Heartbreaker by Karen Robards Page A

the point when there were things all around them in the shadows. Things that rustled. Things that slithered. Things that squeaked. She picked up her pace, trying to close the distance between herself and Jess’s unyielding back, with little success.
    Even with his pack, which had to weigh at least as much as hers, and Rory in his arms, he was moving faster than she thought she could ever move again.
    She was so tired. What she needed was a rest—and a cigarette.
    “Wait!” bubbled to her lips more than once as the distance between them gradually increased, but Lynn forced it back. She would ask for no quarter from Jess Feldman, ever.
    “Whooo-ooo!” The sharp flutter of wings near at hand accompanied the cry and almost surprised a scream out of Lynn. It was an owl, of course, she told herself, as brilliant reflective eyes in a pale round face swooped past her to vanish again in the dark. Nothing but an owl.
    Up ahead Jess stopped, waiting. With a feeling of relief Lynn tromped over roots and rocks and miscellaneous debris littering the path to his side.
    “Get the flashlight out, will you?”
    With a brusque jerk of his head he indicated his backpack. Get it yourself, Lynn almost said, but to be fair, with Rory in his arms he didn’t have a hand free.
    “How’s Rory?” Gritting her teeth, Lynn unzipped his backpack and foraged for the flashlight.
    “She’s all right, I think. She was murmuring something a while back. She seems comfortable enough.”
    A glance at Rory confirmed that. Her head lay on Jess’s shoulder, and her body was curled high against his chest. Zipped into a goose-down jacket—like the ones she and Jess wore, courtesy of the cliff rescue line—and wrapped in a silvery space blanket, she looked toasty warm and just a tad too cozy for her mother’s peace of mind.
    A suspicious glance at Jess’s expression reassured her somewhat. At the moment he did not look like he had a sexual thought in his head. What he did look was very tired.
    Lynn found herself wishing there was someone to carry her . She was tired too, so tired she could drop where she stood and sleep for a thousand years.
    Jess had even more reason to be tired than she did. Rory weighed less than a hundred pounds, but even so, carrying her for so long must have required considerable strength. He was holding her in his arms too, like an infant, in deference to her injured state, instead of hauling her slung over his shoulder or in some other masculinely efficient way.
    If Lynn hadn’t been feeling so out of sorts, she might have felt a glimmer of gratitude toward him for his care of her daughter.
    But she was feeling out of sorts. No, out of sorts was too mild a way to put it. What she was feeling was downright mean.
    The smooth, cool plastic of a disposable lighter touched her probing fingertips. Lynn almost wept. What good was a lighter without cigarettes?
    “Why would anybody pack a lighter and no cigarettes?” she demanded of no one in particular. It was a question she’d asked before, both out loud and silently, from the time she’d discovered the lighter in one of the packs when she had first searched them and concluded that cigarettes must be in there too, only to have her hopes dashed.
    “Maybe to start a fire with, so we won’t freeze.” This was the first time Jess had answered a question he must have recognized as purely rhetorical, and Lynn would just as soon he hadn’t bothered. His sarcasm did nothing to improve her mood.
    “Oh, shut up,” she said.
    “Mom?” Rory’s voice, thin though it was, was more welcome than even a cigarette would have been.
    “Baby, are you awake? How do you feel?” Lynn abandoned her search of the backpack to come around to look at her daughter. Rory’s forehead was shiny with salve from the first-aid kit in one of the packs. Lynn hoped that the shine magnified the degree of discoloration; half of Rory’s forehead looked black. If not, the injury was growing worse—but then,