Natural Attraction Page 8

  “I never should have allowed her to go off like that.” Jessie bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. It was her fault, too, that she’d let Carl go off to work that day and die.

  “How could you have stopped her from being the bright, inquisitive kid she is, Jess? Don’t blame yourself.” Was he getting through to her? He could read her like a book. She’d blame herself today if anything happened to Nell just as she’d probably blamed herself all these years for not being there for Carl.

  “You’re right. I’ll be careful.” She couldn’t have changed anything today. She couldn’t have changed anything seven years ago.

  “All set?” Mark saw her catch hold of her fear and subdue it with an effort that was almost physical. “Ann, lead the way.”

  It wasn’t far. Nell was huddled on a small ledge ten feet below the edge, twenty-five or thirty feet above the overgrown floor of the old quarry.

  “How did she get up there?” Mark asked. There wasn’t any discernible path; the ledge sloped up wider at the far edge but was still dangerously narrow all along its length.

  “Who knows,” Ann wailed, goaded by fear. “She thinks she’s Spider-Man or the Human Fly or something. How can we get her down?” She wasn’t speaking to her, Jessie realized, but to Mark. The leader. The one Ann sensed most able to deal with the situation.

  “Nell, baby.” The words, torn from her mother’s heart were only a whisper as Mark’s grip tightened warningly on her wrist.

  “Don’t let her see you yet, Jess. She’ll only be more frightened, more anxious to get down. Lyn looks like she’s doing a good job of keeping her occupied. Let’s work our way over there, get a look at the situation up close.”

  “Ann—” He pointed with a long, tapered finger, another gesture without a wasted motion caught forever in the meshes of Jessie’s memory. The beauty of the moment stretched out, enveloping the stark glory of the landscape, the scurry of cloud shadows, the wind slipping through the high grass. “Go down to Lyn. Tell her we’re coming.”

  Mark took Jessie’s hand, starting off around the edge of the quarry at a pace that was swift but sure, leaving Jessie with no excess breath to speak. She had no idea what to do at the moment. No solution presented itself in the swirling mass of confusion and fear in her mind.

  “It’s funny,” she managed to whisper in a breathy sigh that was half a sob. “Whenever one of them is hurt, I freeze up inside. I get this sharp, wrenching pain, right here, low in my middle. Just like labor pains, you know? No, that’s silly, of course you don’t know about labor pains.” Her brave attempt at a smile fell short of its goal.

  “I can guess. Don’t worry, Jess.” His voice carried all the confidence in the world, but he failed to meet her anxious gaze. “She’ll be fine. There’s got to be a safe way down. I just wish we had a rope.”

  “Did that go over with the ill-fated duffel, too?” Jessie wanted to sound as serene and confident as he did. She intended to convey her trust in his handling of the situation, but her voice cracked and broke. She gave up any further attempts at conversation when he shook his head vehemently.

  “Damn it, no. I didn’t think there’d be any need to bring one. I should have been prepared.”

  Jessie stopped short, pulling back on his arm, spinning him halfway around to face her. She wasn’t going to let him shoulder the blame. Now she had all the confidence in the world. “Don’t say that. You couldn’t have known this would happen. Don’t mention it again.” Her eyes flashed with conviction; her chin took on the obstinate tilt Mark was coming to recognize.

  “You’re my responsibility.” Agitation showed in his sharp words if not in his quiet hands and strong body.

  “Nell is my responsibility, no one else’s. I made the decision to come out here. Don’t mention it again.”

  “Yes ma’am.” A ghost of a smile curled at the corner of Mark’s lips. “I’ll get her back for you. I promise that.”

  “I know you will. But we’ll do it together.”

  “Together.” Mark walked swiftly to the edge of the quarry, dropped to his knees and leaned over. “Nell.” His voice was even, low, completely assured and reassuring. A tear-streaked gamine face looked up at him, fear and hope competing for dominance in brown eyes so like Jessie’s.

  “Where’s my mom?”

  “I’m right here, honey. How did you get in such a pickle?” Jessie was proud of the matter-of-fact tone she managed but her nails almost drew blood, she curled them so tightly into her palms. Nell was so far away, so obviously beyond her reach. Irrationally, Jessie longed to be able to swoop down over the ledge, pull her child close and return to safety all in one swift leap.

  “I don’t know how I got out here. I was climbing. It was easy coming up. And I found this weed growing in the cracks. I mean this plant Mark said made such good soup….” She reached for a small sack propped beside heron the narrow ledge. A crumbling piece of moss and lichen-covered stone dropped over the edge with a hollow thud. Nell flattened herself against the face of the quarry, a great heaving sob escaping her trembling lips. “That happens whenever I move. I can’t figure out how to get back down.”

  “Don’t cry, honey,” Jessie said with loving sternness. “It won’t help. I’m right here. Can’t you try going back very slowly?”

  “No! I told you. It creaks and pieces fall off.”

  “Okay, we’ll think of something else.” Without hesitation Jessie turned to Mark. He was frowning, concentrating on the problem, working through various solutions in his mind. Why couldn’t she make her brain slow down from its whirling, useless befuddlement and help him? She took several deep breaths and willed herself to a semblance of calm.

  “Could you climb up this last little bit of rock? I’ll lean down and help you.” Jessie lay on her stomach and stretched her hand down. Last little bit of rock—ten or twelve feet of pockmarked granite. Nell was still much too far beyond her grasp.

  “I don’t think I can,” Nell replied, sobbing. “Mom, I’m scared. I want to get down from here.”

  “Hold on, Nell. Your mother’s got the right idea. I think I see a way down.” Mark’s voice was quiet and convincing.

  “Mark? What are you talking about? Can she make it by herself?” Jessie couldn’t see any way at all of accomplishing the feat.

  “Not alone. I’ll help her. See that fissure in the stone? It goes all the way to the bottom. It’s not too wide. I can get from there to the ledge. I’ll steady her until she gets far enough up the rock to reach you safely. She’ll never go back the way she came. And I seriously doubt it will hold my weight, too.”

  “I can’t let you do that, Mark. I’ll go. I’m smaller.” Jessie eyed the split in the quarry face dubiously. It was two or three feet wide, jagged and ugly. A great chunk had broken off, making a small depression that did, indeed, open out onto the ledge where Nell was stranded. It would be possible to climb down, but very, very dangerous.

  “You don’t have any choice in the matter, Jess. I’m still the leader of this expedition, remember? I know what I’m doing. I’ve climbed a little before when I’ve had to. No more argument.” The last words were an obvious challenge. He tucked in the tails of his denim work shirt as he spoke, buttoning the cuffs over strong, sinewy forearms. “Agreed?”

  It wasn’t the time for arguing, or hysterics or tears, although Jessie felt prone to all three. She wouldn’t argue with him. She wouldn’t break down and cry. She had to be brave for the girls—and for herself. “All right. You’re the boss. But for God’s sake, be careful. I can’t have you on my conscience, too.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m tough.” Their eyes met and held, underscoring the hidden meaning in their exchange. “Trust me, Jessie.” His hands were on her shoulders, strong and sure. She didn’t have to search to interpret his meaning this time. Reasssurance was there for her to see. Jessie drew strength from his touch without embarrassment, using it to restore her dwindling reserve of courage.

  “I do trust you.
” She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him quick and hard. “Hurry. I’ll lean as far over as I can to take her hand. She’ll make it then.”

  “Of course she will. She’s your daughter, isn’t she?”

  On those words he was gone. Jessie went to the edge, flopped down on her stomach again, explaining calmly to Nell what was happening and continued to talk to the frightened child. Afterward she could never remember what she’d said. They were silly inconsequential things that required answers and diverted Nell’s attention from her dilemma and Mark’s climb.

  Nell couldn’t see his descent or the rapt, attentive faces of her sisters. Jessie wished she couldn’t see them, either. Their excitement and fear for Mark and Nell were mirrored too clearly in expressive faces so like her own. Endless moments later, Mark dropped down in a welter of dislodged stones that bounded off the ledge onto the quarry floor.

  “I can’t go back up there like you came down, Mark,” Nell admitted tearfully. “I tried. It’s too wide. I’ll fall just like those stones.” She swiveled her head downward to mark their course when the stones came to rest at the foot of the sandy knoll where the twins waited.

  “I know, baby. You’re going up,” Mark soothed.

  “Up?” Nell turned her attention to the rock wall above her, then focused her tear-bright gaze on Jessie’s face.

  “Will you help me, Mom?”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Jessie assured, forcing a smile to her lips that made her face ache with the effort it took to produce.

  “Okay, then, I’ll do it. What about my sack?”

  “I’ll take care of it; don’t worry.” Mark wished he could take his own advice. Nell was right. There was no way, without the proper equipment, to get her back up the split in the quarry face. He wasn’t too sure he could get back up that way himself. His climbing skills were rusty. He was ten years older than he’d been the last time the need arose. But he’d find a way to get Nell to safety. He had to. They were counting on him, all the Meyer women.

  “Put your hands in the cracks, then your sneakers, Nell,” he instructed with all the certainty twenty-five years of military service could muster in his voice. “Your mom will help you up the last few feet and I’ll steady you from down here.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can, Nell Elizabeth, or you’re going to be there a long, long time. There’s no other way.” Jessie’s tone was as everyday as she could make it, as though she were scolding for nothing more serious than a spilled glass of milk on a newly mopped kitchen floor. It worked.

  “Okay. Here’s my sack.” Nell handed Mark the bag filled with pungent, lemony sheep sorrel. “This soup had better be good.”

  Mark laughed, tossing the sack to the waiting twins. Lyn caught it deftly, holding it over her head in momentary salute. Mark waved back. Jessie’s spirit showed brightly in all the girls, but Nell was most like her. In her it burned highest.

  “It’ll be the best soup you ever ate. I promise. Now scoot! And don’t look down.”

  “I won’t.”

  His hand on Nell’s leg met wiry strength he hadn’t been prepared to encounter, and it bolstered his own confidence in her ability. She’d do it. He steadied the child as she made her way up the rock slowly and carefully. Once she slipped, skidding back several hard-won inches. Mark braced himself to take the weight of her fall, his heart hammering in his chest. He knew he couldn’t save either of them from going over the ledge if her fingers lost their grip and she came tumbling back into his arms.

  “Nell!” Jessie’s face was white with anxiety despite the fact she’d stretched herself dangerously far our over the edge of the rock lip. “Hang on, baby. It’s only a little farther. I’m here.”

  Nell choked back a terrified sob. “Only babies cry.” Mark wondered if even Jessie could hear the faintly muttered childhood curse.

  “Keep going.” It was the tone he’d used so many times in Nam, a monotone almost devoid of expression or emotion. It was an order strictly calculated to keep raw youngsters going when they thought they couldn’t. He hoped it worked as well on little girls. “I have to let go of your leg now, Nell. But just one or two more handholds and you can reach your mother. It’s all a piece of cake from here.”

  “Chocolate cake?” came the breathless little-girl voice that made this throat ache with the pathos of its bravery.

  “Double Dutch devil’s food, what else? Now go!” A scramble of rubber-soled shoes, a shower of moss and pebbles, and she was up over the edge into Jessie’s arms.

  Mark rested his forehead against the quarry face a few moments, blinking back stinging, unfamiliar, unexpected tears of relief and gratitude. It had been the look on Jessie’s face more than anything else that had jolted him out of the past, out of his stoic, habitual control. It was that look of love and pain and joy that had transfused her features as she pulled Nell into her arms. They’d done it. Together.

  “Mark.” She was back, leaning down again. He looked up, smiling. “How are you going to get off that ledge?”

  “Damned if I know.” He grinned, but Jessie’s face was stiff with anxiety. Fear sparked again in her eyes, but this time it was fear for him. “Hey, cut it out, Jess. Who’s in charge here?”

  “I’m not sure. It can’t be you. You’re in the same darn position Nell was five minutes ago. So now it must be me. Take my hand,” she commanded every bit as forcefully as he had.

  “No.” At least he’d goaded her into action. He’d been afraid she’d fall apart after the worst was over. He’d seen it happen so many times to women and men. Again he underestimated his Jessie. “I said take my hand,” she shouted, sharp and staccato, as though he were an errant child.

  “I don’t need it, Jess. Get back. I’m coming up, too.” It wasn’t the wisest move he’d ever made, Mark realized the moment he started up the sheer rock face. The hand and footholds had been adequate, barely, for a thirteen-year-old child—but not for a man who stood six feet even in his stocking feet and wore size eleven shoes. Still, he almost made it. Jessie had ignored his orders, as usual. Her hand was there. Her clutching fingers brushed across the back of his, trying to get hold of his wrist. “Give me your hand!” She groaned with her effort to reach him.

  “No.” He wasn’t going to make it. His foot slipped. If he grabbed her hand now he’d pull her over with him. His only chance lay in hitting the ledge, breaking his fall enough to land on the even smaller projection eight feet below it. Otherwise there was nothing but thin air and solid rock for another fifteen feet.

  “Mark, take my hand, damn it.” Jessie’s voice was shrill with tension and fear.

  “Can’t reach it,” he lied. Hell, he was falling off a damn cliff and he hadn’t even told her he loved her. And he did love her. The thought didn’t take him by surprise. There wasn’t room for surprise, only chaotic plans, an aversion to dying before he’d been able to make love to Jessie, make love to her slowly, passionately, totally, at least ten thousand times.

  “Too late,” he growled. Now. But he’d tell her over and over again. If he didn’t break his damn fool neck.

  Mark did hit the ledge, but the crumbling granite undermined by countless seasons of freezing and thawing, wind and rain, and the tenacious weakening of clinging moss and lichen couldn’t sustain his weight. He made a grab for the edge, and his fingers held for a moment, long enough to allow him to twist his body around and slither along the rock face to the small ledge below.

  There his luck failed. He landed with a jarring thud that sent shearing pain up the left side of his body from knee to shoulder. His right foot missed the ledge altogether. Mark stepped backward into space, with a weightless, terrifying sensation of falling that lasted countless, endless seconds.

  There was solid ground beneath his hands. And pain. He heard the twins’ voices screaming, which made the pain worse. He wasn’t dead, Mark decided, trying to move. He hurt too much. You weren’t supposed to hurt at all if you were dead. He rolled onto his s
ide. The pain increased, roaring through his body, blotting out sound and light. His last thought before the darkness surging outward from behind his closed eyelids settled down over all of him was one of thanksgiving. “At least I didn’t break my damned fool neck.”

  VOICES WERE RINGING IN HIS ears. Hands, surprisingly competent, were firmly and steadily running over his arms, his legs, his neck and shoulders. “I don’t think anything’s broken, Mom.” Ann’s voice or was it Lyn’s? He had trouble telling them apart when he didn’t see them. “He might have a concussion, though, or even a fractured skull.” Definitely Ann. But the hands belonged to Jessie.

  “No fractured skull.” He was sure of that much, but his voice was weak and scratchy. He tried again. “I’m all right.”

  “You are not.” Jessie sounded angry, very angry. Why was she yelling at him? Mark wondered in painful confusion. Hadn’t he saved her child’s life? What did she have to be angry about? He tried to ask her but she interrupted him. “Oh, Mark, why didn’t you take my hand, you idiot?” He gave up trying to understand what was going on. Moving his head to keep the sun from spearing him in the eyes had been a mistake. His stomach churned. It took all his concentration to remain conscious. There wasn’t any energy left to ask questions.

  Seconds passed. He could hear Nell sob. He didn’t want her to cry. “Let me up.” Colonel Elliot was speaking again. Maybe it would work on Jessie, too. He must have sounded stronger, for the trembling, restraining hand on his chest was removed. He understood now; Jessie was scared. He’d scared her badly. The look on her face as he fell returned to him with stunning clarity. So unbelieving, so shocked. “I want to sit up.”

  “No, lie still. You’ll only faint again.”

  “For Pete’s sake, Jessie. Don’t say ‘faint.’ It sounds so damn effeminate.”

  “All right,” echoed from a shaky trill of golden laughter. “Lie still or you’re liable to pass out again. Is that better?” They were fighting words.

  Mark recognized a challenge when he heard one. He rolled onto his side although he was sure he’d tried the maneuver once before and it hadn’t worked. He put his weight on his left wrist and the pain streaked up to his shoulder so fast and so devastatingly that he ended up on his face in the dirt. This time when the lurking darkness returned he didn’t even try to fight it.