Page 33 of Suddenly Tempted
“Noted,” he said, nodding once.
It was his tick, Darcy had noticed. Whenever Devlin found something he wasn’t sure about, he’d go all hard-faced at it. Noted and a nod. But she was breaking through, because when he said it to her just then, his cheek dimpled in a smile.
“Come on then,” she told him. “Lead the way. Where are we going?”
“It’s not far,” he said. “They’re already out there looking for us. They might have found the helicopter wreckage, which means they can trace us. There could be a team already at the ranger station waiting for us with warm clothes and some brandy.”
“Then we’d better go meet them,” she said as they set off.
But as they were rounding the lip of the crevasse, Devlin stopped suddenly. He looked up and his expression turned to one of panic.
“My case,” he cried, the whites of his eyes flashing in the snow. “Oh no, did it fall? Please no, please don’t let it have fallen down there.”
“Hey,” Darcy said, placing a hand on his arm. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s back there. It’s fine.”
He took a huge breath of relief, walking over to it and picking it up. For all his strength, and all his toughness, he looked unbearably fragile.
“I know I shouldn’t ask you,” he said. “I know you’ve done more than enough for me already. You’ve saved my life. But could you possibly . . .”
Darcy laughed, taking the case from him.
“It would be my pleasure,” she said.
Chapter 17
DEVLIN
He’d spoken the truth. It really wasn’t far.
But it was hard work, and slow. Every step he took, Devlin expected the ground to open up beneath him again. He tested every inch of snow, poking the toe of his shoe in until he felt solid rock. It got harder with every passing minute because his feet were like blocks of ice. In fact, his entire body felt frozen solid, especially with no coat to keep him warm. Not that he was complaining about having to give it away.
He kept looking at Darcy as he walked. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. There was no doubt about the fact that she’d saved his life. He never would have been able to pull himself out of the crevasse, not with his broken arm. If it hadn’t been for her, he would have hung there until his strength gave out, and even now he’d be lost in the darkness of the mountain. The thought terrified him more than anything else in his entire life — not just dying, because there had been plenty of times he’d come close to that doing extreme sports around the world. No, Devlin couldn’t quite put his finger on what felt different this time. Only that it might have something to do with Darcy and the sudden urge he had to kiss her.
He snuck another look at her. Her face was fierce with concentration, her lips moving in an unspoken conversation. She looked incredible. It was such a ridiculous thought that he almost laughed. But he didn’t, because he knew it was true. Something had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours — a fundamental change in the way he saw himself and the world. Yes, part of that was to do with his near-death experience of crashing in the mountains, but part of it was to do with something else, too.
It was to do with Darcy.
“Whoa, careful,” she said, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead of him was another crack in the rock, this one too narrow to fall down, but wide enough to get a foot stuck in.
Pay attention, you idiot,he told himself. He really needed to stop thinking about Darcy and start thinking about getting to the ranger station alive. But it was impossible. Right then, she was the only thing grounding him. The sound of her bubbly laugh, her wide smile, the size of the heart she was carrying around with kindness and compassion for everyone. Even him. He felt himself smiling at the very idea.
Stepping over the crack, they continued up the slope. Now that the sun was out, the top layer of snow had started to melt. That was a good thing because the bigger crevasses in the ice were now visible — yawning mouths in the rock that wanted nothing more than to swallow them both. They stayed well clear of them, making good progress upwards.
“You really think that helicopter was looking for us?” Darcy asked, her cheeks a sweet pink with the cold and exertion.
“I’m sure of it,” he replied. “I’m surprised there haven’t been more of them.”
“There might have been,” she said. “But they’ll be concentrating the search on the area between the Royal Alpine and the airport, thinking we went down there. Seeing as that’s what you told them we were doing.”
He nodded. That was a smart observation, and one he hadn’t thought of. Of course they wouldn’t be looking here. Who in their right mind would fly onto one of the biggest mountains in the country in the middle of one of the fiercest storms of the year?
“Can you tell me why?” Darcy asked, as if reading his mind. She seemed to have an uncanny ability to do that. “Why did you head here, knowing it was so dangerous?”
Devlin felt the familiar hollow feeling eating away inside him at the reason he’d been so reckless. He opened his mouth to tell her to stop asking him so many questions. Then he stopped. She deserved more than that, and not just because of what she’d just done. She deserved more than that because she was a good person. And, truth be told, he was starting to enjoy Darcy’s questions. He liked the way they popped out of her mouth and how she sometimes looked as surprised at them as he felt. Devlin was feeling more open to answering them too.
But he wasn’t quite ready to share this secret yet.
“There’s something I needed to do,” he said. “Something I still need to do. It’s . . . it’s incredibly important to me.”
