journal? Had he written his farewells there before he died on the mountain? There were so many unanswered questions.
“I’m going to go see Mum,” Mal said, pushing to his feet. “And then I’m going home to grab a shower and a drink, and maybe I’ll get myself a haircut.”
“What about the woman?” Dana asked with a wry smile.
“That might have to wait,” he murmured.
Mal gave Duff a rough pet and the dog trotted beside him to the Range Rover. “You want me to take him?”
“No, I’ll keep him.”
He waved at his sister, Duffy at her side, as he drove out to the main road. Life had always been pretty uncomplicated for Mal and he liked it that way. But the reality of their business problems was beginning to weigh on him. There was never extra money; he could barely afford to make rent from month to month. When finances were tight, he bought new equipment instead of food and ate expired rations from their expedition stockpile.
He reached into his pocket and grabbed the wad of cash that he had left over from the client tips he and the other guides had divided amongst themselves. He’d take enough for a single night out. The rest would have to go to pay the bills.
“I’d better make it a bloody good night,” he muttered. “I’ve had enough of living like a damn monk.”
* * *
“HEY, BILLY FINSTER! Set me up with a pint and make it quick. I’ve got myself a powerful thirst!”
The shout echoed through the empty pub and Amy Engalls looked up from her laptop at the tall, lanky man who strode up to the bar. His hair was shaggy and he wore a well-worn T-shirt and faded jeans. The cap on his head was turned backward and his eyes were hidden by a pair of bright blue sunglasses.
He glanced around and his eyes lingered on her for a long moment. Amy grabbed a quick breath and held it. Was this Malcolm Quinn? He wasn’t due back until tomorrow, but she’d studied the photos and it could be him. Word around town was that he and his brothers hung out at Brawley’s Pub near his place on the beach. So she’d decided to stake it out. When he turned away, she quickly pulled a file folder from her bag and searched for a reference.
Her breath slowly escaped as she stared down at the handsome face in the photo, then compared it to the profile of the man at the bar.
An instant later, the barkeeper burst through the swinging kitchen door and confirmed her suspicions. “Mal Quinn, you old dog. I was wonderin’ when you’d roll back in. Where was it you were?”
“Greenland,” Mal said as he slid onto a stool.
The barkeeper drew him a glass of beer and set the pint in front of him. “Bloody hell, what’s in Greenland?”
Mal took off his sunglasses and tossed them on the bar. “Lots of ice. And snow and cold.”
“Any pretty girls?”
Mal laughed. “Not that I saw. The whole expedition was blokes. Not a woman for miles.”
Billy nodded, then slapped his hands on the worn wood surface of the bar. “At that is exactly the reason why you’ll never find me out there, trudging up some mountainside or walking across some bloody glacier. I can’t do without female companionship. And they can’t do without me.”
“You can’t do without your smokes and Foster’s for more than a day,” Mal teased. “It’s hard yakka out there. Not for a piker like you.”
The barkeeper frowned, then patted his stomach. “I could get in shape for it. Give up the ale and the cigs. You could put me with a group of ladies and I’d keep them all entertained.”
Amy listened as they exchanged jibes, silently taking in Mal’s appearance. How would she describe him in her story? Tall, graceful, fit. He was thin but muscular, broad shouldered and narrow hipped. His dark hair was long and shaggy and streaked by the sun, and his tanned face was shadowed by the stubble of a beard.
He was, by all accounts, one of the most gorgeous men she’d ever seen. The pictures she had didn’t come close to conveying the energy that surrounded him. He was powerful and focused, even in casual conversation. Here was a man who lived life to the fullest, a man who wasn’t afraid of danger. A man she wanted.
She shifted uneasily, surprised by the depth of her attraction to him. It wasn’t just his looks. It was something deeper, more perplexing. Maybe she admired his courage because she had never had much of her own. She’d spent her entire life accepting what was tossed her way and had never really stood up for herself.
Until now, she hoped. She was here to change the course of her life. And she wasn’t about to let opportunity slip by, even if it meant approaching an impossibly sexy man and convincing him to do something he wouldn’t want to do.
A phone rang and Billy moved to the end of the bar to answer it. Amy continued to observe Mal Quinn from her spot at her table, wondering how she ought to introduce herself. Should she take the initiative now, or wait until tomorrow? What if she didn’t get another chance?
She’d worked as a copy editor for High Adventure magazine for the past six years, hoping for her big break into feature writing. But most of the feature writers were adventurers themselves, out in the world, doing daring deeds and living to tell their tales. She was just an ordinary girl who could write a really good story. An ordinary girl who just happened to be the publisher’s daughter.
Amy had never wanted to write for an adventure magazine. In truth, she would have been happy working at any one of the numerous women’s publications that her father owned. But with her father’s twisted sense of purpose, he’d put an impossible goal in front of her and challenged her to meet it, all the while assuming she’d fail. That was the way it had always been with Richard Engalls. He wanted his children to prove they were worthy of his valuable attention. Her brother had been a model student and was an adventurer himself. But Amy didn’t seem to possess the Engalls backbone. She was her mother’s daughter, still scarred by her parents’ divorce when she was thirteen, still hoping that her father might notice her and approve.
Which was why she was here. Amy knew a good story when she read one. And just because she’d never been on a big adventure didn’t mean she couldn’t write an adventure story, did it? For the first time in her life, she’d show her father that she had what it took to succeed in publishing. She’d cashed in her savings and wagered it on one bet—that she could land a feature with the Quinn brothers. She’d follow their journey, documenting the story of the three Quinn brothers in regular articles. It had everything her editor looked for in a feature—conflict, emotion, a high-profile location and adventurers with personality.
Her editor had scoffed at the notion that Amy could get an exclusive and convince her father to fund the expedition. But beneath his bluster, she could tell the editor had found her idea intriguing, and she didn’t doubt that he’d go to her father at the first available opportunity and ask for the story himself. But Amy was one step ahead of both of them. She took her two weeks of vacation and, after checking Mal Quinn’s online itinerary, bought a plane ticket from New York to Auckland.
Gathering her courage, she pushed her chair back and walked to the bar. She’d order something to eat and maybe strike up a conversation with Mal. She’d almost reached a spot beside him when his mobile rang. He fished it out of his pocket and then slid off the
