The Rivals (10 page)

“Was your brother ill?” Sarah asked, wondering if he might have chosen death over the disintegration of his body during a terminal illness.

“He was only twenty-three and healthy as a young bull. He'd just finished law school and been recruited by a high caliber New York firm. He had his whole life ahead of him.”

“Oh,” Sarah said.

Silence reigned in the Tahoe for another five minutes.

“I blame my grandfather's second wife. The proverbial wicked stepgrandmother,” Drew said. “She made sure Dusty felt unwanted and unimportant and…useless.”

“How did you escape her clutches?” Sarah asked.

“It's a long story.”

“I've got time.

Drew stared out the window as he spoke. “My grandfather had two daughters, my mother Ellen and Clay's mother Eve. He fell in love with a woman named Shelby and divorced my grandmother, who fell apart and turned to alcohol and drugs. She finally slashed her wrists three years later.”

“That's terrible!” Sarah said.

“I wasn't born yet when all that happened,” Drew said sardonically. “The good part comes later.”

Sarah made a face. “How can you make fun—”

“My life was anything but funny,” Drew said bitterly. He turned and looked out the window again, regaining his composure, then began talking as though he hadn't stopped.

“Shelby had a daughter Elizabeth, my aunt Liz, who became the favored daughter.”

“That sounds way too much like the fairy tale about the wicked stepmother and the ugly stepsisters,” Sarah said.

Drew glanced at her and said, “Only the wicked stepmother part applies in this case. Aunt Liz was always nice and very pretty. Shelby was hell on wheels. She thought she ought to run all three of her daughters' lives.”

“Uh oh,” Sarah said.

“She couldn't stop my mother Ellen from marrying the man she loved, but Shelby didn't like Dusty's and my father, so she hounded him until he divorced my mother. Mom married a second husband, my stepbrother Morgan's father. He lasted a couple of years before Shelby ran him off.

“If Shelby didn't like you—and for some reason, she took a dislike to Dusty—she knew what to say to make you feel like a bad person,” Drew said.

“She sounds like an awful woman.”

“She was,” Drew said. “She's the reason Aunt Eve married Jackson Blackthorne instead of King Grayhawk.”

Sarah turned to him in surprise. “Really?”

Drew nodded. “Aunt Eve was being courted by King, but Shelby didn't want her stepdaughter going so far from home, so far from her grasp and control. So she told a few lies to convince Aunt Eve that Blackjack was the better choice. My aunt became a Blackthorne, and the rest is history.”

“Whatever happened to the wicked stepgrandmother?”

“She's still alive and kicking in the hill country of Texas, madder than a peeled rattler because my grandfather left his ranch in Texas to his daughters—and her daughter. My grandfather's will stipulated that each of the three sisters had to name the other two as their heir to the DeWitt property, so the ranch would stay in one piece. My aunt Liz, the only sister living, owns the entire DeWitt ranching operation.”

“I'm confused,” Sarah said.

“About what?”

“If you know your grandmother was a terrible person—and the exception, rather than the rule, as grandmothers go—why do you think you wouldn't be a good parent?”

“Kids need too much.”

“You've just told me you have more money than you can spend in your lifetime,” Sarah pointed out.

“They need attention,” Drew qualified.

“You could hire a registered nurse or a nanny.”

“Love,” he said curtly. “They need too much love.”

“I can't disagree with that,” Sarah said. “Everyone needs to be loved. Surely you—”

“I'm done loving,” Drew said, cutting her off.

“Right,” Sarah said. “I forgot about the girlfriend who dumped you.”

“She's none of your business.”

“I suppose she was the straw that broke the camel's back.”

Drew made a disgruntled sound in his throat. “Let it go.”

“I have to admit true love wasn't any part of what I had in mind last night,” Sarah said. “Just some satisfying sex.”

Drew eyed her with interest. “That can still be arranged.”

Sarah laughed. “It wouldn't work now.”

“Why not?”

“I should have said that what I wanted was
anonymous
sex. Now I know too much about you.”

“Lady, you know nothing about me,” Drew retorted.

“Very little, I'll admit,” Sarah said. “What I do know makes any involvement between us impossible.”

“You should know better than to throw down a gauntlet like that.”

“I wasn't offering a challenge, just stating a fact.”

Drew snorted. “You're lucky my head still hurts.”

Sarah eyed his bruised forehead. “Did you have that checked out by a doctor?”

“I'm fine.”

“Except your head still hurts.”

“It's nothing,” he insisted.

Sarah suspected Drew, like many of the men she worked with, would have to be prostrate before he'd seek out a doctor. Which made her wonder whether she should head up into the mountains with him on skis. “Maybe you should tell me where this cabin is and let me go on my own.”

“I would have done that, if I'd thought you could find it without me,” Drew admitted. “It's tucked into the trees so well I didn't see it myself until I nearly tripped over it.”

“Why are you so sure you can find it again?” Sarah asked.

“I know exactly where I was, because thirty seconds later I was on my way down that mountain in the middle of an avalanche.”

Sarah stared at Drew. “And you're willing to go back up there?”

“For Kate I will,” Drew said soberly.

For the first time Sarah noticed the beads of perspiration on his upper lip. “What's your relationship to Kate Grayhawk?”

He turned to stare at her and said, “Let's just say I care about her and leave it at that.”

Sarah believed Drew knew full well that Clay was Kate's father, but in case he didn't, she couldn't admit she knew the truth. “How did Kate Grayhawk get under your ‘no kids' radar?” she asked instead.

“She never acted like a kid,” Drew said. “Didn't cry, mope, moan or wail. Game to try anything. Brave, loyal, trustworthy—a real Boy Scout.”

“Shouldn't that be Girl Scout?” Sarah said with a smile.

“Real tomboy,” Drew explained. “Never saw her in anything but jeans and a T-shirt and cowboy boots.”

“I'm surprised she didn't call you when she couldn't reach her mother.”

“Kate wouldn't have known I was here,” Drew said. “I've been living like a hermit. Haven't wanted to be bothered.”

“Home nursing your broken heart?”

Drew shot her a sideways look. “I don't have a heart.”

Sarah wasn't so sure, but she wasn't going to argue. They'd reached the parking lot at the foot of 25 Short, and she pulled in and parked the Tahoe. “How long is it going to take us to get to this cabin?”

“Maybe thirty minutes,” Drew replied.

Sarah stood with her face to the wind, gauging its speed, then looked up at a gray sky heavy with snow clouds. Finally, she looked at the unpredictable, avalanche-prone snow cresting 25 Short, which she knew, having just been up there, was a risky place to be skiing.

“How high up do we have to go?” she asked.

“Not far. Just across the base and up a ways,” Drew replied.

“Let's get on and get off,” Sarah said, eyeing the mountain above them.

They'd been skiing fifteen minutes when Sarah felt a thirty-mile-an-hour gust of wind. “That isn't good,” she said, staring up. “Wind like that's going to shift the snow on the crest.”

“What do you want to do?” Drew asked.

“Go back,” Sarah said. “Wait till the wind dies down.” She felt a shiver roll down her spine as she heard the sharp crack of snow breaking free.

“Is that what I think it is?” Drew asked, raising his gaze to the top of 25 Short.

“We need to get off this mountain.”

Drew turned to her, his blue eyes fierce and said, “What if that cabin gets buried by snow before we get back?”

Sarah was used to making hard choices, but she didn't like the one Drew had presented to her. If they moved forward, they could very well end up buried under an avalanche started by the gusting wind thousands of feet above them.

But if Drew could find the cabin, and if Kate Grayhawk was inside, they might be able to rescue her and escape, since snow from an avalanche might not get this far down the mountain.

What if they turned around, and later discovered that Kate Grayhawk had been in the cabin and been buried alive? Sarah would never forgive herself.

“Sarah?” Drew prodded.

Sarah made a frustrated sound in her throat. There was no more time for what-ifs. It was time to act.

“How far to the cabin?” she asked.

“Maybe five minutes.”

“Let's go.”

Sarah's breath created trails of fog as she sucked oxygen open-mouthed. She was fast on skis, but Drew could have won prizes racing. She struggled not to lose sight of him as he pressed forward through the spruces and pines.

“Wait for me,” she called out. “We don't know what—or who—we'll find at that cabin.”

“If Kate's abductor is there,” Drew replied, “he must be as aware of the avalanche danger as we are. He might already be high-tailing it out of there.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Sarah said. “Don't go in there without me.”
And my gun,
she added silently.

Drew glanced over his shoulder, and Sarah realized that he wasn't going to wait for her. She increased her stride, using every bit of strength and skill she had to close the distance between them.

Sarah felt the ground shudder, or maybe she only imagined the earth shaking beneath her feet, and acknowledged the fact that they'd run out of time—and luck. She was aware of her heart beating like the drum in a marching band and the taste of copper in her throat.

Under the circumstances, a healthy dose of fear was a good thing. She could use all the adrenaline her body cared to shoot into her veins. Tons of snow were on their way down the mountain. She was racing for her life.

The sad thing was, they'd risked their lives for nothing. They'd never found Drew's mysterious cabin.

“There!” Drew said, pointing in the distance. “See it? There!”

Suddenly, Sarah saw the tiny cabin through the trees, every bit as ramshackle as Drew had said it was, half a football field away.

She could also hear the snow thundering its way down the mountain, could see the mist rising along its path, like a powerful steam engine billowing white smoke.

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven,” she began praying.

“Move your butt!” Drew shouted.

Sarah realized he'd stopped and was waiting for her. She spurred muscles that were already screaming to even greater effort, and together they made it to the cabin door. She stepped out of her skis and pitched both skis and poles inside. The snow appeared like a giant tidal wave at the edge of her vision.

“Inside!” he snapped, throwing his skis and poles in after hers and pushing her inside ahead of him.

There was no time for caution, no time to see whether the cabin was occupied by friend or foe, before Drew closed the door behind them.

It took Sarah a tenth of a second to realize that the cabin was empty. In a glance she took in a broken table. Spiderwebs. Dust. A single boarded-up window.

She turned and met Drew's gaze. It was all going to be over in another tenth of a second.

Sarah launched herself into Drew's open arms, her face buried against his shoulder as the thundering snow cracked trees like matchsticks on its way down the mountain. She held tight and waited for the moment when the ancient logs that protected them would crack, and they would be crushed under tons of snow.

Sarah's chest hurt, and she realized she was holding her breath. She gasped a life-saving breath of air as the thundering sound moved beyond the cabin, and she realized the walls hadn't come down, and they hadn't been buried alive.

Or maybe they had.

Sarah's fear was that the cabin was buried under so much snow that they wouldn't be able to dig themselves out, that eventually they'd suffocate. She had to try the door. She had to know for sure whether snow had trapped them in a cold white tomb.

She pulled free of Drew's grip, but her legs were trembling so badly they wouldn't hold her upright. She grabbed at him as she started to fall, and his arms once more tightened around her.

“Whoa, there,” he murmured in her ear. “Take it easy.”

“We're alive,” she said. And then felt stupid for announcing the obvious.

“Yeah,” he said.

She realized he was trembling, too. She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Getting there.”

Then she remembered what Clay Blackthorne had said about Drew being buried in an avalanche on 25 Short. She slid her arms around his waist and held him tight, giving back the support he'd offered her. “That was close,” she said.

“Yeah.”

She heard him swallow and looked up to see he had his eyes closed and his jaw clamped tight.

She raised a hand and cupped the back of his head, drawing it down to her own, so she could lay her icy cheek against his. “We're safe,” she murmured.

Maybe saying it would make it true.

She heard him swallow hard again, and realized her own throat was tight with emotion. She was no more willing to admit her own fear than to force him to admit his.

They stayed clutched together until the rumbling snow had passed beyond their hearing.