King’s Peak, at 13,498, is the highest in the state.” He paused. “Am I boring you with the travelogue?”
“Not at all. I like knowing about the area where I live. Most people don’t realize there are canyons and cliffs up here that are as impressive as the Grand Canyon.”
“Yeah, Desolation Canyon of the Green River for one. It’s a prime rafting area.”
“Have you gone down it in a raft?”
“Several times. It’s fun.”
“If you like life-threatening adventure,” she murmured wryly.
His chuckle was low and husky. Intimate. It sent a funny sensation down her spine. Being with Jeremy, away from their common environment, put a different angle on their knowing each other, as if the past was too far away to count.
She frowned as an uneasy feeling disturbed her pleasure with the scenery. She wasn’t an adventurer, she decided. She liked life to be predictable and stable. She no longer considered living in a van and following the best surf to be the height of fun as she had as a four-year-old. She was no longer positive she knew everything worth knowing as she had been at nineteen.
Young and foolish? Yeah, been there, done that.
When he pulled off the road at a vista point, she got out of the SUV and stood on the lookout, wary and disturbed.
To the west rose the Badland cliffs. To the east was the gorge of the river. She and Jeremy stood on a mile-high plateau between the two. A breeze from the canyon caressed their faces, cooling the heat that enveloped her when he moved near.
“Look,” he said, speaking close to her ear, “I think there’s a bighorn on that bluff.”
She saw a white spot moving in the distance. The mountain sheep clambered up the steep incline and disappeared over the ridge.
“How do they manage such slopes?” she asked in awe.
“Suction cups for feet, I think.”
His breath touched her temple as he laughed. Instinctively she turned her face to his as amusement caught her unawares. She sucked in a quick, startled breath as she realized their lips were only inches apart. And that she wanted…
His eyes, which had some surprising green flecks near the pupil, locked on hers as if he could read that internal yearning. For a second that seemed an eternity, they stared at each other.
He stepped back. “We’d better move on. It’s a short distance to the site but very winding.”
They were mostly silent on the rest of the trip, other than her exclaiming over each new panoramic view, which seemed to occur with each bend in the road.
When they arrived at the construction camp, around thirty people were there, most of them operating huge machines that ate up big chucks of dirt and moved boulders as if they were toy building blocks. She was pleased to see a woman driving one of the behemoths and another, obviously in the last trimester of pregnancy, going into a trailer that had a sign declaring it to be the office.
Jeremy led the way to it. “Tina Ramsey, Zia Peters,” he introduced her to the pregnant woman. “Tina is the executive assistant of the site and keeps things on track around here. Zia is the new curriculum coordinator for the county education department. She arrived in town yesterday.”
“Glad to meet you,” the younger woman said. “Are you at the residential hotel? Everyone stays there when they arrive.”
“Yes. I rented a suite for a month while I’m looking for a place of my own,” Zia told the friendly younger woman.
“My cousin Jim is in real estate. You should check with him. Are you looking to rent or buy?”
“Rent for now. I would like a small house, if possible.”
Tina wrinkled her nose. “Those are hard to find. People tend to stay put.” Her laughter was infectious. “There was an article in the local paper about the county’s plans for the school system, if the federal funds come through. It mentioned you.”
Zia liked the vivacious young woman. She was friendly and very pretty with thick black hair that almost reached her waist, fair skin and intriguing gray eyes that flashed like quicksilver as she talked.
Tina turned her attention to her boss. “I have the lading bills for you to look over. Also, I need your signature for the overtime hours last week.”
Zia glanced out the trailer window at the busy compound while they conferred. Jeremy had just started his new position, yet the two seemed very comfortable with each other.
She wasn’t particularly comfortable with anyone at first meeting. For her, friendship had to grow slowly. Only time would tell if the person was trustworthy. Her attitude was a lot different from what it had been at one time, when she’d been prone to snap judgments.
Maybe part of turning over a new leaf was learning to trust others without so many of the reservations learned from the past.
“Come on,” Jeremy said. “I’ll show you around.”
Jeremy, like his uncle, was one of the most honorable people she’d ever met, she mused as she fell into step beside him. He would never walk out on anyone who needed him….
He took her arm and led the way outside, interrupting the unsettling introspection.
The gorge where the new road would cross was narrow and deep. Below them, the river rushed over rocks as big as cars. The land on either side was beautiful in a wild, natural way that didn’t invite habitation.
“This will be the foundation of a rainbow bridge,” Jeremy explained, pointing out the concrete piers.
“Rainbow?” That sounded too fanciful for a bridge.
“The roadbed will be built across the top of an arch made of steel beams and attached to piers on each side. It’s a fairly simple form of construction and very strong. The Chinese used the technique a couple of thousand years ago, only they built the whole bridge from logs lashed together and the arch also functioned as the road. Unfortunately none are standing now, we only have a few engravings to go by.”
By the time they’d finished the tour, including crossing to the other side and back on a rather precarious—in her opinion—footbridge, she’d learned a lot more about bridges than was strictly necessary in her view. She was aware of amusement in Jeremy’s eyes as he gave her the guided tour.
The footbridge was like a ladder laid across the gorge with flimsy ropes for railings. The workers could probably dash across as sure-footed as the bighorn they’d seen earlier.
Zia kept her eyes on where she put her feet, aware of the water ten stories below and of the gaps between the foot supports which looked wide enough to fall through.
“You handled that very well,” Jeremy commented when they had safely returned to the main camp. “Some people can’t take seeing the empty space below them. They freeze.”
“It wasn’t empty,” she muttered dryly. “There was a river moving at around sixty miles an hour a hundred feet below.”
