Authors: Kate Richards
She’d fled down the trail toward the distant lights of the camp, too upset to care if she ever saw him again. So independent at that age. All black or white, no shades of gray.
No stopping to wait for explanations.
All or nothing.
No matter how wet he made her, how needy, she’d find a way to live without him. She’d never see him again.
Shaking off the past, Michaela pulled her head into the bag and prepared to wait out the darkness. She’d gotten good at wishing. Wishing for Val to realize his mistake before it was too late, for her career as a photographer to take off, for the pregnancy that Val considered a disaster but Silas longed for, for morning. At least half those things were guarantees.
Curiosity
drove Val down the hill toward the bend in the trail where the mystery woman had disappeared. Hiking after dark could lead even an experienced person to get lost and end up in trouble. As the sun disappeared over the peak, the path dropped low enough that he could no longer see Lake McGee and he found where his trail intersected with hers. She couldn’t have gotten far in the dark, could she? Perhaps she’d gone on to a campsite where someone waited. A man. A man smart enough to know when to make love to a woman and when to wait.
He’d never intended to let so much time pass. But his pride wanted her to contact him first. And his grad school studies combined with an internship in Julia’s father’s office took all his time. By Thanksgiving he’d begun to receive invitations to their home, dining seated at Julia’s side.
Lovely and gracious, she presided over her widowed father’s home like a queen. A perfect hostess. The perfect companion for a man of business, as her father pointed out one evening in his den. What were his intentions? He had none, but his future took on a life of its own until, without quite realizing how it happened, he found himself married and a junior partner in the firm of Ardent and Co., Brokers.
The girl he’d met that summer
faded from his mind. Julia offered everything he wanted and needed. Polished, smart, always knew the right thing to say. Michaela would never have been the wife for him. When their daughters were born, his position in the family solidified. So why could he never forget about
her.
His mother tried to support
his choices, but she and Julia never meshed and she soon became the occasional phone call, a macramé mobile for over their daughter’s crib, a place for the girls to spend part of their summer “roughing it.”
The dark trail became harder to follow
now, slippery with loose gravel, and he doubted the wisdom of his decision. Why follow a strange woman into the night in the mountains? She looked competent enough, but something about her drew him, and he wanted a closer look. The location reminded him of Michaela. But of course she’d never be right here, within a few hundred yards of where she’d left him, after he got stupid and told her no.
But he hadn’t been wrong. They had no protection, what if she’d become pregnant? He
thought of his children born within the bonds of matrimony. He’d given them everything. He couldn’t have provided so well for a child of his and Michaela’s before he finished his studies.
And would he have been able to have the career he did? Money was no problem at the
this point in his life. He could get up an expedition to Mount Everest without batting an eye, take a trek to Antarctica, scramble up an ice face in the Arctic. Free as a bird and far more wealthy.
No, if he’d accepted Michaela’s offer, he’d likely have had to work his way from the ground up without an MBA.
Even without an unplanned pregnancy, he couldn’t have walked away if he’d made love to her. His heart and body would have formed an unbreakable bond. He’d made the right decision. Then why did his soul ache like a sore tooth every time he thought of it? Of her?
And why did she occupy his solitary fantasies, every time he took himself in hand?
The trail branched and he paused to consider his choices. Left? Right? The trail less traveled? He bent to look for signs of recent passersby but darkness precluded any real clues. Mentally flipping a coin—a favorite trick of his—he came up with tails.
“Left it is,” he murmured, briskly stepping in that direction. But he went no more than a few yards before he stumbled over a large bundle and went flying to hands and knees.
A female voice screamed and he lurched back under an onslaught of small, hard fists.
“It’s okay,
it’s okay.”
“
Then get off my ponytail,” the bundle growled, shoving at his knees. “At least you’re not a bear.”
Out of breath, Val gaped between his spread arms at the woman he’d been tracking, sitting up in her sleep bag and clutching her hair.
“I’m not.” He rocked back to sit beside her, chuckling despite his scuffed elbows and torn pants.
She pushed the bag off
her legs and crouched as if to run then looked him over and fell back on her behind. “You’re not what?”
“A bear.” The moon rose behind him, casting a glow over the woman and his eyes
drank her in.
What the…
His heart struck up a drumbeat, nearly slamming its way out of his chest. “Michaela?”
Not quite a
s slim as he’d thought from above, but her figure still tempted. Breasts larger than he remembered, a thicker waist, rounder hips. A mature figure that made his dick try to climb out of his pants. Was she married? Had she had children? Her face held some lines of the laugh variety, and her hair held more gray than he’d imagined, gleaming in the slight light reflected by the clouds.
His cock
sent him a message, demanding he throw himself at her, cover her with kisses, show her the brand of physical affection she’d wanted and he—the stupidest man ever born—had refused.
“A bear? What are you talking about?” She scooted back, away from him. “And how do you know my name?
I have a gun!”
“No need for violence.” If she had one, it wasn’t in her hands. But he didn’t want to take the chance.
Thirty-five years of missing her ending in a headline:
Hiker kills stalker on dark trail.
The moon lighting her beautiful features must be casting his in shadow. “You asked about the bear, you said— Never mind.” Tilting his head to the side, he tried to get some light on his face. “Now do you recognize me?”
She shook her head. Suddenly her face paled and her jaw dropped. “It’s not possible.”
She knew him.
“Hi, Mickie.”
“Where did you come from? Where’s Julia?”
She looked around as if expecting the woman to pop out from the trees.
She knew more about his life than he knew about hers, but not the whole story.
“You’re a little behind the times. Julia and I don’t travel together anymore.”
He drew a
shuddering sigh, although not of regret. That emotion fled behind the reawakening of passion too long denied. His hands flexed in his desire to stroke her smooth, naked skin, his cock throbbed—he craved her mouth.
Does she still taste like ripe cherries?
Did they even make that gloss so many years later?
Her brow furrowed. “I-I’m sorry to hear that. I always imagined you two taking the European capitals by storm.”
Her words flowed over him, the same voice, a little huskier with time, rolled over him, awakening hungers he’d buried so deep he’d thought them gone. But a single glimpse of her was all it took and he blessed—and cursed—whatever Fate had led him to follow a stranger into the woods.
“Oh, we did that a long time ago.”
And with less enjoyment than he’d hoped. He’d tolerated the fancy hotels and exclusive resorts of his ex’s choosing, while stealing away to breathe the clean mountain air whenever he could. Tramping alone in high altitudes, sometimes not seeing another person for days. He looked at her sleeping bag piled alongside the trail. Another solitary traveler.
Women hiked all the time, often alone, and he’d never had the urge to track one down before. Not in the US, or the Swiss Alps or Tibet. Why now?
He knew why.
A cold breeze rattled the late summer Aspens, a reminder that winter would come soon. Another month and these altitudes would be deep in snow, the trees and wildlife hunkered down to wait for the return of spring.
“So how was Europe?”
He didn’t want to talk about the past—well, not the Julia past.
He found more interest in how to get her shirt off without her smacking him. His gaze dipped to her breasts, just as full as he’d seen at first glance.
“We have unfinished business.”
Like learning if she still went without a bra.
“Do we?” Michaela sat up straight, her back against the rough bark of an evergreen, hands flat on the ground at her sides, ready to push her to her feet.
Unsure how much time he had here, wondering if she’d send him away, he looked his fill. Unlike Julia, she’d taken no actions against the ravages of time. The laugh lines he’d noticed before bracketed her mouth, crinkled the corners of her eyes. She’d probably never heard of Botox. Or a surgery that froze beauty in a cold and artificial way. Yet her true loveliness had ripened into something more. Something that made him yearn to spill his heart, to invite her into his sleeping bag where he could lie next to her naked body and touch her in ways that would leave her panting his name, begging her to fuck him.
If she still wanted to.
His breath stuttered, his heart pounding in a way the altitude never caused anymore. Maybe lack of blood in his head made him dizzy. Her wary expression made him fear a wrong move would send her flying down the trail.
Shifting his pack from his shoulders, he rummaged inside for his fleece-lined sweatshirt and
dragged it over his head. The garment had accompanied him to more peaks than he could count, and its soft, worn folds helped restore his confidence. He’d earned the glare she sent his way. But he sure as hell wanted to know what pleasure would shift it into ecstasy, to know if she looked the way he imagined when she came.
She’d dumped him, disappeared on the last day of camp without a good-bye, leaving him to return to school, to bury his loneliness in Julia’s company until, before he knew it, he found himself married and successful.
As he’d always intended, as far from the hippie commune life his mother embraced as possible. What kind of woman named her son Valiant anyway? One who never took into account the beatings the name would bring.
Unfinished business?
He’d managed to finish their business pretty well after that final night in the mountains. Despite her rising
irritation Michaela couldn’t take her hungry gaze from his handsome face or stop the throbbing in her pussy. The hazel eyes she remembered so well sat under groomed brows. Was his once-ebony hair the same color now? The woolen cap pulled down over his forehead hid it. He still wore it short, then. But the intensity of those eyes hadn’t changed. Her nipples hardened under his appraising gaze. Her fingers itched to trace the lines of his cheeks, to feel the roughness of the beard scruff on his cheeks, to learn the lines of his muscular chest, his flat belly….
His lips drew her like a magnet. Firm, set but with a sensuousness time hadn’t done a thing to erase. Kisses…he’d been the best kisser ever. Poor Silas had been sweet and warm but couldn’t hope to compete with the masterful skill of a man
whose lips had branded her skin wherever they’d touched. Who had captured her girlish heart and left it to bleed when he went off to live the life he wanted.
With the wife he wanted.
His utter disgust at his hippy mother’s lifestyle had sent him flying in the opposite direction. To preppy clothes and Julia. The perfect wife.
He’s married.
She shook off lustful thoughts and tried to rein in the heat building low in her body, soaking her panties. “So, what happened, anyway?”
He blinked, lifting his eyes from her chest. Michaela fought a smile at that. Not busty, not ever, she also had suffered less from the effects of gravity than some. She still didn’t wear a bra
except on rare occasions at the gallery and her near constant treks through the mountains in search of the perfect landscape kept her in shape. She had nothing to be ashamed of in the leg department.
An insane urge to strip naked and show him her assets sent heat rushing from her chest to her forehead.
Married. Hands off.
No matter how wet her panties and how her nipples poked against the soft cotton of her T-shirt. Michaela Vanz did not sleep with married men. Not even to prove a point. Or satisfy her curiosity.
“What happened with what?” He dug through his pack again, but never took his gaze from her.
“Life.” If she could keep the conversation on a chatty level, she might survive until he wandered off down the path and out of her life again. “Have any kids?”
He pulled a propane burner and a small pan out. “Yes. Cold? You want some tea?”
“Sure.” She unzipped her sleeping bag and wrapped it around her shoulders to still the shivers that gave her away. “How many?”