The Reluctant Bride (3 page)

Karinne sighed again and turned her head away. He could rarely say no to her. Maybe that was his problem. Max relented.

“You and Anita have breakfast? Did you bring boots? Hats?”

Karinne nodded. “We ate. And we have everything ready for the hike down.”

“How about a mule ride?”

“But…I thought they were booked.”

“The park service had two cancellations. They said we could have the slots if we'd piggyback their mule-pack gear down with our regular chopper load supplies,” Max said, referring to the chopper delivery service the concessions
often used. “One couple can ride, the other can fly. Your choice.”

Karinne nodded. “Anita would love the flight. I'd rather savor the quiet. And you.”

“We might lose the sun again,” Max warned, smiling at her response.

“That's not a very romantic answer,” Karinne replied.

“I'm saving the romance for after tonight, since we'll be in a dorm. Sorry, but all we're allowed is a good-night kiss.”

“I can drag that out for quite a while,” she said merrily.

“Ms. Cavanaugh, you're a woman after my own heart.”

Bright Angel Trailhead,
South Rim, Grand Canyon

The sun finally broke through the clouds as the four regrouped in the parking area outside the small airport that served the Grand Canyon.

“Are you
positive
you don't want to take the helicopter?” Anita tried to hide her eagerness.

“I've been. You go,” Karinne replied. “This will be your first time, won't it?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes. Thanks, I can't wait.” Anita grinned.

“Guess Anita and I will meet you down below,” Cory said.

“You want my help loading the supplies?” Max asked.

“I can handle it. You two get your mules,” Cory said.

“Enjoy your flight,” Karinne told them.

“We'll see you this evening,” Max added.

Karinne tilted back her head, shading her eyes as the prop wash of the helicopter blew over their heads. Anita and Cory's journey would be far faster than hers, but she didn't mind. She and Max stood apart from the crowd of tourists waiting for the trip down.

“You nonriders don't need to worry,” the park's head
mule wrangler explained to the group standing outside the corral. “These mules could make the trip blindfolded. Just sit back for the ride and let them do their job. The drop-off side of the trail might seem close, but don't let that scare you. We've never lost a mule or rider yet. Listen up as I call out your name and assign you a mount.”

Karinne listened, one hand holding the upper pipe bar of the corral, the other still shading her eyes as she stared across the majesty of the Grand Canyon. Nowhere else did reds, pinks, oranges, browns and royal purples blend into such a rich tapestry of bands. Within the canyon, towering spires of layered colors descended one mile down into the Colorado River. Even though she'd seen it before, memory couldn't do justice to the reality of its grandeur. The huge size of the canyon, two hundred and seventeen miles long and from four to eighteen miles wide, provided a huge canvas for nature's most famous colors. Most canyons were dark holes, with scattered green vegetation to break up the browns. Not this one—it was a brilliant rainbow that glistened from top to bottom and side to side.

Karinne listened as the park ranger went into more safety details; the mules took the same trail day after day, year after year, making them safe for nonriders and children.

“Does Cory still ride?” Karinne whispered. She and Cory had learned together one summer.

Max shook his head. “No. The day he got his driver's license was the day he quit using a saddle.”

“That's too bad,” Karinne said. “He was always good with animals.”

As an only child, Karinne had riding lessons, ballet lessons, singing lessons and had participated in scouting. Karinne's lack of pitch made music lessons difficult, and she'd quit scouting when her best friend, Cory, couldn't come camping with “the girls.” And although a graceful
child, she'd found dance boring. However, the riding lessons for her and Cory had been a huge success, even though her present lifestyle—and extensive traveling—prevented her from indulging in a pastime she still enjoyed.

The head wrangler continued his talk as Max asked, “You've never ridden mules, have you?”

“No, but I guess the principle's the same, isn't it?”

“The gait's a bit different. And since they're sterile, they're more docile.”

Karinne knew mules were the product of a male donkey and a female horse. Owners claimed mules were more intelligent than either donkeys or horses. Even the ancient Romans and Greeks had bred and valued them for transport, while Old Mexico preferred mules to horses for cavalry soldiers.

“Mules can see all four feet. Horses can't. That's why the early miners used them,” Max explained.

“I just thought the mules would be…larger. These seem…small.”

“Not that small,” Max contradicted, “but the park mules are deliberately bred from the smaller quarter-horse mares. Anything larger wouldn't be able to handle the narrowness of the trail,” he said.

Just then, the second park ranger, a woman, asked, “Anyone here afraid of heights?”

Karinne and Max ignored the wranglers' sharp appraisal of the crowd. She'd never been afraid of heights or horses. She doubted she'd be afraid on a mule.

“If you are, now's the time to admit it. There's no shame in being honest, people, and no place for rider panic attacks. There's only one stopping point on the way down—the Tonto formation,” the male ranger said.

There was some murmuring in the crowd, but no one spoke up.

“We'll be on the trail nonstop around four hours before lunch,” he went on, “and we'll reach Phantom Ranch a couple hours later.” The ranger tipped back his hat and studied the cloudy sky for a moment. “You need to remember two things.”

“Drink lots of water,” Max mouthed to Karinne.

“One, keep hydrated. It may seem cool right now, but the deeper we descend, the higher the temperatures. There's a twenty-degree difference between the rim and the bottom, even in winter. Use your hats, sunglasses, sunblock, and drink often. This is July, our hottest month. In clear weather it can be more than one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit on the canyon floor.”

The other mule wrangler, an attractive woman with long braided hair, spoke next. “That creates another problem. Our mules don't—can't—stop. There are no bathroom facilities for a long time. In ten minutes we mount up. Last chance for you all to make a pit stop. Remember your mule assignment.”

“It's single file for humans and mules,” the other ranger said. “Mules have the right of way over hikers.”

“The trail's
that
narrow?” Karinne exclaimed.

“Yep.”

“Good thing they can see all four feet.”

More than a few in the group rushed off to the restrooms as Karinne turned to Max.

“Phantom Ranch—that's the stables, right?”

“And the overnight lodgings for riders. We'll meet Cory and Anita there, get our supplies and head downriver tomorrow.”

Karinne nodded. She shrugged out of her pack and left it with Max. “Watch this for me? Be back in a minute.”

Except it took a lot longer. Karinne ruefully wondered if she should've taken the helicopter, after all, when she saw
the line for the ladies' room. The men's room line was no shorter.

Oh, well. Better safe than squirming in the saddle.

When they'd all returned to their mules, the wrangler had everyone mount. She explained that she'd take the point position, and the park ranger would follow in the rear. “Let the mules form their own line after I lead out,” she said. “They have their own particular order.”

A few minutes of turmoil went by as determined mules took their usual spots. Karinne and Max's mules preferred the end of the trail, with Max's mount positioned directly in front of Karinne's. She adjusted her baseball cap and gave Max a thumbs-up when he turned in his seat to check on her. Then silence set in as the mules took awestruck riders down into the vast colors of the Grand Canyon.

For the first hour Karinne drank in the sights, grateful for the respite from screaming, yelling, drunken crowds that were her work setting day after day. She'd never heard such quiet on the job. And sounds, when she registered them, were soothing, natural. The clop of shod hoofs on packed ground was broken by the occasional screech of a hunting red-tailed hawk—a cry that carried and echoed through the pure air. No trucks or cars or buildings marred the openness—nothing except rock spires and wildlife. Best of all, from Karinne's point of view, this place had Max.

And he'd once offered to give it up for her. How could she allow him to do that? If only she had the courage to quit her own job, but since she couldn't leave her father, it made no sense to leave Phoenix or gainful employment.

After Max graduated from college, he'd discussed his future plans with her. They were a real couple by then, though Karinne was still in school, and Max had reluctantly offered to give up his hopes of a canyon raft concession and
continue to do geological work with the city of Phoenix. He'd been hired on, but wasn't happy.

Karinne refused his offer. “No, Max. I'll join you up north when I graduate. I'm sure I can find work in Flagstaff.”

After her graduation, they'd been reunited in a Grand Canyon topside hotel. For one happy week the two shared their love, planned their lives together, and Max proposed.

“I wanted to wait until you graduated before making it official,” he said, slipping a diamond ring on her finger.

“We'll set a date as soon as I find a job,” she promised.

But that promise was derailed when, with Jeff's help, a headhunter tracked her down at the hotel to offer her a media photographer's dream job. She could have refused—would have if Max had objected—but he was silent. So, with hesitation, she accepted.

“I've just finished with classes, and this is a chance of a lifetime,” she explained, feeling a little guilty. “I'd like to get some experience for my résumé. Then I'll move up here and we'll get married. It'll only be for a short time.”

“As long as it's short,” Max replied. In her excitement, Karinne missed hearing the strangeness in his tone.

“It will be. Oh, Dad will be so proud!”

“And so will I,” Max said, never reproaching her. Still, the “short time” had turned into months, then years. Her career was so challenging, and then Jeff's heart problems had worsened. There was no sense quitting if she had to stay in Phoenix with her father. Plus she knew Max loved her. He would always be there, and after all, they were still young.

There was another reason Karinne stalled, a secret reason. If Karinne were honest with herself, she was hoping
for Margot to reappear. After all, there had never been a body. If she and Jeff moved, how could Margot trace them?

It was wishful thinking, she knew. Foolish, wishful thinking. But all the same, Karinne stayed at home and Max paid the price. He was getting tired of waiting for the family they'd once planned. Karinne would have to harden her heart and do what her father's doctors recommended. That wouldn't be easy. Because selling the family home meant giving up her last hope of finding her mother.

Still… Karinne sighed deeply, a sigh tinged with pleasure that carried clearly in the pristine air. For now, she could shove aside the tedium of constant noise, and even the mystery of a pink sweatshirt and a note signed “Mom.”

Max swiveled around in his saddle immediately.

“You okay?” he asked.

Karinne smiled. “Just enjoying the trip.”

Max nodded and turned forward again. For the first time since the ride started, the canyon took a backseat in Karinne's vision. Max had an air of caring about him that didn't detract from his masculinity one bit. In fact, she'd always found it one of his most attractive traits. The male athletes she spent her life with were trained to ignore blood and pain, to focus on winning, winning, winning. As the backbone of a multibillion-dollar industry, they were paid exorbitant salaries to do so. No one expected otherwise.

A single sigh would never have signaled such concern from an athlete on the job. Photographers had to suffer the same weather and conditions as the athletes. Even Jeff, her father, had taught her to look after herself, to “be tough” after her mother's death.

With adult hindsight, Karinne often wished she could take back all the “Mom, stop fussing!” complaints she'd made. The “boring” lessons had been signs of a mother's
love. Other than for Max, only her mother would have responded so quickly to Karinne's sigh. Strange how one man's action could strike her so deeply.

In certain ways, Max reminded Karinne of the nineteenth-century explorer, John Wesley Powell, whose life she'd studied in American history courses. His studies of the Grand Canyon were not only his life's work, but Powell's personal joy. Powell lived for his expeditions to the Grand Canyon, Green Canyon and the Rocky Mountains.

Karinne studied Max. Of course there were differences, as well. Powell had fought as an army major in the Civil War, losing an arm, which had ended his military career. The Civil War and primitive field medicine had taken its toll on many men, including Powell. The old black-and-white photographs of him hadn't been kind. They showed a determined, too-thin war survivor. He'd refused to give up his passion for exploration and study, even though his expeditions had taken place in a hostile land.

Max Hunter was a successful native of this wild land. Unlike Powell, Max was healthy without the haggard look of early explorers. He moved with an easy masculine grace that Karinne found a pleasant change from the hurly-burly powerhouses on the sports teams. He didn't need weights or vitamins to stay in shape. His skin didn't sport “lucky” tattoos, and his brown hair wasn't streaked, dyed, spiked or shaved in current men's trends. Nor did he have facial piercings and diamond-studded earrings.

Max was her perfect match, except for one thing—geographic compatibility. Togetherness would be hard. The Grand Canyon was one of the most photographed areas in the world, but she couldn't make money there. Nor could she leave her father, not with his heart problem. But lots of people had successful long-distance marriages, including Cory and Anita. Karinne and Max were in love, both
committed to making things work, so she'd been happily content…until lately.

Could my mother still be alive?
Even the attractive sights and shapes of the canyon around her—including Max Hunter—couldn't distract her. However, she'd try to stay calm.
After all,
she thought,
I'm on vacation….

 

F
IVE LONG HOURS
of riding in intermittent drizzle brought the mules to the Tonto formation. By then, all riders—from first-timers to the more experienced—were ready to dismount and stretch their muscles. The park ranger and wranglers made certain the mules were properly tied to the hitching posts, warned against littering, then checked out the tack while most riders headed for the Porta Potties. Soon after, lunches and drinks were distributed. Karinne and Max both ate their sandwiches standing.