Stranded with a Stranger Read online

  Kurt brought her back to the mundane. “Okay, let’s take your socks off.”

  Glad to have an excuse for the flush she felt suffusing her face, Chelsea hit him with an indignant “Why?”

  “I’m going to wash your feet.”

  “No need—I’m a big girl. I can wash my own feet.”

  “The last thing I expected from Chelsea Tedman was coyness. C’mon, Teddy bear, it’s something you can’t afford on a climb when you’re dependent on one another.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “I called you Teddy bear, Teddy. Did no one call you that at school? I’d have thought with a name like Tedman…” He let his words taper off and replaced them with a grin that made her insides curl. She saw it so infrequently. “You do the growl so well, and I always manage to make you bite,” he added.

  “Huh, I’d like to bite you right now!”

  Silence rocked the shack. The heat of his gaze burned where it passed over her, a startling, pathetically vulnerable and all-feminine sensation that made her limbs go weak, until he blinked then said, “So let’s get to it before the water cools. Not that it takes long to heat at this altitude, but fuel costs a bomb to transport.”

  Realizing she had no choice, Chelsea wiggled forward on the makeshift bed and hooked a finger in the top of her thick wool sock, thankful she’d changed them when she’d freshened up. She’d been limited to four pair, and each night she hung the ones she’d removed outside to air. Washing them was out of the question.

  “Both socks. There’s room in here to soak two feet at a time.”

  Did he remember how big her feet were? She pulled off the last sock and gingerly slipped her toes into the water. It wasn’t as hot as the steam implied. The weary soles of her feet felt the warmth and she sighed, as if he’d handed her a delicious Belgian chocolate truffle. Her favorite.

  He gazed straight at her, all business. “How does that feel?”

  She closed her eyes, as if her pleasure was private. “Great. I like getting spoiled.” But her eyelids snapped open again as water cascaded over the high arches of her feet, directed by a trickle from Kurt’s hand. He scooped up some more, skimming skin dampened by his last effort. His touch set up a tingle in her belly, as if he’d touched her up there instead of three feet lower. She squeezed her knees and thighs together to ease the needy ache. It simply added to her awareness of him.

  Chelsea wiggled her toes and stretched them out straight when she wanted to curl them under. They were the only muscles she dared move as tension from the water massage built inside her. How humiliating. She couldn’t let him see how deeply he affected her

  He tapped her left foot. “Okay, give me this one.”

  Startled by the request, she obediently did as he asked, placing her foot in his hands. “What are you going to do?”

  “Examine it for bruises and blisters. You have an even bigger day ahead tomorrow. Can’t be too careful.”

  He ran the palm of his hand along the sole of her foot and up around her heel, massaging the hollows on either side of her Achilles tendon. She shivered. “My feet are very sensitive.”

  Sensitive! Who was she trying to fool? She’d always been ticklish, but she had just that second discovered how sensual his touch felt as his thumb prodded the base of her toes. Much more of this and the top of her head would blow off. She would give him a hundred years to stop what he was doing.

  “It tickles because of all the sensitive nerve endings, like at the tips of our fingers—probably something we needed while we were swinging around in the trees.” Kurt smiled, looking really relaxed. If it weren’t for the facial hair he would have looked younger, boyish. “You Jane, me Tarzan.”

  “Wrong continent. And I seem to remember a dearth of trees in the neighborhood.”

  He perched the ball of her heel on his knee and began checking her other foot. “Spoilsport. I was just warming to the subject.”

  Warm? She was red-hot. She leaned back on her hands and turned her gaze to the ceiling as he gave her second foot the same treatment as the first.

  Her heels sat on the long, lean muscle of his thigh, its strength pronounced by the way he crouched, all his weight on his toes. She heard the basin scrape the floor as he slid it to one side. Next moment he was drying her feet, carefully attending to each toe in turn.

  Didn’t he know what he was doing to her?

  Or was Kurt Jellic simply a tease?

  “Right, that’s done. Swivel around and put your feet up on the bed. I’ve got some liniment that will toughen them up.”

  Liniment. She thought of the stuff she’d used on her horse. There was nothing sensual about that smell. Her mood was blown.

  “Thanks for looking after me.” Chelsea swung her feet up onto her bed and tucked the foot of her thick sleeping bag over them to keep them warm. The air chilled quickly as soon the sun began its journey behind the mountains.

  “No problem.” Kurt uncoiled his legs and stretched his arms.

  As he straightened, she got her first real indication she hadn’t been the only one turned on by his efforts. She saw him catch the direction of her glance. His mouth twisted to one side as he scrubbed at his beard, his fingers rasping against his hair-roughened chin, but he didn’t embarrass her by mentioning it.

  “If there’s any hot water left, maybe you could shave.”

  He flung the towel on top of his sleeping bag and retrieved the basin from the floor. The look he sent her was strictly unapologetic. “No point.”

  Did he think she was propositioning him? Sure, she’d enjoyed his kiss. That didn’t mean she was up for anything more. Not even a fling. She wasn’t ready, wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready to get that intimate with a man again. Jacques, the Frenchman she’d thought she was in love with, had shown her that throwing caution to the wind led to disaster. She had let him into her bed, into her heart—a heart that had been vacant since the day Atlanta had married Bill and left her in the hands of a cold, imperious father who thought love was for the masses.

  Hence the arrangement he’d made for her sister and Bill Chaplin.

  Of course, she’d rebelled. Their family life had become so acrimonious, her father had shipped her off to school. It wasn’t a particularly happy period of her life. All that had kept her going had been her horse and knowing that in a roundabout way she had won.

  What a little stinker she had been.

  Atlanta had tried over and over to tell her she really did love Bill, but all Chelsea had seen was her father’s manipulations.

  She had been blind to the manipulations of Jacques.

  At least the wedding ring hadn’t been on her finger when she’d discovered Jacques’s extracurricular activities. And she’d been saved from paying out the alimony he’d planned to live on once he had divorced her.

  As Kurt had discovered today, she learned from her mistakes, didn’t make them twice. With Atlanta and Bill dead, she might be twice as rich as she had been before. She hadn’t really given it much thought until now, but some people might think it made her twice as attractive.

  For her it meant double the trouble.

  Kurt heeled the door shut with his boot and announced, “Dinner is served.” He proceeded gingerly into the room, a food-laden metal plate balanced in each hand. On top of that he held the neck of the liniment bottle in the crook of his little finger.

  He moved carefully, mindful that the forks tucked in his waistband would stab him in eight places if he leaned too far forward.

  Chelsea sat on the bed hugging her knees with her arms. She shuffled into a sitting position on the edge of the bed as he said, “Pick a plate—any one.” Then he passed one of the forks over and sat on the other bed facing her, the plate balanced on his knees. No chance of getting burned. The food had already cooled.

  “Eat up while it’s still slightly warm.” He held up the liniment bottle. “This can wait until after the meal.”

  He watched her eye the bottle, a hint of suspicion
in the lift of an eyebrow. Sometimes Chelsea was so easy to read.

  “You’re not expecting me to drink that?”

  Tipping it back, he read the label with as much attention as he’d given to the bottle of Pinot Gris in the hotel restaurant.

  “Well, it does contain alcohol, but are we really that desperate? There are other components in the mix that could turn the hardest stomach.”

  He saw her eyebrows rise as if to say, “What, exactly?”

  “No, don’t ask. I don’t want to put you off your food.” He was simply mucking around, but knew he hadn’t fooled Chelsea.

  “And what’s in this?” She poked at the one-pot mix on her plate with her fork. “Anything I should be wary of?”

  “Nothing but rice, onions and a few almost fresh vegetables. Any lumps in the mix are probably tofu. It keeps better than meat. You need to increase your protein intake. Don’t think calories, think energy.”

  Chelsea stared at the bland-looking lumps on her plate, stirring them with her fork. Kurt quickly shoveled in a couple of forkfuls. “Actually, it doesn’t taste half bad. Enjoy it while you can. It has the value of looking a lot tastier than some of the freeze-dried stuff we’ll end up eating if you ever make it up top.”

  She took a mouthful and swallowed, followed by another. When Chelsea looked up and caught him watching her, she nodded. “I’ve tasted worse. I just cannot, for the life of me, remember where.”

  “Have you never gone anywhere that wasn’t first class?” He had no agenda this time, hadn’t spoken his thought aloud to emphasize their differences.

  Her mouth quirked at the corners. The rest of the smile was in her eyes. The gray in them lightened, sparking as she said, “Does cleaning out my horse’s stall count? I can swing a pitchfork as well as you handle an axe.”

  Kurt didn’t believe her for a moment. Why would she work when chances were she owned the stable?

  Part of him wished he’d never brought up the thorny subject of attraction. But he believed in being honest with his clients, and the sexual tension they generated sparked between them as if a live transmission line had broken loose.

  The kiss should never have taken place. But then, he’d never sunk into the mires of temptation until he’d met Chelsea. God, he loved the way she growled at him. At times her vociferous reactions held all the fear factor of the Teddy bear he’d teased her with, though he didn’t think she’d appreciate being told she was cute.

  Damn, he knew better than to act on the attraction.

  But then, everyone was allowed one slip.

  A ball of pain gathered inside Kurt as he cupped his palm and gathered the liniment into it. The next few minutes would be like the night of the living damned. “Okay. Let’s get to it.”

  “I could do it myself.”

  He sniffed the liquid in his palm and canned that scenario. “No sense in us both ending up with hands that smell like a spicy mint julep.” The light from the kerosene lamp Kurt had lit earlier chased shadows into the corners of the room, but instead of feeling cozy they hung like venomous bats.

  If this was how abstinence made him feel now, God help him in the coming weeks.

  It wasn’t as if he was hung up on sex, but he’d had his moments. What man of thirty-four hadn’t? It had been easy doing without when there was no female within twenty miles that he wanted. No sacrifice.

  But he wanted Chelsea.

  Damn straight he did.

  And that hurt. He didn’t mean just because he was turned on most of the time he was around her. Human nature was to blame for that. All Chelsea had to do was look at him a certain way, or brush against his arm or thigh accidentally.

  Blast! She was the first woman who looked as if she’d been made for him. The first woman who came higher than his shoulder and whose body looked designed to take his weight.

  Chelsea’s eyes snapped wide and her nose twitched. The map she’d been looking at dropped from her hand. He noticed a flicker of apprehension in their gray innocent depths, or maybe it was just that her hair was tousled and made her look younger than her twenty-eight years. “Just be glad you don’t need to use that stuff as aftershave.” She cocked her head to one side and studied him. “Men are lucky they can grow beards.”

  A bellow of laughter ripped out of his throat and slammed against the rough stone walls.

  “For warmth,” she said, as if trying to qualify her outrageous statement.

  “Believe me, Teddy bear, that’s the last thing I’d wish on any woman. You’re better off making do with a scarf.”

  “Don’t call me that. I hate being patronized.”

  She kicked out at his knee and he squatted back on his heels. “Now see what you made me do. I’ve spilled liniment on the floor. How about I call you Teddy, then? That way we can pretend you’re just one of the guys.”

  He stood so he could scuff the stain on the floor with the toes of his light hiking boots. Changing tack, he sank onto the end of her cot. “Here goes. The smell isn’t too unpleasant.”

  Refilling his palm, he thought to warn her. “It will be cold at first because of the alcohol. Don’t jump when I touch your feet.”

  Chelsea leaned back on her hands, pointing one set of toes at him. “This high enough?”

  “Sure, as long as you’re comfortable. Maybe you’d be better lying down.” Wrong thing to say.

  He watched the smile freeze on her face as her foot slowly began to sink back down. “Look, forget that heat-of-the-moment kiss. It never happened. I don’t want to pounce on you.”

  He cupped her heel in his dry hand and began working the liniment into her foot, hoping he’d done a better job of convincing Chelsea than he had himself. When she shivered, he said, “Don’t worry. This stuff warms up on your skin.”

  And beautiful fine skin it was. His callused fingers and palm had felt scratchy by comparison when he’d bathed her feet. “It’s almost a crime to try toughening your feet—like turning a silk purse into a sow’s ear.”

  He got no argument this time, just a lazy murmur as if she hadn’t been listening, and by the time he got to her second foot, she looked as if she’d fallen asleep. He would have liked to think it was his ministrations that had zonked her out, but poor kid, she’d put in a good day’s work. She deserved her slumber.

  Tomorrow would test more than her stamina. He’d already given a couple of Sherpas orders to go out ahead of them in the morning with some of the aluminum ladders they’d trekked in. On Everest, most of the crevasses they had to cross would already be bridged. All part of the $65,000 fee it cost to use the fixed lines that had been laid out before the season proper began.

  He’d told them to look for a crevasse that wasn’t too wide. It wouldn’t pay to scare Chelsea before she’d gained some confidence in the process. But where they had to climb to locate Bill and Atlanta was away from the preformed trail, which took the Lhotse Face to the South Col, then the Hillary Step to the summit.

  Once they left the glacier West Cwm, they’d be on their own.

  Just like last time.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I thought you’d dozed off, but if you must know, I’m thanking God you don’t have the same ambition as Bill. His idea was to follow the route of the U.S expedition of 1963. They conquered Everest via the more difficult West Ridge.”

  Yeah, he was thankful that this time they only had to reach the bodies. That would be more than enough for a rookie like Chelsea.

  “Was I that bad?”

  What could he say? That he hoped she had half her sister’s agility. “No, but tomorrow we’ll be crossing a crevasse on the rungs of a narrow ladder. If you’re anything like your sister it won’t be a biggie. She almost skipped across them, said all her years of ballet had helped. If she could keep her balance on the tips of her toes, she said, how much easier were huge climbing boots?”

  “She was good. I used to love watching her on stage.”

  “I can’t understand how she lo
st her balance and took Bill with her. It was the last thing I’d expect.”

  And it didn’t make sense.

  “Tell me what you do at the embassy,” he said, to change the subject. “Is it interesting work?”

  Chelsea lifted one eyebrow and matched it with a curl of her lip, and then her eyes narrowed. She looked almost threatening. Then her spontaneous grin turned it into a joke. “Don’t ask me. Then I won’t have to lie.”

  She might be useless at ballet, but she was a damn good actress. “You mean if you told me you’d have to kill me?”

  She pointed a finger at him and laughed as she took aim. “Right first time,” she said as her laughter turned giggly. “Really I’m just a lowly translator. But it gives me an excuse to live in Paris, and that I love.”

  Chapter 6

  Chelsea’s week was almost up.

  Yesterday she and Kurt had climbed to the highest point of the glacier—16,500 feet—where they had camped overnight.

  Up here, everything they did sucked up just a little more energy. And it would be worse when they climbed above the Western Cwm. She was thankful they wouldn’t have to go as high as the Death Zone. Simply thinking the name made her shudder. Somewhere along the line the competitive gene must have been left out of her makeup. Well, except maybe when it came to horses, though winning had never been the be-all and end-all of riding in gymkhanas. She had always gotten more pleasure out of the feel of the horse under her, muscles rippling with strength and vigor.

  Her mind went blank for a second as sensation took over and the whole segued into a vision of Kurt naked, all ropy muscles and male strength. Darn—not the best moment to become aroused, with Kurt belaying her down from the top, and her trying to cope with a greater degree of difficulty than she’d faced until now.