High Octane Heroes (21 page)

Here are some of the lessons that I learned:

 

1) Just because it’s sunny in the morning doesn’t mean the weather’s going to stay that way.

2) Fog can come down really fast on a mountain.

3) Trainers offer no support to ankles.

4) Paths can vanish abruptly.

5) Shorts do not keep you warm.

6) Blundering on when you can’t see where you’re going can lead to accidents.

The accident happened about two hours after we had lost the path in the fog. I think the right thing to do would have been to immediately retrace our footsteps until we found it again. But that’s not what I suggested at the time, so we carried on walking through the scrubby trees and undergrowth, steadily climbing higher and all the time looking for a path.

Emerging onto the ridge was quite unexpected, and that’s probably why Frankie slipped and plunged over the other side. And that side was a lot steeper. She suddenly vanished from sight. Then I heard her shriek, and there were scrabbling noises and the sounds of branches breaking.

It was silent again as I gingerly approached the edge.

“Fuck!” she said, and I nearly lost my balance and followed her down. “Fucking ouch!”

She was about twenty feet below me, where the steep slope shelved slightly, and she was clutching on to a bedraggled bush. One of her legs was twisted in a way that didn’t look right, and she continued cursing loudly.

“Hold on, I’m coming down to you,” I shouted.

Skidding down the slope on my tail I learned something else: gravel can go up your shorts. And that’s not a good place for it.

Frankie couldn’t straighten her leg and certainly couldn’t get up. I made her lie back against the slope to take some of the pressure off, but it was already swelling up, black and blue. There was no way she was going to walk down the mountain, even with my help. And of course, we still didn’t even know which was the way back.

Frankie cried with pain, and I cried with, I suppose, self-pity. I didn’t know what to do. We called out for help, but the fog deadened the sound of our voices and, anyway, we hadn’t seen
anyone else for hours. Not since we’d lost the path. I felt awful for Frankie but there was nothing I could do. If she tried to move her leg even an inch, it was agony.

I tried to go for help, but the slope was too steep and slippery with gravel to climb back up. Below us was a black gulley that we couldn’t see the bottom of. I tried to make a move but a flurry of pebbles bouncing down into infinity made Frankie grip my arm tightly. I was glad.

“You can’t leave me here,” she said. “I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” I asked. “No bear or person’s gonna come down here.”

But I was happier to stay with her.

The day wore on, and we had no food and no drink. Frankie was shivering. I was getting desperate. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew it was up to me to do something. That’s when my imagination started playing tricks on me. Voices singing in the distance. A burst of sunshine through the fog. The herbs-and-garlic smell of my favorite Italian restaurant. The
whop-whop-whop-whop
of helicopter blades.

The
whop-whop-whop
of a helicopter! Coming closer and far too loud to be imaginary.

“Hooray! We’re saved,” I cried, hugging Frankie, as the fog was blown away by the dark silhouette of a chopper above us.

She winced in pain, and I gently let her go.

“So where are they going to land?” she asked. “They’re probably not even looking for us.”

But thankfully she was wrong. Seconds later a man in a bright-orange Mountain Rescue tunic and helmet was being winched down to us on the bottom of a rope. And what a man! He landed on our shelf, unclipped his rope and took my breath away. Six-foot-four of mountain muscle come to take command of the situation. My chest heaved with relief.

“Either of you ladies hurt?” he asked, shouting to be heard above the whopping.

I pointed at Frankie’s leg and he dropped to his knees beside her. After a cursory look, he swung a pack off his back and removed his helmet.

At which point I was truly lost. No one who’s on a rescue mission has a right to be that good looking. Not when saving a person’s life already gives him such an advantage. His face could have been sculpted out of granite, with sheer cheekbones, a strong jaw and a long, straight nose. But it was anything but stony. His bright-blue eyes were like sparks of electricity, while the sensuous curve of his red lips sent a jolt of current right through me. And my fingers were straightaway itching to rake through his tousled blond hair.

But his attention was, quite rightly, on Frankie. He tentatively felt her ankle with a large, tanned hand, and she squealed. Moving his hand away quickly, he pulled a radio handset out of his tunic pocket.

“Okay, drop the basket,” he said into the radio. “Looks like a broken leg.”

He turned to me. “What about you? You okay?”

I nodded. I didn’t think cold and scared would really cut it with a guy like this.

“All right, ladies, this is what’s happening. You,” he said, pointing at Frankie, “are going up in the stretcher and straight to hospital. Which means you,” pointing at me, “and I get left here. The chopper can’t fit the stretcher and an extra passenger, so it’ll be back for us in the morning.”

I gulped. “That would be tomorrow morning?” Was I competing for the gold star in stupidity?

Those blue eyes studied me for a moment, and I could have sworn the corners of his mouth were twitching. But he didn’t
seem to feel the need to answer.
I get it,
I thought.
The strong and silent type.

Fifteen minutes later and I was waving Frankie good-bye as, strapped into an orange plastic basket that made her resemble an Egyptian mummy, she was winched up into the helicopter.

“Love you, sweetie,” I shouted after her, but I don’t think she heard me through the noise of the blades.

Then she was scooped in through the door and the chopper swooped away in a giant arc, the noise of the rotors receding with it.

The silence rang in my ears.

“I’m Jake, by the way,” said a voice so loud I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Yeah, I know, I can stop shouting now,” he added not so loudly.

I grinned through chattering teeth. “Melody.”

“Pretty name.” Then his face suddenly darkened. “So what the hell were you two girls playing at?”

“We got lost, and then Frankie fell.” I felt a little indignant at his tone. “It could have happened to anyone.”

“Anyone who didn’t have a map or the right shoes or appropriate clothing.”

So my knight in shining armor was actually a bit of jerk. I turned away from him. I’d been through enough, and I didn’t need to take anymore.

“Hey, Melody, I’m talking to you.”

I ignored him.

“My pilot has risked his life flying in fog to help you and your friend. You do realize that, don’t you?”

How to make someone feel really good about herself, step one: imply that she might be the cause of another person’s possible demise.

“And you were damn lucky it was only fog. It can snow up
here at this time of year. I have a good mind to take you over my knee…”

This was too much and I burst into tears. It was his turn to feel bad.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, looking down at the ground. “You’re cold.”

The stretcher, when it was winched down, had contained a supply pack to see us through the night. Jake unzipped it and pulled out an orange Mountain Rescue fleece.

“Here, put this on.”

My coloring dictates that orange isn’t really the color for me, but for the first time in my life I positively embraced it. Color me Day-Glo, as long as it’s warm.

“So what else you got in there?” I was hungry and thirsty.

The survival pack was pretty well equipped, in fact. There was food and water, with a tiny primus stove to heat them, a medical pack and two huge silver survival blankets. But best of all, a large bar of chocolate, which I attacked as soon as I saw it.

Jake set up the little stove with a practiced air, and we dined on prepacked beef stew with carrots, and I was so hungry that it didn’t taste at all bad. Actually fucking delicious, if the truth be known. While we ate, Jake told me about some of the more dramatic rescues he’d been on. This evidently wasn’t one of them. Then, after we’d both finished our stew, Jake brewed up some instant coffee.

By this time the fog had thickened to a dense, dark gray and the light was already failing. Jake had to use a torch to pour the joe into a couple of tin cups, and I started to get a feeling like I was a frontierswoman out on the trail.

“Okay, I’m putting out the torch now to preserve the battery,” he said.

“So why don’t we light a fire to keep warm?” I suggested. No ulterior motive, I promise you.

“Firstly, Melody, you might have noticed that the few pieces of wood there are on this slope are wet from the fog. But also, we’re in a national park and that would be breaking the rules.”

Geez. What a fun guy.

“I don’t suppose that survival pack had any whisky we could add to this,” I said gesturing with my cup.

Jake laughed.

“Stuck out on a mountain, and you wanna party. I gotta admire your style, Melody. You’re pretty cool.”

I basked for a moment, but I couldn’t help but wonder how we were going to pass the time.

“It’s cold. Come on, let’s get these blankets sorted,” he said.

He put the torch back on and unfolded the survival blankets. Baco-foil on one side and bright Mountain-Rescue orange on the other side. I couldn’t really see how the incredibly thin, light “blankets” were going to keep us warm. But Jake got busy with some tape from the medical kit and had soon fashioned a narrow sleeping bag out of the two.

I watched with interest. One sleeping bag, two people. How was that going to work?

“Shared body heat,” said Jake, as if he could read my mind. “My lucky night. I get to share the sleeping bag with you.”

“So that’s why you joined the Mountain Rescue? So you could share your body heat with young, vulnerable females?”

Jake grinned, and I felt a delicious fluttering deep in my stomach.

“It’s usually old men with wind problems,” he said.

“Okay. Too much information there.”

He took off his boots and wriggled into the sleeping bag. I took off my trainers slowly. I wanted to savor the moment
while I could still imagine that something was going to happen between us. He held up the rim of the sleeping bag so I could slide in next to him. I took the plunge.

It was a tight squeeze, and as we were both still fully dressed it mostly felt like being cocooned in fabric. But my face was level with his neck. I breathed in deeply to get the smell of him and—wow! Man-sweat, musk, sandalwood… I had to concentrate hard on not breathing heavily. God, I’d always had dreams about being rescued from peril by a handsome lunk and, boy, was this living up to the fantasy. I wriggled to get comfortable on the hard ground and breathed in deeply again. My hips tried to go on an exploration of their own, but I managed to keep them still.

Jake slid an arm under my shoulders and raised me up a bit against his chest.

“Lean on me,” he said. “It’ll be more comfortable than the ground.”

I could feel the warmth of his body through my Day-Glo layers as I snuggled against him. “So it’s true…” I whispered with a sigh.

“What?” he said. His breath tickled my ear, making part of my insides flip.

“That thing about body heat. I feel warm already.”

“Hot,” he said.

We both turned toward each other at the same moment, so we were lying chest to chest. My breath caught in my throat as I realized we were also hip to hip. His burgeoning response to our shared body heat was pressing against my stomach.

I raised my face. It was too dark to see his expression, but his ragged breathing told me all I needed to know. I slipped a hand to the back of his neck and pulled his head down to mine. Our lips met in a kiss that was anything but gentle, and his tongue
pushed its way into my willing mouth immediately. It plundered and took possession, skirting the edges of my teeth, exploring the hollows of my cheeks, caressing my tongue and searching ever deeper until our teeth knocked against each other. Both his hands came up and raked through my hair, pulling my head back to tilt my mouth higher, and the erection I felt pressing against me was now huge and hard.

Inside the sleeping bag was a furnace, our bodies smoldering against each other, breaking out in the sweat of anticipation. There was no stopping what was coming down the track toward us, and I didn’t want to.

His mouth pulled back from mine, and his hands ran down my back. They were wide enough to cover the whole width of it. When they reached my waist, I felt his fingers burrowing up under the hem of my fleece.