taking her out to dinner, dancing and being nice been some sort of setup?
“We’d better start back,” Russ said. “There’s a blue norther’ headed this way and it’s gonna get cold. Might even have some ice.”
“I just need to change clothes and I’ll be ready to leave,” she said stiffly.
“You might want to keep those clothes for the hike. Pretty as you look in a short skirt and slinky blouse, flannel and cotton are a lot more practical.”
“Wear these clothes in public?” No way. This trip to Texas had been a disaster from start to finish; she wasn’t about to add fashion crime to her list of faulty decisions. And if he thought flirting with her and calling her pretty would offset her anger, he was sadly mistaken.
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug.
She quickly changed back into her skirt, blouse and jacket, immediately feeling more like herself even though she’d had to trash her stockings. She stuffed the old jeans and flannel shirt into her backpack-there was plenty of room now that she’d eaten all the granola bars and drunk all the water. She would launder the clothing and return it to Russ, showing him that she had manners even if he didn’t.
She waited on the front porch while Russ closed up the cabin. The weather was still pleasant. It was hard to believe that anywhere in January could be so mild, harder still to believe a cold front would hit in a few hours. She hoped the weather didn’t delay her flight. She was booked on a red-eye leaving at ten tonight. She’d be home by morning.
“Ready?” Russ asked, suddenly appearing on the porch beside her.
She nodded. She was beyond ready to get back to civilization and was feeling grateful she’d not been born a hundred and fifty years ago to a pioneer family.
It felt good to stretch her muscles after crawling around for hours the previous day digging through those boxes. And the hike was much more pleasant now that she didn’t have to worry about the dog. At least Russ had left the beast at home this time. Now the only distraction was Russ himself, hiking a few feet in front of her. She wished he didn’t have to be so darn good-looking. What was it about soft, faded denim over a man’s posterior that was so appealing?
She stumbled and almost fell.
Russ halted and looked over his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yes, fine,” she said quickly, reminding herself she needed to keep an eye on the path ahead rather than her guide’s backside.
“Looks like we had some rain last night. Just enough to make things slippery, so watch your step.”
His warning came about a second too late. One moment she was contemplating what Russ might look like naked, the next, something gave way beneath her foot. With the backpack throwing off her balance just enough, she couldn’t catch herself. She let out a scream as she found herself falling down a hillside, hitting trees like a pinball on the way down.
She did a neat somersault and wound up on her butt in a pile of wet, rotting leaves.
For a few moments she was so stunned she couldn’t move, couldn’t say anything. Then she was vaguely aware of Russ calling her name as he scuttled down the hill after her with amazing speed. He was at her side almost instantly.
“Sydney, don’t try to get up.”
Which was exactly what she was doing. The damp leaves were soaking through her skirt and she didn’t want to finish the hike with a wet behind. But then the pain hit. Her left ankle and her tailbone, mostly, but she’d bumped and scraped herself in a number of places on the way down.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. “Did you hit your head?”
“My ankle,” she finally said, barely managing to get the words out. It felt like someone was hitting her foot with a sledgehammer. “I think I broke it.”
HELL. This was exactly the kind of thing he was always cautioning his hikers to watch out for. You had to pay attention on these trails, which weren’t intended for casual strolls. He should have warned Sydney to be more careful from the beginning. He probably should have checked to see that her boots were properly laced, to give her ankles the support they needed.
Getting her off the mountain and to medical help was going to be a trick, assuming he could even get them out of this gully. Doing it before the blue norther’ hit would be damn near impossible. He could already feel a chill in the air. Dense, blue clouds were rolling in from the north. The temperature would drop twenty degrees in the next hour or two and they were probably close to three hours from the car.
Sydney unlaced her boot. Her face was tight with pain, her breath ragged. He eased the boot off her foot as gently as he could, but he could tell he was hurting her. When her foot was free, he peeled off the sock. Her ankle was swelling up fast, but at least there were no obvious bones sticking out.
“If we’re lucky it’s just a bad sprain,” Russ said. “Have you ever broken anything before?”
“No. But this h-hurts bad.”
“Put the sock back on for now. We need ice.”
“Where can we find ice up here?” she asked as she gingerly pulled the sock over her swollen foot. “For that matter, how do we get back to the trail?”
He had ideas for both of those dilemmas. He helped her to stand, letting her lean on him as she balanced on one foot and brushed the leaves off her skirt. She was bleeding from a scrape on one knee, and the sleeve of her fake zebra jacket was torn almost all the way off, revealing a shredded silk blouse and another scrape on her shoulder.
He took off his backpack, stuffed her discarded boot inside and tossed the pack up the hill as far as he could. Then he stooped down, bracing his hands on his bent knees. “Climb aboard.”
“What?”
“You’re gonna ride piggyback. It’s the only way I can think of to get you back to the trail. Hop on.”
She was in no shape to argue. She did as he asked.
He wished she were pressing her body against him for some other reason. He was acutely aware of the feel of her bare thighs around his waist. Her tight skirt was probably hiked up as high as it would go. Her breasts were pressed against his back, her slender arms wrapped around his neck and her head was ear to ear with his. She’d lost her hat during her tumble down the hill, but he didn’t remind her of it. The thing would just get in the way and he suspected it would be no use against freezing rain.
Climbing the steep hill with an extra hundred or so pounds on his back was no picnic, but he managed it, pulling himself up using saplings as handholds, being careful not to jar Sydney’s injured foot in the process. Occasionally she made a quiet little gasp, and he knew the pain must be intense. But he had to hand it to her, she was pretty stoic. She ought to be cussing him up one side and down the other for getting her into this predicament.
This was what he got for trying to deceive her. He should have known better. Hell, he didn’t want his old man’s money because he hated the deceit and shallowness Sammy Oberlin represented. His money and his lifestyle had nearly ruined his and his mother’s lives. When they’d moved to Linhart, they’d turned over a new leaf and started fresh, their lives based on honesty and integrity, the value of working for an honest living, being part of a community.
Yet he’d deceived Sydney in a big way. So much for honesty and integrity.
When he reached his backpack, he tossed it all the way up to the trail. A couple of minutes later he and Sydney made it safely to the trails themselves. He set Sydney down and caught his breath.
“How you doing?” he asked.
She shrugged, which probably meant not too well. Her ankle was the size of a softball inside her sock.
“Is there any way you can walk? Leaning on me for support and with a walking stick, maybe?”
She held on to his arm and tried to put weight on the foot. But there was no way. After three tiny steps she was in tears and her face was a stark white.
“Just leave me here to die,” she said pathetically. “Save yourself.”
“C’mon, gimpy. I can carry you.” But her injury meant they wouldn’t be returning to Linhart today, possibly not tomorrow, either. He could carry her three miles with no trouble-he often carried nearly that weight on long hiking trips. But he would have to move slowly on the rough trail to avoid another tumble, and they were running out of time. They’d spent too much time already. On the northern horizon, a wall of gray announced that the front was moving in-and it looked like a monster.
