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Taking a deep breath and shaking his head in disbelief at what he was about to do, he cranked the truck’s engine, looked down the street in the direction Taylor had gone and backed out of his parking slot.
Quinn had an apology to deliver.
IRRITATION CHASED TAYLOR down State Road 120, pushing the speedometer well to the right of the posted speed limit. She muttered to herself, saying aloud everything she wished she’d thought to say to Quinn Monroe when she’d faced off with him. Smart, cutting remarks that would have made an impression. But no. Not Taylor. The most she’d been able to do was call him a “one-trick pony prick” and storm off.
“Way to go, Williams,” she groused, yanking her hat off and tossing it onto the empty passenger seat. A tug on her hair tie was punctuated by a curse, and both were followed up by a hard yank, but her hair came down. She finger combed the mess of waves, but nothing less than a hot shower and a quart of conditioner would tame the flyaway thing she had going on. She’d get settled in her little cabin, eat whatever the owner sent over for supper, since she hadn’t picked up anything at the mercantile, and then she’d get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow had to be better. Right?
Her opinionated subconscious remained silent, despite the invitation to cut Taylor to ribbons.
That didn’t bode well. Ever.
Some obscure emotion wound its way around her ankles, subtle enough, at first, that she wasn’t sure what she’d stirred up. That mystery feeling became inescapable, squeezing and tightening its way up and up her body until it became an emotional anaconda that was squeezing the air out of her chest. Trepidation, and a hell of a lot of it.
She couldn’t stand the constriction and loss of control, was so conditioned by fear to respond by shutting her mind down and focusing on surviving, that she almost missed the bright red mailbox denoting the road to the rental.
Taylor stomped on the truck’s brakes, the back wheels chattering as she came to an abrupt stop. Backing up on the empty highway, she turned down the dirt road and passed under a black metal sign displaying the place’s name.
Place. Ranch? Family? Resort? Whatever.
Losing control like that had left her too rattled to pay attention.
She pulled over, the truck’s passenger wheels well into the pasture and, closing her eyes, let her head tip back onto the headrest. Doubt moved in, swift and assertive. Had she made a mistake coming here? Why did she think she could do this? What would happen to her if she couldn’t? Clearly Monroe wasn’t a compassionate man. Should she have booked someone else as her recertification guide? There were a handful of people she could have picked from, all of whom were qualified to see her through the process. There was no reason it had to be him. After all, he’d only just reemerged onto the climbing scene after more than a year’s absence. It had been serendipity she’d tripped into a recommendation to Quinn Monroe from another climb instructor she’d contacted. That guy had been booked, but he’d told her Quinn was back in business, providing her with Quinn’s new website and contact information. She hadn’t been comfortable calling, scared he’d recognize her from the accident, which had made national news. Last thing she needed was to hear the derision or judgment that were bound to be in his voice. Rejection would be easier to take in an impersonal email.
She was wildly curious about him, though. No climber had ever worked so hard to gain international notoriety for his skill and then walked away from a career—with sponsorships—when he was at the top of his game. But Quinn had. And then he’d fallen off the grid. Two interviews had briefly featured him since then. In each, Quinn had refused to talk about the reason he’d quit. He’d been borderline surly in his responses when the interviewers tried to talk him around to discussing his stage-left exit. After all, they’d said, the climbing world wanted to know why.
Quinn’s response? “The decision was driven by personal obligations, and I don’t talk about my personal life. Sorry.”
The last articles had been printed before the accident, but the dates were fuzzy. What she knew for certain was that Quinn had disappeared, closed up shop, not long after that. Maybe she should terminate the contract, find someone else.
Except he’d been the best. A person didn’t lose that distinction simply because they took a hiatus. He’d voluntarily come back to the real-life Chutes and Ladders. She didn’t need to know what prompted the absence or return, only that he was back and had the ability to lead her back, as well. To that end, she needed the best climber and instructor money could buy. So what if he’d never be nominated for Most Congenial Mountain Man? Heaven and hell alike knew that personality wouldn’t save a person’s ass in a pinch. Cold, logical decisions were their only chance.
“Looks like I’m keeping him,” she whispered.
The admission didn’t subdue her offended independence and female pride. His gall chafed that part of her raw. Who the hell did he think he was, ordering her around as if she were some green climber who needed him to dictate her every move from the moment she hit town to the second she was off the mountain and on her way home.
What. An. Ass.
Of course, she hadn’t exactly been a peach. More like a pit. She laughed, lifted her head and gasped as the view out the windshield hijacked her attention. Every bit of it.
A series of mesas ran north to south, their varying heights accentuated by extremely flat tops. Each mesa was a mélange of browns and greens, the grass a short carpet interrupted by cedar shrubs and split by the dirt road that snaked its way deeper into the heart of the ranch. At the foot of the nearest mesa stood a lone windmill. Cattle gathered around the stock tank below the spinning fan, their white faces and rusty-red-brown bodies bright against the neutral background of grassland. And above it all rose an endless blue sky.
Taylor shut her truck off and got out, walking to the front and leaning against the bumper. A slight breeze lifted tendrils of hair off her neck and cooled the shirt that sweat had glued to her skin earlier. Inside, she quieted, the change startling enough to be apparent but reality too big to be bothered by it. Never had she experienced anything like this. The mountains in Washington were big, but the space here?
Massive.
This wasn’t the first time nature had made her feel small in relation, but this? No way was this the same. Standing there looking out over the wide-open space, the horizon appeared endless, the sky infinite.
All the questions that had been jockeying for position, each wanting her immediate attention, stopped. And Taylor breathed. Simply...breathed. Lungful after lungful she reveled in the clean air infused with earth and cedar and green growing things.
If a soul could sigh, she swore hers did.
Tires hummed on pavement, the sound carried by the wind. Unwilling to compromise the quiet she’d discovered, she got back in her truck, started it up and put it in Drive. She didn’t look back.
The truck rattled and chattered all the way across the metal-pipe cattle guard.
“Rustic rumble strips,” she mused.
The road was in very good shape, devoid of the washboard surface or shin-deep ruts inherent to dirt roads exposed to wind and rain. A good drainage
