Holding On

  Kenzie glanced at it. “It looks like you drank your half.”

  She disappeared with whiskey and canines.

  Conrad stared at the TV screen, where he and Bruce were listening to radio reports from another climbing team of a collapsed serac on The Bottleneck, the narrow and perilous couloir that led to the summit. The two of them debated whether to take that route or to rock climb the adjacent cliffs instead.

  Kenzie returned, Gabby and Gizmo at her heels, two big glasses of water in her hands. She handed one to him. “Drink.”

  She sat down beside him just as he and Bruce left camp and set off for Camp III. He expected her to chew him out, but she didn’t. “When’s the last time you had something to eat?”

  He had to think. “Your place.”

  “How about I make some supper—it’s almost dinner time anyway—and we watch whatever you want to watch.”

  At the mention of dinner, Conrad’s stomach rebelled. He lurched to his feet, staggered into the bathroom, and spent the next ten minutes throwing up. He didn’t want Kenzie to see this, but she had followed him and stood beside him, holding a damp washcloth to his forehead, bringing him some relief.

  “For what it’s worth, your liver is eternally grateful,” she said.

  Conrad moaned, flushed the toilet, and bent over the sink, some thought in his addled brain about brushing the god-awful regurgitated whiskey taste out of his mouth.

  “I’ve got aspirin in my truck. I’ll go grab one.”

  By the time Kenzie returned, an aspirin and his glass of water in hand, his teeth were brushed and he was standing upright-ish—and feeling disgusted with himself. He’d never claimed to be an expert on impressing women, but he was pretty sure that getting drunk in the middle of the day and puking his guts out wouldn’t do it.

  “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” He popped the pill, drank.

  She led him back to the sofa and sat beside him. “Feel better?”

  He nodded. “Except for my pride. I warned you. I’m a fucking mess right now.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” She took his hand, looked over at the TV, where he and Bruce were slogging their way up The Bottleneck. “Let’s forget about supper for a while. This is your K2 climb, right?”

  “Yes. How do you know?”

  She laughed at his expression. “I’ve watched all your climbing films. In case you hadn’t noticed, I kind of have a thing for you.”

  He reached out, took her hand. “Say that again when I’m sober, okay? I don’t know if I’ll remember it later.”

  Bruce looked at the camera, grinning, his Aussie accent charming. “Conrad here is my climbing wife. We’ve been together for twenty years now. It’s a marriage made in heaven.”

  The Harrison on the screen laughed. “More like hell.”

  Kenzie sat beside Harrison while they watched another climbing film, this one about their Makalu expedition, her heart aching at the anguish in his eyes. “You and Bruce made a great team.”

  Harrison nodded. “He always had my back. I couldn’t have done half the things I’ve done without him.”

  She didn’t believe that, but she didn’t say so. “Where did you two meet?”

  “In a bar in Fairbanks. We tried to hook up with the same woman—a sexy brunette. I hit on her and got shot down. He said something about women loving Aussie accents and moved in. She shot him down, too, and left with another woman.” Harrison chuckled at the memory. “He and I ended up drinking a beer together to commiserate and found out we had more things in common than our taste in women.”

  “Climbing.”

  Harrison didn’t seem to hear her, his smile fading. “I thought we could do anything.”

  She reached over, took his hand. “Can you do me a favor?”

  He nodded. “What?”

  “Can you promise me that you’ll try meditating with Esri?”

  He frowned, then nodded. “Okay. I promise.”

  “Will you remember that you promised me?”

  “I’m not that drunk—not now, anyway.”

  “Okay.” She stood, walked over to the box that held his DVDs, and searched through it. “What would you like to watch now?”

  She tried to steer him away from climbing films. “Oh, I love The Maltese Falcon. The Godfather, too. Do you want to watch one of these?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She turned and saw that he’d fallen asleep right where he sat, his chin against his chest. She set the DVDs aside and helped him to lie down, lowering his head to the plush arm of the sofa and lifting his feet off the floor. Damn, his legs were long—and heavy. Then she grabbed a blanket from his bedroom closet—she knew where everything was because she’d helped unpack it—and covered him.

  “Oh, Harrison.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead.

  He didn’t budge, his breathing deep and even, his face relaxed in the forgetfulness of sleep, his lashes dark against his tanned skin.

  Hungry, she left him in peace and went to the kitchen to make herself a can of chicken soup. When she went back to check on Harrison, she found Gabby curled up asleep at his feet, Gizmo on the floor beside him.

  The dogs had the right idea.

  “You don’t want to leave him alone either, do you?” she whispered to Gizmo, scratching behind his ears.

  She went out to her truck and took out the travel bag she always kept in the back in case a search-and-rescue call required her to leave town. Inside, she had a T-shirt for sleeping, a change of clothes and toiletries, as well as stuff Gizmo would need—a spare harness, dog food, a collapsible water bowl, and such.

  Back inside, she found Harrison and the dogs still sound asleep. She went to his bedroom, switched into her sleep shirt, and crawled into his bed with her book—the latest romantic suspense release from the awesome Kaylea Cross.

  She told herself she’d stop at 10 p.m. At 10, she told herself just one more chapter. Finally, at midnight, she reluctantly closed the book and took Gizmo and Gabby out for a potty break. Then it was time to sleep. She had to be up in six hours. She checked on Harrison, found him still sound asleep. She put Gabby in her crate, set the alarm on her phone, and crawled into his bed alone.

  At some point during the night, Harrison got into bed with her, his arms going around her, holding her close. “You stayed.”

  “I was worried about you.” She snuggled against him and fell into a deep sleep.

  Her phone alarm woke her, pulling her from strange dreams about Harrison and Gabby and Everest Base Camp, where she had never been. Trying not to wake Harrison, she made quick use of his shower and then slipped into jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Harrison’s shout from outside the bathroom door made her pulse skip.

  She opened the door, found him sitting on the bed, his smartphone in hand, staring at something on the screen, a look of naked fury on his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s gone too far.” He stood, handed her his phone, and yanked on his jeans.

  She glanced at the screen—and saw herself.

  The reporter who had harassed Harrison had posted photos of her on his website. The photos had been taken yesterday afternoon when she’d first arrived and then last night when she’d gone outside to get her overnight bag. The headline read, “Harrison Conrad hooks up with mystery chick.”

  She stared, stunned. “Why post photos of me?”

  “I wouldn’t give him an interview, so now he’s harassing you. He’s hiding out there somewhere. I’m going to find him and put an end to this.” Harrison left the bedroom with long, angry strides.

  It took Kenzie a moment to realize that he truly intended to confront the reporter. She ran after him, stepped in front of the door to block him. “Don’t.”

  Harrison glared at her, his jaw tight, angry tension rolling off him. “It’s one thing for him to come after me, but I refuse to let him near you.”

  “He’s trying to provoke you. If you go o
ut there, you’ll be giving him exactly what he wants.”

  “He wants to get punched in the face?”

  “He wants you on camera doing something that he can post to get clicks for his meaningless little website. Let someone else handle this.”

  “Who?”

  “Your agent.”

  “I got rid of my agent.” Or he’d tried to anyway.

  “Okay, well, then why don’t we call the sheriff? There must be some law about taking photographs of people and posting them online without their consent.” Kenzie thought quickly. “I’ll text Quinn and tell her I’m going to be late. Then we can call the sheriff and let them know what’s going on. You’re welcome to stay at my place until this jerk gets tired and goes away.”

  Harrison raised an eyebrow, clearly not impressed with her idea. “I’m not running away and hiding. Besides, I bet they have your license plate number, and if they have that, they can get your address from the DVM.”

  “They can?” Kenzie didn’t like that. “Do you have a better idea?”

  Harrison closed his eyes, drew in a breath. “Not at the moment. I still think punching the little fucker is my best option.”

  “Right. Because jail is so much fun.”

  Conrad called the sheriff’s department, which promised to run a patrol down his street looking for the green Subaru. The blip of a siren down the street ten minutes later told him they’d found the bastard.

  He and Kenzie watched from the window as Deputy Marcs contacted the reporter, who had been sleeping in his vehicle a few houses down. Marcs spoke with him for a few minutes before running his driver’s license. The moment she turned away from the Subaru, the kid tossed something into a nearby bush.

  “I wonder what that was.” Kenzie craned her neck for a better view.

  “Something he really doesn’t want Marcs to find.”

  But Marcs must have seen out of the corner of her eye. When she was done running his license, she slipped on a nitrile glove and retrieved it, holding up a plastic bag of something white.

  “Drugs.” Conrad wasn’t surprised.

  “Well, that explains a few things.”

  Twenty minutes later, the son of a bitch was cuffed and sitting in the back of Marcs’ vehicle on his way to the county lock-up, his Subaru impounded.

  The knot of tension Conrad had carried in his chest loosened.

  Kenzie slipped into his arms. “Aren’t you glad you’re not in the cell next to his?”

  Conrad kissed her. “You were right. Is that what you want me to say?”

  She laughed, the sound putting a hitch in his chest. “You don’t have to say it when we both know it’s true.”

  “Oh, listen to you.” He gave her ribs a little tickle. “Ms. Know-It-All.”

  She squealed, twisting in his arms in a way that made him wish she didn’t have to go to work. He could spend the entire day twisting with her—in bed.

  “I need to go.”

  “I know.”

  She picked up her little duffle bag and her handbag and took Gizmo’s leash. “I teach a class from seven to eight, but I’ll be free after that. Want to come to dinner? I have the salmon fillets I bought for last night.”

  Last night.

  Shit.

  Until this moment, he’d tried hard not to think about the past twenty-four hours. He’d gotten shit-faced drunk in the middle of the day, puked his guts out, and worried Kenzie so much that she had stayed overnight.

  Proud of yourself, asshole?

  He wanted to do something for her. “How about I cook while you teach your class? When you finish, dinner will be waiting.”

  Kenzie stared at him. “That’s the sexiest thing a man has ever said to me.”

  “Really? What kind of jerks have you dated?”

  “Climbers. One left me to be an adventure guide in Alaska and died in a helicopter crash. The other one went skiing in Austria, where he met an athletic blonde. He broke up with me via email.”

  “They sound like assholes.”

  “Remember you promised to meditate with Esri.”

  He frowned. “When did I … Oh. Right.”

  Kenzie stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, Gizmo threatening to trip her with his leash. “See you later.”

  “Hey, about last night …” He pushed aside his shame. “Thank you.”

  She smiled, turning in circles to untangle herself from the leash. “You’re welcome. It’s like I told you last night—I kind of have a thing for you.”

  Out the door she went, Gizmo following at her heels.

  Conrad scooped Gabby into his arms and watched Kenzie drive away, somehow missing her already.

  What was that about?

  He took Gabby outside for a quick potty break, ate breakfast, then looked up Esri’s number and left her a message. She called back almost immediately and arranged to meet him at her office at noon. Then there was nothing to do but pick up where he’d left off yesterday when he’d opened that bottle.

  He had just cleaned up the place and was about to head to the park to practice puppy runaways when Candace called.

  “You should have called me.”

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  “You need to do an interview with one of the networks or a major publication if you want to get these little guys off your back.”

  “I already told you—I’m not interested.”

  “As long as you stay silent, every climbing rag in the world is going to want to come after you in the hopes of being the first to get your story.”

  Conrad closed his eyes, wrestled with his anger. None of this was Candace’s fault. “They’ll go away eventually.”

  “I think you underestimate your importance in the climbing world. My phone has been ringing all morning with reporters from the big climbing mags wanting the exclusive. They know you’re back, and now they know where to find you. That reporter published your address. Those photos are just the beginning, my friend.”

  Well, fuck.

  He hesitated, weighing Candace’s advice against his unwillingness to speak publicly about what had happened that day.

  “Extreme Exposure will pay you fifty grand to do an interview on the Good Day Show and another twenty if you do an interview with Altitude. It will be the easiest seventy thousand you’ve ever made.”

  Conrad wasn’t so sure about that. He’d be exposing his grief for nothing more than money. In the back of his mind, he heard Bruce’s voice.

  Fuck, mate, I’d do it.

  “I’m not interested.”

  “You know where to find me when you change your mind.”

  Chapter 13

  Conrad stepped out of the cold wind and into Esri’s office and sat in the waiting room. Decorated in shades of green, tan, and soft blue, it had a little fountain in one corner, the tinkling of water relaxing. A serene golden Buddha sat on the coffee table, presiding over the room.

  Esri stepped out of her office. “Hey. Perfect timing. Where’s the puppy?”

  “I left her at home in her crate.” He would only be away for about an hour.

  “Want to get started?”

  He followed her into her office, where two meditation cushions sat on the floor in front of a sliding glass door that faced the mountains.

  She lit some incense. “How is your day going?”

  Conrad sat on one of the cushions. “A reporter ambushed me outside my house yesterday. I refused to answer his questions, and we had a confrontation.”

  He hadn’t meant to bring this up, but now that he’d started, the words wouldn’t stop. He told her what the reporter had said and how the bastard had filmed him. “Then, last night, he took photos of Kenzie when she came over, and he put those on his website, too. She kept me from punching the bastard. We called the sheriff, and the kid is now in the county jail on drug charges.”

  Esri sat beside him. “I can’t blame you for feeling angry. What he did must have felt like a violation to both you and Kenzie.”

/>   “She handled it better than I did.”

  “She might have less at stake here than you do. That reporter was asking you to share your private pain with his readers.”

  “Yeah.” Conrad could see that. “My agent called. She says the media are going to keep coming until I give them what they want. Apparently, one of my gear sponsors is ready to dump a lot of money into my bank account if I go on TV and do an interview about what happened. She thinks I should do it.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know why people need the details. A serac fell. It killed two young climbers and my best friend. Why do they need more?”

  “If I could answer that question, I’d write a book and get rich.” Esri gave him a gentle smile. “That said, I don’t think you should do anything you’re not ready to do, no matter how much money is involved. You need to take care of that part of yourself that is grieving.”

  Conrad realized he was dangerously close to falling down the rabbit hole. “Sorry. I don’t want to waste your time.”

  “You’re not wasting my time. If I were in your shoes, I would want to talk about what happened, too. For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing by calling the sheriff.”

  Conrad let the subject go. “So how do we do this? I’ve only ever done meditation in the Dokhang with the monks leading.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Conrad described the mantras, the chanting, the music, the scents. “I sat in the corner and chanted along with them.”

  “Why don’t the two of us try chanting the Shakyamuni mantra together?”

  “Okay.” Conrad sat in a lotus position and closed his eyes.

  “Relax and let your thoughts drift by like clouds. You wouldn’t hold onto a cloud, so don’t hold onto your thoughts.” Then she started. “Om muni muni maha muni shakyamuni soha.”

  Her voice was so different from the low, guttural voices of the monks that it made Conrad smile. He pulled himself together and joined in, ignoring the strangeness of attempting this in Esri’s office. “Om muni muni maha muni shakyamuni soha.”