Reunion Pass: An Eternity Springs novel (28 page)

Lancaster’s brow furrowed and he gave a hesitant, “O-kay.”

“Also, when you were late arriving, he thought you weren’t coming to get him. He’s pretty upset.”

Lancaster muttered a curse beneath his breath. “I was afraid of that.”

“Why don’t you hang back about five minutes and give me a chance to explain things. It’ll make a difference. His cabin is along this trail about three minutes ahead.”

Lancaster halted and checked his watch. “Okay.”

Chase picked up his pace and returned to find Lori sitting beside Nicholas on his bunk, stroking his head like he’d seen her do innumerable times before with an animal of one sort or another. For the first time in a long time—since he quit carrying the ring he’d intended to give her in his pocket—he pictured her as a mother.
To my child.

Whoa. Getting a little ahead of yourself there, aren’t you, Timberlake?

He cleared his throat. “Good news, Nicholas. Your dad is here. He wasn’t even late.” He gave them a brief rundown of Trevor’s shenanigans and how Jax Lancaster had stepped in to save the day.

“That boy,” Lori said with a groan.

Nicholas lifted watery eyes filled with hope toward Chase. “He’s here? Dad’s really here?”

“Yep. On his way right now. If you and Miss Lori are going to do your thing, better get ready.”

“He’s here. He came.” Nicholas blew out a heavy breath, swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, and scrambled off his bunk. “Miss Lori?”

“Are you ready, Nicholas? You have this, don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes. I can do this.”

“All right, then. I’ll go get my part of this show and meet you outside in five.”

“Okay.”

Chase and Nicholas exited the cabin just as Jax Lancaster emerged from the trees. If Chase expected father and son to go running toward each other, arms extended and joyful greetings spilling from their lips, he was sadly mistaken.

Nicholas shoved his hands into his pants pockets as he walked toward his father. Damned if the dad didn’t mimic the gesture. His smile looked forced, too. “Hello, son.”

Nicholas shrugged. “Hey, Dad.”

“I think you’ve grown a foot since I saw you last.”

“You haven’t seen me for a long time, but I’ve only grown two inches this year.”

“It’s been eighty-two days.” Lancaster briefly closed his eyes, then checked his watch. “Six hours and about twenty minutes. I’ve missed you, son. Is it okay if I give you a hug?”

Nicholas shrugged, but Chase didn’t miss the yearning on the faces of both Lancasters when the father wrapped his arms around the boy’s shoulders.

The movement Chase spied along the side of the cabin would be a welcome distraction for them both. “Nicholas, Dr. Murphy is here.”

The boy wiggled away from his father and turned to face Lori. “Oh, wow.”

“What in the world is that?” Ross Lancaster asked.

Chase couldn’t help but grin. Mortimer could easily star in one of those ugly-dog videos on the Internet.

“That’s Mortimer,” Nicholas said, his voice a little wobbly. “Dr. Murphy warned me he was scary looking. Dr. Murphy is the vet, Dad.”

Lancaster’s gaze flicked toward Chase’s. With a look, he asked,
Is this the surprise?

Chase nodded and sent up a little silent prayer that this went as well as the rest of the introductions she’d made during the past few weeks. Though the Boston terrier had slowed down since Cam Murphy rescued him from threatened euthanasia his first summer in town, the dog still had plenty of spunk left in him—as evidenced by the fact that Lori mentioned he’d escaped the Murphys’ backyard the previous day and chewed up a water sprinkler before Sarah chased him down. The years hadn’t improved his looks, either. Mortimer had two different-color eyes that bugged out, more scars than Frankenstein, and an underbite that made dentists see dollar signs.

“That is one frightening dog,” Lancaster agreed.

Nicholas said, “I haven’t met him before.”

“Okay.”

Nicholas exhaled heavily, squared his shoulders, and started walking toward Lori.

“Dogs?” His father asked softly. “This surprise involves dogs?”

“Yep.”

“He’s deathly afraid of dogs!”

“Yeah, you probably should have mentioned that in his file. Nevertheless, look at what he’s accomplished in his time at the Rocking L.”

The next few minutes were even more rewarding than those when Ava put on her July Fourth treasure-diving show. The look on Jax Lancaster’s face when he watched Nicholas follow Lori’s instructions and extend a hand to the Devil Dog to sniff made Chase want to give Lori a high five. And the fact that the tall, tough naval officer blinked away tears from his eyes when Nicholas actually laughed while giving Mortimer a treat made Chase feel like a million dollars. As father, son, vet, and monster dog interacted, Chase’s thoughts drifted back over the past few weeks. His father had done him a favor when he sent him to the Rocking L. Working with these kids had been a great experience. He was sorry it was over.

Although, he didn’t guess it had to be over. Another, shorter session started week after next.

The sound of Nicholas’s unbridled laughter distracted Chase from his thoughts and had him doing a double take. “Who took Mortimer off his leash?”

“I did!” Nicholas said, giggling.

“Wow. Just wow.”

Jax Lancaster wore a huge smile as he sauntered back toward Chase. He handed him his phone, saying, “Do me a favor? Would you take our picture, please?”

Chase stood frozen, staring down at the phone in his palm. It was open to the camera app. He broke out in a cold sweat. His hand started to shake.

“Sorry. No. I’ve got to go.” He shoved the phone back at Nicholas’s dad and fled.

Chased by the hounds of his own personal hell.

And Lori calling his name.

Chapter Sixteen

Lori spent the next few minutes doing damage control with Nicholas and his dad, making excuses for Chase’s behavior that she pulled out of thin air. “One of the reasons Mr. Chase relates to the campers is that he’s mourning the loss of some close friends earlier this spring. Sometimes he flashes back.”

“I know what that’s like,” Nicholas said solemnly. “Tell him I said sometimes it helps to pinch yourself.”

“I’ll do that.”

Or maybe she’d just pinch him herself.

After she saw the Lancasters off, she loaded up Mortimer and took him back to her dad. Cam invited her over to dinner that night—he planned to grill steaks in the backyard—but she begged off, telling him she already had plans. It was the truth.

She had a blockhead to pinch.

She screeched her car to a halt in a cloud of dust in front of the yurt and she yanked open the door and marched inside without bothering to knock. The blasted man was standing in front of the open refrigerator door. Channeling responsible women everywhere, she snarled, “Don’t just stand there with the door open. You’re wasting energy!”

“It’s not a good time, Lori.”

“Not a good time? Well, bless your heart. I guess when you call Nicholas to apologize for being such a jerk you can tell him it just wasn’t a good time. Shut the refrigerator door!”

“Dammit!” He grabbed a beer and slammed the door and whirled on her. “You are not my mother!”

“No, I’m damn sure not. But neither am I a doormat for you to wipe your feet on.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“You drag me into this dog-introduction business and then you leave me hanging? Ten minutes, Chase. You needed ten minutes to see it through.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Dammit, I’m sorry!”

The torment in his expression served to bank Lori’s temper. “What happened? Why did you throw Mr. Lancaster’s phone at him?”

“I didn’t throw his phone.”

“Yes you did. What’s the deal, Chase? You can’t keep it all inside. You have to talk about it.”

“No I don’t,” he fired back, his eyes closed, standing with his hands clenched at his sides and breathing as if he’d just finished a marathon. “I damned well don’t have to talk about anything. I have all I can handle living with the pictures flashing through my mind.”

Lori’s heart went out to him. He looked so tortured. “Talk to me, Chase. Tell me what hurts you so.”

Before she quite realized he moved, he advanced on her two solid steps. “No. No. It’s ugly, Lori. So black and evil and ugly. Not for you. Never for you. You are … clean. Clean and white and … ah, Lori. As much as I have to remember them, want to remember them, I want to forget it. All of it. I need to forget. Please help me forget.”

Chase backed her against the yurt’s wall and kissed her. It was a desperate kiss, full of pain and loneliness and guilt. His hand lifted to her breast, cupped her, kneaded her. His thumb flicked her nipple and sent electric shivers racing up and down her spine. Chase moaned into her mouth. “Lori. My Lori. Where have you been?”

She tore her mouth away from his. “You left me, Chase. I waited … I waited for you. You gave up on me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Then his hand was in her hair, tugging, exposing her neck. His teeth nipped and tugged as he unerringly found those sensitive spots he’d learned eons ago. Sensitive places he’d discovered a lifetime ago. Places no man had found in quite the same way during the years that had followed.

Chase.

She’d missed him. Dear heaven above, she’d missed him.

So she kissed him back.

Her response seemed to release whatever dam held him back and he devoured her mouth with lips that ravaged. His tongue plunged and plundered and took. His hands moved across her body, delved beneath her shirt, and made her shudder and shiver and want. Oh, how she wanted.

He held her pinned against the wall, the evidence of his need hot and hard and huge against her belly. The familiarity of it coaxed a whimper from her throat.

At the sound, he tore his mouth away from hers. He gazed down at her with molten-chocolate eyes that stared straight into her soul. In a voice rough with arousal, he demanded, “Say yes.”

She couldn’t speak. She wished he hadn’t asked. It would be so much easier if he hadn’t asked.

His hands gave her shoulders a shake. “Lori!”

“Yes!” she cried, her voice a little wild. “Yes, Chase. Yes.”

Triumph glittered in his eyes. He lifted her and carried her to his bed where he stripped her naked and made love to her with an intensity that was both familiar and new. She moaned, she thrashed about. As he nibbled and licked his way down her body, when he pushed her thighs apart to allow him access to her core, she threaded her fingers in his thick dark hair and surrendered to the pleasure. As the first climax slammed into her and sent her soaring, Lori sobbed out his name.

When he filled her, when her body clenched around him and gripped him hard, when his thrusting stoked the cinders of her desire back into flame, Lori wondered how she had survived without him.

And as they lay entwined together in the aftermath of passion, her body aching deliciously, the hum of satisfaction singing in her veins, she asked herself the more immediate question.

How would she survive if he left her again?

Long minutes of silence ticked by. She had yet to come up with an answer when Chase’s voice rumbled beneath her ear.

“When I left Eternity Springs the last time, I thought I was headed for Tibet to raft the Hidden River Gorge. It’s the one ride a river rat dreams about.”

Lori went still. She knew about the Hidden River Gorge. His mother had cried on her mother’s shoulder about the trip last January. Lori had looked it up. “The Hidden River Gorge is your Everest.”

“Yeah.”

He rolled over onto his back, keeping her tucked against him as he told her about floods and fears and feuds. He spoke of ignoring his intuition and making a fateful decision to climb onto a helicopter for an unnecessary trip. He spoke of Bradley Austin’s skill in crash-landing the helicopter and David Whitelaw’s youthful confidence in the people back at camp. He painted a vivid picture of the landing zone and walked through the decision to leave it to scout out a campsite that offered some shelter from an approaching storm.

“I picked up my pack and camera bag out of habit. I carried it everywhere. The grass was dense. I hiked for ten, maybe twelve minutes before I started climbing. Needed the vantage point of height.”

Lori waited, her mouth dry, tension zinging on her nerves. It seemed like an hour passed before he continued, though she suspected it wasn’t more than a minute.

“They came up from below and surrounded Bradley and David. Ten men. Armed to the hilt. They were not like the locals who’d worked with us. They looked different. Foreigners, as much as me. I watched them through my long-range lens and for a few minutes, they just talked. I began to think it might be okay.”

He paused again and Lori wanted to tell him never mind. She didn’t want to hear any more. But she knew she had to hear it. She knew Chase had to tell it.

“Then they set the helicopter on fire. Bradley lost it and started yelling. This little short guy took the butt of his weapon and slammed it into his gut. Bradley doubled over and David … well … the kid went Rambo. Tried to wrestle the gun away from the little SOB. Didn’t get the gun but he got in a few good licks. I thought for sure they’d shoot him right then and there.” He sucked in a breath and exhaled a heavy sigh. “Better if they had.”

Chase continued the story, explaining how he had trailed the men and their captives for days, always on the lookout for an opportunity to effect a rescue. “By the third day, I was having trouble keeping up. Staying awake. One time it caught up with me and I slept hard for hours. When I woke up, they were long gone. I picked up their trail easy enough, but I’ll always wonder if I missed my chance to rescue them then. It was the last chance, because when I caught up with them, they’d joined a larger group. It was a training camp. Instead of being outnumbered ten to three, they had us by forty.”

Lori wanted to lift her head and look at him, but she sensed he wouldn’t welcome it. The only movement she dared was to splay her fingers wider across his bare chest.