Stranded with a Stranger Page 6

  She wanted to punch the air and shout Yes! Her next reaction was to tell him I’m glad you see things my way, but they were still in Namche Bazaar and neither reaction was what she would call politic. Also, Kurt’s face looked carved out of the ice he’d told her about.

  But she couldn’t hide the excitement fizzing through her veins. She could make this happen. Hard work, danger—hah, she laughed in their faces. She would do this. “When do we start?”

  “As soon as we’ve got you kitted out and I’ve instructed Sherpa Rei to rehire one of his cousins and some more Sherpa porters to carry our gear.”

  “Good. I can’t wait.”

  The sooner the better.

  She flashed him a smile that had nothing to do with getting her own way and everything to do with knowing she was going to spend some quality time with this guy. “Eat up, then let’s get out of here. I don’t know about you, but suddenly I’m filled with energy.”

  Chapter 4

  They spent three nights on the trail to Ama Dablam, sleeping in tourist lodges on the way, their first stop at Tengboche within sight of the great Buddhist monastery.

  The distance wasn’t great, but the path rose and fell steeply, winding between tall, leafy, scented trees, some of them seemingly growing straight out of the rocks. But once their path branched away from Mount Everest and Base Camp, their height above sea level rose and the green shade was left behind.

  At Ama Dablam, one look was enough to tell Chelsea that when Kurt said, I know someone who owns a place we can use he wasn’t talking about the type of mountain lodge you might find at Aspen, or near the standard of the lodges dotting Sagarmatha National Park.

  The almost squalid little shack was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Its owner, whom Kurt knew well enough to ask a favor from, was a Sherpa, another relative of Kora’s brother.

  Once inside, she sniffed the stale air, sure the tiny building had mice. She was certain she could smell them, and it made her shudder. And though the porters and Sherpas had supposedly readied the place for their arrival, she looked around for a broom.

  Another sweeping couldn’t hurt.

  No one at IBIS would believe this was Chelsea Tedman sighing in pleasure at the sight of a broom without enough bristles to fly a witch. It was enough to make her giggle. What a pampered life she’d led, even though her training with IBIS had been rigorous.

  Prior to moving to France, the only cleaning she had ever had to do was her room at the sorority house. In Paris Mme Guignard, the concierge of her apartment block, let the cleaner in three times a week. Chelsea hadn’t considered it an indulgence. It was what she was used to, and she could afford the service.

  At first glance she had thought the outside looked quaint, with its rough plastered stone walls put together like a kind of upright crazy paving. The gable roof was fashioned from rusting corrugated iron. It was hard to imagine it being transported this distance on the back of a yak without taking off in the wind.

  The last settlement they had passed was called Syalkyo—less than half a dozen houses—and to get to where they were they’d had to cross a glacial river, colored by the run-off from the glacier. Kurt had mentioned it was similar to the Tekapo River near his half-built lodge in New Zealand. The wood-slat-and-rope bridge they had traversed had been an eye-opener for Chelsea. The solid tree trunks they had crossed before Tengboche had been Brooklyn Bridge in comparison.

  With a pack on her back, and a blue-gray-and-white foaming river rushing over rocks underneath, she had felt less than steady matching her steps to Kurt’s as the boards sprang and bounced under her feet on the fragile swaying suspension bridge.

  Chelsea began her final sweep to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. Crouching low, she reached the broom into the dark under the two trestle beds. Someone had unrolled a thin foam mattress on top of each bed for her and Kurt to sleep on.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Kurt filled the low doorway, stealing most of the light and steeping the interior in a gloom the two small windows couldn’t counteract.

  “I’m making sure that it’s clean. If we have to live here for almost a week, let’s at least begin in a semicivilized fashion.”

  Chelsea stood and faced him as she spoke. Kurt was such a giant of a man, she should have felt intimidated, but she didn’t. She had watched him interact with the porters and Sherpas, taking some weight off the load of a young boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. She had learned there was a kindness in the man that he seemed to take pains to hide from her.

  He used his gruffness as a shield the way she used her bossiest sorority-princess manner to keep him at arm’s length. She could see danger in getting too close to this man and was doing her best to avoid the inevitable clash if either of them lowered their guard. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of flame in his dark, almost black eyes when he glanced in her direction.

  Heaven forgive her, she became more obnoxious with each sighting, hoping to douse the fire.

  Kurt took the broom from her. “This isn’t the Ritz. A few days of climbing over the icefall of the Ama Dablam glacier and you’ll be delighted to come back to the luxury of this little abode.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Chelsea stepped to one side, the backs of her knees hard against the wood-frame bed as Kurt hoisted his backpack onto a hook on the wall.

  “Which bed do you want?” he asked.

  Her gaze traveled from Kurt to the bed six feet away on the other side of the room. She’d noticed when she swept underneath them that one looked better constructed than the other. “You’d better take the one under the window. It appears more likely to take your weight.”

  “’S that right?” His mouth tightened. His darkened jawline hadn’t been shaved in the days since they’d had lunch at her hotel. And though she hated to admit it, stubble must have been invented for a strong face such as his. Most men in her tight little circle at the embassy wouldn’t be seen dead with a five-o’clock shadow, much less stubble. Unless he was working undercover.

  Maybe the contrast was why she found him so attractive.

  “I wasn’t implying that you were fat, just heavy…er, b-big boned,” she stammered as he pinned her with an intense look from his deep-set eyes. Her heart kept racing after he went outside.

  Who among her associates had raised her pulse rate? None that she could name offhand, and as for making her tremble—never.

  While Kurt kept busy with tasks that had to be done before night fell—lantern wicks trimmed and sleeping bags unrolled—he noticed Chelsea staring into space. The death of her sister had hit her hard. Hell, it had hit him hard, and he wasn’t related.

  Atlanta had had a lot of guts for her size—not just a reckless foolhardiness, which he suspected was the case with Chelsea. This week would tell, for it would separate the sheep from the lambs, so to speak.

  He lifted her pack and chucked it on top of the bed she’d decided to use. It didn’t make any difference to him which of the two he slept on—he was used to sleeping on a bed of rocks. But it had been a long time since a woman had slept a few feet away. A woman he was determined to keep his distance from. So what if he was partially aroused half the time he was in her vicinity? It took two to tango. He refused to get caught up in the dance.

  He undid the Velcro straps on her backpack. The sound seemed to pull her back to the present. “Better sort out what you’ll want for the morning. It will still be dark when we set out. I want to be near the foot of the glacier by dawn.”

  “You want us to get up before dawn?”

  Was that panic he saw in her expression? He’d bet she was more used to arriving home as the sun rose, in the glamorous world she inhabited. “That’s what I said—dawn—so be prepared to hit the sack early tonight.”

  “Excuse me if I appear uptight, but there is the question of privacy, with us sharing a room.”

  He did what he could to prevent a weary grimace showing, but it was almost impossible. “You
weren’t thinking of wearing a fancy silk nightie to bed by any chance?”

  God, he’d love to see her dressed in a Parisian fantasy of lace and silk. Face it, Jellic, for all your protestations of dampening down the attraction, you know you’d rather see her wearing nothing but her skin. The less there was to remove, the sooner he’d discover if his imagination had done her justice.

  It was too dim inside the little hut to see if she was blushing as she pronounced a drawn-out “No-o-o.”

  “Good. That wasn’t one of the things on the list I gave you to pack. You’ll sleep in your long johns, of course, and if you ever make it up any higher, be prepared to sleep in your clothes. There are times when you’ll be glad to pull on every stitch of clothing in your pack before going to bed.” Kurt lifted his bulky backpack off the hook and began undoing the zipper.

  Turning again, he caught Chelsea in the middle of an exaggerated shudder. “Isn’t that unsanitary?”

  “Didn’t I warn you to enjoy your shower at the lodge before you left? That it would be the last one you had in a while?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “What did you think you would do—wash in a mountain stream? It’s butt-freezing territory. You have to keep warm, keep your circulation flowing. I’ve seen the results of frostbite, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. If a lady like Atlanta could do it, then so can you.” Digging deep into one of the side pockets of his pack, he drew out a box and tossed it to Chelsea. “Here, you’ll need these and I brought extra.”

  “Baby wipes?”

  “They’re the closest you’re going to get to a shower for a while. Use them sparingly.”

  She laid them on the end of the bed and, like him, began pulling out her sleeping bag. It was red, a color he had reckoned she should wear more after she’d held it up in front of her, asking for his opinion of it in the shop.

  “I guess my inexperience is showing, but I can get past that. I’m a quick study.” She bent her head over her pack and began removing some gear, but as he turned his attention to his, he could have sworn he heard her mutter, “I have to be.”

  He wished he knew what she wasn’t telling him. With all her grim determination it had to be something big, something more than just seeing her sister into a proper resting place.

  Chelsea had said she trusted him with her life. What could she be hiding from him that was worth more than surviving Everest?

  After long minutes when the only sound in the room was the noise of climbing boots hitting the floor and the rustle of down-lined jackets and pants being shaken and fluffed, the room grew too dark to see what was in the bottom of their packs.

  “Time to put some light on,” he said. “This kerosene lamp will throw out good light, but we don’t want to waste the fuel. Like everything else that has to be transported this distance, it’s a precious commodity. I suggest that as soon as we’ve eaten, we get into our respective sleeping bags. If you want to read, or get up in the night, use that light on the headband. Better put it someplace handy.”

  “Did you mention food? I could eat anything put before me.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep out of your way.”

  She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand, murmuring sleepily, “I don’t think I’ll need to read myself to sleep after the walk we did today. It was the longest trek yet.”

  He watched her stretch her facial muscles, finishing with a semblance of a grin. “It’s not so much the distance is it? It’s the walking uphill and then down again to get where you are going. It gets you in the back of the knees. As soon as my head hits the pillow, or rather the folded, down-lined jacket I’m going to stuff inside the matching pants, I expect to fall asleep.”

  Chelsea didn’t sleep, though. She lay for an hour going over different types of knots, determined not to let herself fail when they reached the icefall and began seriously using ropes.

  Then she reflected on the country they’d trekked through. They had passed a lot of porters returning to Namche Bazaar or Tengboche for a break or supplies, but away from the track, where the trees couldn’t grow, lay an empty land where the mountains were king and their subjects few and far between. Yet the culture was fascinating. Wherever one looked there was a monastery where the sounds of chanting and prayer wheels were as common as radios and car horns in Paris.

  One part of her, the part that wanted to avoid confrontation, almost wished she could stay in Nepal, where the life seemed so simple, but that was an idealistic view. Even Nepal had its problems. At Namche Bazaar and then Tengboche they’d had to go through military checkpoints because Maoist rebels were stirring up small pockets of trouble.

  She’d heard that tourist numbers had dropped by 20 percent. Some people were willing to sacrifice anything, even their lives, for what they believed in, but it often led to terrorism. That’s how she’d ended up as a translator with IBIS. Jason Hart had conceived the idea after his wife had died at ground zero on 9/11. Ex-naval intelligence, he’d had all the right connections.

  Chelsea snorted and rolled over. She could include herself on that list of those willing to make sacrifices. Tedman Foods couldn’t be compared with a whole country, but they employed thousands of people. Her sigh lingered in the air. What would happen if she didn’t get her hands on that key?

  Was she doing all this for nothing? If she had gone to her boss instead, would IBIS have had the power to open the safety deposit box? The bank-held key wouldn’t undo the lock on its own.

  Too late to worry about the unknown. Without the key she couldn’t find the proof they needed to open it forcibly.

  “What’s wrong—can’t you sleep?” Kurt’s voice rumbled across the gap, as if her huffing and puffing had wakened him.

  “I want to sleep. It just won’t happen. My brain won’t shut up.” She knew she sounded sulky, but she was frustrated she couldn’t face sleep.

  “Want me to read you a bedtime story?” he teased.

  Good idea. “Tell me about Atlanta and Bill. It’s a dreadful admission, but the things I know about my sister’s life over the last fifteen years could be counted on one hand. I’ve missed a great deal, and I can’t get those years back.”

  Kurt waited a moment as she grew silent, then took over the conversation. “I met them first in western Argentina.”

  “Another coincidence. My mother was born in Argentina, but my grandparents died before I was born, so I’ve never had anyone to visit,” Chelsea said—almost to herself, it seemed.

  “The Chaplins were climbing with another outfit, but we were camped close together at the foot of Mount Aconcagua,” Kurt continued. “We’d light a fire at night and sit around and talk. I suppose the first thing I noticed about them was how happy they were, how much of a team, as if they shared thoughts. You know, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing at jokes no one else understood.”

  “I’m glad they were happy, but it makes me even sadder.”

  “Yeah, there are always regrets. Who hasn’t wanted to change the past?” Him for one. How different would his life have been if his father had been content to be the good cop he’d seemed?

  “Before we went our separate climbs, I gave Bill my address and phone number in New Zealand, said if they ever got down there to give me a call. Then we met again at the airport. Turned out we were taking the same plane. I was in cattle class and they were in business, but they invited me to come up to this place they had in Colorado to do some skiing.”

  “Sounds great.” Chelsea’s voice, though flat, floated softly to him in the darkness. He could tell the story was beginning to work.

  “I had a great time. You should have been there,” he teased her. “Wouldn’t it have been funny if we’d met then instead of now?” Would the attraction he felt in his gut when he looked at her have burned as it did now, knowing she was only a few feet away and all he had to do was walk across the room to take her in his arms? “This trek would have been easier on you if we hadn’t met as strangers.”<
br />
  He heard her sleeping bag slither silkily on the mattress as if she was turning on her side to face him. “Living so close, we won’t be strangers by the time it’s over, will we?”

  “No, I guess not. But I would have liked to have met you without this whole business between us. Under normal circumstances, I think we could have been friends.” More than friends.

  Chelsea echoed his thoughts out loud. “I think we could have been more than friends. Isn’t it a pity we’ll never know now?”

  Her voice was husky with regret, as if for all the great sex they would miss. It made his pulse race in an instant.

  Knowing it would never happen calmed him down. It was a shame, all right. The rumors that had circulated around Namche Bazaar had cut him to the quick, but it was a small leap from there to worrying about the type of slant they would put on his getting cozy with Chelsea.

  He was there to look after her, not make her the target of his lust. To do that he needed to keep his mind on the next day and ensuring Chelsea was as fit and as agile as she’d led him to believe. She’d certainly managed the four-day trek.

  Before he could return to his story, she whispered, “Thanks for the story. Good night.”

  At least he was good for something, if only sending her to sleep. Now he was wide-awake, but not for long.

  Dawn flowing in candy-pink over the glacier was something not to be missed. But Chelsea felt she should tell Kurt that if this was to be the routine every morning—rising at 4:30 a.m. and munching a protein bar as they tramped within reach of the icefall—the experience could grow old very quickly.

  They had been traveling almost an hour when the man in question looked over his shoulder at her. “How you going, Chelsea? Not too much for you?”

  She bit her tongue to hold back a wouldn’t you just love it if I chickened out before we’d even started remark.

  “Excellent. I’m really…enjoying myself. A new experience for me…but it’s beautiful in a weird sort of way.” She hated the fact that on top of the exertion, the thinner air was making her pant. She didn’t want to give Kurt an excuse to say she wouldn’t make it.