Indelible (12 page)

Through the gallery windows, Natalie watched Trevor return with his group, boisterous after their experience. They’d been in capable hands. Maybe someone who cared so well for so many couldn’t limit himself to a single relationship. Even his friendship with Whit had the duality of Sara.

He was the go-to guy in a crisis—no contest. Her gratitude and amazement welled up afresh. He didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t, and he didn’t have to. But then, neither did she.

She had joked with Whit about the difference in their clientele. You could see it in the way they approached one door or the other. Art aficionados strolled, while the adventure seekers charged in, especially in these last warm days as fall encroached. Just one more experience before the gear changed from life vests to snowshoes.

But art was timeless. It was sipped, not gulped. Art didn’t plunge down mountains or dodge boulders in white rushing water. It might challenge, even unnerve, but always invited contemplation, appreciation.

Art soothed and intrigued and unfolded layer by layer, revealing more and more with every glimpse. Turning away from the window, she took in the citadel she’d created—with Aaron’s funds and God’s grace—a place of beauty, serenity, and on occasion commerce. How had she imagined traffic between two such worlds?

Better to thrive on her own terra firma. She looked over when someone entered, felt herself light up. She couldn’t have chosen a more perfect example. “Mr. Lemmons.”

“Now we’ve covered that.” He wagged a finger.

She smiled as her patron approached. “Sim.”

“Mademoiselle.” Again he kissed her hand, half jester, half prince—she’d seen his castle. “Would you have some moments to spare?”

For the better part of the next hour, she walked him through the exhibit in a private tour, describing the subjects, and the impressionistic treatments that had developed from the original settings. Already the
owner of her eagle mountain, he settled on his next purchase,
Crystal Lake
. Lena handled the sale. Her manager had insisted the artist should not double as the money-changer. Except on Lena’s days off, of course.

As she was thanking him, a cry came from the studio. Natalie rushed back and found Fleur, bent over the worktable. “What is it? Are you all right?” She looked at the clay, thinking Fleur had been too frustrated to try, then realized the other side bore the features.

Moving around, she saw the shape of Fleur’s face, a good replica of the narrow jaw and pointed chin, unsmiling lips, and delicate nose. But what drew and held her gaze were the eye sockets. Fleur had bored her fingers in, creating hollows that must have wrenched the cry from her.

She hadn’t imagined this would be painful, but the agony in that clay face rivaled anything she’d created. She wrapped an arm around Fleur’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Fleur groaned. “It’s not you.”

Natalie pressed the side of her head to her friend’s. “Sometimes the clay pulls things out from somewhere deep inside.” She just hadn’t realized it would be that way for anyone else. “I mean, think about it. God made everything else with words, but it took clay to make a soul.”

Fleur sighed. “I ruined it.”

“No.” Natalie stroked her arm. “You gave the clay your wound.”

Fleur straightened. “Will you keep it? For a little while?”

“If you want me to.”

“I might, at some point, be able to make eyes.”

She tried to hide the ache from her voice. “It will be here.”

“Do you mind if I go now?”

“Of course not.” She squeezed Fleur’s shoulder. “If you’re all right.”

Fleur shook the hair back from her face. “I am, just. Show me the sink?”

Natalie helped her wash up, then pushed open the door dividing the studio from the gallery. Since Mr. Lemmons had gone, she asked Lena to take Fleur home.

“I’ve just finished up here.” Lena moved the glasses from her eyes to the crown of her head. “You all right, honey?” she asked Fleur.

“Yes. Thank you.”

Natalie squeezed Fleur’s hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She went into the studio and, without looking at it again, gently draped Fleur’s model. Trevor was right about the nakedness.

After turning off the display lights in the loft, she came down to find him, wearing chinos and a sports jacket. Her stomach tightened.

“Hey.” He slid his hands into the pockets.

“Hey.” She moved to the bank of light switches behind the podium.

“How’re you doing?”

“I’m in no imminent danger.” Peripherally, she saw the corner of his mouth pull.

“I was hoping to catch you before you left.”

“And so you did.”

He shifted the weight on one leg, probably easing a newly strained knee doing whatever he’d done with the group earlier. “I’d like to take you somewhere.”

They obviously had different impressions of their last conversation. She felt pretty certain she’d closed that door.

“You’ll be glad you came.”

She cupped her hands over the keys on the podium. “I’m listening.”

“I’d rather surprise you.”

“Trevor.” She couldn’t help it. The whole thing made her laugh.

“What?”

“Is there any reason a famous professional athlete—”

“Formerly famous, former professional athlete.”

“—needs to spend time with me? Come on.”

He gripped his hips. “Okay, wow. You have a serious misperception. I’m a guy asking you out. Nothing else. No hidden agenda.”

Only a ride on a roller coaster she never bought a ticket for. She fiddled with her keys. If she went, it would be with eyes wide open—just not on him. “I’m not dressed for anything rugged.”

He perused her oyster silk blouse and gray skirt. “That’s perfect.”

The kind of roller coaster that screeched to a stop, then did it all again in reverse. “Let me set the alarm.” She pulled on a matching wool suit jacket and went out behind him, securing the door. To her surprise, he
didn’t drive toward town or toward the Kicking Horse center, but merged onto the highway. “So this place isn’t local.”

“Did my face tell you?” He cracked a smile that infiltrated her defenses like tree roots through rocky fissures.

“Fine, joke about it.”

“Just calming your nerves.”

“My nerves?”

“Or whatever.” He smiled again, the creep.

She crossed her arms. “I have nerves of steel.”

“I saw that bouldering.”

“And just now got around to saying so?”

He gave a long sigh.

The scenery made driving in silence acceptable. But after a while, the crags and slopes and Trevor’s presence brought back Cody’s attack and the familiar ache inside. He could keep their destination secret, but she had a lot to learn about this guy who kept showing up at her door. “How long have you done search and rescue?”

“Almost five years.”

“How did you start?”

“Got a call for an expert climber to help search some gnarly terrain in Utah. A solo backpacker missing twenty-four hours. They’d exhausted a surface search and suspected a fall in one of the cliff areas. I grabbed Whit and they flew us in by helicopter, but from the start it was a bad situation, poor access and bitter weather moving in. By the time we mobilized, visibility had degraded.”

“You still went in?”

“We hoped for enough of a window, and with the temperature plunging.” He reached down and adjusted the heat dial as though reliving the cold. “We’d have gone right past if the team leader hadn’t glimpsed the victim through the blizzard.”

“What did you do?”

“I had to get down there and check for life before we risked more in those conditions. The wind kept blowing me off the rock and dashing me back into it.”

Of course he’d been the one to go down. “Was he alive?”

“She was. Marin Bircher, forty-five, survival trained and skilled. As far as we could guess, she got disoriented and stepped over the edge.”

Natalie shuddered. “What a horrible feeling that would be. Not to see it coming.”

“She doesn’t remember.”

“Anything?”

“Just waking up in the hospital.”

“You talked to her?”

“She wanted to thank me. We touch base now and then.”

Natalie flicked him a glance. Still caught in it herself, she understood the woman’s gratitude. “You must have a lot of stories.”

“They’re not all good.”

“How do you deal with the bad ones?”

“That depends. If there was nothing we could do, as in the trauma killed them, then it’s not so bad. But when they could have lived if we’d found them sooner, or got them out faster. Those are the ones that come back in the dark.”

She imagined that awful blizzard, the rugged terrain, the sheer difficulty of what they did. “Do you ever work with dogs?”

“Not directly, but with their trainers. Especially when there’s a lower chance of survival. A dog knows if someone has slipped into an ice or stone crevice where we’ll never reach them.”

“Do you keep looking for remains?”

“Of course. People need closure.”

“So you keep on, even when you’re certain they’re dead.”

“There’s always the balance between finding the lost and risking the rescuers. As the chance of survival decreases, more weight goes to the team.”

“Have you ever stopped too soon?”

“Every time there’s no answer at the end.”

“That must be a difficult call to make.”

“Sometimes it’s clear, storm or geography making progress impossible. No one ever wants to stop. But the wilderness has a brutal power you ignore at your peril.”

He told her about rescues where they’d been overwhelmed, driven back again and again. The conversation occupied her so completely she didn’t realize where they were until he parked.

“Oh, Trevor.”

“I’d have come sooner if it hadn’t been complicated for you.”

“Will they let you in?”

He opened his door and turned. “They’ll let us in.”

Riding the hospital elevator, she was not as confident. Her feet grew heavy. Could she face them?

“I kept hoping your brother would relent, and we could come with his blessing.”

“It’s not Aaron.” In the three weeks since the attack, she’d been offered no opportunity, but she knew whose choice that was. She hoped she knew. What if she saw something else in her brother’s face?

No longer in ICU, when the infection abated at last, Cody had been moved to the amputee clinic. Just the name broke her heart, but when she walked in, his sweet voice cried, “Auntie Nattie!”

Tears streamed down her face as Cody’s arm came up.

In a wheelchair, leg extended, Aaron turned, the love in his eyes unmistakable. “Nat.”

She squeezed her nephew until he squirmed, then turned to her brother. “Where’s Paige?”

“She went home to clean up and rest.”

God was good. “This is Trevor MacDaniel.”

Aaron held out his hand. “You’re my hero, man.”

How many people had used those words to her brother for simply playing a game?

Aaron’s throat choked with emotion. “Anything I can do for you, ever, you just say it.”

“Just glad he made it.”

As the guys talked, she sat on the bed and drank Cody in. “How’re you doing, honey?”

“My arm fell off.” His straightforward delivery squeezed her heart. “Dat lion made it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Dey make a new one.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“A wobot one.”

“Wow.” She didn’t have to fake her awe. Blinking back her tears, she turned to her big brother, who nodded. Amazing.

“How’s your leg?”

“I don’t get a robot one.”

“Those are saved for the best boys in the world.” She hugged Cody again and stood up.

Aaron said, “The team sent in their orthopedic squad to consult. I’m healing well. But Cody’s the star here.” Pain and courage marked his face, looking at his little boy.

She couldn’t begin to know how hard it was. She hugged his neck and kissed him. “I’ve been so worried.”

He kissed her too. “I know. I’m sorry. Paige is out of her head. This. It’s so much to deal with. Just keeps coming at us like a wicked screwball.”

“Is there anything I can do? I want to help.”

“I know.” He glanced over his shoulder at Cody and Trevor. “You know better than all of us what it takes to live different. I hope—”

“What’s she doing here?”

Natalie spun out of his arms.

“You must be Paige.” Trevor rose and extended his arm to shake her hand, it seemed, but also coming between them. “I’m Trevor MacDaniel.”

Paige ignored him. “Why is she here? I told you to leave us alone.”

“Paige.” Aaron’s voice broke.

She turned on her husband. “Get her out of here.”

“I’m going.” Natalie sent Cody a last lingering look, his bewilderment piercing her heart. With a quick, stricken glance at Aaron, she shot past Paige to the hall, her legs moving with involuntary volition.

Trevor caught her arm and turned her around the other way. They moved in silence to the elevator and down. Eyes closed, she felt the cab land. He walked her to the Lexus.

“Are you all right?”

“I can’t see.”

He turned her toward him. How could she explain that images of Cody’s fear and confusion, Aaron’s despair, overlapped by Paige’s rage and hatred all but blocked what was right in front of her?