Stranded with the billio.., p.5
Stranded with the Billionaire, page 5
“Where are we?” he asked.
“On a mountain,” she fired back.
John drew his gaze to the surrounding landscape. To the right, the cornice blocked their view of the mountaintop. To their left, the world was a glittering expanse of white—a smooth, narrow path down the mountain. No mark from other skiers venturing down this trail, not a single footprint. When was the last time someone else had been out this far?
But that wasn’t the part that made him nervous. It was the way the ground directly in front of them spilled off into cold, blue nothing. The world was there and then… gone.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. John looked to the east, off the cliff’s edge. Clear blue sky stared back—not a single blemish. No clouds. Huh.
“John?”
He’d been waiting all day for her to say his name, to speak to him in a way that wasn’t blatantly hostile, but the vibration in his bones was more pressing still. And that rumbling noise…
He turned again, shifting his skis toward the mountain at his back.
He never got a chance to peer around the cornice.
A crushing force slammed into him like a truck, stealing his breath, smashing his sternum. His feet left the ground, and then he was flying, cartwheeling end over end.
And then all John saw was darkness.
Chapter 7
Anne
White. White. White.
Anne blinked, again, again, eyelashes crusted with ice—no goggles. But no matter how many times she blinked, nothing else came into focus. Just that awful… blankness. Was she upside down?
Anne stretched her leg, but it refused to move. Her knee… nothing. A tomb—a tomb of ice. Would this horrible white be the last thing she ever saw?
Her heart was a jackrabbit, thrumming frantically against her rib cage, kicking with a force like thunder. Blood whooshed in her head.
Think, Anne.
One hand was plastered against her side, elbow cocked, fingertips against her chin. Her thumb wiggled; that hand was free, but her palm was hot and sticky. Blood. And her face… her cheek burned against the rough pine bark. But the tree had kept her from being sucked into the void.
She’d seen the wall of snow coming a split second before it had hit. Anne had wrapped her arms around the scraggly pine, banking that the roots would be deep enough to prevent her from being buried or, worse, thrown off the cliff into the frigid sky.
But though she had managed to avoid being splattered over the rocks, it was still difficult to breathe. Her lashes brushed the tree’s bark every time she blinked. Snow had packed itself around her—pressing hard against her ribs, caked beneath her nails. No gloves. She tried to shove herself back, make space to wiggle out, but she was stuck fast against the gnarled bark.
Anne took a breath; her chest was much too small. Wheezing, panting, panic thrumming at the edges of her thoughts. She squinted through iced lashes at the bark: brown wood, tributaries of black snaking through like veins. Spindly branches just over her head, the needles mere shadows in the snow. But the sun was there, just above those needles—yellow haze struggling to break through the crust of ice. She wasn’t far from the surface.
Anne drew her hand up the tree’s rough side, her heart throbbing so hard in her ears that they ached with the pressure. Her shoulder stung, but her fingertips brushed the branch above her—not quite tall enough. She tried again, stretching, reaching… There.
Anne clutched the branch and pulled. She stuck fast.
Shit. Anne gritted her teeth and tried again, hauling against the tree, her shoulder straining, tendons shrieking. The bark ground against her palm, spitting sticky sap onto her flesh as if alive. But it wasn’t alive. Perhaps a hallucination brought on by a lack of oxygen. Was she dying?
Tears smarted in her eyes. She couldn’t pull herself from the powder as she stood now, but the branch was giving her leverage. If she couldn’t pull herself out… she’d wiggle her way out.
Anne clung to the branch and tugged her other hand from around the side of the tree, using it to shove at the snow around her chest. Slowly, slowly shifting her upper body like a belly dancer until there was give on all sides. Soon, her ribs were free.
She sucked air into her hungry lungs and pushed more frantically at the snow. Now that she could breathe, the process was easier, her hips loosening faster than her chest.
Anne grabbed the branch with both hands. A pull-up, just a pull-up like she was at the gym. Please be enough. She yanked.
Her heart stuttered as her body slid up, up, up, and then her head was cracking through the skin of hazy white above her, birthed from the snow in a bundle of frozen limbs. No skis, no poles, no gloves, no phone. But her boots were intact. Anne lay on the snow, flexing her feet, stretching her calves, her arms. Panting breath into her body, trying to force the dizziness away.
The sky was much too blue, the sun punishing as if trying to melt her into the ice. The wounds on her hands stung—that’s what was bleeding, not her face. No sound save her breath and the squalling wind. But…
There should be another sound, shouldn’t there? The scuffling of boots, the hiss of breath, the low keening moan of another presence. Because no matter how she’d tried to spend today in solitude, she hadn’t been on this mountain alone.
Anne pushed herself to seated, frantically scanning the landscape. The earth around her glittered like diamonds, unmarred by boot or hand… or body. The cornice was still there, ice and snow mounded behind it. The cornice had probably saved her as much as the tree. But had it saved her boss?
“John?”
Her voice echoed across the mountain. The wind howled. Nothing more.
“John!” She shoved herself to standing, her knee smarting, feet sinking deep into the powder. Her throat was dry—sore.
“John,” she said again, more quietly this time.
If he was conscious, she should be able to hear him. She couldn’t. And when she scanned the landscape, only white stared back, a blinding, shimmering nothingness, her hissed voice still echoing against the far mountains. Reminding her that she was alone.
Completely and utterly alone.
She stumbled through the snow, the cliff much too close for comfort. Shit. Eleven minutes—that was how long you had to find someone trapped in an avalanche. After that, you were looking for a corpse.
She faced the cornice, the last place she’d seen him, and tracked the path of the avalanche as best she could. Anne could see the shallow area where the mammoth chunk of ice had blocked the powder. Long striations marred the earth to the west, indicators of force. There was the tree where she’d grabbed on, the hole she’d emerged from, the mounded snow around her pine, the indentations where she’d stepped. A new mound of snow had sprung up between her and the main piste—a hill made of fresh powder created by the avalanche. And… wait. A small triangle of color half hidden beneath the skin of ice. Painted hardwood.
A ski.
Anne rushed toward the object, but as she came alongside it, she realized her error. Blue paint—John’s outfit was yellow. This ski was one of hers. But there was something else to the side of the ski, mostly buried in the snow; she would not have seen if were she not standing directly above. A patch of black, dull, and rubbery. The bottom of a boot?
Anne glanced down at her feet—at her boots, still strapped around her ankles.
“John?”
No reply. How long had it been since the avalanche? How long since she’d come to with pine bark against her cheek? Why are you even helping him, Anne? He followed you out here like a damn stalker—like Charles. And if there was one thing the world did not need, it was more men like her ex.
Anne shoved the thought aside, dropped to her knees, and dug, ice raking her bare skin, her injured fingers staining the snow pink. Desmond might forgive her for a lot of things, but not for leaving his brother on this mountain. The boot emerged inch by inch, rubber soles, laces. The straps—connected to his leg.
She pinched his calf as hard as she could with her bloodied fingertips. But her hands didn’t hurt—numb. That wasn’t good.
John did not respond, the leg immobile in the snow. Was she digging out a person or a body?
Anne plowed more snow aside with her hands. His calf was turned left as if he was lying on his side. That’d be better than if he was fully upside down. She could not dig down six and a half feet to uncover his face before he suffocated.
“Don’t be dead, John, you piece of shit. Be like Charles. Be too mean to fucking die.”
She was muttering, gasping as she pawed at the snow. Anne abandoned his leg, stumbling upward—the direction she believed his face should be. She punched at the snow near what was hopefully a shoulder, then plunged her hand through the powder, seeking his jacket, an arm, the curve of his nose. She felt only the cold hardness of packed ice. And then… wait. Heat? Cloth.
“Uuuuuuugggghhh.” The sound came from just under her knee. She slid back in time to see movement, a gentle bulging beneath the powder. A tiny hole opened. Then another. Fingers poked through, worms seeking the sun—John’s gloved hand.
Anne reached into the hole, digging at the area beneath his wrist, hucking snow behind her like a dog.
Alive—he’s alive.
A forearm emerged, covered in ostentatious yellow cloth. His shoulder. She grabbed his hand, his fingers a vise around her wrist as she tugged, leaning back for leverage, her ass almost on the snowy ground. His hair appeared. His eyes, his cheeks, his nose, all of it crusted in white.
“Are you okay?” Her hands were still fisted around his arm.
“I think so. But can you back up a little? Your fat foot is on my thigh.” He released her hand, and she collapsed against the snow, panting while he shoved himself from the hole and sat back on his ass.
First, she had monster teeth, and now, a fat foot? But she was too out of breath to form a rebuttal. Her gaze drifted to the cornice once more. Anywhere else along this trail and the rush of ice and snow would have buried them completely. Had most of it not been blocked by the hulking ice, John would not have been so near the surface. Nor would she.
“What the hell happened?” he muttered, brushing at his jacket. He dusted the snow from his face, but it clung along his jaw, frozen chunks glistening in his hair. “Was it zombies or something? A nuclear plant explosion? Are we the next Spidermen… or women?”
She stared. “What are you—”
One side of his mouth cocked up, that signature John O’Connor smile, the one all the cameras loved—that the ladies loved. “I’m kidding,” he said. “And don’t worry, I’m getting there.”
“Getting where?”
“To the thank you.”
She waited, blinking, but he didn’t actually bother to say thank you, just pushed himself to his feet like the entitled bastard he was. Rage tightened her ribs. Of course, she’d save him and not leave him to die. What crazy person wouldn’t give anything, even their life, to help the magnificent John O’Connor?
At least the fury in her belly was warming her up.
Anne was still seething as John stepped carefully away from the cliff, putting distance between himself and the cornice, his gloved hand up like a visor to shield his eyes from the sun; he’d lost his goggles, too. His boots crunched up the new slope in the landscape, peering over the mound of snow—three steps, four. He stopped short at the top of the hill and lowered his hand.
“I was going to say we got lucky,” he said to the snow in front of him, “but… maybe not so much.”
Not so much? They just survived a fucking avalanche after he chased her out here like a psycho. They wouldn’t even be out this far if he’d just let her clear her head closer to the hotel.
But of course, his spoiled ass wanted more. Maybe he expected a parade.
She waited for him to elaborate, to make another stupid zombie joke, but John did not move. Did not speak. He stood stock-still, his gaze on something beyond her line of sight. Probably trying to freak her out the way he had on the plane.
“You having another heart attack?” Anne muttered as she pushed herself to her feet and marched up behind him. The low hill blocked some of her visibility, but it wasn’t steep. Soon, she was at his side, peering beyond his arm.
Her lungs tightened.
The path down the mountain remained intact, rocks and a few scraggy trees marking the way. She recognized the general shape beneath the fresh crush of powder.
But there was no way for them to get there.
They’d veered off the trail at the cornice, which now towered behind them like a giant half-moon. Between them and the trail, their way down the mountain, a deep crack had opened in the earth—a giant crevasse that ended in pure blackness. At least 150 feet across. Much too far to get over.
“One wrong move, and we’re done for,” John said. “It’s possible there’s a way across if we follow this new ravine. But if we stay too close, we might end up in Middle Earth, hanging with Gollum.”
She blinked. “Lord of the Rings? Really?”
He shrugged. “Who doesn’t love that little bastard?” But his eyes did not leave the ravine.
Middle Earth on one side, the cliff on the other. What if the ravine zagged over and met the cliff at some point in front of them? What if it blocked their way down entirely?
A groaning creak cut the air. John stepped back quickly, arm out as if to protect her—to guide her away. She moved before he could touch her, both of them edging back from the hole. A giant section of ice broke from their side of the ravine with a grinding squeal and vanished into the dark.
She watched it fall without saying a word. There was nothing left to say.
Their way home was disappearing one chunk of ice at a time.
And there was nothing they could do about it.
Chapter 8
John
He’d always assumed that when death came for him, it would be silent—a gentle slide into nothingness. But this would not be a quiet death. No, the end before him would prove blisteringly noisy, his body plummeting into the dark to the soundtrack of his screams.
John studied the crevasse. White snow bled into aqua, fading to navy at the edge, then indigo below the icy upper lip. After that, it was just empty black. The jagged line stretched as far as he could see. It snaked, severe and cruel, up toward the top of the mountain from where they’d come, running alongside the ski slope. To the right, their only way down, the crack widened, then sprouted dark, aggressive fingers like tree branches. Every few minutes, another chunk fell into the abyss, one grating crackle after another.
They would fall, too, if they weren’t careful. Anne had not moved from her spot at his side, had not commented on their predicament, but he knew she felt it, too—their impermanence. Her fingers twitched, shaky as her breath.
John blinked at the hole. He did not want to leave this world screaming. He wanted to leave this world more composed than he’d come into it.
“We need to get out of here,” he muttered, more to himself than to Anne.
His chest was tight, aching where he’d been tossed around like a rag doll. Bruises along his left side; he could feel the injuries throbbing. But his bones felt intact. Nothing broken… he hoped.
“I don’t think the whole side will fall off,” she said, her gray eyes on the mountaintop, her normally full lips a tight, bloodless line. She pointed. “The rock is still attached way up top, though we can’t exactly scale it and cross to the trail. Too sheer.”
John followed her gaze, trying not to think about the way her voice trembled. Her hands had not stopped moving since she’d noticed the wound in the ice. She wanted what she was saying to be true, but she wasn’t any more certain than he was about the stability of the ground beneath their feet. This side of the ravine might crack off and drop them into oblivion.
Their best bet was to find a way down the mountain.
John squinted against the glare. The original path was no longer an option, but mountains had more than one side. There had to be another way outside of plunging into that giant hole in the earth or hurtling off the cliffs. Another way besides scaling impossibly sheer mountaintops to the original trail.
“What do you know about this area?” he asked.
He didn’t know shit about where they were. He’d come here to make sure she couldn’t fuck them over any more than she had already; she was the one who’d chosen this hill of death.
“There were three wolf attacks in this area last year,” Anne said, her face still aimed at the top of the mountain.
He blinked. Of all the things he’d imagined she might say, that wasn’t in the top thirty.
“Bears and wolves, even wild cats, aren’t known for going after humans,” she went on, her voice hollow. “But in recent years, attacks here have been ticking up as the resorts encroach on more animal habitats, destroying the breeding grounds of smaller prey.” Her voice sounded numb like she was giving a lecture—no feeling behind it, though she was talking about things that could literally kill them. Was she in shock?
“So, if we stay out here, we’ll be eaten by wolves?” he asked.
“I’m… not sure. Those statistics come from land nearer to civilization. Where we’re not.”
Awesome. He dropped his gaze to Anne’s fidgeting hands. Her fingertips were bloody, raw, a single drop of crimson marring the snow near her feet. He frowned, but she still wasn’t looking at him. Anne’s gray eyes had shifted, though, locked on the ravine.
His hackles rose. This was her fault—entirely her fault. If she hadn’t run from him, if she’d just stayed at the hotel, done her goddamn job…
Another drop of blood slipped over her palm and fell to the snow.
John peeled off his gloves and handed them over. “We can share them,” he said. “Your hands look a little chewed on.”
Anne finally turned his way. Bags beneath her glazed eyes as if she hadn’t slept in weeks.
