised to discover they were as redundant as her own prayers. She’d said some for Maddie after her sister’s letter arrived. Maddie had been a friend since childhood, a woman who would never have intentionally hurt a soul. She hadn’t deserved to die. Chelsea had called the detective in charge of the case, but had gained no helpful information. Didn’t a woman’s death matter anymore?
Spinning a prayer wheel was probably as useless as the entreaties she had sent upward that Atlanta was really safe. All her hopes of them coming together again, her chance to correct past mistakes, had died on the mountain.
But no prayers would be as profound if she couldn’t find her sister and that key. Too many huge American firms had toppled recently, brought down by creative accounting, and this could be another instance. If only she could be sure what was in the safety deposit box.
Last quarter’s financials had been down again, but if Maddie was correct, she needed to find the proof.
That was the only way to stop cousin Arlon.
Kurt squinted at the figures written in his small accounts book. Not that he thought scrunching his eyes would change the fact that if he didn’t score some work soon, his business would be in the red. It had cost him $65,000 to use the fixed lines and aluminum bridges put out by the Sherpas’ association at the beginning of the season. If he didn’t get more work soon…
The up-front payment he’d received from the Chaplins had been eaten up and then some. And he wasn’t such a boor that he would claim from the estate of a couple of friends who’d been killed on his watch.
“Aargh.” He cleared his throat as if that would get rid of the rumors that had been circulating since he’d come back down the mountain without Bill and Atlanta.
The local magistrate had more or less cleared him. That is to say, nothing could be proved one way or another. All they had was his word. But in a close-knit society, once a rumor took hold it was hard to contradict it.
Bad news always traveled faster than good.
If he could get his hands on the bastard who had started them, he’d kick him to hell and gone. His family knew only too well how rumor and innuendo could ruin a life. But when his father had died it had been Kurt and his brothers and sister who’d been left to deal with the mess. Were still dealing with it.
He looked up from the lined page and realized he should blame the poor light for the problem with his eyes. At five-thirty in the evening his attic room always flooded with gray watery light as the sun dropped behind the Himalayas. He shut the book with a snap. The sound was like a thunderclap in the quiet room.
Though he had taken lodgings on the top floor of a tavern, the old stone walls were two feet thick and swallowed up the noise from the barroom, keeping it to a low murmur he barely noticed.
Kurt scrubbed his hands over his face and combed his untidy hair with his fingers. He needed a shave. His stubble was four days old and as black as his hair. What was the point? He had no one to impress. Clients were staying away in droves.
He pushed up from his cross-legged position on the floor. The wooden boards were ten times more comfortable than any flat spot on Everest. He stretched, his fingers brushing a large beam. The slope of the roof made it necessary to stoop at the far side of the room by his bed, and he had to take care not to knock his head for the first couple of steps after he emerged from the attic.
Running his hands over his pockets, he felt for his matches. Time to light the lamps before he started falling over the furniture and his bags.
A wooden stair cracked outside. The sound of it ricocheted through the silence like a bullet bouncing off the walls. He recognized the sound. That particular step was five from the top.
His hand slid to the knife on his belt. He unsheathed it as he crossed to the door in his sock-cushioned feet and listened for the creak of the step one down from the landing outside his door.
He’d been robbed twice in the short time he’d lived here. The door didn’t have a lock, but then anything of true value he carried on him.
Whoever was climbing the stairs must have been taking them two at a time. The next noise he’d been waiting for didn’t arrive before a gentle tap on the door started it swinging open. Not only did the heavy wooden slab not have a lock, its catch didn’t work worth a damn, losing its grip at the slightest pressure.
There was no announcement. No “Hello, is anyone there?” Only the door moving closer to his shoulder as it was pushed wide. The footsteps were light, as was to be expected in a country where most of the inhabitants were head and shoulders shorter than him.
He let the intruder take no more than two steps into the room, then, knife poised in one hand ready to strike, he wrapped his other arm around the thief from behind. “Don’t move. I have a knife and it’s pointed at your throat.”
The intruder let out a squawk that nearly deafened him. He almost dropped the knife as a padded elbow dug into his ribs. If the aim of the elbow hadn’t warned him his target was taller than he’d imagined, the handful of fluid feminine breast told him he was definitely below the mark by eight inches or more.
It had been so long since he’d touched a woman, touched anything that filled his hand with such soft fullness, that his palm burned through the contact, even through several layers of clothing. Stunned by the unexpected rush to his groin, he grabbed a breath and smelled a floral perfume that clouded his reason and made him squeeze, just once.
As the heel of her boot stomped down painfully on the bony arch of his foot hard enough to make him wince, a second mistake leaped to mind. Her struggles had brought her dangerously close to the blade of his knife. Kurt flung it from him before its sharp edge could slice something a lot more fragile than nylon rope. Before the clatter of metal on wood reached his ears he’d bundled the squirming mass of female body tightly in both arms. “Take it easy, easy. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“All right for you to say now I’ve knocked your knife out of your hand,” she boasted.
Well, at least he now knew she was an American.
She wriggled some more, her butt rubbing against his groin. It reacted accordingly.
“I threw it away,” he growled, unable to stifle his indignation that the woman had laid claim to his act of chivalry.
“So you say now.”
He felt the muscles in her butt tighten against him as she lifted a knee, but he was too busy spreading his legs to avoid her heel to enjoy the sensation. As her foot jarred against the floor its echo went straight from her to him. It was about then she appeared to recognize what was happening behind her, and she squawked once more. “Let me go, you…you lecher.”
The bands of his arms tightened, quelling her renewed struggles. This was getting out of hand. Didn’t she realize this situation was as painful to his ego as it was to her sensibilities? Only one thing for it, he decided.
Letting his arms slip lower without losing their hold, he picked her up. The softest landing place in the room was the bed. No sooner thought than done—he hefted her up and released her onto the mattress.
He could hear her pushing herself backward to the head of the bed, her heels catching on the covers. “Keep away from me. I know karate. No way I’m going to let you rape me.”
“Pity you never got past lesson one, where they taught you to stamp on your opponent’s feet. And while we’re on the subject, who snuck into whose room? Believe me, you couldn’t be safer. I’ve no urge to have sex with a shrew.”
“You should be so lucky.”
“Hold it! Hold it right there. Not another word. If I’m going to be accused of sexual assault, and believe me, I’ve been accused of a lot worse recently, then for a change I want to look my accuser in the eye.” This time the matches sprang to his hold in the first pocket he searched. He lit one, but it didn’t pierce far into the gloom, and the shape on the bed could have been man or woman. But having touched her, he knew better.
“Actually, no one mentioned sexual assault, only…”
He froze, still as a statue, the match flaring in his fingers, as faint and tiny as the light at the end of the tunnel called his future. “Only what?”
“Whatever they say about men like you.”
“Men like me don’t go in for rape either.”
He could tell she’d heard the rumors, but he hadn’t expected her to back down. That made her either a coward or a woman who desperately wanted something he had. And she’d already let him know it wasn’t his body. He blew out the match, then took his ire out on the full backpack he’d left on the floor, kicking it in front of the door to make her escape harder.
The annoyance didn’t go away. Striking another match, he murmured under his breath, “The woman wriggles around against a guy as if she’s giving him a lap dance and she wonders why he gets a hard-on.”
Kurt had done a lot of talking to himself lately. Especially since people he’d once counted as friends had appeared to be avoiding his company. As if they would become guilty by association.
So she’d been asking around, had heard the stories that got worse as they went from mouth to mouth. He could have told her about rumors—that if they won’t go away, you have to learn to live with them.
Without turning his back to her, he lit the first couple of yak-butter oil lamps. Their glow was enough to illuminate long jean-clad legs. The third brought out the curve of her hips. He knew, to his cost, they were softly rounded where his were lean. The lilac anorak was a fashion statement no mountaineer worth his or her salt would wear. Its quilted folds hid the full breasts his palm had lighted on by mistake. He smiled softly as he picked up the next tiny copper bowl filled with oil.
Her hair was black, short, spiky, a match for the dark clumps of eyelashes framing her huge gray eyes. Eyes wide and staring at him as if he were the devil incarnate. As if she too thought him responsible for Bill’s and Atlanta’s deaths.
Sometimes he wondered if maybe he was.
While her expression nagged at his conscience, something in him acknowledged that contempt wasn’t the emotion he wanted to draw from the woman sprawled across his bed. But he wasn’t willing to go deeper into his motives.
With the final lamp lit, a gas cartridge one, the last of the gloom receded to the edges of the attic. Kurt walked up to the bed and looked down at his unexpected guest. Her eyes flashed a warning and her hands bunched up fists of the top cover as if it were the only thing preventing her from leaping at his throat.
“Hi, I’m Kurt Jellic. And you’d be…?”
“One moment you’re threatening to slice my neck, and the next you’re making an introduction as if we’d just met at a garden party,” Chelsea sniped, taking advantage of what seemed to be a truce to push herself into a more dignified sitting position.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m all out of cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey tea, but I can offer you a whiskey. They do say it’s good for shock. Perhaps it would make you remember your name.”
Taking a good look at him in the lamplight, she was left in no doubt that this guy could have killed her if necessary. She’d watched him move from lamp to lamp with lethal grace. Gradually each small increment of light had revealed the man Atlanta and Bill had trusted to get them safely to the summit of Everest and back again.
Why hadn’t that happened?
Oh, yeah, they had fallen. And she’d heard the word accident flung around with abandon. Kurt Jellic had been with them, and like a few other people she wondered how he had survived.
He threw her a grin, quirking his eyebrows as if to say, “Well?” His teeth were a slash of white in a face brushed with the kind of dark stubble film stars affected, as if it made them unrecognizable. His slightly gaunt features were dominated by dark unreadable eyes under black eyebrows, both sitting above an uncompromising straight slide of a nose.
“I’ve no trouble recalling my name. It’s Chelsea Tedman.”
She waited for a reaction, but wasn’t overwhelmed with surprise when she didn’t get one. Why would Atlanta have mentioned an estranged sister she hadn’t seen since before Chelsea entered high school?
He stepped around a heap of red and yellow ropes on the floor in front of a huge old-fashioned chest, then lifted a bottle. The reflection from a butter-oil lamp glimmered through the amber liquid sloshing near the bottom. The bottle had been well and truly broached. Hell, she hoped he wasn’t an alcoholic.
That was all she needed.
“Okay, now the formalities have been taken care of, how do you take your whiskey—straight or straight?”
“I take it in a glass.”
The bottle made a hollow clunk as he set it back down and picked up the glass sitting next to it. He peered into its depths and didn’t look particularly happy with what he saw.
Chelsea almost choked on a breath as he pulled out the tail of his tan-and-brown-checked shirt and proceeded to wipe the glass with it. His glance caught Chelsea’s horrified expression. Kurt’s embarrassed smile was almost boyish, if anyone with bristles could be likened to a boy. “What did you expect? This isn’t the Ritz. No room service. It’s either use what you have to hand or put up with a layer of dust floating on your whiskey.”
Apparently satisfied with his efforts, he poured some liquid into the glass, then opened the top drawer of the chest. He withdrew a blue plastic mug and emptied the rest of the bottle’s contents into it.
Chelsea’s innate fastidiousness made her hesitate to take the tumbler, even considering that alcohol was an antiseptic.
“Will it help if I tell you I put this shirt on clean not more than two hours ago?” He lifted the blue mug as if toasting her. “And you were the one who insisted on a glass.”
She took the tumbler, lifting it by the rim, wary of touching any part of this man whose sexual heat had burned through her as if he hadn’t held a knife against the tender skin of her throat.
He hadn’t actually said she was acting like a wimp, but she certainly felt like one. How had it come to this? Atlanta had been the delicate flowerlike child, while she had been the tomboy. Her sister had gone the ballet-and-piano-lessons route, while she had ridden horses and played basketball. Even at thirteen she’d been two inches taller than her elder sister and had made an ungainly, sulky bridesmaid at Atlanta’s wedding, letting everyone know she was doing it under protest.
When had their roles reversed? Atlanta roughing it on a mountain in boots and anorak, while Chelsea swanned off to watch the ballet in Paris dressed in the latest fashion as if she were a changeling.
And she was. She fluttered around Paris like a dilettante, playing at being a translator at the American embassy. Well, she was a translator for real. Though in truth, she worked in a basement office of the embassy, translating secrets that terrorists would give their lives to get their hands on. That’s if they even knew IBIS, the Intelligence Bureau for International Security, existed. Jason Hart, the bureau chief and initiator of the bureau, had taken extreme measures to insure its anonymity.
Kurt knocked his mug against her glass. “Sláinte.”
“Cheers.” The sip she took burned all the way down, and her face flamed as Kurt Jellic settled his massive frame on the edge of the bed, making the mattress dip. She was honest enough not to blame the blush on the whiskey. It had been a long time since she’d let down her guard enough to get this close to a man on a bed, even fully clothed.
“So what brings you to this neck of the woods, Chelsea Tedman?”
“I want to go up Mount Everest.”
A spark lightened his eyes, but not the intensity of his gaze on her. “And?”
“I was told you were the one to take me.”
He frowned, his black eyebrows coming together, shading his eyes as well as hardening his expression. “So no one but Aoraki Expeditions could fit you into their group?”
“Not where I wanted to go. But they all said you were definitely available.”
He took a slug of whiskey out of the incongruous plastic mug, but if he’d done it to hide his reactions it hadn’t worked. There was nothing enigmatic about the twist of his mouth, or the way his nose flared as he breathed in hard. “Did they tell you why?”
“They didn’t have to. I’m Atlanta Chaplin’s sister. And I already knew you were the one who took her and Bill up Everest.”
Something between a growl and a moan ripped from Kurt’s lips as he sprang to his feet, turning his shoulder to her for a second. She would almost have preferred he’d stayed that way. She wasn’t prepared for his ominous glance.
It was a relief when he tipped back his head and drained the whiskey from the blue mug, a relief to no longer feel like a slug he’d almost stepped on. Finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You took your damn good time before mentioning that. So what’s it to be—pistols at dawn, pushing me down a crevasse when I’m not looking, or are you going to get your lawyer to sue me? I warn you, you won’t get much. Everything I own is tied up in a half-built lodge in Aoraki, New Zealand. And as it stands it’s not worth much.”
“I’ve no intention of suing you. Do you think I’m so stupid I didn’t check out the circumstances of the accident with the local magistrate? I’m not as green as a cabbage.”
“Huh, looks like I passed, or you wouldn’t be here. But anyone less like a cabbage I’ve yet to meet.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, but at the moment I couldn’t give a hoot if you thought I had buck teeth and a squint. All I want from you is your help in recovering my sister’s body.”
“I’m not sure that it can be done. Even if we could reach them and get their bodies out of there, transporting them down the mountain is almost impossible. Anything of any size is transported either up or down on the backs of Sherpas. Climbing takes two hands. Apart from that, a lot of Sherpas believe the bodies of fallen climbers should remain with the mountain goddess.”
Chelsea felt safe to scoot to the edge of the bed. Holding the glass made her efforts awkward but didn’t deter her, not now that she thought her goal was in sight.
“Here, give me that.” Kurt took the tumbler from her and she rose from the bed.
She stood in front of him and found she had to look up. “You don’t look like a superstitious guy.”
“I’m not, but I am cautious. You don’t succeed at mountain climbing by rushing into stuff hell-for-leather.”
“Good. I haven’t got a superstitious bone in my body.” Kurt ran his glance over her as if checking out her bones—or rather what covered them, she decided, as the flame in his eyes took her straight back to that moment when his hand had covered her breast. Fear for her life hadn’t been enough to stifle the arousing quality of his touch, or the discovery that her breast had fit perfectly into his palm.
He took a sip from her glass, but she felt no inclination to mention it, nor do anything to stifle the persuasive power of the whiskey. For all his faults, her father hadn’t raised a fool.
“It won’t be cheap. If we can recover the bodies, we’ll need a large team of Sherpas on the way down to carry them in relays.”
“Money is no object. Getting my sister home is all that matters.” Her statement suddenly felt like a boast, a clunker dropped into this attic where money was obviously scarce.
She kept her eye on Kurt in case he appeared to see it that way, too. He ran his tongue around his teeth as if pondering the situation. Then, as if realizing he was still holding her glass, he thrust it toward her.
“No, you keep it,” she said coolly. “I prefer mine with soda.”
He took her at her word, taking a smaller mouthful than the one that had made his throat work as he swallowed the last of the whiskey in the mug. “Okay. Prepare yourself for it taking a week or more to get everything organized. Where are you staying?”
“At the Peaks Hotel.”
A raised eyebrow was his only acknowledgment that the hotel was the most expensive accommodation in Namche Bazaar.
“Have you done any climbs with Bill and Atlanta? Better tell me what experience you’ve had.” He waited expectantly
This was the crunch moment that would make or break her chance of recovering her sister and the key. “No, I’ve never climbed with my sister and her husband. We didn’t see each other that often. I live in Paris and…well, you know where they lived.”
“So what’s it been—the French Alps, Mont Blanc?”
“None of those. I stayed in Paris mainly, but I belong to this gym with a huge climbing wall and my speeds on that are considered expert level.”
He let out a whoop that ran around the attic, bouncing off the walls and coming back to her more times than she appreciated. What did he know? She was expert level.
He stopped chortling long enough to spit out, “A climbing wall? Lady, you crack me up.” Then he sobered. “No way am I taking a rookie climber up Everest. My reputation is shot as it is. It would be dead in the water if I took up an inexperienced climber. It was hell losing your sister and brother-in-law. If I lost a third one I might as well shoot myself. I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.”
“But—”
“No. Don’t try to persuade me, or bat those eyelashes my way. If you think that would work, then you are greener than a cabbage.”
Chapter 2
She let Kurt lead the way out of the attic, quite content to follow him into the darkness of the stairs instead of tackling them first.
He’d thrust his arms into a red anorak on the way out, a color that would be glaringly obvious against ice and snow. Chelsea had noticed how he automatically angled himself to exit without brushing his shoulders against the doorjambs on each side.
As Kora had said, he was a very big man.
Every few steps Kurt stopped and lit one of the small lamps set into shallow alcoves in the wall.
The creaky steps hadn’t seemed so steeply pitched when she’d climbed up them, and losing her balance on the way down was the last thing she needed. She would never be able to persuade him to take her up Mount Everest if he thought she couldn’t manage a flight of stairs.
No use pretending a few drinks would loosen this guy up. He’d drunk his whiskey, then hers, and it hadn’t affected him one iota.
She might have to use her feminine wiles.
Oh, God! She might be reduced to begging.
Chelsea squared her shoulders before once more measuring the width of Kurt’s, which were so wide, so reassuringly strong and masculine.
Kurt reached the green door leading into the barroom that she had come through earlier. Kora had inquired of the barman as to Kurt’s whereabouts, then hurried away smiling, her fingers curled around the tip Chelsea had slipped her. It was a small price for finding the one man in Namche Bazaar who could help her. As he reached for the handle, Kurt turned and gestured for her to go in front of him. “After you.”
His cheekbones cut two curved slashes of shadow in the hollows of his cheeks, yet the leanness of his face didn’t fool her into thinking that this was anything but a strong man.
A man, a tiny voice told her, who sounded as if he saw things in black and white, right and wrong. Not one to put her in danger no matter how much she pleaded her case.
She should be extremely careful never to get on his wrong side. Thanks to the experience of their first meeting, she knew the man carried a knife and wasn’t afraid to use it. All of that aside, she would do whatever it took to succeed. Beg, cajole, seduce.
Come up with a plan.
More was at stake now than at any other time in her life.
Inside, the tavern walls were lime washed, same as the outside, though around the fireplace, white had given way to smoky gray. Someone had lit the fire since she had stood there with Kora, and now more than ever the place reminded her of an Indiana Jones movie set. More tiny pots of yak-butter oil burned on a ledge that ran around three sides of the room, throwing pockets of light into the gloom. Overhead, the same pots tipped the branches of the wooden chandelier that swung in the breeze they’d brought in with them. Chelsea held her breath waiting for the main door to slam open. Out of the wild and windy landscape Indy would stride into the barroom in all his whip-cracking, world-saving majesty.
She suddenly saw the humor of it. That’s what she’d come to Nepal looking for, hoping for—a man to help her save her world. But was Kurt Jellic that man?
The door shut and Kurt crowded behind her, so close she could feel his deep voice rumble where his chest touched her shoulder. “Live up to your expectations?”
“I don’t know if I had any, but it’s certainly something else. I’m just letting my eyes become accustomed to the light, or lack of it, so I won’t fall over anything.”
“All right by me.”
His breath on her neck caused her to shiver.
Of course he noticed. “If you’re cold we can sit near the fire.”
“No, thank you. Let’s find a happy medium. I would soon get overheated next to the fire and have to start shedding.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied the men sitting around the tables. “I don’t think there are many here who would object, but to be on the safe side we can take that table in the corner.”
As they reached the table he’d pointed out, a gust of wind blew down the chimney, adding to the smoky atmosphere, well aided by two of the older citizenry puffing on their pipes at a table between them and the fireplace. “I take it that this end of town doesn’t have electricity.”
“Scared of the dark?”
She twisted around to answer him. His eyes stared into hers, and there was a question in them she didn’t know how to answer. Not yet. She blinked, hiding her awareness of his gender. He was all predatory male, and it would take a brave woman or a fool to march into his territory and expect to get away scot-free.
She hoped it would be worth her effort.
Her gaze fell and focused on his mouth. She bit her lip and stifled a laugh. Damn, she’d outed herself, but what was she? A fool, or just a woman doing the best she could with what she had?
His hand touched her shoulder as he smiled wryly. “You sit nearest the wall so you can take in the sights.” She did as he suggested, and now she took a good look around the tavern. The sights were on the rough side, and not all the men were Sherpas or Nepalese. One huge man wore a fur hat that screamed of the Russian steppes, an impression colored by the way he was scowling into his glass.
Kurt waited until she was seated. “What can I get you to drink, and how hungry are you?”
“Whiskey, with water this time since I don’t suppose they have soda, and whatever you’re having. I could eat a horse.”
“Be careful what you wish for. I’ll see if they have any lamb or goat kebabs.”
Kurt towered over the bar. The tough-looking guy serving behind it wasn’t nearly as tall, just bulkier, with a neck that overflowed his shirt. As she got her bearings she noticed blue smoke issuing from a door behind the bar. It curled up high and twisted around Kurt’s dark hair like a halo.
A dark angel? No, there was nothing angelic about this guy. He was too big, too tough, too much of everything—overwhelming.
When he’d turned and looked at her on the stairs she could have sworn he could see right through her, see past the front she always wore to the woman underneath. Could she trust him enough to tell him the truth about her quest? That she not only wanted her sister back, but also had to find the key Atlanta had worn around her neck.
Bad idea. Atlanta hadn’t even told Bill, but what if someone had found out? Her sister hadn’t believed in coincidence when Maddie died, and one death plus two others amounted to one huge coincidence that beggared belief. Thank God she’d used IBIS’s facilities to have Jellic checked out before she left Paris. He had come up clean as a whistle, but there had been some blot on his father’s record. She didn’t believe in all that sins-of-the-father rubbish, though.
Her own father, Charles Tedman, had a lot to answer for.
Chelsea sucked in a breath and took in all the flavors of the room right with it. Apart from the butter oil and tobacco there was a definite hint of barbecued meat. The smell made her mouth water. Would it spoil her chances of getting what she wanted out of Jellic when they diluted the effects of the whiskey with food?
On his way back from the bar, Kurt juggled a whiskey bottle, two shot glasses and a jug of water. Although he’d been the one to ask her downstairs for a drink and some food, her ready agreement somehow raised his suspicions that there was more to Chelsea than met the eye. It wasn’t what he’d expected after laughing at her climbing experience. But the moment he’d suggested it and she’d said, “I’m starving—aren’t you?” his stomach had felt as if it was sticking to his ribs.
He began filling their glasses. Chelsea had reassured him that the tavern wasn’t below her standards. But compared to the hotel she’d booked into, this place was in a class of its own. That’s why he’d picked it; no one he knew frequented this type of dump.
“Here’s looking at you.” He lifted his glass and tossed half of it back. The name on the label should have been Rotgut, but he didn’t care. He’d needed the burn lately to prove that, unlike Bill and Atlanta, he was still alive.
“Cheers,” she said, and followed suit. The woman had guts, because once he’d poured her drink the only room for water had been a meniscus on top of the whiskey.
He pulled out the chair kitty-corner to hers and sat letting his long legs sprawl under the table. She pulled hers back out of the way as he invaded her space, again. Chelsea had taken off her lilac anorak and hung it over the back of her chair, and the black sweater she wore under it, though thick wool, assured him that he hadn’t imagined the fullness of the breast he’d cupped. Their greeting hadn’t been as politically correct as a handshake, but it had been a hell of a lot more fun.
He leaned forward while she was busy taking a more wary sip of her drink. “You don’t look anything like Atlanta. I’d never have taken you two for sisters.”
He ruffled the hair above her ears. It was soft, straight and slippery, sliding through his fingers like water. “Where’d you get all this black hair from? Atlanta’s curls were as blond as they come.”
She almost choked on her words as the whiskey went down. “Same father, different mothers. Atlanta’s mother died in a car accident, and mine didn’t fare much better. She fell off a horse and broke her neck.”
“With that kind of history I wonder your father didn’t keep the pair of you wrapped in cotton wool.”
If Chelsea was his, he wouldn’t let her loose around mountains.
Hell, where had that come from? The whiskey must be talking back at him.
“Not so much wrap us in cotton wool, but he made a good show of running our lives. It had to be the best schools, the best clothes. Nothing was too good for us as long as we did everything his way.” Her chin rose and there was a trace of a pout on her lips as she murmured, “I was the rebel of the two, the one who wouldn’t conform, unlike Atlanta.”
He noted the belligerence in her eyes. Kurt gathered she was harboring some held-over resentment from the past. He recognized it easily. Didn’t the same type of emotions emanate from his twin, Kel, the moment their father’s name was mentioned? The trouble with the powerful bond between identical twins was that no words were necessary to know what the other was feeling.
Kel had been the first to call him via satellite phone. Kurt had been back at Camp Three less than half an hour after the tragedy. Dazed with shock, he’d had to force himself to speak to Rei, his head Sherpa, and Paul Nichols, the only other paying customer on their team. He’d never discovered how Kel had found him, but his brother was the twin with connections, working as he did with the Global Drug Enforcement Agency.
“It must have come as a great shock when you heard of your sister’s death.” He said the words gently, for Chelsea’s sake, though part of him still raged inside because of what had happened and the way it had happened. He hadn’t had an accident on any of his climbs until this one. He still could hardly believe it himself, though he had only to shut his eyes at night for the tragedy to start playing over and over in his mind.
Every night, as he lay there in the dark, his own doubt assailed him. Was there anything more he could have done?
What a waste of two good lives.
“I caught it on CNN. I always watch it in the evening to catch up on news from home.” He watched her sigh and wondered if the deep sigh had been dragged up from the same kind of place he kept his regrets.
“I’d received a letter from my sister two or three days before I heard of the tragedy. Her death brought a lot of emotions bubbling to the surface—besides grief, that is. We’d planned a reunion…in Paris.” Chelsea dipped her head, but he could see a sparkle of tears on her lashes. It gutted him that he had to turn her down, but it would be suicide—hers—to take her up a mountain that showed no mercy. Rookie climber or old hand, one wrong move and they fell off the top of the world to their deaths.
Everest took no prisoners.
“If there was any way I could help you, I would do it—you know that, don’t you? I’ll be honest. I need the work. There have been a lot of rumors doing the rounds of Namche Bazaar. Not one of them is true.” Her hand lay on the table, and he reached for it.
To comfort her or himself, he had no answer.
Though she wasn’t a small woman her hand felt tiny, fine boned compared to his. The temptation to cling tightened his grip, a reflex based on the same instincts that had made his palm measure her fullness when she came tiptoeing into his life.
“There’s one way you can help—give me a chance to take my sister home.”
Without preamble he changed the subject. “You still hungry? I’ve ordered a whole swag of food.”
Tears ceased to sparkle on her lashes. He hoped this meant he’d turned her thoughts away from climbing Everest. It had been ages since he’d had a chance to talk to any woman but Atlanta. In the three years since he’d met her and Bill, she’d become like a sister to him, closer than his own sister, Jo, whom he hadn’t seen for years.
One difference—in his exchange with Atlanta he hadn’t gotten the sexual buzz he felt now. Part of him wished he were able to grant Chelsea her wish and take her with him—and not just because of the amount of money involved. Sure, he was practically broke, but he had broad shoulders and knew how to work. He’d be all right someday.
She pulled her hand from his, lifted her glass to her lips and spoke over the rim. “What kind of food?”
“Strips of barbecued lamb and some flat bread to wrap it up in. I thought that would be more filling than kebabs.”
“Great. I seem to have been hungry ever since I arrived in Nepal.” She sipped some more whiskey. He’d bet the shudder went right down to her toes. “Must be all the clean air.”
He found another smile and gave it to her with genuine pleasure as he looked around the smoky room. “You’re easily satisfied.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not one bit satisfied. I won’t be until I get up that mountain and recover my sister’s body.”
He heard undertones of poor-little-rich-girl in the ringing echoes of her empty glass as she slapped it down on the wood.
Bill had been a good friend to Kurt. A rich man in his own right without the added advantage of his wife’s money, he had never made himself out to be better than anyone else. And listening to Chelsea, he didn’t like the fact that she almost never used his name. “I notice it’s always your sister you mention when you talk about retrieving the bodies. What about her husband? Where does Bill’s body figure in your scheme?”
Was she that obvious? Had Kurt looked into her psyche and seen the grudge she’d carried for fifteen years? “All right, you got me. I never liked Bill.”
Kurt drew back and sat up in his chair, as if to get away from her. “What’s not to like? He was a great guy, never harmed anyone.”
“It’s not that I want to leave him up there. It’s just that Bill’s the reason for the gulf between Atlanta and me. Aided and abetted by my father, of course.”
Although Kurt had distanced himself, no longer stretching his legs out under the table at ease, she felt relieved when he propped his elbows on the table and nursed his glass between his hands. “You’ve lost me. Start at the beginning, for we seem to be talking about two different guys. Bill was one of the kindest people I ever met.”
Just as she opened her mouth to begin, Chelsea had a lightbulb moment. She licked her lips, but the words refused to come. In a blinding flash Chelsea had seen how she must appear to Kurt, and the picture wasn’t pretty. She pointed at the bottle. “Can I have another shot?”
“You don’t think you ought to wait until the food arrives?”
“No. I need it now.” She held out her glass.
As he poured, he lifted his eyes so they clashed with hers, and it was as if he could read her mind and knew all her secrets, but all he said was, “Dutch courage?”
“Something like that.” She took a mouthful and threw it back, the burn mellowing the more she drank. Or maybe the first few sips had cauterized her nerve endings. Whatever it was, the whiskey slid down easily.
She’d heard you could tell a stranger things you wouldn’t dare tell a friend. In another moment of revelation, she realized she didn’t have a lot of friends who wouldn’t make some use of her confession if it were told to them. Which didn’t say much for her taste in friends. A pity Kurt didn’t look like a priest. It would make this a whole lot easier.
“You’ve got to remember I was only thirteen—”
She broke off to regroup her thoughts. Had that sounded like an excuse or what? She needed to tell it straight and start at the beginning. “Atlanta would have been four when my mother married Charles Tedman. They had a very short courtship, and I guess she was already pregnant and that hurried things along, because I was a seven-pound premature baby—though who gives a damn about how close the wedding is to the birth these days. Except maybe if you are Argentine, and come from a proud family like my mother did.
“I think I fell in love with Atlanta from the moment I opened my eyes and was able to see her. Even then I recognized our differences. She was so pink, white and gold like a china doll.”
“You’re not without top-notch qualities yourself.”
Chelsea smiled as the memory brought up an image from her childhood. “She was like my little mom, always there when I woke up. My mother was a horsewoman who traveled the world riding in the top events. She was better at schooling horses than children.”
“So, who brought you up? Did you have a nanny?” He reached out and tucked back the strands of black hair that were blocking her view of him, and vice versa, and she wished he hadn’t. Bad enough spilling her guts without catching his expressions of sympathy or otherwise.
Suck it up, Chelsea, she told herself, but as he ran the tip of his index finger around the curve of one ear, his touch made her quiver.
She felt her color deepen, and lowered her eyelids as if that would hide her reaction to him. “No, just a housekeeper and Atlanta. By the time I started kindergarten she was ten and used to boss me around, but at the same time she always made sure no one picked on me. I was the black moth in a field of butterflies, too exotic for most of the cool New England blondes I went to school with. Atlanta had no problem. Her mother had been one of them and Father had loads of money, even if he was a self-made man.”
She flashed a smile meant to say But look at me now—I got by, but sensed that Kurt saw through her bravado.
“How many did you beat up?” he asked.
“Not too many. Remember I had Atlanta.”
“I have a twin. That made fighting our battles easy. Besides which we’re identical and it was difficult to know which of us to blame. Of course, if the crime was too bad, Grandma Glamuzina punished us both.”
“Poor you,” she teased.
“Don’t get me wrong—the punishment rarely fit the crime. But this is your story. What happened when you were thirteen?”
“Atlanta married Bill. She was only eighteen and Bill was almost thirty. God, I’ll be thirty myself soon, but to me he looked like an old man and I couldn’t see how she could love someone that old. I blamed it on my father. He’d made two profitable matches himself, and I knew that if Bill had been poor my father wouldn’t have let him through the door.”
Chelsea laughed as she remembered something else. Another swig of whiskey eased her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked so much straight up. “You should have seen Father when he discovered Bill had decided to give up making money and live on what he had. He went apoplectic. I don’t think my father took a day off work in his life, except to get married. Though I guess you could say that was all part of business. Thank God neither of us took after him. Cousin Arlon is the nearest thing he had to a son.”
Her stomach curdled as she remembered what had brought her to Namche Bazaar, and this tavern, and this man. “It didn’t make any difference, though. Father didn’t believe in leaving money out of the immediate family, not even to a cousin.”
And there of course was the problem. A good-paying appointment wasn’t enough for Arlon. He wanted it all.
Her gray eyes went opaque, making the dark rim around the irises stand out. Kurt wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have poured her that last drink. But she brightened up as their food appeared on a large wooden platter for them to share. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” she said as she grabbed a piece of flat bread before starting in on the barbecued meat. “Ooh, this is hot. Watch your fingers.”
“The tips of my fingers are like asbestos. That’s what years of climbing mountains does for you.” He still felt the heat, though, as he grabbed a few strips from the huge pile of meat, and for a few minutes all they did was chew and moan about how good it tasted.
“Mmm, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. I can’t remember the last time food tasted so great. I must take some of these spices home with me. Think I can buy them in the market?”
“I should imagine so. They sell almost everything else there.” As he spoke he watched her reach for another round of bread and begin filling it with more lamb. The way she ate was very sensual, without a hint of prissiness. She’d chomp down with her white teeth, laughing with sheer enjoyment as the sauce hit her chin. He was amazed how disappointed he felt when she pulled a handkerchief out of the reaches of some pocket to clean her face and hands. She’d only to say the word and he would have licked them clean.
Just the thought of it made him grow hard, and he was glad the table sheltered his problem. Bad enough her knowing that wiggling her butt against him turned him on, without letting her in on the secret of the effect watching her eat had on him.
Time to change the subject and save his hide. “You didn’t finish your story. Tell me what Bill did to create a gulf between you and Atlanta besides being an old man. I mean, you’re what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and I’m past thirty-four. So far this conversation hasn’t done wonders for my ego.”
“Okay.” She put her roll of bread and meat on the edge of the half-empty wooden platter. “Short and sweet this time. Bill took her away clear across the country and I never spoke to her again.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes at him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gulped down all that food. This seems to be turning into a guilt trip. I was a little witch back then, stubborn as they come. After that, everything I did was the opposite of Atlanta. No ballet lessons for me—I rode horses, played basketball. In short, I became a tomboy. My father went ballistic. I didn’t care. He wasn’t turning me into the perfect little daughter so he could marry me off to a rich old man.”
Chelsea sniffed, looked at her small stained handkerchief and rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her hand. “I needn’t have worried. No way did I fit the criteria for a good upper-crust wife…but that’s another story.”
Kurt searched his pocket, then handed her a handkerchief. “Here, take this—it’s clean.” He eyed her warm black sweater. It might be a slightly chunky knit, but that didn’t exclude elegant from its description. “And don’t worry, the tomboy image didn’t take.”
“But it did. I still spend a lot of time at the gym. I’m strong. Want to feel my muscles?” She held out her arm.
Nuh-uh—hands off, boy. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
He wanted to feel a lot more than her muscles, and if he started there he might not stop. From his memory of her pulled against his length there was absolutely nothing hard about her, just soft warmth that fitted against him perfectly.
No point in heading in that direction, though. Even if the unheard-of happened and the attraction did turn out to be mutual, the accident would always come between them. The memory of a tragedy whose edges were as sharp and jagged as the mountain it happened on would be equally difficult terrain to get over. From what he could tell, both of them were carrying a heap of guilt. Not a good thing to have in common.
“Well, for your information, I’m quite the basketball star. We make up a couple of teams from the embassy and play at least once a month—clinging to our roots, don’t you know.”
“The embassy?” Why was he just hearing this?
“Yes.” She looked quite proud. “I’m a translator at the American embassy in Paris. I like to keep busy.”
If ever he needed another reason not to take her up Everest, this was it. She might act as if she were alone in the world now that Atlanta had gone, but he’d met a few of those embassy types and he was certain she’d have more people watching her back than she realized.
Time to bail out. He made a show of looking at his watch, surprised to see that in Chelsea’s company time had actually spun away from him much faster than he’d guessed. “It’s getting late. I ought to walk you back to your hotel.”
Her eyebrows rose and her accent became snotty. “There’s no need. I can take care of myself. You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. You might have noticed this isn’t the most salubrious neighborhood. Why do you think I greeted you with a knife? I’ve been robbed twice, and foiled another attempt before it got started.”
“In that case I accept your company.” Chelsea proceeded to shrug into her lilac anorak, sliding the zip up to her neck. It didn’t make any difference that her curves were covered by a jacket cut in a similar fashion to his; he still couldn’t see her as a tomboy. No, Chelsea was all red-blooded woman. And the pity of it was, after tonight he would never see her again.
In this quarter of town the street lighting was practically nonexistent, but he wasn’t taking her back up to his room to fetch a flashlight. It was too dangerous. Just the thought of being alone in his eagle’s nest with Chelsea gave him a testosterone high.
His luck was in. A three-quarter moon rode in a cloudless sky and was enough to light their way back to her hotel.
“Here, better take my arm. These cobblestones are rough underfoot,” he said, discovering—by letting her come close—masochistic tendencies that had never surfaced before. But then, he’d never claimed to be all wise. If he had been, he would have sent her packing before he decided to feed her. However, after he dropped her at the hotel he never had to see her again.
“Kurt, I’m not ready to give up on this yet. I’m certain that given the chance I can persuade you I’m not a liability. When can I see you again?”
No one was more surprised than Kurt when he heard himself say, “How about lunch tomorrow?”
Chapter 3
Shank’s mare was the main mode of transport in Namche Bazaar, and for once Kurt was glad of it. Walking gave him time to phrase the exact wording of the refusal he meant to hand Chelsea once he reached her hotel. He would hang tough. She wasn’t about to catch him oversexed or underprepared, not this time.
The trouble was he liked her. More than liked—wanted.
Chelsea was something beyond his experience. He couldn’t remember meeting another woman quite so…damn it…intriguing.
Only look at the way they’d met. Their rude introduction hadn’t sent her into screaming fits of hysteria.
He felt a stirring in his groin as he indulged in a wry, one-sided twist of a smile at the memory of those few minutes.
“Hell.” He shook his head. If ever a dame was ballsy.
All kidding aside, he had no intention of taking her anywhere near Everest. Not damn likely. Nothing Chelsea Tedman could come up with would change his stance on that. The bones of his guiding career had been picked clean since the accident. He had nothing left to offer as far as that was concerned.
Besides, turning up at Base Camp with Atlanta’s sister in tow would only add grist to the rumor mill.
He turned a corner and headed up the slope that would take him from one terrace to another. The Peaks Hotel was on the highest terrace looking down on Namche Bazaar, but then that’s what five-star accommodation was all about.
“Hey, Kurt…Kurt Jellic.”
Kurt spun around. He recognized Basie Serfontien and stopped to let him catch up.
“Where have you been hiding, man? There is this woman, a bit of all right. She wants to recover the Chaplins’ bodies for burial, God help her. I told her you were the only mountain guide who wouldn’t be booked solid.”
And I bet you told her why.
“’S okay, mate. She found me.”
Smiling, Basie slapped him on the shoulder. “Good news, man. You need to get back on the horse.”
Kurt shook his head. “Not if it’s likely to take me for a ride. I’m still thinking about it.”
“Ach, you’ll be mad if you don’t, man. She’s easy on the eye, that one. And money is no object for the Tedman woman.”
Kurt shook his head. He couldn’t be like Basie. If a client had money but no experience, the man would just add a couple of extra Sherpas into the equation to drag the wanna-be climber up to the summit. “I’ll probably see you up at Base Camp, either way. Someone has to do more than just leave the Chaplins lying there.”
He waved Serfontien off and carried on his way. The South African’s easy-on-the-eye comment sent his thoughts wandering back to the restless night he’d spent. Hours of half-remembered dreams where Chelsea fitted over or under him, skin to skin, pounding heart to pounding heart in earth-shattering sex.
Kurt let rip a heartfelt groan. It earned him a surprised look from a guy he was about to pass. “What’s up, mate?”
Tourist. Australian. One look was enough to distinguish the climbers from the wanna-bes. Some of them actually climbed as far as Base Camp, using up much-needed space on the rocky lower reaches of Everest, including adding to the horrendous pollution when they left their rubbish behind.
Kurt shook his head. “’S all right, mate. No worries.” He saluted him and walked on. The sight of these pseudoclimbers was so common that the Aussie’s presence evaporated from Kurt’s mind before he’d taken another two strides.
Back to Chelsea.
If only she hadn’t mentioned that one of her pleasures was horseback riding. The vision that had conjured up had played in some of the more erotic fantasies he’d had in the night. Yet he wasn’t so blinded by lust that he couldn’t recognize his dreams were just visions distorted by a bad case of desire. And all of it brought about by wishful thinking.
In other words, it wouldn’t happen in a million years.
For one thing, he dared not let it.
If he felt the rumors about his part in the accident were bad now, no matter what Basie Serfontien thought, getting involved with Chelsea would be like throwing gasoline on a fire to put it out.
At first sight Chelsea had christened her hotel the Raffles of Nepal. The all-white interior, combined with punkah fans that adorned the ceilings of the first-floor rooms as well as the bedrooms, reminded her of a trip she had once taken to Singapore. Everyone ought to experience Raffles Hotel at least once.
But unless the weather improved, she wouldn’t be switching on the fan in her bedroom. She imagined July and August really heated up, but early May was still reliving the crisp spring days of April.
Even so, she’d heard that on Everest it was easy to get sunburned by the reflected rays piercing the thin air. At least, she’d read it in one of the Everest books she’d brought to read on the plane.
“And you’re still a long way from there, bébé,” she mused.
Paris felt like a lifetime ago. Maybe it was? Sooner or later everything was bound to change. Her job at IBIS looked likely to be the first casualty now that her responsibilities to Tedman Foods and its employees had increased ten thousandfold.
A server dressed in a short white jacket appeared in her peripheral vision. “Can I bring you something, lady? A cocktail? Some tea?”
She looked up at the steward. He was very young and no doubt glad of work that didn’t entail carting seventy-five pounds or more up a mountain, strapped to his back with a strip of webbing across his forehead to balance the weight.
“No, thank you. I’m going inside for lunch as soon as my friend arrives.”
The chairs of the veranda weren’t the high-backed cane found at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, but the seating did provide Chelsea with a comfortable spot to formulate her plan of attack while she watched for Kurt to arrive.
What had she just called him? Her friend? She wasn’t certain they could ever be friends. Lovers or enemies? Only time would tell. Her brain said be wary, but her body had a mind of its own.
She rested her head on the back of her chair and let the peace soak into her. The veranda was fairly deserted. Tourists didn’t pay the fortune it cost to get here to waste their time watching Everest from afar. An idea about that had occurred to her that morning over breakfast, but would Kurt go along with it?
Kurt Jellic. Now, there was a man of contrasts. He looked rough, hard-bitten with his unshaven face and dark, almost black Gypsy eyes. Not what she had expected when Atlanta had said in her letter that he was a New Zealander. She tried to picture Kurt, with sun-bleached hair and light blue irises, sliding down a wave on a surfboard, her former stereotypical idea of a New Zealander.
It didn’t take, but she couldn’t discard the impressions that came from being held against his long, lean-limbed body, while her life trembled on the edge of the knife blade in his hand.
Color and heat rushed to her face and scorched her insides with a sudden rush of arousal. He’d certainly proved he was human…and the attraction was mutual.
Would it be an underhanded trick to use that attraction against him? Despite his initially forbidding appearance, Kurt had turned out to be a nice guy. Hadn’t he listened to her without complaining while she provided him with proof positive she had been the kind of spoiled teenage witch he probably hated?
A teenage witch who had fought against losing the closest thing to a mom she had ever known.
Her eyes welled with unshed tears. Damn, Atlanta’s death had made Chelsea’s intentions of saying, “I’m sorry, sis—I didn’t mean it” an impossibility. There was only one thing she could do for her now. One last thing.
Her tear ducts overflowed before she could prevent it.
They had been doing a lot of that lately. Chelsea opened her eyes wide to halt the hot slide of teardrops onto her cheeks, and then changed her mind. Scrunching her eyelids together to form narrow slits, she let her full weight sag against the cushions in an attempt to relax.
The rustle of prayer flags accompanied the sighs that whispered over her lips until a few minutes later she hovered on the edge of sleep and the world around her became a jumble of light and dark shapes.
Bam! She was wide-awake. One of the shapes lost its hazy edges and turned into a living, breathing Kurt Jellic.
“Am I disturbing your beauty sleep?” His voice had the husky edge it had lost when she had imagined him into a nice guy who would jump to do her bidding and give in to her every whim.
But Kurt was more than that. More than she had remembered. He was, first and foremost, disturbingly and attractively, all male.
She pushed against the cushioned seat of her chair to stand up, eager to reach a height where his size wasn’t such a disadvantage. It wasn’t easy.
Her hands sank deep into the pillowy softness that had almost seduced her into sleep. However, the angle of the seat—knees higher than her bottom—made it impossible to stand with any semblance of elegance.
“Here, let me.” Kurt held out his hand and, fool that she was, Chelsea took it in hers. The world blurred at his touch. He pulled her to her feet and released his hold. And with its loss she felt nothing would ever be the same again.
He was dressed in the same casual outdoorsy style as most of the guides she’d met in Namche Bazaar—sun-faded khakis topped by a checked shirt under a black anorak. On him it had a style she hadn’t perceived last night. The long stretch of muscled legs moved with a singularity that made him stand out in a crowd. She took a drawn-out look, knowing something was different.
Sure, he’d shaved, she’d give him that. But it wasn’t simply that the razor had highlighted the dimple on his chin that made her stomach flip over, or the fact that the touch of his hand had sent an icy shiver down her spine.
No, it was in his eyes and the way he held himself. He reminded her of someone, but for the life of her she couldn’t say whom. She returned his gaze and recognized awareness in his eyes, a knowing that hadn’t been there before, as if in a past life they might have been lovers.
Flustered, she bent to flick the creases out of her skirt till it swung lightly from her hips, skimming the tops of her calves. When she had picked out the light cream cashmere top and natural linen skirt, she hadn’t considered its subtle sexiness as part of her plan to get her own way. Now she realized that like everything she had done since their first meeting, it had been part of her strategy, part of her seduction.
Too bad she hadn’t reached a definite conclusion on how to go about this master plan.
Just when it counted most, she was going to have to wing it.
Chelsea was used to controlling her own life, and it showed as soon as they entered the restaurant.
On the other hand, weighing in at 220 and standing at least three inches above most other men, as well as running the kind of enterprise he did, Kurt had become used to commanding attention, not being superseded. He didn’t remember Atlanta being so bossy. She and Bill had always consulted each other, but then they had been a couple, two halves of one whole.
Kurt turned his attention to Chelsea, who had already picked her selection from the menu, told him he would enjoy it and informed their server they’d have two of everything.
The sibilant lisp of the sommelier did nothing to smooth Kurt’s ruffled feathers. “Your meals will be here directly. Meanwhile if I can suggest a good wine to accompany them…” The wine list was fluttered at Kurt’s face like a fan.
He scowled his annoyance at the undeserving sommelier, then asked Chelsea, “You want some wine?”
“Yes, I’d like that.” She smiled at the sommelier and held out her hand for the wine list. “Do you have a—”
“I think a Pinot Gris will go best with what we’ve ordered,” Kurt said before Chelsea had a chance to pipe up. He took the list, glanced over it, then pointed. “This one.”
It paid to have a brother who was a Master of Wine and made his living tasting and writing books about the fermented juice of the grape. Drago was the eldest of the Jellic boys—men. He’d been out on his own a lot longer than the rest of them.
Circumstances of late had wrought a change in their slightly dysfunctional family, starting with the marriage of Jo, his younger sister. Since then, Franc, his genius kid brother, had found a great job, with loads of responsibility, in one of his new brother-in-law’s firms. The family ties were now less fractured than they had been since the day his father, Milo Jellic, committed suicide.
His sister had married a man with money to burn, probably with the same kind of class Chelsea had. Not that he had aspirations in that direction—not even as a solution to his problems. Didn’t matter that one glance at her sexy body had his insides turning every which way.
No, he was sure his twin brother, Kel, would agree with him that one millionaire per family was enough.
Kurt glanced around the almost empty dining room as the sommelier left. They’d been the center of attention as waiters vied to pass them menus and then take their orders.
“So where did you learn so much about wine?” Chelsea leaned across the table, one hand toying with her empty glass.
The movement emphasized the lush curve of her breasts where her cashmere sweater clung to them. He had to admit she had style. It didn’t matter that her hair looked as if she’d cut it by herself without the aid of a mirror. He guessed it was the latest trend, but all it did was make her look younger, more vulnerable. He hardened his heart and refused to fall for it.
“I don’t spend all my life on top of a mountain. New Zealand may be a small country, but it’s big on wine.”
That said, he tried to shrug off the feeling he’d made a mistake coming here. The contrasting digs they’d chosen—the tavern he’d shacked up in and this upmarket hotel where the cheapest room cost five hundred dollars a night—escalated his estimation of the class barrier he’d sensed looming between them.
It wasn’t anything that had required much thought with Atlanta. She had been a friend; he hadn’t been attracted to her. But with Chelsea, the attraction presented itself like a minefield in no-man’s-land.
The quickest and easiest way out was to say no.
Chelsea’s eyes lit up as she smiled at him. “Alone at last.”
Kurt had an unwelcome impression that her eager eyes saw him as a parcel, tied with a big blue bow that she couldn’t wait to hack into with her scissors.
He glanced over his shoulder, totaling the number of stares from hovering waiters focused in their direction. “I’ve felt more alone in Grand Central Station.”
“They do pride themselves on exemplary service here. At least, that’s what it said on the hotel Web site. But it isn’t quite so overpowering at dinnertime when the restaurant is busier.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that. This isn’t the style I look for when I’m thinking of climbing a mountain. Although a certain amount of comfort between climbs is attractive to people with money. At least, that’s what I had in mind when I started converting an old farmhouse near Aoraki National Park into a lodge.”
He could see Chelsea was dying to question him about the place that had been a huge drain on his purse for the past year, but the sommelier beat her to the draw.
He held out a bottle so Kurt could read the label. French. This far from New Zealand he’d known he couldn’t expect everything. Meaning a bottle marked Marlborough, one of New Zealand’s top wine districts. He nodded his acceptance and an opener materialized from the guy’s pocket.
“Aoraki? Where is that?” Chelsea asked.
He briefly lifted a hand to signal her to hold a moment.
“Let me taste this, then I’ll tell all.” Kurt swirled the wine in his glass the way Drago had shown him, took a sniff and then tasted the wine. It had the pearlike aroma but not the rich, ripe fruitiness he’d expect if it had been a New Zealand wine. Still, it would pass muster. He glanced up at the patient sommelier. “Excellent. Thank you.”
It was apparent that Chelsea agreed. Her gray eyes seemed to lift at the corners smiling at him over the rim of the glass as she took her first taste. “I’m pleased to know your taste in wine exceeds your choice in whiskey.”
“I’m versatile. I use what’s on hand. Sometimes a compromise is necessary.” But there would be no compromising where Chelsea’s safety was concerned.
“You wanted to know about Aoraki. It’s the Maori name for Mount Cook. It translates as cloud piercer.”
“I like that. Much more romantic than Mount Cook.”
Trust a woman to find the romance in a hunk of rock. After last month’s accident he was having trouble finding anything vaguely quixotic in his chosen field. It had become a means to an end—that end being his lodge. “I’d be telling a lie if I said there was any fairy-tale romance connected to my lodge. It used to be a sheep station, but it’s years since anyone lived there. Most of the land was ceded to the state in lieu of back taxes. The land itself is pretty barren, a flat valley scooped out at the foot of the Southern Alps by glaciers during the ice age. My interest in it is its accessibility to the Alps and Aoraki. It’s close enough to the township of Lake Tekapo not to be completely isolated. Lots of tourists pass by on the way to Queenstown.”
“But it must be exciting making a project like that come to life.”
“Exciting would be good, but when I think about the lodge, all I see ahead of me is hard work and lots of it.”
“Why aren’t you there now working on your property instead of climbing Mount Everest?”
“I need the money. Besides, it’s winter in New Zealand, lots of snow and rain—better for skiing than climbing, though there are plenty of fools who still want to risk it. My aim is to build up a training establishment attached to the lodge where I can teach guests to climb safely.”
Kurt cleared his throat in an attempt to dislodge the lump that had settled in his craw. “You might not believe it, but I had one of the best safety records going until last month. Hell, they do say pride comes before a fall, but I’d rather have died myself than lose anyone on my watch, especially Bill and Atlanta.”
“I know that feeling well. It’s called guilt. No wonder we’re together. They say misery loves company.”
Kurt’s mind latched on to only one portion of her last sentence. “But we’re not together. After we’ve eaten I’ll go my way and you’ll go yours. Tell me something. When you were trying to hire a guide, did you give them all your name and your reasons for going up Everest?”
Chelsea leaned back in her chair as if distancing herself from him. Hardly worth the effort, given they were already sitting at opposite ends of a table for two. “Yes. Why not?”
“No reason.” He gave her the lie, knowing after today he wouldn’t see her again.
He watched her lift her glass and pour some wine into her mouth as if she were drinking straight courage.
He tried some of his own, just a sip, and waited. He wasn’t lacking in courage, but something told him if he didn’t keep his wits about him, Chelsea would try to tie him in knots.
His stomach had already taken a few twists and turns since he’d arrived. Sexual attraction could steal a man’s soul. Look at Adam. Even he wasn’t immune to the allure of a good-looking woman. But then, he’d had only one to choose from. Why, out of all the women Kurt had met, was Chelsea the one to stir feelings that had lain dormant since he’d given his love to the mountains?
He wasn’t the type to court danger and leave a family at home. No, there was nothing of his old man in him, except maybe going for the thrill. He couldn’t see why, as a cop, his late father had taken to dealing drugs. It couldn’t have been for the money. None of it ever appeared on their table. They’d been a big family, and after his mother died, Grandma Glamuzina had managed the way she had in the old country, working on a shoestring budget.
After his father drove his car off a cliff, the fat hit the pan and the truth came out—or what had passed as the truth. He’d come to think that his need to climb stemmed from being able to get above everything else, up high where the stench of corruption couldn’t taint him.
His sister and her husband, Rowan McQuaid Stanhope, were now in the process of trying to unravel the mystery of who’d done what. It was after he heard about their efforts that he’d decided to start work on the lodge. Even to himself he hadn’t admitted that maybe this had been the catalyst for thinking he could settle down at last, maybe find himself a wife.
Yeah. That explained this sudden rush of testosterone to the brain; he’d given his instincts permission to find some woman attractive. But why Chelsea?
She was the last person he could have a relationship with.
“I could fix your money problems.”
“Whoa, back up there. That wasn’t why I mentioned them. If I was into borrowing money I would have asked Bill—I’d known him a lot longer than I’ve known you.” This woman’s mind worked faster than a black cat disappearing at night.
She was hard to keep up with and knew exactly which buttons to push. He’d have to learn to keep his mouth shut and not give her another opening. He polished off the rest of his wine in one gulp.
Chelsea signaled the sommelier to refill Kurt’s glass, but kept her smile tucked inside her mind as she did it. She’d learned negotiating on her daddy’s knee and knew not to blow the deal by letting the other side recognize you could see the winning post streaking toward you. “I’m not talking about a loan. You have something I want and I have something you need. Fair exchange is no robbery. Let’s parler.”
Her mind clicked to possibilities that hadn’t entered her plans when she sat outside on the veranda. Now it took shape, a plan she hadn’t considered before. “I think the least you can do is give me a trial. I deserve at least that. I believe I can cope. You don’t. Take me up there and give me a chance to prove what I can do.”
She saw Kurt’s lips quirk, pulling his mouth up at one side. The action emphasized the depth of the dimple in his chin and distracted her attention from his words for a moment, but only a moment.
“You really think you can take the leap from a climbing wall to the highest mountain in the world in one go?” He gave the question a facetious quality with the lift of one eyebrow.
Chelsea wasn’t used to being talked down to, even by men who were six inches taller. But she now knew she had an edge. Seduction and feminine wiles didn’t have to come into her proposition. This was business. Her territory. “I’ll never know unless I’m given the chance to try. Look at it this way—you’re here, you’re available and you need the money. I have money, I want to find my sister’s body and you have the opportunity to make sure I’ll be safe before you take me on. Or rather take me up the mountain.”
“Why don’t you just pay me to go up and recover the bodies and bring them down to Namche Bazaar?”
“No… Definitely not. That isn’t the way it’s going to go down. I have to be there.” She couldn’t take the chance on someone else finding the key before her.
His dark eyes glinted as if he sensed she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. She was right. “What’s so important about you being there?”
She rolled her eyes at him and thought fast. “If this is the moment when you expect me to spill all my guilty little secrets about my relationship with Atlanta, forget about it. I don’t remember what I told you last night, but that was whiskey-on-an-empty-stomach talking. All I’ve had today is a few sips of wine and a big breakfast.”
The mention of food appeared to trigger the arrival of their first course—corn and feta fritters, layered with bacon strips and vegetables. It had sounded good on the menu, but at the moment it had lost its appeal by slowing the momentum of their conversation. Kurt had already made it clear that he didn’t care to have a discussion in front of any of the dining-room staff.
It didn’t matter to her who knew she wanted to go up Mount Everest after her sister’s body. There was only one secret she needed to keep, apart from her connection to IBIS, and that was the whereabouts of the key. This was the first time in her twenty-eight years that she had felt the lives of thousands of employees lay in the palm of her hand.
She didn’t look on it as a burden. All she knew was there was no way she wanted to let them down. She hadn’t even stopped long enough to check out wills or anything. Maybe someone from Bill’s family owned part of Tedman Foods. She didn’t give a hoot. As a Tedman, Chelsea was the last of that name, Arlon Rowles being her father’s first cousin only because their mothers had been sisters.
The server left and Chelsea picked up her knife and fork, but didn’t use them. She wasn’t able to start eating. Getting her own way was more important than food, even if she had been starving.
She watched Kurt cut into a fritter and layer it with bacon and tomato on his fork. Once his mouth was full and he had no choice but to listen, she made her move.
“If you’re worried about my safety, don’t be. It won’t make any difference. I will go up there, either with you or someone else, even if I have to fly an experienced guide in from the States. They can’t all be in Namche Bazaar right now.
“What you have is a chance to make sure I can make it. I’m fit. I have some experience with ropes, knots, carabiners and ascenders. Teach me enough to get me up to where Atlanta and Bill are lying. I know you trust yourself. Well, forget about the accident. I trust you enough to get me up there and back again in one piece. So what do you say? Have we got a deal?”
She gripped her eating utensils hard.
Not that that would stop her hands shaking, or dissipate the sense of urgency coursing through her veins as if her life was at stake. She thought of Maddie and knew that it could be, if knowledge of the key Atlanta had been carrying got out.
The sooner they did this the better.
Chelsea meant what she’d said. She trusted Kurt Jellic with her life, only she couldn’t tell him that her life was more likely to be in danger from an external force, not the mountain that had taken her sister.
Kurt’s face was grim. Did he consider that what she asked amounted to blackmail? But like it or not, fate had linked them in this endeavor. And like it or not, there was no going against fate. The monks in the temples of this high mountain stronghold would be the first to agree with the supposition that it was already written in the sands of time.
“Since you put it like that, you leave me no choice.”
He took a sip of wine while Chelsea held her breath.
“I know someone who owns a place we can use. It’s not on Everest, but it’s within four days’ walk from here, maybe three depending on your stamina. The mountain it’s close to isn’t anything like as high as Everest, so we won’t have to worry about oxygen. We won’t need tanks where you want to go, in any case. We don’t have to climb to the top.
“What Ama Dablam does have is a glacier, an icefall that’s easier to reach than any of the others. And if you can’t make it on this one, you’ll never be able to reach the couloir where their bodies fell.”
She wanted to punch the air and shout Yes! Her next reaction was to tell him I’m glad you see things my way, but they were still in Namche Bazaar and neither reaction was what she would call politic. Also, Kurt’s face looked carved out of the ice he’d told her about.
But she couldn’t hide the excitement fizzing through her veins. She could make this happen. Hard work, danger—hah, she laughed in their faces. She would do this. “When do we start?”
“As soon as we’ve got you kitted out and I’ve instructed Sherpa Rei to rehire one of his cousins and some more Sherpa porters to carry our gear.”
“Good. I can’t wait.”
The sooner the better.
She flashed him a smile that had nothing to do with getting her own way and everything to do with knowing she was going to spend some quality time with this guy. “Eat up, then let’s get out of here. I don’t know about you, but suddenly I’m filled with energy.”
Chapter 4
They spent three nights on the trail to Ama Dablam, sleeping in tourist lodges on the way, their first stop at Tengboche within sight of the great Buddhist monastery.
The distance wasn’t great, but the path rose and fell steeply, winding between tall, leafy, scented trees, some of them seemingly growing straight out of the rocks. But once their path branched away from Mount Everest and Base Camp, their height above sea level rose and the green shade was left behind.
At Ama Dablam, one look was enough to tell Chelsea that when Kurt said, I know someone who owns a place we can use he wasn’t talking about the type of mountain lodge you might find at Aspen, or near the standard of the lodges dotting Sagarmatha National Park.
The almost squalid little shack was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Its owner, whom Kurt knew well enough to ask a favor from, was a Sherpa, another relative of Kora’s brother.
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Frances Housden
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Born to luxury and comfort, Chelsea Tedman never expected to be climbing Mount Everest. But her need to solve the mystery surrounding her sister′s fatal fall on the mountain had Chelsea in Nepal, determined to climb the unforgiving terrain at all costs.She just needed a guide. Mysterious as he was alluring, Kurt Jellic was the only man for the job, and all she had to do was convince him. But Chelsea didn′t know which was more difficult: Everest′s brutal climb or her irresistible attraction to Kurt. With danger so near, Chelsea could soon be victim to the mountain…and to her own passion.