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She nodded. ‘All my notes on a thumb drive.’
‘I’ll have a look,’ he said. ‘Not like I have somewhere else to be.’
He wedged himself between the seats again, but twisted away from her this time, bracing his spread knees on the seat backs and reaching out for the glow-stick. The yellow light moved with him as he stretched down towards the floor of the passenger seat.
But as he did so the car lurched.
‘Sam!’ Aimee screamed, just as his two-way radio burst into a flurry of activity. But the sudden splintering pain from her chest crippled her voice.
He froze in position and then slowly retreated, his strong muscles pulling him back up, bringing the light with him. He spoke confidently into the transmitter at his collar, but his words were three-parts buzz to Aimee. Her heart hammered so hard against her chest wall she was sure it might just split open.
She might have caused them to go crashing to the ground—who knew how far below? For a handbag! For a story! Tears filled her eyes.
‘Sorry, Aimee,’ he said, breathing heavily and righting himself more fully. ‘I’ll get it when the car’s hauled up.’
She shook her head, unable to speak, unable to forgive herself for putting them both at such risk.
He looked more closely at her. ‘Aimee? Were you hurt? Is the pain back?’
She shook her head—too frightened to speak—though her burst of activity had definitely got her pain receptors shrieking.
‘I wouldn’t have tried that if I’d thought it would actually dislodge us. That was just a settle. It will probably happen again whether we move or not. It doesn’t mean we’re going to fall.’
Tell her clenched bladder that. She nodded quickly. Still too scared to move more than a centimetre.
He found her eyes in the mirror. ‘Aimee, look at me.’
She avoided his eyes, knowing what she’d just done. Get my handbag, Sam … As though they were just sitting here waiting for a bus. Maybe her parents were right not to trust her with important decisions.
‘At me, Aimee.’
Finally she forced her focus to the mirror, to the blue, blue eyes waiting for her there. They were steady and serious, and just so reliable it was hard not to believe him when he spoke. ‘We’re thoroughly wedged between the tree and the rockface, and tethered to a three-tonne truck up top. We won’t be square-dancing any time soon, but you don’t need to fear moving. We are not going to fall.’
She looked at the rugged cut of his jaw and followed it down to the full slash of his lips, then up to his strong, straight nose and back to his eyes. Every part of him said reliable. Capable. Experienced. And a big part of her responded to the innate certainty in his manner. But an even bigger part of her was responding to something else. Something more fundamental. The something that would never have let him get this close, this quickly under her skin, if not for the fact that the fates had thrown them together like this. She would have followed him out onto the bonnet of her car with no safety harness if he’d asked her to with the kind of sincerity and promise that he was throwing at her right now in the mirror.
And extraordinary as it was, given how slow she was to trust strangers, she realised why.
She believed in him.
‘We are not going to fall,’ he’d said. She nodded, letting her breath out on a long, controlled hiss.
But deep down she feared that while that might be true literally, she could see herself falling very easily for a man like Sam. And just as hard.
Under these circumstances, that was a very, very bad idea.
CHAPTER THREE
‘SO who’s Wayne?’
Aimee’s head came up with a snap as Sam shifted again behind her. He was a big guy, and he had squeezed himself into the small space left vacant by the tree branches in the back of her little car and been settled there for over an hour.
‘Wayne?’
‘You mentioned his name earlier. Boyfriend? Brother?’
Was this conversation or curiosity? ‘Ex.’
‘Recent ex?’
‘Recent enough. Why?’
‘There was a … certain tone in your voice when you mentioned him.’
‘A certain sarcastic tone?’
She heard the smile in his voice. ‘Possibly.’
Aimee shifted back in her seat. Wayne was not someone she usually liked to talk about, liked even to think about, but all bets were off in this surreal setting. Their physical proximity demanded it. ‘Wayne and I turned out not to be a good fit.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I’m not. I’d rather have found out now than later.’ And it was true—no matter how challenging she’d found it to walk away. Even though he’d been giving her clear signals that she was somehow deficient in his eyes. Even though she knew he wasn’t good for her. She’d wriggled out from under the controlling thumbs of her parents only to fall prey to a man just like them at a time when she was most susceptible to him. ‘If I’d put any longer into the relationship I might have been more reluctant to end it.’
Another long pause. Funny how she’d only known Sam a handful of minutes but she already knew how to tell a thinking pause from an awkward one. This was thinking.
‘Not everyone finds that strength,’ he finally said.
‘You learn a thing or two recording life histories for a living. About achievements. About regrets. I don’t want any regrets in my life.’
She’d lost him again. His eyes stared out into the darkness.
What was his story?
‘Sam,’ she risked, after a comfortable silence had stretched out, ‘any chance you can lower the back of my seat a bit? Safely?’ She didn’t want a repeat of what happened before.
He studied the angle of the car and her position in it. His answer was reluctant. ‘The seatbelt is working well right now specifically because it’s nearly at ninety degrees.’
‘Even just a little bit? It’s doing my head in, looking straight down, wondering what’s down there, knowing that I’d crash straight through if the seatbelt gave.’
His hand slipped onto her shoulder through the gap between the seats. ‘The seatbelt is what’s keeping your body from putting too much weight on your bad leg.’
Oh.
Her disappointment must have reached him, though, because he said a moment later, ‘Let me just try something.’ He rummaged in his kit again, and then emerged with a set of flex-straps.
Aimee chuckled tightly. ‘You got a decaf latte in that Tardis, Doctor?’
He smiled as he wrapped one strap carefully around her waist and fixed it behind the seat, then the other under her good shoulder and hooked it on the headrest. ‘These aren’t generally for people, but I’ll be gentle with them.’
He pulled the two together and clipped one end of a climbing tether onto it, then fixed the other end to his own harness. If she fell she’d snag on his safety rope. Or pull him down with her.
That was a cheery thought!
‘Ready?’
So ready. So very ready not to be facing death literally head-on for every minute of this ordeal. She felt him fumbling along the edge of her seat for the recline lever and then suddenly the back of the seat gave slightly—just slightly—and he lowered it halfway to a fully reclined position. She hung on to her seatbelt lifeline and prepared for the pain of more of her body weight hitting her leg, but the flexi-straps did their job and held her fast to the seat-back. It really wasn’t too bad.
‘Oh, thank you.’ Her view was now the buckled roof of the car. A thousand times better than hanging out over who knew what. ‘Thank you, Sam.’
With her seat now reclined into the limited free space in the back of the car, there was nowhere for him to go but into the expanded gap between the front seats. He wedged himself there, with his spine to the passenger seat back, his shoulder pressing against the branch, facing her across the tiny gulf he’d opened up.
Unexpected bonus. She could talk to him front on.
‘You look funny,’ she said softly. Though still gorgeous. ‘Your face is back to front without the mirror.’
‘You look good.’ He smiled, then flushed as she dropped her eyes briefly. ‘I just meant that pretty much everything on you is intact. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to find that. Just to hear you honk that damned horn.’
Aimee sobered. He must hold some truly terrible images in his head.
‘It’s always the calmest most compliant people that have the worst injuries. They’re the ones I dream about later.’ He tucked her foil covering back in, keeping up his part of the conversation. She let his deep, rich voice wash over her. ‘It’s the guy with a twisted ankle and a golf tournament to get to that makes life hell. We’ve had hikers activate their EPIRB halfway up a mountain because they’re tired and want a lift back down.’ He shook his head.
‘Where do I fall on that scale?’ Was she being too high maintenance? Get my handbag, Sam. Lower my seat, Sam …
‘You have a scale all your own. All the reason in the world to be losing it, but holding up pretty well all things considered.’
She was—and that was really saying something, given her upbringing. Where the heck would she have learned resilience from in her bubblewrap childhood? But honour made her confess. ‘I was sobbing my heart out before I heard you calling.’
That seemed to genuinely pain him. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to you quicker. We had to assess the safety.’
She pinned him with her gaze. ‘I’m so glad you found me at all. Imagine if you hadn’t.’ It hit her then, for the first time, how long, slow and awful her death would have been. She swallowed back a gnarled lump and just stared, watching the play of emotion running over his features. Sadness. Regret. Confusion. But then his eyes lifted and it was just … light. And it changed him.
‘How old are you, Sam?’
‘Thirty-one.’
‘How is it that a man like you who wants children doesn’t yet have any?’ That was the closest she’d come to asking him outright: Why are you still single?
His eyes grew wary, but he finally answered. ‘It takes one to want it but two to make it a reality.’
‘You don’t have women knocking down your door to help you along with that reality? You’re gorgeous.’
His eyes grew cautious. But they didn’t dull. On the contrary, they filled with a rich sparkle. ‘Are you offering?’
She held her breath. Tilted her head. ‘Are you flirting?’
The bright sparkle in his eyes immediately dimmed. The smile straightened out into a half-frown.
Her breath caught. ‘You are.’
‘Sorry. Really inappropriate. Just playing to my strengths.’
His confusion touched her. ‘Don’t apologise. I’m battered and broken and feeling pretty average. It made me smile.’
‘I’m glad I could make you smile, then.’
‘Do they train you for that?’ she asked pertly.
‘For what?’
‘Keeping up people’s spirits with a sexy smile.’
The hint of colour high in his jaw brought her back to her senses. The man was just trying to keep her alive. He would say just about anything. Flirting included. It probably was in his training manual. Which meant it had to end. One of them had to put things back on a more real footing.
She took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, Sam. I think that was the ant juice talking. I apologise.’
He brushed it off with a shake of his head. ‘It’s not generally known for its truth serum properties.’
A blush stole up her cheeks, but this time he was staring straight at her. There was no hiding it. ‘A crazy side-effect?’
‘It’s probably written on the bottle somewhere. “May cause outbursts of inappropriate confession.”’
A gentleman, too. Handing her as dignified an exit as she was going to get. ‘Thank you. For keeping me sane.’ For keeping things light.
‘That’s how this works. You’re the victim. Whatever you need …’
Victim. The word put an early end to the golden glow of promise that had filled her from the inside out at his gentle teasing. Wasn’t that exactly what Danielle had accused her of being? By letting her father and Wayne run her life and others control her career? That hadn’t been a fun conversation. But it had been necessary. It had triggered the rapid departure of Wayne from her life and this journey of self-discovery. ‘Is that what I am?’
He stared at her—hard. ‘No. You’re brave and open and the least victim-like victim I’ve ever met.’
‘It’s because you’re with me. I’d be a basket case without you here.’
Two tiny lines appeared between his brows. ‘Sometimes we only find out what we’re capable of when we’re tested.’
‘Well, I think I’ve failed this test. Maybe I’ll do better next time.’
‘No.’ Immediate and fervent. ‘No next times. You don’t get this kind of luck twice.’
‘Luck?’ Was he crazy?
His face grew serious. He glanced at his watch. ‘You’ll see in a couple of hours. But I’ll be right here with you.’
A couple of hours felt like for ever. ‘Will the … what do you call it … getting me out …?’
‘Extraction.’
‘Will the extraction start as soon as the sun comes up?’
‘As soon as the sun crests the mountaintops, and assuming there’s no fog, yes.’
