The Rivals (11 page)

Sarah was so caught up in comforting Drew that it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing. “Thank you, God,” she murmured.

“What?” Drew said.

Sarah smiled up at him and said, “You'll be pleased to hear we haven't been buried alive.”

“Damn pleased,” Drew said, returning her smile with a lopsided grin. “How did you come to that conclusion?”

Sarah pointed at a crack in the chinking near the front door of the cabin. “Sunlight.”

Drew left her and crossed to the door, which faced the downslope, and opened it. A foot of snow blocked the threshold, but that was all. He turned to her and smiled. “I'm feeling damn lucky right now. How about you?”

Sarah felt something lurch inside her at the sight of Drew's brilliant smile. She'd found him attractive from the start, but the heightened emotions of the past half hour had made her even more susceptible to whatever it was about this man that made him stand out from all others. Lucky? She'd be damn lucky to get out of here with her heart intact.

She forced her gaze away from him, back to the interior of the cabin. “Too bad there was no one here for us to find,” she said, as she surveyed the dilapidated one-room cabin.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I was hoping…” He met Sarah's gaze and said, “I wanted her to be here.”

What he meant, and hadn't said, was that he wanted Kate Grayhawk to be alive. Sarah wanted the same thing. More than he knew.

“We'd better go,” she said. “I need to check on my kids.”

She watched Drew curb the reflexive twist of his mouth at the mention of her kids. He looked at her and smiled ruefully.

Her heart was thumping heavily, and her body felt languid. She resisted the urge to move in his direction. So what if he'd allowed her to comfort him? So what if he'd comforted—and protected—her? So what if he had a thousand-watt smile?

He was a rich playboy. He couldn't stand kids. Well, most kids. All he wanted from her, if he wanted anything at all, was sex.

Sarah looked into Drew's striking blue eyes and felt her insides take the kind of uncoordinated flying leap a bullrider takes off a ball-breaking Brahman.

She realized she was trembling again, and wondered if it was a leftover response from the avalanche or anxiety about what might happen next. She stumbled over her own feet when she tried to walk. She must have looked like she needed someone to hold her up, because Drew crossed the room in two seconds flat and tucked his arms around her.

“You okay?” he asked, staring down into her eyes.

She stared back up at him, feeling her insides clench in a way she recognized all too well. “No,” she rasped. “I'm not okay.”

“What's wrong?”

She closed her eyes to shut out the concern she saw in this near-stranger's eyes.

“Hey,” he said, holding her close and rocking her. “We're okay. It's all over. We're fine.”

He kissed her on the forehead. Purely in comfort, she was sure. Then on the cheek. And then his mouth slid down to hers.

And she felt the world turn upside down.

Adrenaline was still running hot through Sarah's veins. That was the only explanation she had for the voracious need she felt to be kissed, to be touched, to somehow climb inside the skin of the man whose need seemed as ravenous as her own.

“Sarah,” he said in a guttural voice.

Just her name. She answered his call with the wanton desire that had gone from tight bud to full bloom in the seconds since his mouth had claimed hers.

His eyes glittered avidly in the shafts of sunlight that streamed through the cabin walls, as the snow settled on the countryside around them.

Their mouths meshed, their hands searched urgently for flesh, discarding mittens and shoving coats and sweaters aside. Sarah gasped as Drew's warm hand surrounded her breast and heard his gasp in return as she slid her hand inside his long johns.

Her mouth sought his in a frenzy, her tongue dueling with his, hot and wet and urgent. He lifted her and she clasped her legs around his waist as he impaled her. She heard a ragged murmur of satisfaction in his throat and answered with a moan of her own. Everything was feeling—hot, liquid, pulsating need.

He took the few steps necessary to brace her against the wall and give him the leverage he needed to thrust. Her body tightened around his and she groaned as she convulsed in a sweet agony of joy and pain. He uttered a savage, guttural sound as she felt the heat of his seed inside her.

Her breath hissed from her in smoky clouds, as it did from him. The air felt painfully cold as she sucked deep breaths to feed desperate lungs.

The sudden knowledge that they hadn't used anything to prevent conception woke her abruptly from the fantasy she'd created with him. “Oh, God,” she croaked. “Let me down.”

She kept her face pressed against Drew's chest and her arms on his shoulders as he released her cramped legs.

She resisted the touch of his fingertip under her chin until he said, “Sarah, look at me.”

She wasn't brave enough to deny him. She lifted her chin defiantly, ready to confront him.

When their eyes met, she saw a glint of humor, and then the amused twitch of his mouth.

“I have to admit I wasn't expecting that,” he said. “From near death to spectacular sex in the space of a heartbeat.”

“It's the ‘near death' part I could have done without,” Sarah admitted. “The ‘spectacular sex' was…” She ran a fingertip over his still-damp lips and felt her insides quiver. “Spectacular.”

“Except now I'm about to freeze my ass off,” Drew said with a smile that threatened Sarah's heart rate. Her nipples peaked as he straightened her sports bra back over her breasts. She held her breath as he lowered her long john shirt, trailing his hand enticingly across her pubis. She fought the urge to arch her hips against him.

She grabbed his hand and said, “Don't.”

He looked surprised but didn't push the matter. “I think your sweater's over there on the floor.”

By the time she'd retrieved her sweater, he was dressed again and holding her coat, scarf, hat and mittens in his hand. She allowed him to help her into the coat, then took everything else from him and finished dressing.

They'd abandoned their cross-country skis and poles on the floor inside the door. Sarah picked hers up and stepped outside into the powdery foot of snow with Drew on her heels.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Drew said.

“No.” She stepped into her skis, grabbed her poles and shoved off in the direction of the parking lot.

Sarah felt surprisingly self-conscious when she and Drew ran into a Teton County Search and Rescue team heading up the trail as she and Drew were going down. She knew her eyes must be bright, and her lips felt beestung from Drew's kisses. But no one seemed to notice anything different about her.

“Hey, Sarah,” the team leader greeted her. “Should have known you'd be up here ahead of us. Who's that with you?”

Sarah had no choice but to introduce Drew. “This is Drew DeWitt. A…friend.”

Too late Sarah realized she shouldn't have tried to put a label on Drew, because once she did, eyebrows went up all around. Detective Sarah Barndollar was a notorious loner. Ever since Tom had disappeared, she'd claimed she had no time for anything except work and family obligations. Yet, here she was skiing with a stranger none of them had ever met—in a town where local folks knew each other—and calling him a friend.

“Any suggestions where we ought to go looking for the Grayhawk girl?” the team leader asked her, his curious eyes on Drew.

To Sarah's surprise, Drew answered, “Above the avalanche, because if she was anywhere below it she's dead and buried now.”

He shoved off without giving anyone a chance to reply. Sarah stayed only long enough to say, “Head up to where we marked her backpack was found and work your way downhill. Good luck.”

Drew reached the Tahoe ahead of her and was leaning against the front fender, his skis already strapped to the roof, waiting for her. “They aren't going to find her,” Drew said flatly.

“Probably not,” Sarah agreed as she lashed her skis to the SUV. “But they have to look.” She paused and added, “Just as we did.”

Drew turned his back on her and looked up at the mountain. “Where the hell has she gone?”

“We may never know,” Sarah said. It was a brutal truth she'd been forced to live with before.

He turned angry blue eyes on her and said, “That's not good enough, Detective Barndollar.”

“I've done all I can do today,” Sarah replied. “There are a lot of dedicated officers searching for Kate. I'll start again tomorrow, and I won't ever stop searching until I find her. But right now, I have to go home to my kids.” She got into the Tahoe and waited for him to join her.

They made the trip back to town in a silence all the more provocative because of what had passed between them on the mountain. When they reached the parking lot where Drew had left his Porsche, Sarah killed the engine and reached for the door, hoping to escape without talking to him.

He caught her arm and said, “This isn't over.”

She forced herself to meet his gaze and said, “It was sex. Precipitated by—”

He caught her nape and kissed her hard on the mouth. Her blood thrummed through her veins, and she felt completely alive as she hadn't since long before Tom had walked out the door. She didn't try to escape. She simply stopped returning his kiss.

When he let her go, she put up a wall behind her eyes to keep him from searching out the chaos his kiss had created inside her. “Good-bye, Drew,” she said.

His lips curved in an ironic smile. “I'll be seeing you, Detective Barndollar.”

Sarah didn't contradict him. She was just glad to get him out of the car and out of her life, before she got involved with him anymore than she already was. She stayed where she was until he'd removed his skis from the Tahoe and strapped them onto his Porsche. He gunned the engine, so she could hear the horsepower under the hood, but since it was a police parking lot, he eased the Porsche onto the street like he was taking his dog for a pleasant walk.

Sarah leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes and let the remorse flood over her. What had she been thinking?

Well, the answer to that was simple. She hadn't been thinking. She'd been feeling. Oh, God, had she been feeling. So much. So wonderfully much.

A knock on the window jerked her back to reality, and she stepped out of her Tahoe. “Hi, Jim,” she said, greeting the investigative sergeant who'd taught her everything about police work that she hadn't learned during the FBI course she'd taken at Quantico. Sergeants didn't work on weekends, and yet Jim was here, on his way out as she was coming in. “What's up?” she asked her boss.

“Anything new on the Grayhawk girl?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, no.”

“We're getting a lot of pressure to find her,” Jim said.

“From Blackthorne?”

“Yeah, from him. And from King Grayhawk. He wants his granddaughter found. Now. The sheriff has every available deputy working double shifts.”

“I've already done my extra shift,” Sarah said. “I've got some paperwork to do and then I need to go home.”

“I need you to—”

“Not today,” Sarah said firmly. “My kids need me at home. I'll be back at work first thing in the morning.”

“All right. I'll cover for you.”

“Thanks, Jim,” Sarah said. She'd only planned to spend an hour at the office, but several calls came in regarding Kate. By the time Sarah had taken them, it was dark outside. She felt guilty for having worked so late as she hurried out to her Tahoe and headed home.

Sarah's house was on the hill above Snow King Mountain. Most locals could no longer afford to live in Jackson because the dearth of real estate—97 percent of Teton County was forest service land—made it incredibly valuable, and the influx of politicians and Hollywood types had pushed property values sky-high. When folks couldn't keep up with the property taxes that escalated along with the property values, they sold out.

So far, Sarah had held on to the house, a simple wood-frame home with a brick fireplace. It had three bedrooms but only one bath, and a water heater too small for five people to get hot showers one after another.

Tom's disappearance had reduced that problem by one, but had created a financial, as well as an emotional, nightmare for Sarah. Instead of two incomes, she and the kids had been managing for the past fifteen months on one and a half—the half being all the extra shifts Sarah worked for any patrolman who was on vacation or had a family emergency. It was still tough to make ends meet.

If Tom had died, his life insurance would have kept them afloat. But until Tom's body was found, he wasn't “officially” dead. So Sarah worked long hours and endured the accusing faces turned on her by her children when she arrived home at odd hours.

Nate and Brooke were old enough to understand her financial dilemma, but she'd worked too much overtime before this emergency for them to accept the need for it now.

Sarah pulled the Tahoe into the driveway and cut the engine, then let her head fall forward onto the steering wheel. She'd willingly take ice-cold showers the rest of her life if Tom would just show up and explain why he'd left in the first place.

Sarah needed to go inside and be a mother to her kids, but her feelings were still raw. She couldn't believe what she'd done with Drew. For the first time since she'd promised to love, honor and cherish Tom Barndollar, till death should part them, she'd betrayed her marriage vows. She was surprised at how guilty she felt.

And how angry she felt.

“Where are you, Tom?” she raged. “Where the hell did you go?”

It was time, Sarah realized, to file for divorce. Time to move on. Time to admit, at last, that Tom was never coming back.

“Oh, God.” She gasped with the pain the mere thought of taking such a step caused her. She hadn't grieved her loss, because she hadn't admitted to it. What had happened with Drew had been a shock. She'd felt alive again. She'd wanted to live again.

Recognizing her loss meant grieving. And grieving meant the wrenching pain of letting go, knowing that she would never really let go until Tom—or his body—was found.

Sarah shivered and realized she must have been sitting in the Tahoe long enough for the last of the heat to dissipate. She shoved open the door and headed inside to see her children.

Which was when she realized her pickup wasn't in the driveway or parked on the street. There were lights on inside the house, which meant the kids had been home after dark. But where were they now?

Sarah hurried inside, suddenly worried. She depended on Nate and Brooke to take care of Ryan, and they'd always acted as responsible baby-sitters. She stepped into the living room and found Ryan lying on his belly, Brooke beside him, both already dressed in pj's, playing a desperate game of Metroid on the TV.

She wanted to grab both of them up in her arms and hug them, she felt so grateful to find them safe and sound. She got a quick, “Hi, Mom!” from Ryan, who remained focused on the game, and no greeting at all from Brooke.

“Where's Nate?” she asked.

“Out with some friends,” Brooke replied, not looking up from the game.

“He was supposed to be home before dark,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, so were you,” Brooke said.

Sarah felt mortified.

“I win!” Ryan shouted gleefully.

Brooke looked at the screen, groaned and said, “No fair. Mom broke my concentration.”

“Have you had supper?” Sarah asked.

“Ryan was hungry,” Brooke said, staring her in the eye. “So I fed him.”

“Thank you, Brooke,” Sarah said, swallowing her pride. “Did Nate say when he'd be coming home?”

“Before curfew,” Brooke replied.

Nate's curfew was midnight, which meant that despite how tired she felt, Sarah would be up late waiting to make sure he got home safely. “Did you have a nice day with your friends?” Sarah asked Brooke.

“Yeah. When Ryan wasn't bugging me to death.”

“You like me,” Ryan said, grinning at Brooke as he dropped the controller and sat up. “You know you do.”

Brooke ruffled Ryan's hair and grudgingly said, “Yeah, bug, I do.”

Ryan jumped up and crossed to Sarah and hugged her around the waist. “I'm glad you're home, Mom. Brooke and me were getting scared.”

Sarah met Brooke's gaze and saw the fear behind the sullen mask on her stepdaughter's face. “I'm sorry I didn't call to let you know I was running late. I'll try to do better.”

Brooke turned away without acknowledging the olive branch she'd extended. Ryan grabbed her hand and said, “I'm nearly finished with Harry Potter. Will you help me read an extra chapter tonight?”

“Sure,” Sarah said as she slid her arm around Ryan's narrow shoulders and walked with him down the hall.