“Oh, no,” Jack agreed. “Too dirty. How much farther until the lake?”
“Another quarter of a mile.”
They sped up. Jack was panting pretty good at their near-running pace. It was the altitude and nerves, she knew, but he was holding her back. “I’m going ahead,” she told him. “Stay on the trail.”
Without waiting for a response, she took off, making much better time, and soon enough the trail opened to a clearing, with tawny, undulating wild grass leading directly to a gorgeous beach.
A deserted beach.
The land was vast and rambling, open but not flat, beautiful in its emptiness. The morning light coated the ground with just enough dew to give depth to each individual feature.
Lily scanned the water. Smooth as glass.
And utterly devoid of one spoiled married princess.
But across the lake, there was a single lone deer, sipping from the water, causing the lake to ripple outward in mesmerizing circles.
“A deer,” Jack said, coming up behind her, bending at the knees to gasp for breath.
The deer lifted its head, wriggled its nose, then bounded into the woods without a backwards glance.
“And heat spot gone,” Jack said, sounding despondent.
Lily looked around, not ready to concede defeat. “Michelle?”
No answer, just her own voice echoing back to her. She turned in a slow circle, shoving her sunglasses to the top of her head, scanning every rock, every tree, every inch of the horizon with careful precision.
And it was halfway around, when she was facing dead east, which was the way back to camp, that she saw it. There. High on the craggy rock behind where their camp lay.
A splotch of bright yellow.
What the hell?
Shading her eyes from the morning sun, she squinted and tried to focus in. She recognized the area. Rocky growth, above a dense wooded area.
Above their camp.
Just behind where their camp lay was the makeshift bathroom. They’d set it up against the base of a sharp hill. Which is where she was looking right now. As unbelievable as it seemed, the splash of yellow was halfway up that hill and moving.
As unbelievable as it seemed, Michelle had apparently taken herself on a little climbing expedition. “Uh- oh.”
“What? Where is she?” Jack followed her gaze and his jaw dropped. “Is that-My God.” He let out a long breath and stared at the moving dot of yellow. “What the hell is she doing?” He brought his hands up to his mouth, cupping them around his lips. “Michelle!”
“Don’t,” Lily breathed, grabbing his arm. “Don’t startle her.”
Regardless, they were too far away to see if Michelle had reacted to Jack’s voice. Dropping his hands, he whirled back the way they’d come.
Together they raced through the woods and back into camp, where a startled Rose and Rock, standing by the fire, looked up.
“Did you find her?” Rose asked.
“Is she okay?” Rock rushed to ask.
“We found her, we just haven’t gotten to her yet.” Lily kept moving through camp toward the yellow spot that she could no longer see, not from here. “Where’s Jared?”
“He went after the other heat spot,” Rose said.
The one that had turned out to be Michelle after all. Lily skidded to a halt and stared at her. “I told him to stay.”
“Honey, most men don’t know how to take directions, you know?”
No. No, she didn’t know but she was coming to. It didn’t matter now. She was going to get him, and Michelle, and then she was going to put her hands around their necks and squeeze.
And then…
And then, if Jared was up for it, she was going to hug him to death, just to finish him off. “Come on,” she said to Jack, and headed east. Soon they stood in the low valley, with sharp, jagged, sheer rock on either side, climbing up hundreds of feet. She’d been here earlier, and hadn’t seen Michelle, but then again, she wouldn’t have if Michelle had gone climbing. The shrubbery and lodgepole pines and scrub blocked most of the rock so that seeing any distance upward became all but impossible.
There was the fallen log, the group of three trees that they all had used for shelter when going to the bathroom in the woods without four walls and a lock.
“What do you think?” Jack asked, his eyes a little wild with worry and fear. “She start climbing from here?”
Hard to tell. The dirt here was dry and brittle as well. There were no defined or clear footprints, but lots of dust disturbed from all of them from the night before, and, Lily hoped Michelle from this morning. All the comingled trampling led back to camp.
Except…
Cocking her head, she studied the narrow path that led straight up. Not exactly a path, but it was definitely a route she would have chosen if she was alone, and especially if she wanted to remain alone.
From up there on the rock precipice, she’d be able to see far and wide. But better yet, no one would be able to see her. Maybe just what she’d have wanted on a day like this, if she was a woman not sure about where she and her husband were going to go with their marriage.
Jared had thought of that, too. And he’d gone after her.
Damn it.
Her heart started to pound. He was no more equipped than Michelle to make that climb. God. If he got hurt, she was going to kill him.
14
“JACK,” Lily called out, head still tilted up, still trying to see.
“Yeah?” he asked from behind her.
She gestured up. “I’m going to climb it.”
Jack eyed the rock wall and the outcropping that was cut out and so overgrown with bushes that they couldn’t see above it. “Where?”
“Here.” Lily began to climb the rock using questionable foot and hand holds.
“Lily, I don’t think Michelle could have…”
She didn’t waste the breath to respond, and a minute later heard him scrambling behind her to keep up, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs.
“This is all my fault,” he said, panting. “I was so frustrated that she really believed I loved her for her daddy’s money. I kept taking that out on her. God, I’ve been such an ass.”
“It’s not all your fault.” Lily glanced up, but could still see nothing. “Michelle! Michelle, can you hear me?”
She wanted to lay her eyes on Jared, too, right now, right this minute. Honestly, what had he been thinking, going off to play hero?
Finally, she got to the top and crawled over. Normally the view would take her breath. She could see everything in a captivating, panoramic circle: the sharp jagged mountains lined with blankets and blankets of green, the dips and valleys of rock, the myriads of small alpine lakes like ribbons of blue.
It was staggeringly gorgeous.
Then she saw something even more gorgeous. Jared stepping out from behind a tree, hair tousled, jaw streaked with dirt, shirt torn, a knee bleeding…
Yeah. Staggeringly gorgeous.
And her heart simply turned over and exposed its belly. Oh, God. No. No, not this man. She was not going to
