Reckless Engagement

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN Katrien arrived next day at the upper field Zachary was coming out of the café. As she saw him pick up his skis she told herself it was coincidence, that he hadn’t been sitting and watching the chairlift, waiting for her.

He smiled at her lazily and, without speaking at all, tramped to her side at the top of the slope, let her push off before him, and followed, swooping past her in a series of sashaying curves, wide sweeps leaving parabolic lines in the snow.

She began to copy him, watching how he used his body, feeling her own muscles respond as she mimicked his movements.

She finished the run faultlessly and came to a swerving halt beside Zachary, flushed and proud of herself and meeting his eyes unafraid, responding to their laughing approval.

‘I never thought I was that good!’ she said involuntarily.

‘We none of us know what we can do until we try.’ He smiled at her, and suggested, ‘I’ll buy you a drink before we do it again.’

She let him, but the next time she bought the drinks and he just raised a dark eyebrow at her and allowed her to pay.

They skied together every day, and had coffee or drinks afterwards. One afternoon he asked her if it had always been her ambition to become a model, and she laughed and told him the only career she’d seriously considered was librarianship, which made him laugh in turn. ‘I was in my last year at school,’ she said, ‘and a friend asked me to model a dress she’d designed for a sewing contest. We came third, and one of the judges approached me and asked if I was interested in modelling professionally. My friend was terribly excited and talked me into going to see the agency the woman suggested. And…well, things just sort of developed from there. What about you? How does one become a mountaineer?’

‘I’ve been skiing since I was ten, more interested in cross-country than downhill. When I was fifteen I started climbing. At university I met Ben and we climbed together during the holidays.’

‘What did you take at university?’

‘A science degree.’

‘Is that how you got a job in Antarctica?’

‘Uh-huh. I studied ice movement, and did a fair bit of climbing there. Later Ben and I did Everest together, and then turned professional.’

‘You make a living climbing mountains?’

‘As mountain guides, nursemaiding recreational climbers to the best climbs around the world. In between, we tackled the real stuff, the places and routes no one had successfully climbed before.’

‘Surely it’s very expensive fitting out an expedition.’

‘I’ve had grants from various institutions to carry out scientific studies on the mountains—the qualities of ice and snow, geological information, environmental studies. And several clothing and equipment firms helped finance our climbs. Ben was good at rustling up sponsors, and he was very photogenic.’ Zachary grinned, half sadly. ‘He even did a bit of modelling work. I teased him about that. You never bumped into him?’

Katrien shook her head. ‘Your family must worry about you.’

‘My mother was killed in a car accident when I was fourteen, and my father died a few years ago of a brain tumour. I have a brother who lives in England with his wife and family. We keep in touch, but his life is too busy to spend it worrying about me.’

‘That was awfully young to lose your mother.’ She still felt grief for her father’s death over a year ago. How much worse it must have been for a fourteen-year-old.

‘Death is the inevitable consequence of life.’ He paused. ‘I learned that a bit earlier than most people, I guess.’

Too early, surely. ‘Is that why you took up climbing?’ she asked, wondering if having his mother taken from him at a vulnerable age was what drove him to risk his life over and over—a need to defy the cruel fate that had taken her from him, to shake his fist in the face of death.

‘It took my mind off things, certainly. When you’re climbing you need to concentrate on your next step all the time. If you don’t, it could be your last.’

‘That’s what I meant.’

He looked surprised, then searching. ‘What you meant?’

She shouldn’t have started this, but he was waiting for her to explain. ‘I just thought…maybe you wanted to show that you could…beat death at his own game, because of your mother.’

Perhaps she had offended him. He seemed disconcerted. ‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘you could be right. I’ve never thought of it in those terms.’

She smiled apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean to psychoanalyse you.’

‘That’s okay.’ He was staring at her as if seeing her in an entirely new light. She looked down and fiddled with her coffee cup, until he pushed back his chair and said, ‘Right, shall we go back to the run?’

On her fifth day when she arrived at the café he wasn’t there. She unstrapped her skis and drank two cups of coffee she didn’t want before she saw a figure in the distinctive ski suit riding up on the chairlift.

When she came to the door he smiled at her and said, ‘I’m glad you waited.’

She didn’t deny it. Of course she’d waited. The thought intruded that she’d waited a long time for him. Years.

Nonsense. He was just a man, met casually and probably never to be seen again. A very attractive man, but not the first one she’d found sexually appealing. She was bound to meet attractive men even after her marriage to Callum, and she would have to deal with that.

Her dreams had been empty lately; no dark, mysterious figure held her close and murmured in her ear, carried her against his heart.

She was too tired to dream. But it was the kind of healthful tiredness that left her looking forward to the next day and the white, beckoning snow. And each day her skiing had improved, her skills growing as she exerted herself, pushing herself to the limit of her ability in an effort to match Zachary.

The run was clear for once of other skiers, except near the bottom.

They took off side by side, and then Zachary swooped off to the left.

Katrien swerved right, glancing at Zachary to see when he changed direction, and in the same instant she followed, gliding back to meet him.

She saw him laugh, and knew he’d read her mind. They passed in the middle of the run, missed each other narrowly and started new opposing curves.

With any other partner this would have been crazy—she wasn’t nearly good enough to successfully negotiate the hairsbreadth manoeuvres—but she knew he would compensate for her, that she could trust him to get them safely down.

When they made it, to a spattering of applause from a group of people waiting to be transported to the top, she laughed up at him and they slapped gloved hands together in triumph.

She looked back up the slope at the almost perfect series of figure eights in the snow, some cut across by following skiers, and gasped. ‘I don’t believe we did that.’

As an experience it was unrepeatable. Almost superstitiously she knew that trying again would be an anti-climax.

As if he knew it too, Zachary said, ‘Nothing beats the first time.’

Katrien supposed that was why he kept looking for more mountains to climb, peaks that hadn’t been scaled before. She said, ‘Tomorrow’s my last day.’

He looked up the mountain, past the skiers zooming down the slopes, to the high, untouched snow beyond them. Then he looked back at her and said almost urgently, ‘Come climbing with me.’

‘Climbing?’

‘You’ve never tried it, have you?’

Dumbly, Katrien shook her head.

‘Nothing difficult. An easy, beginners’ climb. Today I can teach you some of the basic techniques, and what to do in a fall so you don’t just go on sliding out of control. We’ll find a nice gentle slope to practise on. But we’ll need to get you kitted up before starting an actual climb.’

‘You’ll be bored.’

A strange expression flitted across his face. He looked back up again at the mountain, his profile grim and shuttered. ‘I promise you I won’t be bored.’

He had some gear in the back of his four-wheel-drive, and he found an easy slope not far from the ski run and showed her how to hold an ice axe when climbing, and use it as a brake, as an aid to help herself up a slope, and to probe the snow and discover if it was really firm or just a crust on top of loose powder. He taught her techniques for controlling a fall, and how to work with a partner on a rope.

He asked for her boot size, and next morning called for her at the hotel when it was barely dawn, bringing climbing gear, including boots and crampons and a helmet for her. ‘Borrowed them,’ he told her briefly.

He made her go over what she’d learned, and demonstrated how to remove snow from the spikes of her crampons with an ice axe. ‘You have to keep them free because if your crampons are balled up they can’t grip the slope.’

They had something to eat first, then signed a book for the park rangers stating their intended route and estimated return time, and set out to climb the mountain.

He roped her to him, even though the first part was an easy walk over a gentle incline where their boots left deep indents in the snow. ‘Don’t let the rope go slack,’ he reminded her.

When the going got steeper she was glad of the rope and of Zachary’s tutelage. He led on the upward slopes but made her go ahead on the downward side of a ridge so if she got into trouble he could help her. She was panting and her temples and upper lip were dampened with sweat when he hauled her onto a rugged bluff and declared, ‘Okay, we can rest here for a while.’

There was sweat on his forehead too, although he wasn’t flushed with exertion like her. The cold air seemed to have bleached the outdoor tan from his cheeks. He wiped his face with a gloved hand, staring out at the surrounding countryside—bleak and brown near the mountain, mistily green further away.

Katrien subsided on the snow. ‘And you do this for fun?’

He glanced down at her and laughed shortly. ‘You’re not enjoying it?’

She gazed about them and admitted, ‘The view is pretty spectacular.’

‘Worth it?’

But she wasn’t ready to concede that. ‘How far are we going?’ She squinted at the forbidding wall of rock—in some places too steep to hold the snow—that loomed above them.

He didn’t answer immediately, but stood up and she turned to look at him, shading her eyes because the sun lay behind him, making his features dark and indistinguishable. Her heart thumped once with a quick, irrational, complicated emotion, a stirring of familiarity.

‘How far,’ he asked her, ‘do you want to go?’

‘Not all the way,’ she answered. Then quickly added, ‘We couldn’t make it to the summit in the time we’ve got, could we?’

‘No,’ he agreed, after a tiny pause. ‘Not if you don’t feel ready for it.’

When she began to get cold she pushed herself to her feet. ‘All right, MacDuff,’ she sighed. ‘Let’s move on.’

‘You’re game?’ He glanced at the unwelcoming terrain above them.

‘If you are,’ she agreed lightly.

He gave her an oddly searching look, then a faint smile. ‘Remember what I told you. Let me know if you’re in trouble.’

It was all right at first, hard work but not difficult. Perhaps she became too cocky, but as she went ahead of him across a virgin slope the snow suddenly seemed to disappear under her boots and she shrieked Zachary’s name, desperately trying to remember and follow his earlier instructions.

She slid over a hidden overhang and found herself dangling in space, witless with terror. But Zachary had stopped the fall, and when her vision cleared she could see him leaning backwards further up the slope, his boots firmly dug into the snow.

She followed his calm, succinct directions, and with his help was able to crawl back onto the snow-covered slope. He held the rope firm, reefing it in as she panted towards him.

She collapsed into his arms, her breath coming in shuddering gasps. ‘An easy beginners’ climb, you said!’

‘You’re okay.’ His breath feathered her ear as his arms tightened round her. ‘It’s all right, I won’t let you go.’

She shivered, echoes of dreams reverberating in her mind, shards of memory kaleidoscoping and, rearranging themselves into a well-known pattern.

‘You…saved my life,’ she said, her voice sounding odd in her own ears.

His arms loosened and he gripped her shoulders. ‘Nothing so dramatic. But,’ he added, frowning, ‘I should have known better than to drag you up here with me.’

‘Drag me…?’ She hadn’t needed any coercion; she could scarcely claim he’d forced her. Then, looking down at the nylon line that still joined them, she made a little grimace. ‘Well, you could say that, I suppose…’

She raised her eyes to his, willing him to laugh, and after a moment he did, in a slightly strained way, releasing his hold on her. ‘You’re a brave woman.’

Brave? Katrien shook her head. ‘Hardly.’ But now wasn’t the time to detail her fears and phobias. And Zachary Ballantine, mountaineer, wasn’t a person who would understand them. ‘Did you ever,’ she asked him carefully, her heart thudding, ‘save someone’s life?’

His eyes went dark, his mouth straight. ‘I didn’t save Ben’s.’

She felt again the wave of pain that had emanated from him the night of the charity dinner when he’d spoken of his friend. Stretching out her gloved hand, she grasped one of his. None of the usual platitudes would suffice, she knew. He’d probably heard them all dozens of times.

He didn’t look up, but his hand closed hard about hers through the layers of insulating fabric. He lifted their clasped hands and brought them down once, on his knee.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, then by tacit consent got up and continued the traverse. At the next vantage point Zachary said, ‘Time to start going down.’

Katrien was surprised at her sense of disappointment, but there had never been any question that they would attempt to make the summit. She followed him obediently, and heeded his warning not to relax just because they were no longer climbing. ‘More lives are lost on the descent,’ he said, ‘when people get careless.’

A light snowfall had started before they signed in again at the foot of the mountain. When they emerged from the building dusk was falling and the snowflakes drifting across the car park had thickened, driving against the building.

They paused in the porch and Zachary said, ‘I’ll drop you off at the hotel.’

Katrien shivered, hugging herself. ‘That would be very welcome, thank you.’ She didn’t feel like waiting about for public transport.

‘Wait here.’ He strode off into the flurrying snow.

A few minutes later a four-wheel-drive vehicle drew up before the porch, and Zachary dropped to the ground and opened the other door for her. ‘Hop in.’

He had turned on the heater, and blessedly warm air curled about her feet when he restarted the motor. All the way to the hotel she formulated and discarded things to say. Zachary drove with his eyes on the road ahead, obscured by the whirling snow that platted continuously against the windscreen. The wind was increasing by the minute. She thought he’d been wise to get them down from the mountain not only before dark but before the snowstorm had begun. Surely it hadn’t been forecast.

He drew up close to the hotel’s main doorway.

‘Thank you,’ she said. How inadequate and thin it sounded. ‘And thank you for taking me on the mountain.’

‘I wanted you with me.’ With a curious air of hesitation, he looked away for a moment. ‘Have dinner with me.’

She glanced at the lighted doorway of the hotel. ‘Where?’

Zachary considered the question. ‘Would you come back to the lodge?’

‘Who else is there?’

He paused again before answering. ‘My friends are overseas. There’s just me.’ He was half turned to face her, his forearm resting on the steering wheel while he waited for Katrien’s decision.

‘With this snow,’ she said slowly, ‘we might be stranded there.’

‘Yes,’ Zachary agreed gravely. ‘We might.’ Another pause. ‘Would you object?’

She had difficulty getting the words to leave her lips. ‘Callum might.’ Reminding both of them.

Zachary nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’

She couldn’t do that to Callum. Or to herself. The strange pull this man exerted on her senses, her subconscious, didn’t justify her cheating on her fiancé, betraying her own principles and jeopardising her entire future. ‘I can’t.’

He nodded again, as though her answer was the one he’d expected. ‘I guess not.’ He shifted in his seat, his chest lifting on a breath. ‘How about here, then? In the dining room. Your fiancé couldn’t take exception to that, could he?’

Gratefully she seized on the reprieve. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. That would be…nice.’

It would be a lifeline. Callum would certainly have every reason to object if he knew that the stark necessity of saying goodbye to Zachary Ballantine was stifling her breath and freezing her blood. That the prospect of never seeing him again sent her into an irrational, mindless panic.

‘I’ll go back to the lodge and freshen up,’ Zachary was saying. ‘See you about seven?’

She nodded. Too late to back out now, she told herself with guilty relief. ‘Drive carefully. No, don’t get out, I can manage.’ She was scared to be touched by him again. She didn’t know how she was going to get through a meal with him without him guessing at what she felt. But at least she’d had the sense to insist on a public place.

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