harness and zip line to a catwalk in the treetops. She’d found she was not much in fear of the heights despite her phobia about flying. Later, a steep hike had taken them up a trail to the hot springs, where they had luxuriated in a rock-lined bathing pool, steam billowing into the cool mountain air.
Enraptured by all that she beheld, her holiday gloriously recovered from its disastrous start, she was already plotting her return next winter. Maybe she would bump into Pablo Esquivel. Maybe she would thank him. Maybe she should stop thinking about him — why was he still popping into her mind? He was yesterday’s boring tragedy.
Glo had attached herself to her, always there, stride by stride, zip line to zip line. Though she smoked and drank to some excess – maintaining she was supposed to be on a “damn holiday” – she was naturally athletic and kept trim: stretch exercises for half an hour every morning and evening, followed by vigorous aerobics. After dinner, she would loll on a hammock with a gin and tonic and a Nancy Ward romance.
She is a lawyer. He is a cop. When they clash in court, they discover they share a strange passion
.
Glo entertained Maggie enormously; they had bonded like schoolgirls in a camp dormitory. But, to Maggie’s mind, shoot-from-the-hip Gloria-May made an odd pairing with stern, ambitious Chester Walker. Still, she clearly owned his heart, and could melt him with a word or a touch.
Maggie bent to her creative labours at her balcony table. It was becoming a frolic to insinuate real people into her fiction: a gangly heroine, a glib villain, a shy work truck with a dark past. What role could she assign to a Southern temptress or to a square-jawed ex-Marine officer?
His T-shirt smeared with grease, Jacques pulled himself from under his rust-eaten Jeep. “This is as far as this baby is going today. It’s a connecting rod.”
Fiona shrugged into her heavy packsack. “Let’s walk.”
“Let’s not. We’ll camp here; this is the heat of the day.”
His bossiness irked her. Fiona found the fellow sufficiently capable, however sour and laconic, but she worried that he might show another face once he dipped into the litre of whisky she had seen him stow in his pack
.
“Suit yourself.” She marched up the track alone
.
Fiona was disappointed when she reached the rushing river’s edge; her plan to follow it upstream was thwarted by a twenty-metre cascade falling almost vertically from a rocky ridge. This was a mortifying defeat in the battle of wills with Dr. Cardinal; she would be forced to swallow her pride, rejoin him
.
But first she would sample the pool hollowed out by the falls. She stripped off all her clothes, then arced like an arrow, feeling the cold fresh snap of the water as it engulfed her
.
Not long afterwards, as she was floating, enjoying the sun on her body, she opened her myopic eyes to behold a large humanoid shape looking down at her. “The lady’s even prettier when she blushes. Found yourself a nice spot.”
With one fluid motion, Jacques pulled his shirt over his tangle of red hair, exposing a broad chest and a waist thickened with careless
living. Unbuckling his trousers and dropping his shorts, she turned her eyes away as he hurtled into the water
.
Maggie reconstructed this last mangled sentence, planted a period at the end, then tended to her cramped toes. A story was definitely unfolding; the seeds of danger and romance were planted, erotic fertilizer added.
She put her manuscript aside at the sound of the breakfast gong. This morning’s schedule included an easy meander down a valley, then an interview with Senator Walker. Because he was frequently secluded with his two advisers, Maggie’s opportunities to chat with him had been brief and limited. Tomorrow one of the helicopters was returning to take Chester (he regarded that name as “wimpy,” Glo had confided) back to Washington “for vital affairs of state.”
Yesterday, during dinner,
Enraptured by all that she beheld, her holiday gloriously recovered from its disastrous start, she was already plotting her return next winter. Maybe she would bump into Pablo Esquivel. Maybe she would thank him. Maybe she should stop thinking about him — why was he still popping into her mind? He was yesterday’s boring tragedy.
Glo had attached herself to her, always there, stride by stride, zip line to zip line. Though she smoked and drank to some excess – maintaining she was supposed to be on a “damn holiday” – she was naturally athletic and kept trim: stretch exercises for half an hour every morning and evening, followed by vigorous aerobics. After dinner, she would loll on a hammock with a gin and tonic and a Nancy Ward romance.
She is a lawyer. He is a cop. When they clash in court, they discover they share a strange passion
.
Glo entertained Maggie enormously; they had bonded like schoolgirls in a camp dormitory. But, to Maggie’s mind, shoot-from-the-hip Gloria-May made an odd pairing with stern, ambitious Chester Walker. Still, she clearly owned his heart, and could melt him with a word or a touch.
Maggie bent to her creative labours at her balcony table. It was becoming a frolic to insinuate real people into her fiction: a gangly heroine, a glib villain, a shy work truck with a dark past. What role could she assign to a Southern temptress or to a square-jawed ex-Marine officer?
His T-shirt smeared with grease, Jacques pulled himself from under his rust-eaten Jeep. “This is as far as this baby is going today. It’s a connecting rod.”
Fiona shrugged into her heavy packsack. “Let’s walk.”
“Let’s not. We’ll camp here; this is the heat of the day.”
His bossiness irked her. Fiona found the fellow sufficiently capable, however sour and laconic, but she worried that he might show another face once he dipped into the litre of whisky she had seen him stow in his pack
.
“Suit yourself.” She marched up the track alone
.
Fiona was disappointed when she reached the rushing river’s edge; her plan to follow it upstream was thwarted by a twenty-metre cascade falling almost vertically from a rocky ridge. This was a mortifying defeat in the battle of wills with Dr. Cardinal; she would be forced to swallow her pride, rejoin him
.
But first she would sample the pool hollowed out by the falls. She stripped off all her clothes, then arced like an arrow, feeling the cold fresh snap of the water as it engulfed her
.
Not long afterwards, as she was floating, enjoying the sun on her body, she opened her myopic eyes to behold a large humanoid shape looking down at her. “The lady’s even prettier when she blushes. Found yourself a nice spot.”
With one fluid motion, Jacques pulled his shirt over his tangle of red hair, exposing a broad chest and a waist thickened with careless
living. Unbuckling his trousers and dropping his shorts, she turned her eyes away as he hurtled into the water
.
Maggie reconstructed this last mangled sentence, planted a period at the end, then tended to her cramped toes. A story was definitely unfolding; the seeds of danger and romance were planted, erotic fertilizer added.
She put her manuscript aside at the sound of the breakfast gong. This morning’s schedule included an easy meander down a valley, then an interview with Senator Walker. Because he was frequently secluded with his two advisers, Maggie’s opportunities to chat with him had been brief and limited. Tomorrow one of the helicopters was returning to take Chester (he regarded that name as “wimpy,” Glo had confided) back to Washington “for vital affairs of state.”
Yesterday, during dinner,
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