Stranded With A Stranger

Chelsea sucked in a breath and took in all the flavors of the room right with it. Apart from the butter oil and tobacco there was a definite hint of barbecued meat. The smell made her mouth water. Would it spoil her chances of getting what she wanted out of Jellic when they diluted the effects of the whiskey with food?

On his way back from the bar, Kurt juggled a whiskey bottle, two shot glasses and a jug of water. Although he’d been the one to ask her downstairs for a drink and some food, her ready agreement somehow raised his suspicions that there was more to Chelsea than met the eye. It wasn’t what he’d expected after laughing at her climbing experience. But the moment he’d suggested it and she’d said, “I’m starving—aren’t you?” his stomach had felt as if it was sticking to his ribs.

He began filling their glasses. Chelsea had reassured him that the tavern wasn’t below her standards. But compared to the hotel she’d booked into, this place was in a class of its own. That’s why he’d picked it; no one he knew frequented this type of dump.

“Here’s looking at you.” He lifted his glass and tossed half of it back. The name on the label should have been Rotgut, but he didn’t care. He’d needed the burn lately to prove that, unlike Bill and Atlanta, he was still alive.

“Cheers,” she said, and followed suit. The woman had guts, because once he’d poured her drink the only room for water had been a meniscus on top of the whiskey.

He pulled out the chair kitty-corner to hers and sat letting his long legs sprawl under the table. She pulled hers back out of the way as he invaded her space, again. Chelsea had taken off her lilac anorak and hung it over the back of her chair, and the black sweater she wore under it, though thick wool, assured him that he hadn’t imagined the fullness of the breast he’d cupped. Their greeting hadn’t been as politically correct as a handshake, but it had been a hell of a lot more fun.

He leaned forward while she was busy taking a more wary sip of her drink. “You don’t look anything like Atlanta. I’d never have taken you two for sisters.”

He ruffled the hair above her ears. It was soft, straight and slippery, sliding through his fingers like water. “Where’d you get all this black hair from? Atlanta’s curls were as blond as they come.”

She almost choked on her words as the whiskey went down. “Same father, different mothers. Atlanta’s mother died in a car accident, and mine didn’t fare much better. She fell off a horse and broke her neck.”

“With that kind of history I wonder your father didn’t keep the pair of you wrapped in cotton wool.”

If Chelsea was his, he wouldn’t let her loose around mountains.

Hell, where had that come from? The whiskey must be talking back at him.

“Not so much wrap us in cotton wool, but he made a good show of running our lives. It had to be the best schools, the best clothes. Nothing was too good for us as long as we did everything his way.” Her chin rose and there was a trace of a pout on her lips as she murmured, “I was the rebel of the two, the one who wouldn’t conform, unlike Atlanta.”

He noted the belligerence in her eyes. Kurt gathered she was harboring some held-over resentment from the past. He recognized it easily. Didn’t the same type of emotions emanate from his twin, Kel, the moment their father’s name was mentioned? The trouble with the powerful bond between identical twins was that no words were necessary to know what the other was feeling.

Kel had been the first to call him via satellite phone. Kurt had been back at Camp Three less than half an hour after the tragedy. Dazed with shock, he’d had to force himself to speak to Rei, his head Sherpa, and Paul Nichols, the only other paying customer on their team. He’d never discovered how Kel had found him, but his brother was the twin with connections, working as he did with the Global Drug Enforcement Agency.

“It must have come as a great shock when you heard of your sister’s death.” He said the words gently, for Chelsea’s sake, though part of him still raged inside because of what had happened and the way it had happened. He hadn’t had an accident on any of his climbs until this one. He still could hardly believe it himself, though he had only to shut his eyes at night for the tragedy to start playing over and over in his mind.

Every night, as he lay there in the dark, his own doubt assailed him. Was there anything more he could have done?

What a waste of two good lives.

“I caught it on CNN. I always watch it in the evening to catch up on news from home.” He watched her sigh and wondered if the deep sigh had been dragged up from the same kind of place he kept his regrets.

“I’d received a letter from my sister two or three days before I heard of the tragedy. Her death brought a lot of emotions bubbling to the surface—besides grief, that is. We’d planned a reunion…in Paris.” Chelsea dipped her head, but he could see a sparkle of tears on her lashes. It gutted him that he had to turn her down, but it would be suicide—hers—to take her up a mountain that showed no mercy. Rookie climber or old hand, one wrong move and they fell off the top of the world to their deaths.

Everest took no prisoners.

“If there was any way I could help you, I would do it—you know that, don’t you? I’ll be honest. I need the work. There have been a lot of rumors doing the rounds of Namche Bazaar. Not one of them is true.” Her hand lay on the table, and he reached for it.

To comfort her or himself, he had no answer.

Though she wasn’t a small woman her hand felt tiny, fine boned compared to his. The temptation to cling tightened his grip, a reflex based on the same instincts that had made his palm measure her fullness when she came tiptoeing into his life.

“There’s one way you can help—give me a chance to take my sister home.”

Without preamble he changed the subject. “You still hungry? I’ve ordered a whole swag of food.”

Tears ceased to sparkle on her lashes. He hoped this meant he’d turned her thoughts away from climbing Everest. It had been ages since he’d had a chance to talk to any woman but Atlanta. In the three years since he’d met her and Bill, she’d become like a sister to him, closer than his own sister, Jo, whom he hadn’t seen for years.

One difference—in his exchange with Atlanta he hadn’t gotten the sexual buzz he felt now. Part of him wished he were able to grant Chelsea her wish and take her with him—and not just because of the amount of money involved. Sure, he was practically broke, but he had broad shoulders and knew how to work. He’d be all right someday.

She pulled her hand from his, lifted her glass to her lips and spoke over the rim. “What kind of food?”

“Strips of barbecued lamb and some flat bread to wrap it up in. I thought that would be more filling than kebabs.”

“Great. I seem to have been hungry ever since I arrived in Nepal.” She sipped some more whiskey. He’d bet the shudder went right down to her toes. “Must be all the clean air.”

He found another smile and gave it to her with genuine pleasure as he looked around the smoky room. “You’re easily satisfied.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not one bit satisfied. I won’t be until I get up that mountain and recover my sister’s body.”

He heard undertones of poor-little-rich-girl in the ringing echoes of her empty glass as she slapped it down on the wood.

Bill had been a good friend to Kurt. A rich man in his own right without the added advantage of his wife’s money, he had never made himself out to be better than anyone else. And listening to Chelsea, he didn’t like the fact that she almost never used his name. “I notice it’s always your sister you mention when you talk about retrieving the bodies. What about her husband? Where does Bill’s body figure in your scheme?”

Was she that obvious? Had Kurt looked into her psyche and seen the grudge she’d carried for fifteen years? “All right, you got me. I never liked Bill.”

Kurt drew back and sat up in his chair, as if to get away from her. “What’s not to like? He was a great guy, never harmed anyone.”

“It’s not that I want to leave him up there. It’s just that Bill’s the reason for the gulf between Atlanta and me. Aided and abetted by my father, of course.”

Although Kurt had distanced himself, no longer stretching his legs out under the table at ease, she felt relieved when he propped his elbows on the table and nursed his glass between his hands. “You’ve lost me. Start at the beginning, for we seem to be talking about two different guys. Bill was one of the kindest people I ever met.”

Just as she opened her mouth to begin, Chelsea had a lightbulb moment. She licked her lips, but the words refused to come. In a blinding flash Chelsea had seen how she must appear to Kurt, and the picture wasn’t pretty. She pointed at the bottle. “Can I have another shot?”

“You don’t think you ought to wait until the food arrives?”

“No. I need it now.” She held out her glass.

As he poured, he lifted his eyes so they clashed with hers, and it was as if he could read her mind and knew all her secrets, but all he said was, “Dutch courage?”

“Something like that.” She took a mouthful and threw it back, the burn mellowing the more she drank. Or maybe the first few sips had cauterized her nerve endings. Whatever it was, the whiskey slid down easily.

She’d heard you could tell a stranger things you wouldn’t dare tell a friend. In another moment of revelation, she realized she didn’t have a lot of friends who wouldn’t make some use of her confession if it were told to them. Which didn’t say much for her taste in friends. A pity Kurt didn’t look like a priest. It would make this a whole lot easier.

“You’ve got to remember I was only thirteen—”

She broke off to regroup her thoughts. Had that sounded like an excuse or what? She needed to tell it straight and start at the beginning. “Atlanta would have been four when my mother married Charles Tedman. They had a very short courtship, and I guess she was already pregnant and that hurried things along, because I was a seven-pound premature baby—though who gives a damn about how close the wedding is to the birth these days. Except maybe if you are Argentine, and come from a proud family like my mother did.

“I think I fell in love with Atlanta from the moment I opened my eyes and was able to see her. Even then I recognized our differences. She was so pink, white and gold like a china doll.”

“You’re not without top-notch qualities yourself.”

Chelsea smiled as the memory brought up an image from her childhood. “She was like my little mom, always there when I woke up. My mother was a horsewoman who traveled the world riding in the top events. She was better at schooling horses than children.”