Denali Dreams, page 9
When the memories faded and the heat of embarrassment filled her once again from his contemptuous glare, Jolie returned her focus to the ranger giving the presentation. Was he glaring because he recognized her? She’d like to think she’d grown up a lot since their last encounter, enough that he wouldn’t recognize her. Funny how she’d been the life of many parties as a teen, flirting and freely dating, confident and carefree as the daughter of an oil tycoon. But David … he made her feel ashamed of that wealth and upbringing.
Jolie couldn’t stop her gaze from traveling back to him. Tension formed knots in her shoulders as he snatched a clipboard from the desk. The very clipboard she and the others had used to sign in. He muttered something then wagged the board at the manager, who yanked it from his hands.
“There are ranger Base Camps at various levels,” the ranger at the front of her group said. “On patrol during your climb will be myself and David Whiteeagle. That grizzly right there is David.” He pointed. “Trust me when I say don’t cross him. And the way you cross him is to go up on his mountain unprepared or without care.”
The others laughed as they considered David. Too much truth hung in Ranger Knox’s statement for Jolie to find any humor in it. Must be sad to be known as a grouch. And yet, she couldn’t stop staring.
“There will also be a doctor ranger and two others at Base Camp,” Ranger Knox continued. “Outside, we’ll do an equipment check. If you fail that, you don’t climb.” Groans bounced around the room, but he shrugged. “Sorry. We’d rather you be ticked and alive, than ill prepared and dead. Just remember, even though you paid good money to climb the High One, it’s not worth it if it’s your last.”
Like Gael. Had he known it’d be his last? He proposed to Mariah Whiteeagle at the peak. At least, she assumed it’d happened. Gael had told her the whole plan before the fateful trip. Jolie’s fingers dug beneath the collar of her turtleneck to find the necklace. She slipped her pointer finger through the gold ring dangling there. On their descent, neither made it back alive.
“He’s still staring,” Nikki said under her breath.
Jolie refused to look. Refused to give him another chance to hurt her. But in her periphery, she saw him pivot and stomp out of the building. Keep walking, David. Nobody needs your attitude. She’d come to Denali to make peace so she could move on after her father’s death.
“Okay, if you’ll head with me out front, we’ll do the equipment check,” Ranger Knox said as he tromped toward the entrance.
As they stepped into the heavily clouded morning, a commotion sprang up to their left. Heading down the steps, Jolie saw David arguing with an older man.
“I’m fine,” David with a snarl.
“If you don’t want me to bench you, let me examine it.”
David huffed, his jaw muscle popping under the tension. Finally, he yanked up his black thermal sleeve, up over the elbow, and tucked it above his bicep.
“With muscles like that, I think I might need his services,” Nikki said under her breath.
A large red spot around his elbow stilled her.
“Whoa,” Nikki said. “Looks like he got whacked.”
“Yeah, by a side-view mirror.”
Nikki gasped. “He’s the one Derrick hit coming up here.”
“He hit me,” Derrick said with a snicker as he and Aidan Sheppard bumped fists. “Not my fault he stepped into the road without looking.”
Compunction pulled Jolie toward David. If they’d hurt him …
She had tried to get Derrick to stop, but he’d argued they were already late and would lose their registration and right to climb. Then he went on about how the guy should’ve been paying attention. That David wasn’t laid out in the road gave Derrick’s conscience a carte blanche from guilt.
“How’d this happen again?”
“Big black Escalade.”
The man, apparently the ranger doctor, glanced toward Derrick’s vehicle. “You and rich people.”
David snorted and nodded, looking around. “Tell me about it.” His gaze rammed into hers.
Fire bolted through her stomach. At first she couldn’t move. Which was insane. She met with dignitaries, presidents, princes … But David Whiteeagle? Where was the barf bag? “Hey, um, I …” She pointed to his arm. “Derrick should’ve stopped. We tried to make him.”
David’s jaw muscle rippled again as his lips pulled taut.
“I’m sorry.” Her stomach squirmed under his narrowed gaze.
He jerked around with a hiss and yanked his arm free. “Hey!”
Touches of gray at the doc’s temples matched the snow-blotted front lawn. “The bone is bruised, but I don’t think it’s broken. You’d need an X-ray to be sure.”
“It’s not broken. I’m fine.” David yanked the sleeve down. “I have an equipment check to do.”
David brushed past the girl who wasn’t a girl anymore. He remembered the sixteen-year-old version, the petulant partier who’d ended up in the news more often than climbers summitted. Even then, drop-dead gorgeous. But now—she could wipe a guy’s good sense from his head.
That was, if she hadn’t been born a Decoteau. If she wasn’t the sister of the man who’d killed Mariah. No way would he give her an inch of anything.
“You haven’t changed much.”
Her words drew him up short. “Excuse me?”
Jaw jutted, she folded her arms over her raspberry-colored North Face jacket. “We apologized. But you held it over my dad like a boulder.” She stretched her arms out wide. “It was an accident, or don’t you know what that is?”
David’s pulse pounded. He stepped closer. “Accidents happen when people aren’t prepared.”
Her eyes enlivened. “And they happen when experienced climbers are prepared. It’s the whole point—nobody’s at fault.”
“All he had to do—”
“He did everything he could. It was an avalanche!” Her eyebrows winged up. “How can you blame that on my brother? What, did he have power over the wind and snow?”
“No, but if he was so experienced—”
“Don’t make accusations you can’t back up.”
“Oh, I’ll back them up all right.”
“Hey. Hey!” Ranger Logan Knox wedged in between them, palms on David’s chest as he gave his fellow ranger a nudge. “Dude, c’mon. Get a grip.”
Teeth grinding, David severed the emotional tie those caramel eyes held over him. He took a step back, and humiliation flooded in as he felt the shocked stares of those around him.
“What is with you, man?” Logan asked in a low tone, guiding him away.
“She’s a Decoteau.”
Logan hesitated and looked back, and that little hesitation gave David the affirmation he needed—someone to understand what riled him. Holding David’s arm—right at the tender bruise—Logan stopped. “Look, man. I get your anger, but you gotta wind down your temper.”
“Why do you think I’m heading to Base Camp?” David stretched his neck. “Days alone with nothing but wind, ice, and snow.”
“And a Base Camp manager, a ranger doctor, and another ranger.”
“Yeah, but there’s nearly forty miles of glacier to give me the space I need.”
Logan laughed. “Dude, I don’t know if Denali has enough space for you. Listen, seriously, man.” He sighed. “You need to get over this. It’s eating you up. Mariah wouldn’t—”
“Don’t.”
“I will because Mariah was your sister—she loved you. But as an experienced climber, she knew what—”
The whoosh of each heartbeat clogged David’s hearing. He swallowed in an attempt to clear it.
No-go.
“All right,” he called out to the others loud and strong, cutting off Logan’s lecture. “Get your gear and lay it out for inspection.”
David stalked away from Logan, away from the mountain of pressure building at the base of his neck. As he and Logan checked the Decoteau team’s equipment, he tried to scratch the look of shock and hurt lingering in his mind along with the memory of a pair of caramel eyes. It bugged him that he’d hurt her feelings. But he stretched his neck and dug into the check.
Though he’d hoped to find their equipment faulty or to discover vital pieces missing, each check confirmed they’d followed protocol and smart climbing measures to a T. To boot, their gear was top-notch quality.
“Everything should be here,” said a stocky-built guy who was ranked as the senior climber. James Sheppard. His son, Aidan, repacked their gear as David finished checking it. “I’m very careful about my climbs. It’s an adrenaline rush, but I realize who has the power.”
David straightened and considered the man with salt-and- pepper hair. “Yeah? Who’s that?”
He thumbed toward the mountain. “Denali.”
With a nod, David moved to the next spread of equipment and crouched to inspect. He hesitated when someone in brown insulated overpants came into view. Jolie. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Why hadn’t Logan checked her stuff? She was thin and pretty. And blond. Probably had just enough skill to make the climb. But what if she got into trouble up there? Would he be hauling her dead body off the mountain the way he had Mariah’s?
Something in him clenched at the thought. He leaned on her ice axe with his knee, begging it to snap. If it snapped, he could deem her unprepared. Send her packing. A twinge of guilt hardened—just like the axe. It didn’t give.
He stood and stared at the equipment. Everything in pristine order. And just like Sheppard’s—the best available. No surprise for the rich, spoiled daughter of an Alaskan oilman. Yet the gear wasn’t new. Not even gently used. It had enough wear to prove it’d roughed mountains.
“Was this Gael’s?”
Jolie frowned. “No. Why would you ask that?”
“It’s seen some good use, but it’s taken care of, too.”
She turned toward him, shock in her expression. “I—”
“Jolie’s an expert climber,” a guy with too much goop in his hair said as he joined them.
“Not true, Derrick,” Jolie said.
Derrick. The guy she’d said was driving the truck when they hit him. This was the type of guy she wanted to climb with? Someone who would run another person down, then not even stop to check on them? He grunted. That told him how things would go up there.
“I’m not rated.” Voice soft as a light dusting of snow, she leveled her gaze on David. “But I’ve done enough climbing to be experienced.”
David wasn’t going to listen to her go on about how she could conquer this mountain. You know, on second thought … “It wasn’t enough that your brother died out there? What, you have a death wish, going up with guys like him?”
She drew back. “Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to talk to me like that?”
“Forget it.” He waved her off with another forget it then trudged to Logan. “When they get stuck or hurt up there, I am not hauling these rich kids off my mountain.”
Chapter 3
Coddled on three sides by the high peaks of the Alaska Range—Mt. Foraker, Mt. Hunter, and Mt. McKinley—Base Camp welcomed the DeHavilland Otter that ferried Jolie and her team to the southeast fork of the Kahiltna Glacier with a stiff wind. The thirty-minute flight numbed her mind as she wrestled with the haunting knowledge that this rugged range had taken her brother’s life. Ironic that Baron had sent her here for safety.
As the pilot and Mr. Sheppard lugged the gear from the plane, Jolie drew her pack and sled off to the side.
“Being that gorgeous, I think I can forgive him for the rich kids comment.”
“What?”
Nikki nodded in the direction of the Base Camp structure jutting out of a mound of fresh snow. There, in his thermal shirt and overpants, stood David.
Mountain lion. Rippling with tension, waiting to pounce from his crouched position. Expression as cold and forbidding as the mountain he guarded. And yet, a lion seemed too small, too paltry. He definitely had the grizzly bear presence—large and powerful.
His comment had cut deep. Why? It wasn’t any less venom filled than his heated words on the day of the funeral. But … maybe she’d hoped that he’d see her now, see that she wasn’t sixteen or spoiled anymore, and he’d …
What, Jolie? Beg for a date? Say he was wrong?
Hurt clogged her mind as Jolie and her team grouped under his all-too-scrutinizing gaze. She wasn’t sure she could stand another day beneath his withering glare. After all, they would spend tomorrow here with logistics and crevasse rescue practice before setting out on Tuesday.
Mr. Sheppard and Aidan staged the equipment and set up tents, and Jolie busied herself with helping Nikki set up the last of their equipment for the night. Derrick banged his iPhone against his palm, cursing.
“No reception, Derrick.” Jolie rolled her eyes and lifted Nikki’s pack onto her back. “Did you pay attention to anything at the ranger station?”
Sporting a knit skullcap and expensive jacket, he grinned. “Yeah, you.”
Ignoring his flirtatious comment, Jolie glanced around the Base Camp. To think, Gael had been here a week before he died doing what he loved, with the girl he loved. She’d ached for what they had, that special something. Not even their parents had the kind of love Gael and Mariah shared. Would she ever? Becoming managing partner of Decoteau Industries pretty much stripped those chances—she’d be immersed in all things D. I. for the next twelve months—at least—getting up to speed on all things D. I. if she wanted to honor her father and carry on his legacy with excellence.
A chill that had nothing to do with the thirty-degree temperature cloaked her in its icy embrace. Bitter whispers on the wind reminded her that she was alone.
Staring at the jagged mountains jutting up from the glacier, she shuddered, remembering Baron’s words. “… someone is trying to take Decoteau Industries out from under you.”
Her father possibly murdered? Too insane to think about. It bordered on the ridiculous. But what if Baron was right? She’d thought about the possibility the whole trip to Talkeetna, then a little more on the flight up to here.
She twisted and appraised the landscape with a long sigh. At least, out here, she was safe from whatever or whoever.
“He’s watching you again,” Nikki said in a nonchalant voice as she unrolled her bedding.
“Huh?” Jolie looked up from her arctic sleeping bag.
“Ranger Grizzly.” She nodded toward the Base Camp shelter.
Jolie spotted the back of David as he stepped into the inverted U-shaped building, still wearing only his thermal shirt and overpants. Had he really been watching her? What, to see if she was doing something wrong? “Probably wants to point more fingers or find fault.”
Nikki’s green eyes probed her. “What’s the story between you two?”
“He’s Mariah’s brother.”
Gaping, Nikki froze. “Gael’s Mariah?”
Swallowing hard at the way her friend put that, Jolie gave a quick nod. She pushed onto her haunches then stood. “I think I’m going to take a walk before I bed down.”
“A walk?” Nikki looked around, her face puckered with confusion. “Where?”
With a shrug, Jolie said, “Around.”
Tromping the perimeter of the 7200 Base Camp pumped heat through Jolie’s body and afforded her the physical and mental room to think. Why, of all places and times, did David have to be here, to remind her, to reprimand for a perceived wrong? She came to Denali to release her brother and father one last time. To move into the role her father had named her to. A role she accepted with honor but …
She hunched her shoulders and let her gaze travel the forbidding mountain. As if it stared down on her, daring her, warning her. You’re not good enough. Never have been. You’ll regret invading me just as your brother did.
But Jolie did not believe her brother had one regret.
Well, maybe one—that he didn’t get to spend his life with Mariah the way he’d wanted. They’d had a long talk before the proposal, and he shared how he wanted to show Mariah the world, lavish love and gifts on her like she’d never known. And even then, Gael worried that he couldn’t make her happy. She had a close-knit family. She’d known a type of stability she and Gael hadn’t despite their parents still being alive and married—well, until Daddy died. Jolie always guessed Gael’s love for Mariah was more about the girl being the antithesis to Mother, a rich socialite. Used to wealth. Arrogance. Entitlement. Women had jockeyed to be her friend. Few wanted to be friends—real friends. Most didn’t. And her mom never cared about anything but having the life she wanted, regardless of leaving her family empty emotionally.
I never want to be like her.
“Can I help you?”
Startled by the question, Jolie blinked. Found herself standing just inside the Base Camp store that sported a couple of tables with necessities. Ranger Knox held a thermos, steam spiraling out of the top.
She indicated his steaming drink. “I … do you have any more of that?”
Ranger Knox grinned. “Right here.” He turned to a steel carafe sitting atop a stack of supply boxes. “Do you have a thermos?”
“Oh. Yeah.” She felt the blush rise to her cheeks. The rangers were very protective of the environment, which meant they didn’t hand out Styrofoam cups for hot drinks. “Let me grab it.”
A snort from the side surprised her. Sitting in a camping chair, David shook his head. She could just hear his thoughts, Stupid rich girl. Wouldn’t be the first time. And probably not the last. Would he ever see her as anything else?
Did she care?
Jolie stomped into the darkening day. He could keep his foul attitude and gorgeous looks. She groaned as she dug through her pack and retrieved the thermos.
“What’s got you riled?” Nikki asked.
“That grizzly bear.”
“Ran into him again, did you?” Nikki’s words held way too much amusement.
Shooting a glare at her friend, Jolie pushed out of the tent and returned. Inside the Base Camp store, she handed the double-insulated thermos to the ranger.
