Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
T hey got an early start then next morning. It was just as well. Tildi had slept well once the shooting star show slowed. She was able to make several wishes, most of which she wouldn’t tell him.
“Everyone knows wishes don’t come true if you share them, Daddy,” she’d told him with a tone so prim it would have made a schoolmarm proud.
They’d made it to the jeep Sev had arranged for him. He’d driven them the final thirty miles to the spot he’d picked for his escape. Once again, the plans he’d made didn’t allow for an extra passenger.
No novice should make a base jump like the one he’d planned. Hell, no novice should base jump at all. He tried to tell himself he’d be with her, but the entire thing was reckless at best. The jump was tricky with all the icy winter winds blowing in off the northern Pacific Ocean. Keeping the parachute on target would require skill.
Add to that the narrowness of the strip of beach they had to land on. It didn’t leave much room for error. Normally, landing in the water wouldn’t be a problem, but coral covered the bottom of the ocean in the Kuril Islands. He hadn’t counted it as a factor, either. It was only an issue if you didn’t know what you were doing, which he did. But Tildi didn’t know the first thing about base jumping.
None of this would be an issue if he were alone, but he wasn’t. He’d calculated the jump limit counting only himself. Even with how small Tildi was, they were over the weight limit. That meant they would fall faster and hit the ground harder.
The blue-black waters of the Pacific churned in the wind, and the cold front that had moved inland sooner than expected blanketed the island with fog. At least that worked in their favor.
That was about the only thing that did. If he had any other option, he’d have gone with it. But this was all he had.
Returning his attention to the beauty beside him in the jeep, he got down to it. “All right, Bluebell, I need you to listen to me. When I tell you this, I want you to keep in mind that I have kept you safe so far. I’ve been doing missions like this for a long time, so you can trust I know what I’m talking about. Yeah?”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. Best to just go ahead and get it out there. “If you didn’t like going out the window, you’re going to hate what happens next. But this time, we’ll be together. You’ll be in my arms almost every second. I promise you’ll be safe.”
“I’d feel safer if you didn’t spend so much time trying to convince me how safe I’m going to be.”
His girl was a bit of a straight shooter herself, wasn’t she? “Fair enough. I have a boat hidden in the cove just north of that point,” he said, indicating where the beach jutted out into the water not far away.
“I’m not afraid of the water or boats, so there’s no need to worry about me.” Scanning the grassy area in front of them, she asked, “Where are the steps down to the beach?”
“It’s two hundred and fifty feet down to the beach, Tildi.”
“Wow, I’ve never even seen that many steps. We’d better get started. The guards who are left have to be tracking us by now. We have to hurry.”
“We will, but there are no steps.”
Confusion danced across her face. “No steps? Then how are we supposed to get down there?”
He slid her from his lap and knelt next to his pack, unzipping the bottom before pulling out what looked like a flat backpack. After rezipping the bag, he stood and held it up to her.
“We get down with this,” he said.
Her confusion vanished, replaced by fear. “It looks like an awfully small bag to hold two hundred and fifty steps.”
Ignoring her sarcasm, he asked, “Tildi, do you know what base jumping is?”
She shook her head. “I’ve heard of it, but I’m not exactly sure.”
That was probably a good thing. He explained while he took out his chute and harness. “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I’ve done this hundreds of times. It will only last about ten seconds, and I’ll be holding you almost the entire time.”
She shook her head. “Wait, what will only last about ten seconds? No, strike that. What do you mean almost the entire time?”
How could he word this in a way that wouldn’t freak her out? Nothing came to mind. “I’m going to need you to take off my coat, Bluebell.”
“But it’s cold,” she replied.
“I know, babygirl, but the coat will get too heavy when we get into the water. It will weigh you down. You have to take it off so we can add it to the backpack. I have a blanket on the boat that will warm you up.”
“Okay, I guess.”
The petulance in her tone almost made him smile as he slipped his coat from her shoulders and stuffed it into the backpack. He was about to make her jump off a two hundred and fifty foot cliff, and she was whiny because she had to do it without his coat.
Kneeling in front of her, he snapped the leg straps together before holding them out. “Step,” he said. She didn’t move, but one pointed glance back at the boulder had her grabbing his shoulder to steady herself as she stepped into the leg straps.
Her legs were smooth and toned, and he had the sudden urge to run his tongue up her inner thigh as she stood before him with her legs slightly spread. His cock began to swell again, obviously on board with that plan.
Get a grip, for fucks sake. You’re not in junior high.
He hadn’t had this kind of reaction to a woman in three years. He stood, pulled the canvas loops up her gorgeous legs, and secured the chest straps in place.
“This is bringing back less than pleasant memories of my backpack in middle school,” she said as he pulled the shoulder straps in place. “At least this isn’t as heavy as my trig and chemistry books.”
He paused. “You took trig and chemistry in middle school?”
She blushed as if being smart was something to be ashamed of and shrugged. “It’s not hard when you have personal tutors every day.”
Why would she downplay her intelligence? “Sounds hard to me,” he said.
He was no slouch in the academic department, but it seemed his babygirl was on an entirely different level.
“Well, it wasn’t,” she said. “But it was something that made me different from everyone else. It’s hard to make friends when you’re twelve, taking classes with sixteen and seventeen-year- olds. I had to fail things on purpose so people would stop calling me a freak.”
He cracked his neck to each side to give himself time to calm down. He was all for allowing a child to live up to their full potential, but it sounded like Tildi’s parents hadn’t considered her overall well being. He could picture her sitting alone at lunch with no one to talk to. How isolated had she felt?
He let that drop for now but filed it away to bring up on the trip home. They would need many topics to make conversation on the nearly three week journey. That was one of the many things they could do to pass the time. Something to look forward to.
Now for the hard part. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he said, “This is how it’s going to go. We are jumping down into the water. You are wearing a parachute designed for jumping exactly this distance. You are strapped in, so there is no way for you to fall. It will feel like you are floating for ten to fifteen seconds. I’ll be holding on to you the whole way.”
“How are you going to be holding onto me if I’m falling off a cliff?” she asked, and her voice sounded so small. It killed him that he had to put her through this, but there was no other way.
“Not falling, jumping,” he said.
She yipped out a laugh. “I assure you, if I go over that cliff, I will be falling because you pushed me.”
He had to fight his grin. She wouldn’t appreciate it, but she was so darn cute when she got feisty. He liked it. Picturing life with her was not hard to do.
“I’ll be holding onto you with my legs around your hips. And I will be controlling the parachute. If anyone were to fall, it would be me, and I assure you that you won’t get rid of me that easily.”
“This is insane,” she said. “You-you are insane.”
“No, I am skilled at keeping people alive and getting out of tough situations. I promise you, Bluebell, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“So, if I close my eyes?”
“You can do that until we get to the bottom. You have to be looking in order to land properly.”
“On the sand? Is the sand down there soft?”
They were on a volcanic island. There was nothing soft about this place, including the beaches. “No,” he told her honestly. “But you don’t have to worry about the rocks because we are landing in the water.”
“Great! So all I need to worry about is drowning.”
Her hands had fisted on her hips. Her current tone of voice would normally make his palm itch, but right now, he was glad to see anything that wasn’t fear.
“You’re not going to drown,” he explained. “I am going to let go of you at the last second so I’ll be able to help you as soon as you hit the water. You need to prepare, though, because it’s going to be cold. Very cold. And if you gasp, you’ll probably suck in water rather than air. I’ll have us in my boat as quickly as possible, and then we’ll head out to sea to rendezvous with my teammates on a much larger boat that will take us back to the United States.”
“So, if I agree to jump off a cliff, and if I don’t drown or freeze to death in the water, and if we can actually make it onto this larger boat… how long will it take to get back home?”
“If everything goes according to plan, we should be able to make it home to Wyoming in about three weeks.”
Something he couldn’t read crossed her face. “Is that where your ranch is? In Wyoming?”
Her question brought him up short. When he thought of home, he thought of Wyoming, but when did he start thinking of it as Tildi’s home, too? She had a family and a life somewhere that had nothing to do with him she probably wanted to get back to. And yet, somehow, for him, home now included her.
Who would watch over her when they got back to the States? It didn’t sound like her family was worth going back to. And on her own, she’d managed to get snatched by the Boss of the Midnight family, one of, if not the most powerful clans of the Cosa Nostra in America.
It would have to be her choice, but now that he thought about it, he wanted her to call Wyoming home, too.
She was still looking up at him, waiting for his answer. “Wyoming is where I grew up. My family owns a ranch there, and I work the ranch with my brothers and run a private security company from there as needed. I’d love to show you when we get back. It’s beautiful there.”
A pretty peach blush flooded her cheeks, and she dropped her eyes. “I’ve never seen the Rocky Mountains before. I’ve heard they’re beautiful.”
They were a beauty beyond compare. At least, that’s what he always used to say. But that was before he met a pixie of a girl with pink hair and lavender-blue eyes. He wouldn’t be able to say that anymore.
“Well, Bluebell,” he said as he led her to the cliff’s edge. “I’ll take you on a personal tour. But first, we have to get to the boat. I’m counting to three, then you jump out like you’re doing a belly buster off the diving board.”
“I’ve never done a belly buster. I’ve never been on a diving board, either, for that matter. I don’t suppose this is a good time to mention I don’t know how to swim,” she said.
“Wait, what? You don’t know how to swim?”
She shook her head.
“Did you or did you not tell me not five minutes ago, little girl, that you weren’t afraid of water or boats? Were you lying to me? Because if you were, you are going to be very glad you are jumping into the ice cold Pacific. That’s what it will take to cool your backside off.”
She shook her head harder. “I didn’t lie. I mean, not exactly. I don’t get scared in the water or boats because I never get near them. How was I supposed to know you were going to make me jump into the ocean?”
His hand itched so bad it was twitching. She wasn’t going to sit without wincing for a month. “You don’t swim.”
“No,” she cried. “Thus, the talk of drowning. I told you I can’t do this!”
Holy hell. It hadn’t occurred to him she might not be able to swim. Once again, he cursed her parents.
“Yes, you can. Okay, new plan. I’m not going to let go of you. We will hit the water together, and I will get us back to the surface.”
When she didn’t answer, he turned her to face him. “Listen to me, little one. A Daddy would never let his babygirl go. Do you hear me? I promised I would keep you safe. If you haven’t figured it out yet, you’ll soon learn my promises mean everything to me. We are going to see those mountains in Wyoming, you and me. Got me?”
She stared at him for what seemed like forever, then nodded. “I got you, Daddy,” she said, trying her best to keep her voice steady.
His heart swelled with pride at her courage. She was something else.
“All right, babygirl. On three. One. Two… THREE!”