Fortune's Legacy (7 page)

“Geez!” Kyra jumped in his arms, just missing smashing his nose with her forehead.

The female voice spilled through the intercom and shattered whatever spell had held them in place. Kyra felt disoriented. Garrett looked furious.

Instantly, Kyra bolted, pushing out of his arms and standing on legs none too steady. Her body whimpered, but her brain shut down the longing. She told herself that she hadn't actually felt Garrett's body harden beneath hers. She hadn't actually been fantasizing about kissing him.

She scrubbed both hands across her face and sat down on the opposite side of the plane. Quickly she buckled her seat belt and sternly told herself to stay put. To keep her distance. To, for heaven's sake, never fall into the man's lap again.

“Mr. Wolff?”

The voice came again, a little louder this time, and Kyra realized he hadn't answered the summons yet. She glanced at him and found him staring at her through blue eyes that looked as stormy as the sea. His expression was unreadable, and Kyra wished she knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling.

Was it only she who'd felt that momentary blast of heat? That incredible urge to—

Garrett leaned over, pressed the intercom button once more and practically snarled, “Yes?”

“I'm sorry, sir.” The female flight attendant's voice was frosty. “I don't mean to interrupt, but I wondered if you and Ms. Fortune would care for some more coffee or tea.”

He looked at her, a question in his eyes.

Kyra nodded. Good. A distraction was good. “Coffee. Thanks.”

He hit the button again. “Two more coffees. Thank you.”

When the intercom was quiet again, Garrett deliberately kept his gaze from meeting Kyra's. He picked up the file folder he'd been reading earlier, smoothed out the wrinkles made by her butt landing on his lap, and studied it like a man reading a map in the desert, desperately looking for the last water hole.

He couldn't have made his position any clearer, she thought with a pang of something that was not disappointment. Clearly, he wasn't going to acknowledge that moment of insanity. He was going to pretend that nothing had happened between them in that one little slice of time.

Well, fine. Better this way, anyway, she thought. At least she knew where they stood. Back on the shaky ground of being enemies.

And before she gave in to the urge to walk and talk off her nervousness again, she'd nail her feet to the floor and sew her lips shut.

“W
e should have stayed at the airport.” Kyra's voice was quiet, tinged with just a hint of fear.

He couldn't blame her. Just outside Denver, the promised storm had hit. At first, there hadn't been more than a few snow flurries gusting past the car. Now, though, things were different.

Garrett's hands fisted on the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening. Since getting off the plane, they'd hardly spoken two words to each other. Which was probably just as well, he conceded.

It was better all the way around that they keep a safe distance between them—even if it was only emotional. Sure, they were stuck with each other's company for a couple of days, but nothing said they had to talk.

Besides, talking wasn't what he wanted from her.

In a flash, his brain tripped back to that moment in the plane when the turbulence had dropped Kyra into his lap. His body had reacted so quickly, so fiercely, it had taken his breath away. With his arms around her, her hands on his shoulders, her mouth just a breath away from his, Garrett had damn near given in to the instinctive urge to kiss her.

Taste her.

If it hadn't been for the flight attendant interrupting them… He'd never been both grateful and annoyed at the same time before. By the time Kyra had lurched off his lap, he'd been forced to keep that stupid file folder open across his legs just to keep her from seeing what her nearness had done to him.

“Hello?” Kyra said, her voice sharp, worried. “Are you in a coma or something?”

“Wide awake,” he snarled. “And concentrating.”

Kyra peered through the windshield at the swirling wall of white just beyond. “I can't believe it's snowing this hard in April.”

“Not too unusual for Colorado,” Garrett muttered, and kept his gaze fixed determinedly on the road in front of them. Not that it was helping much. In the last fifteen minutes, the snow flurries had thickened until it felt as though he was driving through a snow globe shaken by an angry child.

On either side of the two-lane highway, tall pines dipped and swayed in the rush of wind and snow. The headlights only served to illuminate the gusts of white,
leaving the road pretty much to guesswork. He'd been reduced to hugging the right side of the road, following the curve of the trees. The double yellow line was gone, swallowed by the snow. Why they'd had to meet at a private estate rather than at the airport hotel, he didn't know.

“Remind me to stay in Texas from now on,” Kyra whispered.

“I'm with you on that one,” Garrett muttered, thinking about Red Rock, wishing they were both back there now, with the sun blasting out of a brassy sky. Not to mention Kyra locked away in her office and he in his own.

“Maybe we should go back.”

He glanced at her. “There's nowhere to turn around, Kyra. We keep going.”

“Right. But will we even
see
the turnoff?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Not real comforting.”

“You want comfort?” he asked. “At least we're on the ground.”

“Right. Good. Car better than plane.” She forced a smile. He could see the tension in her eyes and knew what that brief smile had cost her. She had spine. More strength than he'd ever thought.

Flying made her crazy, but she didn't let her fears keep her out of the sky. She could talk a man into the ground when nerves had her, but she wasn't afraid to tell you what she was thinking.

“We should probably stop until this snow quits,” she murmured, “don't you think?”

“Stop where?”

“Good point.” She wiped her palm across the passenger-side window, as if it would clear her view. “It's getting thicker.”

“Yeah,” he said, squinting past the wiper blades that whipped ferociously across the windshield. “I know.”

This stretch of highway was almost deserted. He'd seen only two other cars in the last hour, and the only house they'd passed had been more than a mile back.

“Do you have any idea at all where we are?” she asked.

He spared her a quick look and a shrug. “I'm not even sure we're on the right road anymore.” It cost him to admit that, since like every other male in the world, he never liked to acknowledge that he might be lost. But in this blinding snow, it was impossible to know if he'd stayed on the main route or somehow taken a side road that would land them in the middle of nowhere.

The headlight beams bounced off the rushing snow and flashed right back at them. The wipers slapped the glass, but couldn't quite keep up with the thickening storm. Between gusts of wind the heater sighed, spewing warm air at the front seat, and still Garrett felt a chill right down to his bones.

Unless they got off this road and found shelter, they were an accident waiting to happen.

“What's that?”

Garrett glanced at her again. “What's what?”

“That. Don't you hear it?”

From a distance came what sounded like a foghorn.
Long, low, moaning, it cut through the wind, the snow, the cold, and made Garrett shiver with foreboding.

In the next instant, headlights speared through the windshield, brakes screamed, tires slid on ice and Kyra shrieked, “Look out!”

Garrett cursed, low and harsh, and then yanked the steering wheel to the right. As they crashed through trees and down a ravine into a snow-filled cavern of shadows, she heard the eighteen-wheeler zoom past them into the night.

 

“Kyra! You all right?”

She woke up to a white, silent world and a headache the size of West Texas. The deployed airbag was already deflating as she turned to look at Garrett in the darkness. “Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”

She lifted one hand to her forehead, half expecting to find her head sitting at an inhuman angle to her neck. Nope. Still there. Just aching like a bad tooth.

“Kyra?”

She blinked, focused, then nodded. “Right. I'm fine. You?”

“Yeah.” He unsnapped his seat belt, then leaned over and did the same for her. “I'm fine. But the car's trashed. No way are we getting it back to the highway.”

Back
to the highway? Oh yeah. They'd been run off the road and were now sitting at the bottom of a ditch, snowladen pine trees the only witnesses. “Great. Now what?”

“We've got to get out of here.”

“And go where?” she asked, sliding her gaze from Garrett to the wall of white just outside the car.

“We passed a cabin about a mile down the road,” he said, reaching into the back seat to drag out the coats they'd brought along. Pushing hers toward her, he shoved his arms through the sleeves of his own and then shifted in his seat to button it up. “Get your coat on, Kyra. We can't stay here.”

She knew that. They'd freeze to death if they stayed in the car. But the thought of walking a mile through the blowing snow filled her with dread. She looked out the window again and shivered.

“It'll be okay,” he said, as if reading her mind. His voice was low, intimate and just a little impatient.

She turned her head to look at him and found his face only an inch or so from hers. Forcing a smile, she said, “I'm not much of a hiker.”

“We'll make it.”

She nodded because she knew they had no choice. But she really wished she were wearing hiking boots and thermal underwear instead of black slacks and trendy pumps. “Okay, then, let's go.”

He opened his car door and instantly icy wind and a blast of snow rushed inside. Kyra dragged her coat on, grabbed her purse and opened her own door before she could chicken out. The teeth of the wind snapped at her, sending cold shards deep into her bones. She used numb fingers to fumble her coat buttons closed, and wished briefly that she'd gone more for warmth than style when
she'd bought it. But at home she was only in the cold long enough to run from her condo to her car.

Here, it was different.

Here, it was freezing.

Garrett came around the end of the car, grabbed her elbow and steered her back up the ravine to the highway, where walking would be easier. Her elegant black pumps slipped and slid on the snowy ground, and her bare ankles soon felt like blocks of ice.

“Have to keep moving,” Garrett shouted, close to her ear. While they walked, he dug out his cell phone, stabbed at the numbers then cursed. “No service. Keep walking.”

She knew that, but it didn't make it easy. One foot in front of the other. Fall, sprawl in the snow, get up and do it again. Slowly, determinedly, she kept pace with him, but was grateful for his firm grip on her arm.

Up on the highway, the wind had free rein. There were no trees to block it. Nothing to ease the bite of it. She dipped her head and plowed along in Garrett's wake. Alongside them, the pine trees bent and swayed in the wind, as if dancing to music only they could hear. Her teeth chattered and each breath felt as if splinters of ice were scraping her lungs.

Snow dusted them until they looked as if they'd been tarred and feathered. Flakes slipped under their coats, slid beneath the collars of their shirts and snaked along their spines, driving the cold deeper. Their footprints were filled in as soon as they'd moved on.

And the snow kept falling.

The wind kept howling.

Kyra lost track of time. Lost track of everything but the need to focus on moving first one foot, then the other. Her brain raced while her body plodded.

She thought of roaring fires, blistering sunlight and snuggling up to a warm body beneath a down quilt. She thought of summer days and long, hot nights. She thought about burrowing into Garrett's chest and feeling his arms come around her.

Her steps slowed as her body grew tired.

“Keep moving, Kyra.”

“I am.” Too weary to shout, she let her anger out in a snarl.

“Not fast enough. You're slowing down.”

“Cold. Too cold,” she murmured, and hated that she sounded whiny. But she felt whiny. Every inch of her body ached with fatigue and cold. She wasn't dressed for this. And working out three days a week in a climate-controlled gym just didn't prepare a person for hiking through snow wearing now-ruined pumps.

“Gonna quit on me, Fortune?” he asked, dipping his head so that his words came hot and furious beside her ear.

“Didn't say that,” she snapped, feeling a small spark of irritation burst into life in the pit of her stomach. She straightened, clenched her teeth and muttered, “I can make it.”

“I don't know,” he goaded. “You're looking a little wiped.”

That tiny spark of irritation blossomed and grew, warming her a little with the flames of righteous indig
nation. “Don't you worry about me,” she said, grinding out each word. “I can make it if you can.”

“Bet you can't.”

She flashed him a glare. “How much?”

“Fifty bucks says you fold before we get to that cabin.”

“You're on,” she said quickly, reacting to the challenge just as she always did. Don't think about it, just take it, then do whatever you had to do to win.

She'd always been competitive. It came from being the youngest of four children. Always jockeying for position. Always having to shout just to make sure people knew you were there. Always trying to be noticed. To be better. To be someone.

This is not the time for self-psychoanalysis, Kyra.

Instead, she gave in to the urge to win. To compete. She would use whatever tools she had to help her make this trek.

Pulling her arm free of his grasp, she said, “And if I have to drag you the last half mile or so, I want a hundred.”

“Deal,” he said, and grabbed her arm again.

She would have fought him on it, feeling the need to stand on her own two feet. But the simple truth was she needed the stability his strength offered. Her feet kept sliding on the snow-covered road, and if she fell down one more time, she wasn't at all sure she'd be able to get back up again, bet or no bet.

“The Fortunes are supposed to be tough,” he said, and she heard laughter in his tone.

“Tougher than you can imagine,” she replied, her breath huffing out in a white cloud in front of her face.

He had no idea, she told herself. No idea at all what it was like to grow up as the child of Leonard Fortune. Maybe her crowd of cousins had grown up at ease with the world, but
her
father's children had had to fight for everything they'd ever had.

“Prove it,” he taunted. “Keep moving, Kyra. Just keep moving.”

“I
am
moving,” she said, planting one foot in front of the other, wincing as daggerlike jabs of cold stabbed her legs with every step.

“Not much farther.”

“You've been saying that for hours.”

“Not hours.”

“Feels like it.”

“I know. Almost there.”

Kyra's body was on autopilot, but her brain kept ticking. She knew what Garrett was doing. By making her mad, by forcing her to concentrate on proving him wrong, he was giving her the strength to make this hike through what felt like the back forty of the North Pole.

He was every bit as cold as she, and just as unprepared to face a howling winter storm. Yet he had the strength to push on. The determination to make sure
she
kept moving. Admiration welled up inside her.

She'd always thought of him as a brilliant businessman. But she'd had no idea that beneath those elegantly cut suits beat the heart of an adventurer.

And oh, she was grateful for it.

“There it is,” he called out.

Thank God.

She squinted through the wind-driven snow and spotted a shadow among the trees. About a hundred yards off the highway, the cabin sat squat and dark. But to Kyra, it looked at the moment like a five-star hotel.

The snow was nearly knee-high now, and walking was harder than ever. Especially as they struggled uphill toward the cabin.

Still Garrett kept moving, kept his grip firm and strong on her arm and didn't let her slow. Kyra reached deep inside for the last of her strength and drew on it to help her march at his side.