“I’m sorry I’m such a basket case.”
“Don’t apologize. This isn’t easy. For either of us.”
Rather than upset her, his harsh tone seemed to bolster her control. Rising, she approached him and knelt in front of the stove to warm her hands. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Buzz passed her his backpack. “I brought some protein bars. Get out a couple, so we can eat. Put down the tarp.” He could have very well done those things himself, but he knew Kelly well enough to know that she functioned better if she was busy, no matter how minute the chore.
While she did that, Buzz pulled the first-aid kit from his pack and set it atop a relatively flat rock. “Come here,” he said.
“That’s not—”
“I’m the EMT,” he said. “Let me worry about the first aid, all right?”
She handed him one of the protein bars. “I’m too tired to argue with you.”
“Well, that’s a first.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Keep that blanket around your shoulders and sit down.”
Relief slipped through him when she sat down without an argument. Buzz removed an antiseptic cleansing pad, some antibiotic cream and a large square bandage. “Any headache or blurred vision?” he asked.
“No.”
“Nausea?”
She shook her head.
He cut her a hard look. “The truth, Kelly.”
She sighed. “A little bit of a headache, but it’s only because I’ve been crying.”
He wasn’t sure why it was so hard to look at her. Wasn’t sure if it was her beauty or the grief he saw in the depths of her gaze. But as he knelt in front of her to get a look at the cut on her temple, he found himself barely able to meet her eyes.
“I’m going to check your pupils.” Without giving her time to respond he put his hand gently against her crown, then flashed the light first in her left eye, then in her right. “As far as I can tell, you don’t appear to have a concussion.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Well, after we find Eddie tomorrow, I’m going to personally haul you into Lake County Hospital and make sure you get a CT run.”
Her gaze met his, the play of emotions in her eyes touching him despite his staunch resistance. “Thank you for saying that. I mean, about finding him.”
Realizing it was probably best not to talk to her when he was this close, Buzz disinfected his hands then applied a thin layer of antibiotic cream to the cut. He tried not to notice the sweet scent of her hair that rose up with her body heat into the cold night. He damn well ignored the fact that his heart rate was up, and that it didn’t have anything to do with high altitude or physical exertion—or even a lost little boy.
He unwrapped the bandage and pressed it to the cut, sealing the adhesive as he did so. Throughout the process, Kelly didn’t so much as flinch, just watched him with sad, devastated eyes.
When he finished, Buzz rose quickly, paced over to the stove and adjusted a flame that didn’t need adjusting. He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on in his head, but he didn’t like it. He wanted to believe it was the shock of learning he had a son that had him twisted up inside. But Buzz was honest enough with himself to realize that keeping close quarters with his very attractive ex-wife was making an already complex situation infinitely worse.
“Kel, why don’t you lie down on the tarp and try to get some sleep?” he said.
When she didn’t answer, Buzz walked over to her, and put his hand on her shoulder. “Kel?”
“I’m not going to be able to sleep,” she said.
“You’ve got to try.”
After a long moment, she raised her gaze to his. “I’m too scared to sleep,” she whispered. “How can I sleep knowing Eddie is out there in the wilderness all alone?”
“You can do it because you know you’re going to need your strength and a cool head to get through this. You can do it because you raised a smart kid. And because you know I’m damn good at what I do.”
A wan smile touched her mouth.
“I’m not going to let either of you down.” Slipping his hand under her arm, he helped her rise. Kelly didn’t fight him. Gently, he guided her to the tarp, then slipped her sleeping bag off her shoulders and spread it on the tarp. “If you can’t sleep, just lie down and rest. It’ll be light in a few hours.”
He wasn’t sure if her legs buckled or if she went down on her own power, but he was surprised nonetheless when she acquiesced. Once she was inside the sleeping bag, Buzz pulled the edge more squarely over her and walked over to the stove and doused the flame. At his own sleeping bag, he lay down.
Around him, the night sang a peaceful symphony. The familiarity of it should have calmed him, but it didn’t. Buzz was as revved up as a jet engine, his mind replaying everything that had been said and done in the last hours.
Across from him, Kelly lay silent and still. The moon cast pale moonlight over her silhouette. Even in the dim light he could make out the curve of her hip, the dark shadow of her hair. The wind shifted, stirring the leaves of the tree above them, and he thought he could smell the sweet scent of citrus and woman that he remembered so well. The familiarity of it took him back to the last time they’d been together. The little house where they’d lived as husband and wife.
That last night, they hadn’t even made it to the bedroom, shedding clothes and inhibitions and resolve…. They’d ended up in the hall, disheveled and crazed with lust. She was the only woman who could do that to him. The only woman who could make him lose control as if he were some kind of randy teenager dealing with his first case of hormones. They’d ended up making love on the stairs, in the landing, on the desk just inside the study….
Buzz’s body stirred, a deep, purring heat that disturbed him deeply. Shifting restlessly beneath the blanket, he turned onto his side away from her and closed his eyes. He knew better than to think of her in sexual terms. The woman had stolen four precious years of his child’s life from him. Buzz didn’t want to forgive her. He didn’t want to care for her. He sure as hell didn’t want to want her.
But he did want her. His body ached for her. A familiar ache that had haunted him for all these years. Buzz figured he could live with it because there was no way he could overlook what she’d done, no way he would ever let himself get tangled up with a woman he couldn’t forgive.
Buzz woke to a scream. Scrambling out of his sleeping bag, he jumped to his feet, blinked the sleep from his eyes. He looked down, saw that Kelly had left her sleeping bag.
Where the hell was she?
Dawn brushed pink and gold on the rocky peak above where they’d camped. A yellow finch chirped angrily from the branch of a lodgepole pine. The breeze rustled the tall, dry grass from the meadow.
Had he dreamed the scream?
“Buzz!”
The terror in her voice sent him into a dead run. He burst through the brush, around an outcropping of rock and into a stand of aspen and pine. A hundred scenarios rushed through his brain. Panic nibbled at his spine, but he shoved it back. Buzz Malone was a professional. He didn’t panic. Wouldn’t panic because he knew a little boy’s life could very well depend on his keeping a cool head.
“Kelly, where are you?” he shouted.
“Over here! Please, Buzz! Hurry!”
His sock-encased feet pounded over the dry earth. He broke through thick underbrush, the branches scratching him like sharp tentacles. An instant later, the forest opened to a clearing. The sound of rushing water met him. He stopped. Held his breath. Listened.
“Buzz! Over here!”
Twenty yards away, he saw a flash of blue near the water. Kelly. He dashed toward her, keenly aware of his heart hammering against his ribs. Fear gripped him like a vice as he stumbled over river rock and into the icy water.
“What happened?” he shouted.
The water level was low. Kelly stood next to the muddy
bank, her arms wrapped around herself, looking down at the ground.
Buzz reached her a moment later. Her eyes met his. The ravaged expression in her face devastated him. He saw pain and terror and the dark fringes of panic in the brown depths of her eyes. All the caution he’d been feeling the night before left him abruptly. He went to her, put his hand on her shoulder, heard himself say her name.
Her hand trembled when she pointed at the muddy bank.
Buzz looked down at the perfect imprint of a cougar’s paw.
Kelly looked wildly around, felt her control leave her like a physical departure. She stared down at the print, horror zinging through her like a gunshot, her heart pounding pure terror.
“Eddie!” she cried. “Eddie!” Panic resonated in her voice when she screamed his name. She tried to squash it down, get a grip on it, put it in a compartment for later, but it reared up inside her like a maddened beast, took her in its jaws and shook her violently.
“Eddie! Sweetheart, where are you?”
She turned in a circle, looking frantically for something, anything, any sign of her son. Trees and brush and rock blended into a single, dark threat as her gaze skimmed the surrounding woods. The shadows within mocked her, refusing to give up their secrets. Every sound taunted her, a child calling out.
On the other side of the stream, she spotted a disturbance in the sparse yellow grass. Her heart stopped for a beat, then banged hard against her ribs. The next thing she knew she was running, through shallow water that ran swift and cold around her ankles. She scrambled over rocks, slipping on moss and tripping over loose stones the size of basketballs. Vaguely, she was aware of Buzz calling her name, but she didn’t slow down, and she didn’t stop.
Wet sand sucked at her hiking boots when she reached the bank, but Kelly was in good physical condition and muscled her way up it. Calling out to her son, she paused, breathing hard, shaking uncontrollably, her every sense honed on her surroundings. She wasn’t sure what caused her to look down, but when she did everything inside her froze into a solid mass of ice. A perfect imprint of Eddie’s sneaker was set into the dry earth. Right next to it, several drops of bright red blood glistened dark and wet.
Kelly stopped breathing. Her blood stalled. The sound of the birds and swiftly moving water faded to a dull roar. Around her, the trees and underbrush and jutting rocks blurred into a kaleidoscope of black and gray. Terror like she’d never felt in her life enveloped her, a dark smothering hand that shut down her senses one by one. She felt it cover her, pressing down, constricting her heart and lungs and squeezing until she couldn’t breathe.
“Eddie!” Feeling wild inside, she looked around, felt the steely grip of helplessness clench her. A few feet away, another drop of blood glistened darkly. Farther in, another footprint beckoned her to follow.
She broke into a run, then into an all-out sprint. Branches clawed at her face and clothes as she tore down the trail. Sounds choked from her throat, but she didn’t care. Her mind whirled with the possibility that she would find her little boy safe and alive and crying for her. Tears blurred her vision as she darted between two boulders and entered a copse of lodgepole pine. Hope and desperation churned and exploded inside her until she convinced herself she would reach her child any second, that she was so close she could smell his little-boy scent, hear his voice crying out to her.
“Kelly!”
She’d nearly forgotten about Buzz. For the first time she heard him behind her, breaking through the brush. She could hear the heavy pound of his footfalls against the earth, his labored breaths, the occasional curse….
An instant later, a heavy hand clamped over her shoulder. On instinct, she spun around, tried to jerk away. “Oh, God, Buzz! There was blood! On the bank! Oh, God!”
Buzz maintained a firm grip on her shoulders. “Take it easy, Kel.”
“I’ve got to find him. Let go of me!” She tried to twist away from him. “He needs me!”
“Calm down, damn it. Pull yourself together!”
She stared at him, aware that she’d lost control, that she didn’t have a clue why she was running or where she was going. “He’s crying for me,” she said.
“Kelly….”
“Let go of me. I need to find him. Don’t try to stop me.”
“Easy. Just…Jesus, Kel, take it easy.”
“Let go of me!”
“I want you to calm down. Take a deep breath for—“
“I’ve got to find him,” she cried. “He’s nearby. I can feel it.”
“Kelly! Damn it.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she’d lost it. That she’d slipped down that slippery slope into hysteria and was tumbling headlong into a place she didn’t want to go. She knew it was going to cost her credibility. The logical side of her brain knew it was foolish to fight him; she knew Buzz was only trying to help. Intellectually, she knew all of those things. But terror and panic and a mother’s desperation overwhelmed logic. Something inside her brain shorted out and all she felt was the primal need to find what was precious.
“Let go of me!” She lashed out with her fists, but Buzz was ready and deflected the blows. “Please, he needs me.”
“Stop it.” He shook her hard enough to make her head snap back.
Angry now, she put her weight into it and shoved him. She might as well have been shoving at a mountain because he didn’t budge.
“Kel, pull yourself together.”
She stepped back, trying to dislodge his hands, but the heel of her boot caught on a fallen log behind her. She stumbled. Her arms shot forward as she fell back, her hand snagging the sleeve of Buzz’s jacket.
“What the—” His sock caught on the same log, and they went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
Kelly landed on her back atop a cushion of pine needles and prickly tufts of buffalo grass. Muttering a curse, Buzz came down on top of her, breaking his fall with his arms on either side of her. An instant later, she was staring into gray eyes set into the hardened planes of a face that was at once troubled and concerned. In the back of her mind, she was aware of heavy breathing. She could feel a heart raging, but he was so close she couldn’t tell if it was his or hers. Her legs were drawn up slightly and her knees were apart. Somehow, Buzz had managed to land between her legs.
Something in the way he looked at her snapped her back. She blinked, shook herself. A breath shuddered out of her. Slowly, she became aware of him pressed intimately against her. His solid weight was strong and reassuring and achingly familiar. The panic that had exploded out of control a moment earlier faltered, then retreated, a formidable army temporarily defeated.
In its place, a new awareness zinged like a hot bullet. She told herself it wasn’t possible to feel anything but fear and desperation and pain when her son was missing and in danger. She tried desperately to deny the slow spiral of warmth that crept past the ice that gripped her. Finding Eddie was the only thing that mattered. But the familiar press of Buzz’s body against hers banished the last vestiges of panic, reminded her that while she might be afraid, she was still alive. She was still human, still a woman—and she hadn’t been held for a very long time.
The power of the moment stunned her. His closeness, the warmth of his body, the scent that was uniquely his made her realize that she was still vulnerable to him. And that no matter how badly she’d wanted to believe it, she hadn’t gotten this man out of her system in the time they’d been apart.
Chapter 5
“A re you all right?” Buzz finally asked.
The words came to her as if through a fog and from a great distance. Blowing the hair from her eyes, she risked making eye contact. His face might have been expressionless to a person who didn’t know him. But Kelly knew him. Had memorized every hard angle and plane, and she didn’t miss the flash of heat in his eyes. She wanted to believe it was anger, but she knew it wasn’t, knew it was much more dangerous and infinitely more complex. And she knew there was no way in hell she could let
this go on.
“I’m okay,” she said in a voice that sounded amazingly normal. “Let me up.”
His grip on her wrists relaxed. “You’re not going to go off on me again, are you?”
“I didn’t go off on you,” she snapped.
Pulling away slightly, Buzz scowled at her.
She looked away, shamed that she’d lost control. She could only imagine what he thought of her, this man who lived for the high that came with emergency situations. A man who looked down on people who were too weak to handle it. She wondered if that’s what he thought of her now. That she was weak, that she couldn’t handle it.
“I’m sorry I lost it,” she said after a moment. “I don’t normally do that.”
“It’s okay. This has been…stressful to say the least.”
She remembered the blood and shuddered. “I was okay. I mean, I’d walked over to the stream to splash some water on my face. I was feeling all right. I was ready to go. Then I saw those cougar tracks.” She closed her eyes for a moment, fighting to control an imagination that would drive her insane with worry if she let it. “There’s blood, Buzz. For a moment, I thought…I thought…”
“Don’t go there, Kel. He’s all right,” he said fiercely.
“How do you explain—”
“The blood could be from any number of things. The cougar could have nabbed a squirrel, for God’s sake.”
She prayed that was the case.
“We’re going to find him,” Buzz said. “And he’s going to be fine when we do. You’ve got to believe that.”
A dozen emotions rushed through her brain when she looked into his eyes and saw that he wasn’t saying empty words on her behalf. Buzz didn’t make nice; he didn’t pretend for the sake of others. He believed what he was telling her, and he meant it. The realization took her panic down a notch. “Thank you for saying that,” she said.
“Kel, you’ve got to trust me.” Buzz stared at her for an interminable moment. “I’ve got to be able to count on you, too.”
Kelly stared back, desperately trying not to acknowledge how much being close to him like this had bolstered her. His hips were nestled snugly between her legs. She could feel the hard ridge of him against her most intimate part. It shamed her that she would notice such a thing at a time like this. What kind of mother did that make her? She tried to convince herself she needed the physical contact on an emotional level. But she knew that wasn’t quite true.