Chapter 14
DARCY
The higher they climbed, the harder it was to breathe.
Darcy had been expecting this. Although she’d never been climbing before in her life, she’d had to attend a health and safety seminar when she’d started working at the resort. Abigail Lamb, the boss, had walked her through all the advice she needed to pass on to guests — things like which areas of the mountains were out of bounds, the warning signs of avalanches, and how to avoid frostbite. There had been a whole section on altitude sickness — when there simply wasn’t enough oxygen in the air to keep your body working. She didn’t remember the ins and outs of it, but she did remember that one of the symptoms was a terrible headache.
A terrible headache like the one she was getting now.
She rubbed her temples, stopping for a moment and closing her eyes. The headache was probably just because of the cold, and because of the blindingly bright light. They’d been walking for nearly two hours now and the sun was above the peaks, its light bouncing off the snow in every direction. It felt like being in a tanning booth, but with your eyes open.
“You all right?” Devlin asked. She squinted at him, seeing that he’d come to a stop too. He dropped the case, stretching his good arm.
“Just a headache,” she said. “Probably nothing.”
A look of concern crossed his features, but only for a moment. He looked down the slope, then craned his neck up at the mountain that towered over them.
“How high are we?” she asked.
“The ranger station’s at about 9,000 feet,” he said. “I’m guessing we’re over 8,000 now. Are you feeling sick? Tired? Dizzy?”
Darcy nodded.
“Tired, sure,” she answered. “But that might have something to do with, you know, crashing in a helicopter and sleeping in a cabin. Dizzy, a little, but only from exhaustion. And I’m more hungry than sick.”
She was, although she was so hungry it was making her feel nauseous. Her stomach felt like an empty bag, and the sound of it growling had been the loudest thing on the mountainside besides than their crunching footsteps.
“Let’s take a break,” Devlin suggested, picking up the case and walking to her side. “Why don’t you eat something?”
“We’ve only got one protein bar left,” she said. “We need to save it.”
“Have a bite,” he urged. “Go on, it will give you a boost.”
She nodded, pulling the bar from her jacket pocket. She used her teeth to tear it open, then took the smallest of nibbles from the top.
“You can have more than that,” Devlin said.
“I don’t want to,” she replied, grimacing. “It tastes like an old sock.”
He laughed, and she held it out to him.
“Your turn.”
“No, thank you.” He shook his head. “I’m okay.”
“Hey, have you forgotten our last conversation already. Come on, we’re a team.”
“I thought we were talking about rabbits,” he said, considering the protein bar. “Oh man, I could eat rabbit stew right about now.”
“Oy, you leave Nibbles out of this conversation,” she hurled back, lifting the bar to his face as his good hand was full.
“Nibbles?”
“And Norman,” she added. “I’m capturing two.”
Nodding thoughtfully, he opened his mouth and took a bite.
“Thanks,” he said, chewing then swallowing.
“Don’t get used to me feeding you,” she replied. “I know your APEX Billionaire’s Club must have an army of servants who do that, but I’m not one of them.”
He laughed, and the cloud of his breath drifted up into the sky. He looked different when he laughed, his eyes crinkling. Unreserved, unharried, like when he was sleeping. A dangerous tingling warmed her belly and she looked away.
“Is that what you think my life is like?” he said. “Servants feeding me? Getting me dressed?”
“Isn’t it?” she asked, smiling. “I bet you have somebody to tie your shoe laces.”
“Of course,” he said, smiling back at her. “His name is Jim, and I pay him a million quid a year to make sure my shoes are on properly.”
He shook his head.
“My life isn’t any different to yours,” he said. “Not really, not when you boil away all the other stuff. I get up, I go to work, I go to the gym, I watch TV, I read, I eat, and I go to bed.”
“But you get up in a mansion, you drive to work in a Porsche, you have a personal gym, you’re on the TV, and your bed is probably made of gold. If you need something, you buy it. If you need someone, you buy them too.”
Devlin shrugged, the smile dropping away.
“That’s not true,” he said.
“You bought me,” she replied. “One hundred thousand, wasn’t it?”
“It’s not like that,” he said, again. “I was desperate, and the money felt like a necessity. I needed to get up to the mountain and you were my only hope.”
“But there’s the difference,” Darcy added, not unkindly. “A huge difference. You were desperate for my help so you paid me because you had the finances to be able to do that.”
Devlin closed his eyes in exasperation.
“I grew up with nothing,” he said, eyes firmly shut. “We were so poor, my dad was useless, he was in prison half the time. Mum did her best, she was amazing, but we never had anything. I earned every penny I’ve got, and I’m not ashamed of it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
She looked at his face, studying the worry lines on his forehead so closely she didn’t realise he’d opened his eyes. He gave her a silent look that made her chest constrict and the skin on her neck prickle with heat.
He breathed deeply, then nodded.
“If your head gets worse, or you feel severely dizzy or sick, then tell me,” he said. “High altitude pulmonary or cerebral oedemas are no joke. They can be fatal.”
He pulled the packet of pain relief from his pocket and offered her two pills.
“This will help, wash it down with some snow.”
She did as he told her, removing a glove and scooping up some scratchy snow, dissolving it in her mouth. It lifted her mood a little. Her snow scooping hand soon started to sting with the cold and wet, but as she tried to pull her glove back on, it stuck to all her fingers and hung off them like the branches of a willow tree. Devlin pressed his lips together and put down the case.
“Here,” he said. “Let me help.”
Darcy watched as Devlin pulled off the glove from his good hand with his teeth and started to tug at hers. He sighed as the glove slid easily, his chest rising and falling, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His fingers brushed the skin of her wrist, and for a moment it was like he was holding her hand. Darcy’s breath caught in her throat. Her skin tingled. And she was almost certain the sharp intake of breath came from Devlin and his realisation of how it looked. He dropped his hand like Darcy had electrocuted him, turning to pull back on his own glove.
“Thanks,” Darcy said, her voice husky. Devlin gave her a nod and they started back on their way, walking side by side.
Every so often Darcy would feel Devlin turn and inspect her, as though she was about to fall or faint. She could see the concern even from the corner of her eyes and it made heat pool in all her softness. She was suddenly too hot in her layers of clothing, and she tugged at her collar in a futile attempt to cool down, grateful that Devlin didn’t mention her rosy cheeks. The quiet of the mountain pressed too hard — she needed to fill it.
“You’re good at this.”
“Good at what?” he asked.
“Walking,” she replied. “Through snow. You’re a cross-country skier, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I love it.”
“You’re crazy,” she said, out of breath again. “Why would you do this for fun?”
He laughed.
“I like the challenge of it,” he said. “It’s good to test yourself. Cross-country skiing is one of the hardest things you can do, but you can do it. There’s really nothing as exhilarating as pushing yourself to your limits, and nothing as rewarding as crossing the finish line. I’ve competed a few times, mainly in Canada, but Scandinavia too. Cross-country skiing, and marksmanship.”
“I heard you were competitive,” she said, her foot slipping on a loose rock beneath the snow. Devlin was beside her in an instant. “Like, really competitive.”
“I am,” he said, stepping back into line as Darcy walked on. “But it’s not like that. I don’t care if I win or lose. It doesn’t matter where you come in the ranks, as it’s not about who you beat. The only person you should be competing with is yourself. Do better. Be better.”
“Are you actually Devlin Storm?” Darcy asked, smiling. “I remember reading an interview with you where you said you enjoyed nothing more than crushing your opponents.”
Devlin shook his head. “Yeah, that sounds like something I’d say. Pompous and ridiculous and self-aggrandising.”
“But that’s not you,” Darcy said. Devlin stopped walking, turning to her and fixing her with his intense gaze.
“Can I tell you something?” he asked, speaking more quietly now that they were face to face. “Something you probably won’t have read in many interviews.”
“Sure,” she said, following his lead as he walked on again, his arm brushing hers as they went. It was a solid contact that felt good in this wide expanse of pure, white nothingness.
“I wasn’t called Devlin Storm growing up. Devlin, yes, but I had my dad’s name, Priestley. I hated it because I hated him. He was the least priestly person you could ever meet. His name was a joke. Mum had his name, too, and her maiden name was Smith, which felt far too dull.”
“How did you end up with Storm?” Darcy asked. She’d heard the name Priestley before, it was a common fact that he’d changed his name, but she had never heard the reason why.
“Mum was a quiet woman,” he went on, his voice even softer now, so that she had to lean closer to him to hear it over the sound of their crunching feet. “That’s why dad liked her, I think, because he could order her around. She used to do everything for him, and I never once heard him ask nicely, or say thank you. He was the same with everyone. He just had a way of making you feel small, small enough that he could boss you around, use you. I used to hate it so much, the way he was.”
He took a moment to think about his own words, his green eyes seeing something that Darcy could not.
“I hate how like him I am,” he said eventually. “I hate that I can see him in me every single day — that arrogance, that selfishness.”
“Why are you like it, then?” Darcy replied. “Why not change?”
“Because I saw what happens when you don’t keep people at arm’s length” he said. “I’m not going to be at the mercy of someone just because I fall in love with them. If I start letting them in, I might lose everything.”
“You might gain a lot more,” said Darcy.
“That’s a risk I’m not going to take,” he snapped back.
She could feel the anger pulsing off him in waves, but there was something else — a flicker of regret, as if he were lost in a moment from his past. Sensing the shift, she kept quiet, giving him space. They both trudged up the steep slope in silence. It was a few minutes before he started speaking again.
“Mum was kind and loving all her life,” he said. “She could never stand up to dad, because he would use his physical strength against her. Except once. I still remember it so clearly. I was twelve, I’d just had a growth spurt, and I was in the wrestling club at school. All my life I’d been afraid of Dad, but for the first time I was bigger than him, stronger. He was just out of prison, and I think he wanted to show me that he was still the man of the family. One night, drunk and angry, he raised his fist to me and Mum . . .”
He took a deep breath, a cloud of it billowing out of his pursed lips.
“Mum changed. In that instant, she became something else. There was a sudden strength in her, a fury. It was like a storm was raging behind her eyes, and she ran in front of me and pushed Dad as hard as she could. He went down like a ton of bricks, and she just stood over him and ordered him never to touch me, never to even lift his fist to me again. And he never did, not once. For all Dad’s meanness, his anger, for all the times he made my mum feel like garbage, he never once threatened me again.”
“A storm,” Darcy said. “That’s where your name came from?”
Devlin nodded.
“I took that piece of her, that strength, that storm I saw in her eyes, and I made it part of me, for ever. She’s with me. She’s always with me.”
“I’m sorry you lost her,” said Darcy.
“Thank you. It still doesn’t feel real, you know? I still think I can just pick up the phone and . . .”
Whatever he was about to say became stuck in his throat and Darcy’s heart melted like snow in the sun. She reached out and touched his arm, as tenderly as she could, pulling him to a halt. He stood there, facing away from her, and when she finally coaxed his head around, she saw that his amazing, green eyes were swimming with tears.
“Come here,” she said, and he shook his head. She opened her arms. “Just for a moment. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
He let her embrace him, and she pulled his head onto her shoulder, putting her other arm around his waist and hugging him as hard as she was able to in her layers of clothes. She felt his body shudder, but whatever sadness was there must have been quickly locked away because after a moment, his body tensed and he pulled back.
“It’s the air,” he croaked, clearing his throat. “It’s too thin. Makes my eyes water.”
“It’s okay, Devlin,” she replied. “There’s nothing wrong with being human. There’s nothing wrong with needing help or with asking for some compassion. Your mum saved you that day because she acted out of love for you. If you want to be like her and to keep a bit of her with you, like you say you do, then maybe you need to open your heart to receiving it to. I bet you’ve never truly been in love, have you? Never fought for someone who meant the whole world to you?”
He scrunched up his nose.
“We need to keep going,” he said, hefting up his case. “All talking does is slow us down. All it does is make us vulnerable to the mountain.”
Darcy felt foolish for trying to get him to open up. All too often she’d read that men like Devlin didn’t share their feelings. They were solitary, and closed, because they believed that any attempt to open up would be a chink in their armour.
But the thing was, she hadn’t tried to get him to talk. He’d done it all himself. Sure, she’d asked a few questions, but it was him who’d steered the conversation into the past, and towards his parents. She got the feeling that Devlin’s emotions were like a core of ice, buried deep inside him and kept guarded at all times. But that ice water heated up sometimes, it came to a boil, and he just couldn’t stop it from bubbling over.
The world knew Devlin Storm as a cold, uncaring, emotionless man, but in the short time she’d spent with him, Darcy was starting to understand just how fragile he actually was.
But she had no desire to be shouted at again, so she stayed where she was, walking beside Devlin as they marched up the slope. She rubbed her hands together, trying to flex her numb fingers. They’d made good progress, climbing the mountain faster than she’d thought. If the weather held, and there were no catastrophes, then they’d reach the ranger station in another two hours or so.
They had reached a small rocky outcrop and Devlin went first, scrambling up it. Darcy waited until he was at the top then took her turn, heaving her exhausted body up over the rocks until her arms and legs screamed at her to stop. But she made it, and despite her heart rate soaring through her hat, Darcy was proud of her climb. She looked to Devlin for recognition of her hard work, but he simply started walking again.
She followed a little behind, watching Devlin as he strode on ahead with a sense of determination. As she walked, she thought about everything that Devlin had said to her — his poor childhood, his drunken father who had been in and out of prison, his loving mum. It was so different to the Devlin Storm she’d read about in the papers, so different to the picture of himself he presented to the world.
That Devlin was the very definition of a spoilt brat. That Devlin had claimed to come from a long line of wealthy people, the crème de la crème of British life. That Devlin had driven a new sports car every week, had lived in a new penthouse or mansion every month, and had spent millions of pounds every year on parties for him and his friends. The Devlin with her here today was a different man entirely. But which one was real?
She would never know. In a few hours they would be flown off the mountain. Darcy would be taken to the local hospital, and Devlin would no doubt be transported to a private clinic somewhere. Their worlds were so far apart that they would never see each other again.
Good , she said to herself. I’ll never have to be at the wrong end of a Devlin Storm piercing glare again .
The thought of it, though, the thought of never finding a way through Devlin’s icy shields and into the truth of him, made her head pound and her heart race.
Ahead, she heard a clatter of rocks, and another angry shout from Devlin.
“Come on!” he yelled.
How infuriating could he be? One moment he was telling her to stay back, the next he was ordering her to catch up. She ignored him, purposefully slowing down and taking a moment to breathe. Beneath her the world shone, the brightest thing she had ever seen in her life, and as much as she hated adventures, she couldn’t help but be mesmerised by the sights it brought to life.
It was only when Devlin cried out again that she realised he didn’t sound angry at all.
He sounded scared.