Chapter 3
T he idea of hiking had been Delilah’s. Well, Dolly’s, really. It had been on the list of things to do that Dolly had offered Delilah during their get-together. Neither of the boys had been interested, but Delilah had pushed the issue.
Which made her feel even worse when everything went wrong.
They’d been in Cambria four days, and Jesse and Gavin were already complaining about being bored.
When their house had sold, Delilah had pulled Jesse out of kindergarten—something that was allowed in the state of Connecticut with a signed parental waiver—and at first he’d thought it was a fun novelty that he wouldn’t have to go to school. But it hadn’t taken long for him to start protesting the lack of things to do, and Gavin had soon joined in.
So, Delilah had researched hiking trails, packed snacks, water bottles, and bug spray, and ordered her two reluctant and whining kids to get in the car.
“I don’t want to go.” Jesse shoved his lower lip out in a pout.
“Me neither.” Gavin tended to agree with Jesse on most things, especially when he was in opposition to whatever it was Delilah wanted.
“Why not?” She kept her tone upbeat, her face open and enthusiastic. “It’ll be fun. The article on the Internet says there’s a waterfall at the end of the trail.”
Jesse rolled his eyes. “It’s water. I’ve seen water.”
“Well, you haven’t seen this water. Besides, we all need the exercise.” She shooed them out of the house and into the car, her day pack full of supplies.
“You said this trip was going to be fun. It’s not fun. I miss Dad,” Jesse said.
All at once, Delilah’s composure slipped, and she felt her throat clog with emotion. She blinked her eyes to hold off tears, cleared her throat, and forced her lips into a smile. “I know you do, honey. I do, too. But we have each other. So, let’s try to have a good time, all right?”
It started okay, despite the kids’ protests. Delilah drove north to where the map indicated, parked at a turnout off Highway 1, slung her pack over her shoulders, and got the kids out of their booster seats.
The first part of the trail was wide and relatively level, and the landscape was lovely, with towering pines, dramatic hills, and the ocean stretched out into eternity below the bluffs. The boys chatted happily as they walked, and Delilah breathed in the clean fall air, congratulating herself on her excellent plan for a wholesome family outing.
Things were still okay as the trail narrowed and began to climb into the hills. Delilah wasn’t in the best shape—she could admit that—but the exertion felt good. The boys had forgotten to be opposed to the outing and were exclaiming over the squirrels, the birds, even a small, harmless snake that slithered over the path.
As it turned out, she was worried about the wrong things. She was worried about sunburn, poison oak, bug bites, possible dehydration if they went too far and too long without remembering to drink their water.
She wasn’t worried that one of her boys would leave the trail and fall into a ravine, but that was what happened.
Jesse had brought a small rubber ball that he’d gotten from a vending machine in Morro Bay. He was tossing it into the air and catching it as they walked—something Delilah had thought nothing of, never imagining that it might lead to potential disaster.
“Throw it to me,” Gavin said. Jesse threw it to him, and Gavin caught it.
Then Gavin threw the ball back to Jesse, but it went high, sailing over Jesse’s head and off the path.
They could see it from where they were—the ball, a bright, neon orange, lay in a clump of bushes a few feet down the hill from where they stood.
Jesse stepped off the path to get it, and Delilah warned him to be careful. At the time, getting the ball seemed like a reasonable thing to do, as the incline wasn’t too steep where it lay, and it was only a few feet away.
Jesse picked up the ball, and it seemed like the whole thing was going to be a momentary, easily forgettable blip in their day.
Then his feet slipped, and Delilah watched helplessly as her son slid down to where the earth fell away. He plummeted, screaming, into a brush-filled ravine so far below the path that Delilah could no longer see him.
Her heart pounded so hard that her vision blurred and her head filled with buzzing panic.
“Jesse! Jesse!”
“Mom!” he called back.
Okay. He can hear me, and he can answer. Okay.
“Are you hurt?” she called down to him.
“Uh … no. I’m scratched a little, that’s all.”
Thank God. Oh, thank God.
The buzzing in her ears began to subside, and her heart slowed a little, though it was still beating way too fast. She took a deep breath, let it out, and told herself to stay calm. He’d fallen, but he was okay. Kids fell all the time.
“Can you climb back up?” she asked him.
She heard sounds—a rustling in the brush far below her—as he tried.
She heard him drawing closer, then, horrified, she heard the sound of him sliding back down to where he’d started. “Mom, I fell again,” he told her.
“Jesse, are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just can’t get up there.”
She assessed her situation. She could climb down to him, but then what if they both were stuck down there with Gavin up here on the trail alone? He was only four years old. She couldn’t take the risk that he’d be left up here on his own.
“Okay. Just sit tight, honey, I’m going to call for help.” She pulled out her cell phone, but the screen said NO SERVICE. She could feel herself starting to panic, but she couldn’t do that. The boys would follow her lead. She needed to be calm, confident, in control.
“Why aren’t you calling?” Gavin asked, his face a mask of fear.
“Sweetie, there’s no cell service here.” She kept her voice matter-of-fact for his sake. “Don’t worry, though, we’re going to figure this out.” She and Gavin could go get help, but that would mean leaving Jesse.
She looked at her phone again and walked a short distance up the trail, hoping to find a pocket of service.
No luck.
He’s okay. We’re all okay. There’s no need to panic. I’ll just think and figure this out.
And she would, she knew that. She just had no idea how.
Quinn couldn’t have said why he picked that particular trail on that particular day. Hiking was like breathing for him. He did it when he needed to clear his head, when he needed to think. He did it when he was sad or lonely or happy or bored. Something about being out there in nature amid the trees and the wind and the birds made him feel right, as though he were in exactly the right place at the right time.
As it happened, he was in the right place at the right time, as far as the family on the trail were concerned.
He’d been walking for a couple of hours, and he was descending the trail on the way back to his van when he heard some kind of commotion up ahead. He couldn’t determine the nature of the commotion, but it sounded like someone was upset.
He rounded a curve in the trail and saw a woman and a kid up ahead. The woman was kneeling on the ground and peering off the side of the trail, and the kid was hanging back, sucking his thumb and crying.
“I want Jesse!” the kid wailed as the woman said something Quinn couldn’t hear.
“Need some help?” Quinn asked.
The woman looked up, and both surprise and relief washed over her—he could see it as clearly as if she had been wearing a costume that she’d now removed.
“Oh, my God. Yes. My son fell into the ravine. He’s six years old. He’s okay, he’s not hurt, but he can’t get back up, and I can’t go down there and leave Gavin alone, and my cell phone isn’t getting a signal, and … I’m rambling. Yes, I need some help. Are you going down to the highway? Could you call the police or somebody when you get there? There should be a signal down there. Call 9-1-1 or the park rangers, or … I don’t know who. Just somebody who can rescue my son?”
Had he thought she’d seemed relieved? Now that she was babbling at him at a thousand miles a minute, it was clear that she was still in mid-panic.
His impressions of the woman hit him in quick bursts: short, maybe no more than five foot three. Late twenties, early thirties. Dark hair in a ponytail, blue eyes, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose that made a person think of the kid she had once been. Her V-neck T-shirt showed an inch of cleavage, and he tried not to look directly at it. Her jeans showed off some lush and extravagant curves—ditto the part about not looking.
At least, not too obviously.
He willed himself to focus. Kid in jeopardy. Right.
He stepped off the trail, peered down toward the drop-off, and called to the kid. “Hey down there. Jesse, is it?”
“Who are you?” The kid sounded scared, so Quinn tried to be soothing.
“I’m Quinn. How far did you fall?” From the sound of his voice, it was maybe twenty feet. Probably no more than that.
“I don’t know,” the kid said. “I didn’t really fall. I just kind of slid.” His voice had taken on a whining quality, probably from fear.
“Okay. You’re not hurt, though?”
“Not really. I scraped my knees.”
“All right.”
“Can you please go down to the highway and call someone?” the woman asked.
“You don’t need me to call someone. I’m someone.” He began climbing down the side of the ravine to get the kid.
“You’re going down there? Oh, my God. Okay. Okay.” The woman was still freaking out, and he let her. If that was what she needed to do, where was the harm?
He climbed down, watching his footing, using tree roots and clumps of bushes to anchor his hands and feet. The thought of poison oak occurred to him, but he didn’t see any, so that was good.
When he got down there, the kid was sitting on the ground, his eyes round with fear. He was wearing shorts, and his knees were bleeding a little, but it didn’t look too bad.
“You must be Jesse.” Quinn offered his hand for the kid to shake. “I don’t see any other six-year-old boys down here, so I’m assuming.”
The kid’s hand felt small and fragile in his. He shook it manfully, then bent down and hooked a finger at his own back. “Here. Climb on.”
“You want me to get on your back?”
“Yeah. Like a piggyback ride. You’ve done piggyback rides, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Up you go.”
The kid climbed onto his back and grasped him around the neck, nearly choking him. He repositioned the kid’s hands to his shoulders. “Hold on there. Otherwise I’m going to pass out from lack of oxygen before we get up there.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
Once that was settled, he told the boy to hang on and started climbing. While he climbed, going slowly, taking one careful step at a time to avoid falling, he made small talk to keep the kid calm.
“You’re in, what, first grade?”
“I’m supposed to be in kindergarten, but I’m not going because we’re on vacation.”
“You’re skipping school for vacation? That’s gotta be pretty sweet.”
“I guess.”
“How about your brother? Is he skipping school, too?” Quinn kept up the patter to keep the kid calm, and it seemed to be working. They’d made it halfway up to the trail, and the boy was chatting amiably with him.
“He’s only in preschool, but he knows his letters and stuff. His teacher called my mom in for a conference because he’s really quiet and he doesn’t have any friends.”
“Huh. You must like it that he’s quiet, though. No little brother annoying you, yapping about this and that.”
“He talks at home. Just not at school,” Jesse said.
“You know what? I was the opposite.”
The kid was slipping a little on Quinn’s back, so he took a moment to shift him a little higher.
“You were?”
“Oh, sure. I couldn’t keep my trap shut. My teacher had to move my desk away from everyone else’s just so I wouldn’t have anybody to talk to.”
“How’s it coming down there?” The mom’s voice sounded shaky, a little shrill.
“Good. We’re almost there,” Quinn told her.
When he hefted himself and the boy up onto level ground and then onto the trail, the woman gasped in relief and snatched the kid off of Quinn’s back and into her arms so fast the boy’s feet probably never touched the ground.
“Jesse. Thank God. I didn’t know how I was going to get you up from there.” She clutched him to her.
“Mom. Let go. You’re hugging me too hard.”
She let go of him with a laugh, then hugged his brother as though she were taking inventory of her offspring.
“Did you get your ball?” Gavin wanted to know.
Jesse pulled the ball out of his pocket and held it up triumphantly.
“At least it wasn’t all for nothing.” The woman ruffled Jesse’s light brown hair with her hand. Then she turned to Quinn. “I can’t thank you enough. You’re a hero.” She held out her hand to him. “I’m Delilah Ballard. You’ve met Jesse. And this is Gavin.”
He shook her hand, feeling a little puffed up about the hero thing. It wasn’t every day he got to rescue a kid and get the gratitude of a pretty woman—though, in his line of work leading wilderness hikes, it wasn’t unprecedented.
“Quinn Monroe. And it was my pleasure.”
She turned her attention to her son’s knees, which were bleeding lightly. She made a fuss over his injuries, pulled a packet of wet wipes out of her day pack, then started dabbing at the boy’s scraped knees. As she worked, Quinn noticed her hands and the fact that her left one didn’t have a ring.
“Mom, ow!”
“I’m sorry if it hurts, but I have to clean this.” She wiped away the blood and gingerly removed bits of dirt and gravel. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
She straightened up, balled up the wipe in her hand, and looked at Quinn. “We wanted to go hiking. It seemed like a simple enough thing to do, but I guess it wasn’t. We’re not exactly outdoorsy.”
That was his cue. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “If you want to try again, let me know. I lead nature hikes tailored to your needs. Overnight, all day, a few hours—whatever works for you. I know the most scenic spots, and I know the difficulty level of the trails so I can steer you away from potential problems.” He held out the card to her, and she took it.
Delilah held the card in her hand, read it, then tucked it into her back pocket. Under other circumstances when a man offered her his card, she might have thought he was making a move—giving her his contact information not so she could hire him, but so she could give him a call, maybe see him again sometime.
But in this case, she dismissed the thought. The man standing in front of her was stupidly handsome. At no time in her life had Delilah ever attracted the interest of anyone who looked like this.
Dark hair that was thick and wavy, just long enough to curl over his ears. Eyes a mesmerizing green. Facial features that belonged on a marble bust of some Roman general. He was tall—over six feet—with broad shoulders and a trim waist. And that smile—oh, God. He had a way of smiling that said he was imagining what you might look like naked.
But Delilah was just … well, she was just Delilah. She was someone her ex-husband had criticized for being too chubby, too plain, too lacking in sophistication. Too much a mother and not enough a woman. So the card obviously was just business.
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind,” she told him. “If we go hiking again. Which, at the moment, I’ll be happy if we never do.”
He laughed amiably. “Fair enough. You want me to walk you three back to your car?”
Quinn delivered them to the turnout where their car was parked without further incident. He stood by while Delilah supervised the buckling of seatbelts and the distribution of snacks and water.
He was particularly attentive when she bent over to pick up a packaged cheese stick that she’d dropped. He couldn’t help admiring the fit of her jeans, which hugged an ass so round and tantalizing that he felt an almost irresistible urge to reach out and caress it.
Since that might ruin his image as a hero to women and children in distress, he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them from doing anything untoward.
“You guys all set?” he asked.
She turned to him and smiled. He liked her smile, and he liked how small she was in comparison to him—how she had to tip her neck back to look at him. It made him feel like a big, strong man, God help him.
“Thank you again. So much.”
“No problem. You drive safe, now.”
What kind of a lame pickup line was that? You drive safe, now? Was that the state of his game, that he couldn’t think of anything better?
As she drove off, he thought it was better that she was leaving him in her rearview mirror. Just because she wasn’t wearing a ring didn’t mean she wasn’t married. Some married women didn’t wear rings. And even if she was single, she had kids, and Quinn wasn’t the type for that. He didn’t have the interest, and he didn’t have the patience to deal with someone else’s children.
He’d liked Jesse, though, and that Gavin kid had been cute as hell.
Still. He wasn’t going there. If she called, he would offer to lead a hike, as he would for any other client.
That was all.