Never Let Go (11 page)

She started backing away, her eyes full of tears but her chin up. "Don't start that again, not now. We have too many other things to worry about ..."

"I want an answer—I want the
truth
!" He leaned the shotgun against a tree and threw his canvas tote off his shoulder. Then he strode toward her. "An answer," he commanded harshly. "I won't play by your rules anymore! If you want my help, then you better talk!"

"You wouldn't believe the truth right now! And It would only complicate things! Put you in more danger!"

The ground made an ominous sound under his boots, as if a heavy piece of wood were cracking. "I'd rather be in danger than in hell—which is where I've been for the past ten months! Talk!"

She made a strangled sound of utter defeat. "All right, all right! I was—"

The ground gave way beneath him in a wrenching collapse that upended rotten boards and timbers like the broken bones of some strange animal. Dinah screamed as he disappeared into the maw of the violent earth.

Seven

Dinah ran to the side of the gaping hole, which was easily six-feet wide. She succumbed to a sense of terror unlike anything she'd ever felt for herself. She dropped to her knees and gripped the edge of a timber.

"Rucker!" Her voice was as jagged as the torn wood.

He was pinned about fifteen feet down in the corner of what appeared to be the entrance to an old gem mine. Several thick timbers were jumbled over his legs, but he sat upright with his back jammed against a wall shored with rotting planks. His head drooped forward.

"Please God, let him be all right," Dinah whispered. "Rucker!"

He raised his head slowly, gasping for breath, then nodded to show that he'd heard her. His face was drawn with discomfort.

"Hold on," she told him. "I'm coming down!"

Dinah threw one leg over the edge of the hole and pushed tentatively at a long timber that angled to the bottom. It seemed sturdy.

"Don't try it!" he called. "Everything else might collapse!"

She hesitated, struggling to control the reckless impulse that made her think only of going to him quickly. "Are you hurt?"

"Nothing a Band-Aid couldn't fix." He struggled fiercely for a moment, and his helpless torment wrung a cry of despair from her.

Heaving for breath, he halted the vain effort and looked up at her wearily. "My legs are trapped."

She looked down into the dark shaft and shivered for him. Dinah didn't have to ask to know that the ground underneath him was cold and probably damp. A furious sense of determination hummed in her veins. She had to get him out of that horrible gravelike hole.

"I'm going for help!"

His grime-covered face became terribty haggard looking. "Don't lie—this is the chance you've been waitin' for. You won't be back."

Her mouth gaped in horror. "You're wrong."

Rucker laughed humorlessly. "Go on. But have the decency to tell somebody where to find me before I catch pneumonia."

Bitter disappointment made her head droop in defeat. If he truly believed that she could leave him there to suffer, then little was left of the love he'd once felt for her.

"I'll go for help," she repeated dully. "I give you my word. If you don't want to believe in it, that's your problem." She frowned with concentration, thinking. "There's a rope behind the seat in the truck. I'm going to get it. Maybe I can drag these timbers off of you somehow."

"You can't budge these things. Just go. Get the hell out of here. I don't expect any loyalty from you."

She shook her head In exasperation. "I'd like to come down there and punch you."

They looked at each other in silence, his gaze furious and hers challenging. Dinah ignored the insult in his attitude and told him staunchly, "It'll take me nearly an hour to walk back to the truck—two hours, round trip."

His voice was wary. "I won't hold my breath."

"Good. Blue isn't your color." She vaulted to her feet. "I'll leave the shotgun with you. I'd probably just fall and shoot myself in the toes."

He scowled at her. "Take it. Remember the wild pigs I told you about?"

She chuckled ruefully. "The only wild pig I'm concerned about is you. I'm not leaving you trapped in this pit with no way to protect yourself."

"I'll be all right if you keep your word and come back."

Dinah groaned in disgust and warmed the air with several colorful oaths she'd learned from him over the years.

She retrieved the shotgun and removed the shells. Then she lay on her stomach by the collapsed mine and gingerly dropped the gun into his upraised hands. The shells followed. Dinah winced as she noticed that he was already shivering. She pulled the wool muffler from around her neck and tossed it to him.

"Cover your thick skull." She tried to joke. "And call down to the front desk. Tell the manager you'll be checking out of this crummy hotel soon."

"Not me. I ordered a chicken dinner from room service." He held the muffler in one big hand and looked up at her with troubled eyes. "Just tell me this. What were you goin' to say when I was comin' toward you a few minutes ago?"

She smiled pensively. "Sorry. You missed your chance. Believe me, I know what's best for you to know and not know."

His jaw worked as he sought to control his new frustration. He stared away from her and his tone became lethal. "Just turn around and start walkin'. Don't look back. You ought to be good at that."

She gazed at him miserably, nodded, and left.

***

He appeared beneath the oak tree as if the mountains had magically set him in her path—without sound, without warning. The black-haired giant might have been some ancient warrior unleashed by a wizard's spell. He had a long beard. From her perch on a low limb, Dinah stared down in amazement.

He swung his thick walking staff as if he were hitting a golf ball—only the end of the staff connected with the haunch of a grunting wild boar. The animal squealed in alarm and disappeared into a snowy thicket.

The giant tilted his head back and gazed up at her unemotionally. She held a noose of rope in one hand. "What were you going' to do?" he inquired in a deep voice devoid of any discernible accent.

"Lasso him and tie him to a limb so that I could get down."

"And then?"

"Think of some way to get my rope back."

"Good plan, except for the last part."

Dinah studied him shrewdly. This huge man might be their ticket out of trouble or he might be trouble personified. She gritted her teeth.

"I need help. My husband fell into an old mine shaft. Up that way." She pointed.

"How far?"

"About thirty minutes from here."

He held up a massive hand. "Come down, please. I'll go with you."

His politeness offset his threatening appearance. Dinah knew that she couldn't escape from him, regardless of whether he was friend or enemy. Trusting instincts that had saved her more than once during the past ten months, Dinah tossed him the rope and scrambled down from the tree.

***

Rucker held his wristwatch overhead so that it caught the dim afternoon light. She'd been gone nearly three hours.

He groaned from much more than physical discomfort. Could she really do it? Walk away and leave him again, this time in a dank prison with the cold numbing his trapped legs?

No
. She couldn't do that to him. He had to believe in the woman he'd lived with, made love to, and cared for—the woman who'd cared for him in return. Shivering, he leaned his head back on the muddy plank wall and tried to summon images of vindictive retaliation if he were wrong about her. But grief complicated the images and wiped away his satisfaction. If he took revenge it wouldn't ease his gut-wrenching sorrow.

A rustling sound made his stiff fingers fumble for the shotgun. He squinted upward and aimed the gun as best he could. A huge, darkly furred shape appeared at the edge of the hole and peered down at him. Oh, hell. A bigfoot.

But Dinah halted beside the bigfoot and fell to her hands and knees. "How are you?" she called frantically.

A thrill sleeted through Rucker's body. She hadn't deserted him, even when she easily could have. Stunned, he only stared up at her in confusion and wonder.

"Oh, no! He's half-conscious," she cried.

Rucker blinked quickly and shook his head. His voice came out as a hoarse rasp. "I'm fine. But room service sucks." She sagged with relief. The thing beside her made an amused sound and moved out of his range of vision. "What was that?" Rucker asked.

"A mountain man. Drake Lancaster. We crossed paths, and he offered to help."

A thick rope tumbled into the hole. Rucker tied it to one of the timbers. Drake Lancaster's shaggy head poked over the edge of the hole again. "Good." He wound his end of the rope around hands the size of small platters and began to pull. A timber that must easily weigh three hundred pounds creaked, swayed, and rose slowly in the air.

Dinah continued to kneel beside the hole. Rucker caught her gaze, and she extended a hand even though she couldn't reach him. The gesture contained desperate concern and reassurance.

"Believe in me now," she urged him. "Believe."

Rucker never took his eyes from her. The warmth and hope that swelled inside his chest drove away his chills. She cared about him. Regardless of her vague and unsavory reasons for leaving him, she still cared about him. And if he was a fool for believing that, then so be it.

***

Drake Lancaster was the stuff of legends or nightmares, Dinah thought. He had a dangerous aura about him, the same aura she always sensed around Valdivia. Whether he measured honor by Valdivia's brutal standards she had no way of knowing, but it didn't matter.

He must be seven feet tall. His effect was accented by coal black hair and the long beard. Obsidian eyes glittered with intelligence from the background of what little she could see of his rugged face.

Now he stopped at the crest of a hill, and his brown greatcoat flapped back to reveal a heavy pistol strapped low on the leg of corduroy trousers. The handle of an enormous knife protruded from a sheath stuck in his belt. Lancaster pointed across a valley to several quaint log cabins that could be seen through the still leafless forest.

"There. Tom Beecher's rental place. Closed for a couple of weeks while Tom's on vacation, but the water pipes haven't been drained and the gas and electricity are on. Break the lock on the big cabin to your far right—that's Tom's personal cabin—and you'll find whatever supplies you need for the night. I'll tell him who broke in, and why."

Dinah looked at Rucker, who shared her expression of weary curiosity. His clothes were filthy and damp. His legs were unsteady, and he leaned on Lancaster's walking staff. His determination to make the hour-long trek from the collapsed mine to this spot brought tears to her eyes. She held his elbow, trying in vain to help support him.

"Lancaster, you don't care where we're from or where we're goin'," Rucker noted grimly. "Why?"

The great, shaggy head turned toward them slowly. The look he gave Rucker would have cowed most men. Dinah watched her husband straighten subtly, his eyes unyielding. Dinah drew a soft breath of pride.

Drake Lancaster assessed him for a moment, then abruptly smiled. He held out a huge hand. A look of kindred respect crossed Rucker's face. His mouth crooked up at one corner as he shook the giant's hand.

"None of my business," Lancaster finally answered. "You don't ask me questions, I don't ask you questions." His gaze swiveled to Dinah. "He was worth saving," Lancaster noted.

"I know. Thank you." She was spurred by a feeling that there was a great deal more to Drake Lancaster than either she or Rucker suspected. He looked like a man unaccustomed to comfort or gratitude. Dinah kissed her fingertips, then reached up and touched them to his angular cheekbone. "Thank you again,"

His dark eyes softened a little. He looked at Rucker. "You're lucky."

Dinah dropped her gaze and waited for Rucker's response.

"I know," he answered.

Lancaster half-bowed in a way that reminded her of some old-world gallant.. Then he strode off without a backward glance. They stood for a moment, watching him until he disappeared in the snow-frosted woodland.

"Someone is looking out for us," Rucker commented.

Dinah pointed toward heaven. "You mean ..."

"I hope that's what I mean. It just seems odd, that human tank appearin' all of sudden when we needed him."

Dinah touched his cheek tenderly. His face was sallow with fatigue, and she suspected that she looked just as tired. "We deserve a little luck. That's all it was."

He mused over that idea for a moment then nodded. "You're right."

Dinah gestured toward the cabins. "Let's go. Lean on me and think of good things. A real bed. Food. We'll finally get a decent amount of sleep. Then onward to the highway at daybreak."

His undaunted green eyes burned into her with a hungry, primitive look that made her breath pull short. They had exposed too many raw emotions over the past two days to hide behind niceties now.

"We belong in that bed together," he told her.

While her heart thudded wildly, she gave him a jaunty look. "I'd planned on it."

***

The blue tinge to his mouth frightened her, and she knew that he needed warmth and food to fight the effects of the mine shaft. .

"Damned legs," he grumbled, as she helped him to a chair by the cabin's hearth.

"They would have to be attached to you," she teased gently.

She and Rucker studied the rental cabin they'd selected for the night. It was a one-room dwelling, much smaller than the owner's cabin where they'd gathered canned food and necessities such as matches.

The furnishings were cheap but comfortable—an upholstered couch and chair that had probably seen better days in some family's den, a kitchenette with old white appliances, a tiny bathroom with a shower and tub unit made of molded plastic.

But the atmosphere was cosy, with a high-beamed ceiling, a stone fireplace, and a rough-wood floor covered in thick rugs. Dinah turned on the water heater first, then the space heater. Its red coils began to emit delicious heat. She adjusted the cabin's wall lamps so that their light was low and soothing.

Then she knelt by Rucker, who was rubbing his long legs from thighs to calves in an attempt to restore sensation. "Let me do that."

He took her hands in his. "Sssh. You're just as worn out as I am," The affection that flared between them suddenly made the cabin seem very warm. He leaned forward and brushed a kiss across her parted lips. "Forgive me for doubtin' you today. Forgive me."

Dinah rested her forehead against his and gloried in the sensations his firm mouth had aroused. "My darling, I know that you still have lots of reasons to distrust me. But just for a little while, can we pretend that everything's all right?"

"I'll try," he whispered.

Her throat burning, she rose awkwardly and stroked a gentle hand across his dirty cheek.

"I'll run the tub full of hot water, and you can soak."

Without waiting for his response she hurried to the bathroom. When heated water was hissing into the tub, she came back and found Rucker sitting cross-legged in front of the fire grate. As she watched, he coaxed a growing flame under a pile of kindling.

"My very own Boy Scout," she murmured as she handed him wood from a stack by the hearth.

"Wanta cross the street?"

"Hah. I'd be happy to find the energy to open two cans of beef stew."

"Forget the stew. Get that bottle of bourbon."

"A provocative notion, monsieur."

"Mon-sewer. I love it when you call me by my French name."

Laughing from nerves and fatigue and a giddy feeling she didn't need to examine too closely, Dinah brought him the half-empty bottle they'd found in the owner's cabin. She sat beside him on the hearth and gratefully absorbed the fire's heat.

He opened the bottle and looked at her speculatively. "What, no glasses? Is my little debutante going gauche on me?"

"Be quiet and let me have a swig."

They traded the bottle twice. Her two swallows of liquor hit her with intense effect. She leaned forward and mashed her face into Rucker's shoulder.

"Don't drool," he joked tenderly.

"Need food. Need sleep. Need you."

His voice was throaty. "You got it."

She drew back and tugged forcefully at his earlobe. "You're cold. Come take a bath."

"Yes, nurse."

He set the bourbon bottle on the hearth. She helped him to his feet and they went to the bathroom. Steam had already misted the tiny mirror over the sink, and the tub was about to overflow. Rucker bent over awkwardly and switched the water off.

Dinah shut the door, closing them inside the small room together.

He turned to gaze at her under arched brows. She looked up at him with wobbly reserve. "I'll help you undress," she announced.

"That's not a professional gleam in your eye, nurse."

"Sssh."

Her scent, her hands, her voice, and the loving fire in her eyes kept him mesmerized as she unfastened his clothes. Whatever happened beyond tonight, whatever secrets unfolded later, they were together now and he wanted nothing more than to believe in her.

She removed his shirt and undershirt by slow degrees, her eyes following the movements of her hands. He carried a great deal of his weight in his shoulders and darkly haired chest. When he stood before her bare from the waist up, she bent and placed nuzzling kisses down the center of his chest.

"Dee," he whispered, as his hands rose to stroke the unheeded tangles of her hair. It lay in damp strands down her back.

She trailed her hands to his jeans and unfastened them. "Sit on the edge of the tub," she commanded gently.

As he carefully lowered his abused body to the tub's rim, she pulled his clothes to his thighs. The jutting welcome of his manhood made her look at him with a bittersweet gaze. "Even an ice-cold pit can't keep a good man down."

He shook his head. "The night I walked into that city council meetin' and first saw you, I knew you were special," he whispered hoarsely. "Nobody else could make me so crazy with heat and tenderness at the same time. It's still that way."

"You overwhelmed me so much that I nearly forgot to be afraid of you. The big, bad columnist had come to make fun of me and my town, but all I wanted to do was ravish him!"

His mouth quirked up wryly. "You resisted that urge, as I recall. Despite my best efforts. I thought I was slicker than a snake oil salesman until I fell in love with a cross between Scariett O'Hara and Katherine Hepburn."

"I didn't resist for very long," she reminded him. "It was love at first sight."

Rucker touched her face reverently. "I knew that I'd die for you if you wanted me to."

She began to cry softly while she removed his boots and finished undressing him. He tried to caress her tear-streaked face, but she ducked her head. "I'll cry harder," she explained.

"Then climb in the tub with me. You might as well get the rest of you wet."

She gazed at him in amusement, and a flush of pleasure rose in her cheeks. "That would be wonderful."

"Undress for me." His voice was low, soothing.

"All right." She stood and pulled her sweater over her head. He watched her with a languorous, completely possessive gaze, as if she were removing erotic lingerie instead of damp, dirty clothes.