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When they were finally hoisted up to the chopper, Aidan hauled her onto the ski and then boosted her through the jump door. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.
He climbed in behind her, slid the door closed and turned. She’d collapsed on the floor and gone into convulsions. Throwing off the harness, he knelt beside her.
“Get us out of here!” he shouted up to Powell.
“I’d love to do just that,” Powell shouted back. “Unfortunately, we’ve got a little problem.”
They were trapped in a wind shear that kept dragging the helicopter downward. As the tail slewed about, it came dangerously close to the wall.
“Come on,” Aidan said under his breath. “Come on!”
Powell practically yanked the joystick out of the floor to give them lift power. For a moment, he was forced to ride the wind backward, getting closer and closer to the wall until he could maneuver the chopper around and fly with a tailwind out of the canyon.
While Powell battled the wind, Aidan cut off the woman’s wet clothing. Beneath all those soggy layers, her skin was like ice. He rubbed her arms and legs, trying to create enough friction to warm her up.
Rousing, she clung to him for a moment, as if she didn’t yet realize that she was safe.
“You’ll be okay,” he assured her. “We just have to get you warmed up.”
“Don’t let me go,” she whispered.
“I won’t. I promise.”
She was tiny, but surprisingly curvy, and her muscles were rock hard. At the moment, though, Aidan was more interested in the temperature of her body than in its shape.
“F-freezing,” she gasped.
When he had her clothes off, he wrapped her in a blanket, then pulled her into his arms and held her close to his own warm body. She still couldn’t stop shaking.
“Is she going to be okay?” Powell shouted.
She’d better be, Aidan thought grimly as he held her tight. He couldn’t afford to lose another one.
Chapter Three
Thursday, 0900 hours
Kaitlyn came awake with a start. She’d been dreaming that she was falling, and she gasped as she tried to sit up. A firm hand on her shoulder pressed her back down.
“Try to take it easy.”
That voice! Kaitlyn knew it.
She couldn’t place it, but she knew it…
The dream was still so fresh in her mind that she almost expected to feel wind rush past her face as she fell, but instead, she was lying perfectly still in a nice, warm bed.
A hospital bed, to be exact.
Someone had brought her to Ponderosa Memorial, but she only had a vague recollection of being rushed into the E.R. Of bright lights burning into her eyes. Of urgent yet somehow soothing voices speaking to her and above her. She’d been examined and x-rayed…all of which had passed in a blur of pain and confusion.
She was still a little out of it, but not as disoriented as she’d been then. Maybe it was the pain that had snapped her out of the haze. She suddenly felt as if every bone in her body had been crushed. But she knew that wasn’t the case. She was going to be fine. Someone had told her that.
She glanced up at the man whose hand was still her on her shoulder. He had dark eyes and an even darker expression.
“I know you,” she blurted.
Something flickered in those dark eyes. “I hope so. We went to high school together. I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t remember me.”
Frowning, she continued to stare up at him until the lightbulb went on. “Phillip? Phillip Becker?”
His lips tilted slightly, but Kaitlyn had a feeling that for him the gesture was significant. Although she hadn’t seen him in years, the few faint memories she had of Phillip Becker were of a somber, overstudious young man who rarely cracked a smile.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in confusion.
“I’m a doctor. I’ve been on staff here at Memorial for a couple of weeks.”
Why hadn’t she known about that? Word usually traveled fast in such a small town.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“A little after nine.”
She glanced at the window. “But…it’s daylight.”
“Nine in the morning,” he clarified. “You’ve been here all night.”
“I have?”
“You don’t remember being awakened every two hours? The nurses said you were responsive.”
She had a vague recollection, Kaitlyn realized. She frowned as she tried to think back.
Dr. Becker took a light from his lab-coat pocket and bent to check the dilation of her pupils. Next, he held his finger in front of her face and moved it slowly back and forth. “Try to follow my finger,” he instructed. When Kaitlyn did as she was told, he nodded. “Very good.”
Very good. Evidently, she’d passed some kind of test. Yea for her. “How did I get here? I mean, I know how I got here. Someone brought me in, right? But I don’t know…I can’t seem to remember all the details.”
“Two men brought you down the mountain in a chopper,” he said absently as he glanced at her chart.
“A chopper?”
“A helicopter.”
Kaitlyn wasn’t confused by the term. She knew what he meant. But the word had conjured up an image that left her even more confused. A deep voice commanding her to hold on tight. Blue eyes staring deeply into hers as he ran his hands over her body. “We just have to get you warmed up.”
Who was he? she wondered. Where was he?
“I can’t seem to remember a lot of things,” she realized on a note of panic. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing that a little rest won’t take care of,” Dr. Becker assured her. “You have a mild concussion. That explains the disorientation and the memory loss. Short-term amnesia is fairly common with head injuries.”
“What? I have a head injury?” Even more alarmed, Kaitlyn lifted her hand to her head and winced when she felt a bump the size of a goose egg near her right temple.
“Try not to worry. Your MRI and CT look fine. Other than a little soreness, you should be as good as new in a couple of days.”
Relieved, Kaitlyn stared up at the ceiling. “Will I get my memory back?”
“It’s hard to say. I’ve seen car-crash victims who could remember every single detail leading up to the trauma, including the song that was playing on the radio before impact. But they have no recall of the accident itself. Not even weeks, months, sometimes years later. I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said with a shrug. “There are worse things than forgetting a fifty-foot fall into a canyon.”
She’d fallen fifty feet. Into a canyon. God.
Still exhausted, Kaitlyn closed her eyes. “I suppose you’re right.” It was strange, though, having a gap in one’s recall. She had a feeling those missing moments would nag at her forever.
“Try to concentrate on the positive,” Dr. Becker suggested. “You were trapped on that ledge for nearly twenty-four hours. Any number of things could have happened. I’d say under the circumstances, you’re a very lucky woman. You had a lot of people worried about you.” He nodded toward the door. “One of them is outside right now. She’s already caused quite a stir in the waiting room this morning.”
Kaitlyn looked up in surprise. “She?”
“Eden McClain.” His eyes seemed to darken. “Normally, I’d suggest you try and get a little more rest before you start having visitors, but I have a feeling no one will get any peace around here until she sees for herself that you’re okay.”
That sounded like Eden. The wonder was that she hadn’t been able to finesse or bulldoze her way in before now.
“Shall I let her come in for a few minutes?”
“Yes, of course.” Although how Eden had even known that Kaitlyn was missing, much less hospitalized, was another mystery.
Dr. Becker made a note on her chart. “Don’t let her stay too long. As I said, the best thing I can prescribe for your recovery is plenty of rest.”
“Can I have something for the pain?” Kaitlyn asked meekly.
Becker frowned. “Try to ride it out a little while longer. I’d like to monitor your reflexes for a few more hours, but if the pain doesn’t ease up, I’ll have the nurse give you something mild.” He closed the chart and tucked it under his arm. “Good to see you again, Kaitlyn. Sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”
“You, too…Dr. Becker.”
“Phillip, please,” he said briskly. “After all, we do have something of a past, don’t we?”
He turned then and disappeared through the door, leaving Kaitlyn to wonder just what in the world he’d meant by his parting statement. A past? The two of them?
She didn’t have time to ponder the question for long, however, because a second later, the door burst open and Eden McClain took center stage.
THEY’D KNOWN each other since they were fourteen years old, but Eden’s intensity never failed to impress—and exhaust—Kaitlyn. She was always so focused and so supremely self-confident that Kaitlyn sometimes wondered if her friend had ever experienced even a moment of inadequacy. Somehow Kaitlyn doubted it.
The daughter of a logger and a dressmaker, she’d certainly come a long way since her humble beginnings in Ponderosa. Everyone in the state knew that Eden McClain was the driving force behind Governor Gilbert’s reelection campaign, and Kaitlyn wouldn’t have been at all surprised to learn that her friend harbored political ambitions of her own.
If so, she would be a force to be reckoned with. Feminine and gorgeous on the outside with her power suits and pearls, and hard as nails on the inside.
God help anyone who got in her way, Kaitlyn thought.
Eden walked over to the bed and gave her a quick hug. She always wore the same perfume, something dark and sensuous. She called it her “signature” fragrance, and she guarded the formula as jealously as a lost man might horde water in the desert.
“So how are you feeling?” Ending the embrace quickly, Eden straightened. She’d never been the demonstrative type, and the easy way in which Kaitlyn and her mother had expressed their affection had always made Eden uncomfortable.
“Like I fell off a cliff,” Kaitlyn told her. “But never mind about me. What are you doing in Ponderosa? Shouldn’t you be in Helena wowing Prince Petrov?”
Eden smiled. “Nikolai will just have to wait.”
Kaitlyn’s brows shot skyward. “Nikolai? Well, get you.”
“Yeah, well, the informality is just for your benefit. In public, believe me, it’s His Royal Highness all the way. At any rate, the moment I heard you were missing, I got here as quickly as I could.” Eden gave her a reproachful look. “You had us all scared half to death, especially after the floodwaters receded and the state police found your vehicle. Your father was ready to call in the Marines.”
Kaitlyn gasped. “Dad? He’s not here, is he? Please tell me he’s not in Ponderosa.” In her own way, she loved her powerful father very much, but he could be trying under the best of circumstances. She wasn’t proud of the fact that at thirty, she still found him somewhat intimidating, but at least she was honest enough to admit it these days.
“Lucky for you, he’s still halfway around the world,” Eden said. “I talked to your mother, too, just in case the news of your disappearance made it all the way to Texas. She was upset, naturally, but I managed to convince her that you’re in perfectly capable hands here. She’s staying put for the time being because evidently your grandmother has taken a turn for the worse.”
“I know. Poor Nana.” Kaitlyn lay back against the pillows and sighed. “Thanks for handling all that for me. I owe you one.”
“You can repay me by telling me what possessed you to wander off so far,” Eden scolded. “You were miles from the road when they found you. What on earth were you thinking?”
“I was trying to get a cell-phone signal,” Kaitlyn explained. “And if that didn’t work, I was hoping to make it to Eagle Falls before nightfall. I knew no one would miss me until the next day, and I didn’t want to spend the night camped out on the side of road. It may sound crazy now, but I thought it was a good idea at the time.”
“Yes, well, that seems to be your motto,” Eden said dryly. “You’ve always been impulsive.”
Kaitlyn couldn’t deny the charge so she merely shrugged. “Anyway, I started walking and after that, everything…gets a little hazy.”
Eden frowned. “What do you mean, hazy?”
“It seems I have short-term amnesia.”
“Wow.” Eden let out a long breath. “So…you don’t even remember how you ended up on that ledge?”
Kaitlyn shook her head. “Not really, although I’d say it’s pretty apparent that I fell. Phillip says the amnesia may or may not be permanent.”
“Speaking of Phillip…” Eden glanced at the door, then leaned toward Kaitlyn as she lowered her voice. “I just can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that he’s a doctor. God only knows what his bedside manner is like. He always gave me the creeps back in high school.”
“I think he’s just shy,” Kaitlyn said.
Eden gave her a look. “That’s a kind way of putting it. Do you remember what a crush Jenny used to have on him? She was always such a needy little thing. But I suppose you can’t blame her. An alcoholic mother, an abusive father…she was a walking cliché. She used to latch on to anyone who had a kind word for her.”
“You know, I’d forgotten all about that,” Kaitlyn said in surprise. “She did have a thing for Phillip, didn’t she?”
“Big time. But good ol’ Phil only had eyes for you. Like every other guy in town.”
Kaitlyn could have sworn she heard a tinge of resentment in Eden’s voice, but when she looked up, her friend’s dark eyes were completely guileless. As was her smile. “Not your fault you were so darn irresistible. Besides, men are such suckers for blue-eyed blondes.”
Kaitlyn gave her an exasperated look. “You’re exaggerating, as usual. Besides, I don’t recall you ever having a shortage of admirers. And from what I hear, you pretty much have Peter Gilbert wrapped around your little finger.”
“Just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you hear.” Eden laughed, but there was a flash of bitterness in her eyes. “Forget about Peter. Tell me about that hunk of eye candy that brought you to the hospital yesterday. Aidan Campbell.”
“Aidan who?”
