Bound to Happen (18 page)

She did as he requested and fought hard not to peek as she felt him leave the bed. She listened. He was at his desk for a mere second and then back in bed, bouncing the springs violently with his exuberance. Cool air prickled her skin when he drew the covers off, exposing her nakedness.

“I’m cold,” she complained weakly, anxious to see what he was up to.

“Shh. Trust me. I’m a man of my word. I always keep my promises.”

“What are you doing?” she squeaked as she felt him at her hip … writing on her? She twisted around to get a look just in time to see him underline it with a long zigzag that went all the way down her bottom. “Wha …”

“There. You see. I told you I’d get you his autograph.”

“You mean, you’re …”

Joe smiled smugly. “Max supports me in a style that even a yuppie like you wouldn’t think was too shabby. Which then allows me to write the kinds of books that mean something to me but, regrettably, don’t sell well.”

“You mean all this time—” She stopped short. All the time she’d been falling in love with Max Darkwood and falling in love with Joe Bonner, she’d been falling in love with the same man, over and over and over again. Now that she stopped to think about it, she felt incredibly stupid for not having seen it earlier. The hero was so like Joe: Tough and brassy on the outside and as soft as a marshmallow on the inside. Brave and honest and reliable and … honest? “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What? And have you falling in love with me because of my money?” When she began to sputter righteously, he laughed. “Think back, Leslie. When I first brought you here, I wasn’t even sure I wanted you around. I wasn’t sure I wanted you to know anything about me. But I do now. I want you to know all about me. And I want to know all about you. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us. Ever.”

Leslie’s throat grew dry and tight. She felt as if she were chewing cotton balls. Her heart beat sluggishly and her stomach seemed to have become a bottomless pit of burning acid. Joe was apparently satisfied that there were no more secrets between them. He curled himself around her, holding her close, giving every indication he was about to go to sleep. But Leslie knew her night’s rest wasn’t going to come as easily. She had a secret that had to be told, had to be told soon, or she’d lose the only thing that really meant anything to her. Joe.

Before she got out of bed the next morning, she vowed that she’d tell Joe the truth about her and the mountain. She wouldn’t close her eyes on another day without telling him. Not that they’d been closed all that long the night before. She had spent most of those dark hours vacillating between her need to tell Joe the truth and the consequences she might have to pay if she did. Since he was bound to find out sooner or later, and her compulsion to tell him was so great that it was depriving her of sleep, she decided to get it over with. She’d find the words to make him understand. She had to.

The clothes she’d washed the day before had hung out all through the night to dry and had gathered dew in the early morning, which meant that Leslie had to leave them out until the sun was well overhead to redry. Even then the jeans remained damp to the touch. She gathered these first and took them into the cabin to dry, one by one, in front of the fire.

While Joe worked on the nearly finished report for the forest-service hearing, Leslie gathered the rest of the laundry that hung from the limbs of trees and lay neatly over the tops of bushes. “Joe,” she said aloud, practicing her words for the next time he looked up from his keyboard. “I have something I want to tell you. I have something I need to tell you.” She shook her head. “Joe, I’ve changed a lot since we first met. But there’s something I need to tell you about. Something I did before I knew better.” Again she shook her head. “Joe. Remember the night we met, and you asked me what I was doing up here in the mountains? Well, I never did give you an answer. It really hasn’t come up since then. But I think now would be a good time to tell you.” Her last attempt sounded good to her.

She began folding a T-shirt that was scented with clean, fresh air and only slightly less rigid than a piece of cardboard. She was going to miss her fabric softener in the weeks to come, she ruminated. She laid it in the box with the others and leaned up against the large boulder it had been draped over to decide how she would proceed with her explanation to Joe.

As much as he loved her, she didn’t expect to escape unscathed by Joe’s temper, but maybe she could mollify him by getting him to understand. She kicked at the loose rocks that littered the ground around the boulder as words came to mind and were rejected, one right after another.

A deep sigh of frustration escaped her as she turned back to the laundry. Maybe she could write him a letter, she thought, as she moved around the huge stone to reach another shirt. She’d always been able to express herself better on paper than face to face with another human being. She moved her foot to stabilize her balance as she reached high for a last piece of clothing on the rock. A twig from one of the surrounding bushes slipped up inside the leg of her jeans. It scratched a little, and she shook her leg to rid herself of it, but it wouldn’t come loose. Grabbing at the shirt she’d been reaching for, she came down on firm ground and bent to remove the branch, only to discover that it wasn’t a branch at all.

Long, tubular, and bent at an odd angle, nearly three feet of black and brown snake hung out from under the hem of her pants. A convulsion of fear and repulsion rippled through her body before her mouth opened to emit a blood-curdling scream. In that same instant, panic seized her and she snatched at the tail of the snake to pull it away. With one fierce, ripping motion she pulled at it. She experienced a sharp, piercing pain above her ankle that brought forth another desperate cry of horror, before the viper came free. She flung it several feet away and sank to the ground holding her ankle, her pulse racing, her breathing rapid and shallow, tears welling and rolling down from her eyes.

“Oh, lord. Oh, lord. Oh, lord,” she cried, frantic with terror and the knowledge that she was going to die from the snakebite.

“Leslie!” Joe’s face was a mask of fright and worry as he ran from the cabin toward her. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked, falling to his knees beside her.

“My leg. A snake. It bit me.” Her sobs strained her words and caused her to breathe irregularly. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably as Joe wordlessly removed them from around her ankle and pushed her pant leg up to expose the wound. There were two puncture sites, each oozing blood but not copiously. Already the site was swollen and inflamed and tender to the touch.

“Damn,” Joe muttered under his breath. His eyes, when they met Leslie’s, were grave and tormented with grief. “Listen to me, Leslie,” he said sternly, using his voice to break through her hysteria. “You’re going to be fine. Do you hear me? You’ll be fine. I’m going in—”

“No! Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. Tears blurred her vision. She reached out blindly and took hold of his shirt sleeve to keep him near her.

“I have to. Just for a minute. I have to call for help.”

“No. There’s no phone. I’m going to die. Please, don’t leave me.”

“There’s a shortwave radio in one of the cabinets. It’s been there all along. Let go, sweetheart, we can’t waste any more time.” He pulled away from her grasping hands and didn’t take the time to look back at her when she called out his name. There’d be time enough to comfort her after he’d called for help—nothing but time—and each precious minute that was wasted would be vital to her life.

Little had changed by the time he came hurrying toward her with a blanket over one arm and a first aid kit in his hands. She was still crying but quietly, mournfully, helplessly. She was leaning with her back against the boulder, holding her bent leg just below the knee.

“They’ll be here soon. Half hour, forty-five minutes tops,” Joe said. “The ranger said to keep you as quiet as possible and,” he paused, looking around as if he were trying to find something, “I need to kill the snake so we can take it with us to make sure you get the right antivenin. Do you remember where it went?” he asked gently, kneeling beside her and covering her with the blanket.

“No. Stay away from it, Joe.” She sat up in her agitation and took a firm grip on his arm to keep him from going after it. “Stay with me.”

“Shh.” Joe gently pushed her back against the rock and tucked the blanket around her shoulders again. “I won’t leave you. I just want to make sure it’s not around anymore. Where did it go?”

“I threw it. I threw it over there.” She pointed out the direction for him and cried out again when he stood. “No. Don’t. You might get bitten.”

“I need to check, baby. I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.” He stealthily moved off into the bushes beside the stone, pushing the brush back as he went.

“Do you see it? Is it still there?” Leslie called out when she could no longer see him.

“Not yet.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the radio? Why haven’t you used it before now? We could have been rescued days ago.” The mental shock was beginning to wear off, but the physical aftermath was evident as she began to shiver even though she knew she wasn’t cold. Her leg ached and throbbed. Her ankle grew tight and hard to move as the swelling continued.

“I didn’t tell you about it,” she heard a rustling of leaves as he paused, “because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want you to know.”

She could hear him returning and turned her head expectantly. “But why?”

“I didn’t want you to go,” he said simply, back at her side, tying a knot in a plastic bread bag.

“Is that it? Is it dead?” she asked, knowing the answer as she watched the snake’s blood pooling in the bottom of the bag.

“Well, I put my boot on its head and cut it in half. The damn thing better be dead,” he said with a wry smile. He came down on one knee and began to put a clean, loose dressing over her wound.

Leslie nodded numbly, still staring at the bag. She was glad the thing was dead. She would have liked to have killed it herself. Recalling the question she had been about to ask, she said, “But you hated me in the beginning. Why didn’t you call someone to come and get me then?”

Joe laughed unexpectedly. “I’d sure like to know where you got the idea that I hated you. This is the second time you’ve accused me of that.” He sat down beside her, looping an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close and holding her near him. “I think I was in love with you the first time I looked down and found you lying under me. I didn’t want to be, but I was. I could have called the ranger station that first night, but since you were on vacation and no one was likely to worry about you for a couple of weeks, I decided to keep you for a while, to see if I could talk myself out of wanting you so badly. That was a little presumptuous of me, huh?”

“Yeah, a little,” she said, wanting to sound angry and indignant, while all she managed to do was smile and laugh softly. “So, why were you so nasty? Haven’t you heard that old saying about catching more bees with honey?”

“That’s what made me so mad. I didn’t want to catch you. We’re nothing alike. We have nothing in common. And there I was, crazy about you, sitting on my hands to keep them away from you. It was very frustrating.”

“Serves you right. You were awfully mean to me,” she said, growing drowsy. The pain in her leg was now a tingling sensation, as if the limb had gone to sleep. It was the rest of her body that ached at present, especially when she moved. Her eyelids grew heavy as she tried to remain motionless in Joe’s warm embrace. “What made you decide to love me in spite of all our differences?”

“I don’t know. Suddenly it didn’t matter that we were different. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe we were meant to offset each other, to compensate for each other’s faults. Like what’s his name … Jack Sprat and his wife. Remember that guy?”

“Mm,” she moaned sleepily, trying to remember if she’d forgotten to tell Joe something important. Had she gotten all the laundry folded, she wondered vaguely. “His wife was fat,” she muttered.

She felt the vibrations in Joe’s chest as he laughed quietly and hugged her tightly. “All that matters is that we love each other and that we’re happy together.”

His loving gesture brought a groan of misery to her lips. “I’m not feeling well, Joe.”

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s asleep, but I’m a little sick to my stomach, and I hurt all over.”

“Hang on, sweetheart. They’ll be here soon, and you’ll be fine. I promise.”

Leslie fought to keep her eyes open, to stay alert. She was missing something important. What was it? “I love you, Joe,” she said, knowing that was something vital that he had to be aware of.

“I love you, too, Leslie. Very much.”

“What have I forgotten to tell you?”

“Your true age?” Joe knew how old she was. She could remember the night he’d teased her about it and she’d had to show him her driver’s license. She suspected he was trying to keep the mood light to dispel the gravity of the situation, but she wasn’t in a carefree mood. Still, her mind seemed to leap at the chance to go off on a tangent. It began to recall all sorts of special moments the two of them had shared in the past two weeks.

In a dreamlike state of mind it was easy to conjure up the day Joe had worked eight hours straight on his report and then chased her around the woodshed because she’d stolen all his computer batteries to get him to stop for a while. And the day he’d found her asleep under the big pine tree by the garden. He’d made her a crown of the pretty little blue flowers that grew along the forest floor to wear in her hair. And the day they went to see the eagle’s nest. The sun had shone brightly and the mountain had been so beautiful that day.

“Joe. That’s it,” she said, sitting up abruptly to face him, grimacing as her body objected to this burst of activity. “I need to tell you about the mountain. I need for you to understand that I didn’t mean to do it. It’s all my fault, and I’d change it if I could, but I’m afraid it’s hopeless at this stage.”

“Leslie, honey, what are you talking about? Lie back down. You’re getting too excited. You need to stay quiet and calm. Please. Lie down. We can talk later.”