Melting The Ice

“I came for the toxicology conference.”

Not for her. His words cut deeper than they should have.

“You…you didn’t know I was here?”

He leaned forward, as if to touch her, held back. “I knew, Hannah.”

What else did he know? She felt a talon of fear claw at her heart. What had he really come for? “You were hoping you wouldn’t run in to me?”

“I was going to look you up. We need to talk.”

There was so much to say. She had so many questions. Why did you leave me like that? She wanted to scream it at him. Damn her pride. She wanted to hit that hard, muscular chest with her fists. She wanted to shake him. Hurt him. Run her fingers through that gloss of ebony hair. Feel the give of those sculpted lips under the tips of her fingers. God, she just wanted him to hold her.

She tried to stand. The world seemed to have shifted on its axis, leaving her unbalanced. She fought the buckling sensation in her knees. She needed to stand over him. Feel the height. Find some strength. “I don’t think there’s anything to say, Rex. You made that clear in your note.” She needed to buy time. To think.

She took a step back, turned to leave.

“Wait, Hannah!” He was off the rock, gripping her wrist. She could feel her pulse beating against the strength of his fingers.

She looked up into his eyes. “I did, Rex. Six years ago I waited. I’ve waited long enough.”

He stiffened, eyes narrowing like those of a Siberian husky. A small muscle pulsed in his jaw. But he said nothing, just loosened the grip on her wrist, let it fall.

It was the ultimate rejection. He was doing it to her all over again. Hot wetness spilled up into her eyes. She turned so that he wouldn’t see. And she started up the riverbank, half hoping he’d call out to her and explain.

He didn’t.

She held her spine stiff. Ignoring the bite of stones in her sandals, she walked smoothly, proudly, away. But inside she cried. Like the child who had cried for the love of her father. Like the woman who had vowed never to need a man to make her whole.

Rex watched her go. A proud and beautiful woman, her long hair swinging gently across her back. A woman once his. His body screamed to call out to her. To tell her the truth. To explain that he’d had to leave. That he could never be with her. That he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. And nothing…nothing in this world had cost him more than that one act. He’d left her, alone in that tent, sleeping under an African sky. And with her, he’d left his heart.

Chapter 3

“’Night, Danny. Love you.”

“Love you more.”

“You know that’s not possible. Bye, sweetie. Be good.” Hannah put down the phone, picked up her mug of cocoa and walked barefoot out onto the deck.

At least Danny was enjoying himself. She stood at the railing, looking out over Alabaster Lake, cradling her cocoa. She missed him more than she could have imagined. She missed his constant chattering, his incessant questions. His funny little quips. His mess of toys all over the living room floor.

She sipped from her mug. Dusk was settling on the valley but the snow-capped peaks still basked in the sun’s attention. They were bathed with soft peach Alpenglow. So beautiful. So distant. She couldn’t remember when she last felt so alone. She watched as a canoe cut across the glass of the lake, two people paddling in harmony, perfect balance. Their unity lent power to their strokes, purpose to their direction. But she was alone. She’d been left to paddle her own canoe. And she had. Her stroke was not as strong, but she’d found a balance of sorts. She’d been content, if not happy.

Until now. Until today.

Rex had brought a storm into the valley, whipping up waves and rocking her fragile boat. She had to find a way to steady it. She couldn’t see that way right now.

Damn him. He hadn’t even tried to explain. She wouldn’t humiliate herself by asking.

The sun slipped off the peaks and the chill deepened instantly. She set her mug on the railing and reached for her fleece, pulling it tight around her, blocking out the searching fingers of cold.

She had to figure out what to do. This past year Danny had started asking more and more about his father. She was not going to lie to him. She’d told him his dad had left before he was born.

But last month, when Danny asked if his dad even knew that he had been born, she’d been stumped. She’d panicked, changed the subject—and been eaten by guilt since. She hadn’t been ready to deal with it then and she sure as hell wasn’t ready now.

Danny had a right to know the truth. If she didn’t tell him soon that Rex Logan was his father, he would find out himself one day. And at what cost? Yet Hannah was so damn afraid that even if she brought it all out into the open now, Danny would end up feeling the same kind of rejection she had as a child.

She wasn’t ready to shatter her boy’s life.

She had to find a way to sound Rex out. Would he reject Danny outright? Would he be bound by a sense of duty and poke his nose into his son’s life and screw with his head every time his guilt got too big?

Like Mac had?

God knows, Mac had tried to be a father to her, a husband to her mother. But he’d been programmed to roam wild, to chase adventure around the world. Hannah had no doubt Mac had loved her mother once. And he’d tried to do his duty once Hannah was born. But all he did was tear his own soul in two and destroy his family in the process. Sheila McGuire had never really truly been free until Mac lost his life on assignment in the Congo.

God, she was a fool to have fallen into the same trap. She’d fallen for Rex in spite of the fact she’d vowed never to be like her mother. Now she couldn’t see her way free.

And she didn’t have much time. Danny would be home Friday.

The phone rang inside her condo, making her jump. She padded inside, pulling the slider closed against the cold behind her.

She picked up the receiver, half-afraid it was Rex.

“Hannah, it’s Al. Are you okay? You didn’t make it back to the office this afternoon.”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks. I was just feeling queasy. Must’ve been something I had for lunch.”

He paused. “There was a man at the Black Diamond. He followed you.”

She was quiet. So Al had seen Rex. Had he seen her boy in the man?

“Hannah?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Look, if you ever want to talk, if you ever—”

“Al, I’m okay. Really. I wasn’t feeling well. That’s all.”

“All right.” He cleared his throat. “I was just worried about you…and I wanted to tell you the coroner’s report came through this afternoon.”

She’d been so wrapped up in her own angst she’d forgotten they’d been expecting it, hoping it would tell them something others may have missed.

“What did it say?”

“Well, Amy had a badly broken left leg.” Hannah could hear the strain in his voice. “It probably happened in the fall. Judging from where she was found, they figure she tried to drag herself along that rock band that forms a lateral moraine halfway down Grizzly Bowl. But from there it’s vertical blue ice, nowhere to go. She died of exposure.”

“But why didn’t they find her? They combed that area?”