It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) (21 page)

“Cold, or nerves?” he asked, shifting his speech patterns. Simple was better with shock victims, and basic Eagle Scout training from years ago came in handy right about now as he assessed the man.

“B-b-both.” The truck engine didn’t sound like it was moving closer. Was it caught in the thick Maine forest? A burst of adrenaline made his limbs tingle with frustration and the kind of primal fear that you can’t stop. It has to run its course.

Half an hour ago, he was placidly paddling his way through a long, exhausting night tour of the shore, his mind wandering into that territory where thoughts become helium balloons that rise on their own, leaving the mind blank eventually, allowing for true thought to take place.

And now he was sitting next to a mylar-blanket-covered man with broken bones and a dilemma Mike couldn’t fix with a phone call or his own strong body.

His breath began to quicken with fury at his powerlessness. The boat tilted on shore, cock-eyed and sure, the tip staring at him as if to say, That’s it? That’s all you can do?

“Mike!” A man shouted from the top of the hill, his voice carried on the wind.

“Here!” he and Pine shouted simultaneously. Both began to laugh. The sound was great to hear out of Pine, who finished his chuckle and began taking long, deep, slow breaths, the rhythm clearly one borne of practice. His eyelids closed and he breathed in through his nose, out through the mouth.

“Mikey? You there?”

Pine muttered, “Oh, God,” under his breath. His hand began to shake. “Pa?” he shouted.

“Got the old truck here. We’ll get you outta this,” called out a thin, but deep, old man’s voice.

“Your dad?”

“Yeah.” The tone of voice Pine used made Mike shut up. He wouldn’t pry.

Most people didn’t sound that conflicted to have their dad appear in an emergency. Must be a backstory.

“Holy shit!” Miles called down. “You work as a stunt man in your spare time?” Mike looked up just as a third vehicle arrived, this one pulling close enough to the edge and with a focused search light. Suddenly, the shore exploded with light. Blinking hard, he saw the shadow of three sets of headlights in his eyes for the next minute.

The light gave him a look at what they were dealing with now. He let out a low whistle of horror.

Pine must have had a guardian angel with him when he ran off that cliff.

About ten feet to the left of them, the cliff was covered with jagged rocks, and to the right nothing but thick brush. Pine had accidentally picked the cleanest strip of shoreline going down from cliff to water.

Lucky guy.

The sound of crinkling filled the air, and Mike turned to find Pine struggling to stand, his blanket arguing with the night, as if flinging angry words to the wind. He rushed to support the man, and when he slid one arm around his waist and supported his good elbow, he was struck by how damn big the guy was. Mike’s best friend, Jeremy, was a tall guy, but wiry.

Mike Pine was a fucking redwood tree, thick and tall. He idly wondered how the guy managed to be a long-distance, endurance runner with a body made of so much muscle, but the thought shot off like a fired cannon as Pine started to crumple, taking Mike with him.

With the quick thinking that comes from that tiny slice between vigilance and panic, Mike twisted himself, maneuvering until he got Pine upright fully. As they took one step, then two, he felt like a teenager again, playing in a three-legged race.

“I’m good,” Pine said, his voice low with pain. “I can walk.” He peeled Mike’s support away until he was standing on his own, elbow at an awkward angle against his body, forearm crooked and sticking out, hand dangling like a useless, decaying leaf on the end of a branch of a tree in winter.

Step by step, deep breath by deep breath, Pine made his way across the cracked shells that littered the shore. He paused in front of an enormous driftwood log and sat down, folding slowly.

Up above the distinct sound of two people clapping could be heard.

“You can walk?” Miles shouted. “Can you make it up the path?”

“We’re comin’, Mikey!”

Pine’s breath hitched as he inhaled.

Path?
Mike thought to himself.
There’s a fucking path?
 

A bright LED light illuminated the bottom of the thick brush, and Mike jogged over to it. A tiny path, no wider than two feet tucked together, snaked through the thick brush. Tracking it, he saw the climb would be steep.

They might need a boat after all.

That thunder he’d heard in the distance grew louder, and then the wind just...changed. He’d become accustomed to the weather patterns here on the coast of central Maine, so different from those in Indiana growing up, or even in Boston and the Cape. He could smell the rain coming, and he didn’t have to look at the ocean to see that the waves had picked up.

He could hear it.

Short, punchy breaths started to fire out of Mike Pine, the sound like a man with a sucking chest wound.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Gasp. “Just adjusting.” Gasp.

That thin line between vigilance and panic just got thinner.

“Miles! You got some way we can help him up?” Mike could see Miles standing there, talking to a guy as tall as him, which meant Jeremy. A fourth vehicle’s engine sounded in the distance. Damn—they must have called in half the town. Mike’s heart swelled with relief.

The more responders, the better.

“Hang on. Coming.” Jeremy’s form broke away from Miles and disappeared from the thin clearing between the woods. Mike could barely hear the sound of him making his way through the thick woods, but then the unmistakeable sight of a man wending his way down the path made Mike understand that there was a plan. Backup. Blessed backup.

He wasn’t the only one here to help Pine any more.

It took a few minutes, during which Pine worked to control his breathing and Mike jogged over to the base of the path to greet Jeremy, but he got there, face flushed and eyes intense.

“He okay?”

Mike shook his head and dipped his voice. “His breathing’s gone weird, and his arm’s broken in at least two places. I’m not so sure about his legs and pelvis, either.”

“Here.” Jeremy thrust a thick windbreaker at him, one of two in his arms. He walked away from Mike and reached Pine, Mike on his heels, blinded for a moment as he threw the jacket over his head.

“This,” Jeremy declared as he took a much-thicker down coat and tucked it around Mike Pine’s shoulders, “is exactly why I don’t run. Running’s dangerous. If I’m running, it’s because there’s a new batch of beer being delivered from the local brewhouse.”

Pine managed a weak laugh. “Thanks for the coat.”

Jeremy unfolded a second item in his arms, a thick, lined wool blanket that he wrapped around Pine’s legs and lap. Now the guy was insulated from the cold, at least, though he continued to shiver. Jeremy took out his walkie-talkie and said something to Miles that Mike couldn’t understand.

“Who’s up there?” he asked as Jeremy finished talking to Miles.

“Miles. Mike Pine’s dad. Dylan. Alex. Joe Stillman.”

If anyone could figure this out, that crew could.

“Pete? Adam? Dan?” He ran though all the remaining strong guys he could think of.

“Someone has to hold down the fort, so Pete’s there with Sandy, Lydia, and Laura. Dan’s still out of town, coming in early from Portland with Krysta and Caleb. Last-minute supply run before the big wedding.”

Oh, great. No Krysta. Without her best friend, Lydia would be one massive wreck.

“Why Alex? He’s a guest.”

“He’s also a doctor.”

“Gotcha.”

The complexity of the situation made Mike angry. This should be easy. Just rescue the damn guy, right? But once again, Mother Nature reigned. She decided the terrain, the weather, the wind patterns and the placement of obstacles. No one could influence her when the pieces were all in place. All you could do was find a solution or ride her out.

“Jeremy!” he called out, the wind kicking up bad, making it hard to hear. The edge of his windbreaker hood caught in his mouth and he pulled it out. “How the hell are we going to do this?”

Jeremy frowned, listened to something on his walkie-talkie, and shrugged helplessly.

And then the rain began.

“Fuck!” Mike screamed.

Pine rose slowly, like a monk in a silent order, and this time, Mike had help. Between him and Jeremy, they guided him with aching slowness, the rain pelting them like BBs from a kid’s gun, as they reached the base of the path up.

“Think you can walk it?” Jeremy shouted, The rain was hitting them at a forty-five degree angle, punishing in its suddenness.

“I’ll try,” Pine grunted, the words punctuated by those weird breath gasps. Mike frowned, wondering now whether the guy had broken some ribs in the fall.

They made their way about ten feet up the hill before Pine sagged against Jeremy, exhausted.

“Need—to—rest,” he gasped. Mike looked up. The path curved as the slope increased. If it were just a straight line up, they’d be a third done. By his eyeballing, they were about a fifth done, and it was the easy fifth.

Jeremy’s walkie-talkie crackled, and this time, Mike heard the words. “Need a basket?”

A basket?

“We can’t drag him up. No way. The path’s too curvy, and he’d break something else.”

“What about driving him up on a four-wheeler?” Miles asked.

Mike and Jeremy shared a look.

“Dylan,” Pine gasped. “Dylan was a firefighter and a paramedic. He might know. Is he up there?”

“Who do you think is suggesting all these ideas?” a new voice barked back from the walkie-talkie. “Jesus, Mike, I knew you were gun shy about us all getting married, but this one takes the cake,” Dylan cracked.

Pine started laughing, which turned into a racking cough that scared the shit out of Mike.

“We have to get him up there.” The rain stayed steady, any part of him not covered by his wetsuit now soaked, through the windbreaker and all. He wondered about Pine, who would have the added weight of the water soaking into his outer clothing very soon. Whatever benefit he got from the heat of the clothing would be outweighed by the elements very, very soon.

“Can the four-wheeler do the job? The trail’s so narrow,” Mike said into the walkie-talkie. “And it’s going to be nothing but wet sand soon.”

“We don’t need a crash and slide with yet another person getting hurt,” Jeremy said to Mike. They shared a look that made Mike’s mouth go dry.

No, indeed.

That was the last thing they needed.

Jeremy’s words reminded him that Dylan was up there, his longtime partner in physical jeopardy, and he and Jeremy were standing here wasting time.

“Let’s go,” he ordered, taking command. All of his worry faded, the ex CEO in him taking over. “You have to get up that hill on your own two feet, Mike,” he said to Pine, taking the guy’s bad side and holding on
b
y the hip. “One step at a time. We’ve got your back.”

Jeremy shot him a very uncertain look that Mike ignored.

“I’m trying.”

“Try later. Do now.”
Step. Step
.

“Oh, I see the part of Yoda will be played by Mike Bournham,” Jeremy quipped.

Step. Step.

“If I’m Yoda, you’re Jar Jar Binks,” Mike muttered. Pine made a barky, wheezy laugh. Mike guided him two more steps.

“You take that back!” Jeremy shouted, pretending to be genuinely upset. “I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”

Step. Step. Step.

“Of course you have,” Mike scoffed.

They were about a third of the way up now. The angle of the path changed, and Jeremy slipped suddenly, taking Pine down a foot or so, though the big guy recovered.

“Careful,” Jeremy cautioned.

“You talking to yourself, or us?”

“I’m pretty fucking close to talking to God at this point,” Jeremy snapped.

But they kept going up, step by step, Mike’s hamstrings starting to scream. He wore water shoes, unsuited for this kind of terrain. The arch of one foot sent a lightning bolt of pain through him as he stepped on a thin, bony tree root.

Then again, he wasn’t making this walk with broken bones, scraped skin, a possible broken rib or two, and in a state of near shock, so who the hell was he to complain, even in his own mind?

“I think we need another guy to help down here!” he called up.

“Rope and guy coming!” Dylan hollered. In the distance, over the pelting sound of rain, he heard metal against metal, and men shouting.

Within seconds, Mike lost his footing and felt his left leg just
go
, right down the sand, his adductor muscles tearing. Instinct told him to cling to Pine’s side, but a smarter part of his brain willed him to let go, because if he didn’t, he’d take the injured guy down with him.

And then he got a taste of what it felt like to roll down a cliffside himself.

Mike Pine

“MIKE!” Jeremy’s scream pierced him, the pain and fear tugging through his blood like a trillion tether lines being tightened at once. He braced his legs, the angle of the path making it damn hard to even stay still, rain shoved by harsh winds right into his eyes. If he turned to look down at Mike Bournham, he would fall right along with him. Social nicety said you look to try to help, but survival told him to crawl inward, because Mike Bour
n
ham had just been injured trying to help him. If he went back down that hill, too, this rescue would be nothing more than a clusterfuck.

And could turn deadly.

Not how he imagined the night before his wedding. Ever.

The panic from earlier in the day at the sight of his parents had faded out of him long ago, seeping into the sand down there, washed away by tides long gone, the worry and horror all mingled in the ocean water, diluted down to nothing more than nature’s tears.

“FUCK!” Jeremy screamed, holding on, legs working and shifting as the rain turned the ground beneath their feet into a game of Twister.

A thick rope struck Mike on the shoulder, scraping the windbreaker, the rope’s weight so great it dragged the hoodie down, exposing his bare biceps. Stumbling, he perched between two worlds, nearly falling straight backwards.