I posted this excerpt to my Yahoo group, but I thought I would post it here as well. My last post was so serious, and I know how hot men cheer you all up.

These scenes take place in the first half of the story. The first scene shows when Gabe meets Marc. The second is their second meeting, but this time Julian is along for the ride. Since there are those of you who never, ever seem to get enough Julian and others who can't get enough Marc Hunter, I thought you might enjoy these little snippets.

When Gabe meets Marc...


“Kat!” Gabe was on his feet, blocking her path, drawing her into his arms,
relieved when she seemed to come willingly. He ran a finger over the curve
of her cheek. “It wouldn’t have been like that, not with you. If we’d had
sex—”

The doorbell rang, stopping him from saying God only knew what.

“That must be Marc.” She drew away and hurried off to get her things.

Gabe opened the door and found a man about his own age. With shoulder-length brown hair and wearing a faded denim jacket, the man stood tall enough to look Gabe straight in the eye, and Gabe was certain he’d seen him somewhere before.

“I’m guessing you’re here for Kat.” Gabe moved aside to let him in.

The man stomped the snow off his boots and stepped inside, sizing Gabe up like a big brother who’d found a stranger sniffing around his little sister. It made Gabe wonder whether Kat had mentioned their little make-out session when she’d spoken with her friend. And why did the bastard look so familiar?

The man held out his hand. “Marc Hunter, Denver PD.”

And then it clicked. This was the son of a bitch Gabe had spent three weeks chasing through the mountains in the dead of winter, the son of a bitch whose face had spent the better part of a month hanging on Gabe’s office wall — on a wanted poster.

“Gabe Rossiter, Boulder Mountain Parks.” Gabe shook Hunter’s hand, giving back as good as he got. “I busted my ass trying to bring you in.”

“It’s lucky for both of us that you didn’t find me.” Hunter glanced about, obviously looking for Kat, his gaze falling on a climbing harness that Gabe had overlooked on the hallway floor. “You’re a rock jock, huh? I bet that helps you out when it comes to scrambling up the east face of the Third Flatiron and shit.”

Third Flatiron above Boulder

<----East Face/West Face--->

“No, not the east face of the Third.” You prick. “But it did come in handy when a couple of guys got stuck in a freak blizzard climbing the Diamond on Longs Peak not too long ago.”

The Diamond

Hunter’s eyebrows rose a notch, and he nodded. “Thanks, by the way, for saving Kat’s life this past summer and for stopping that son of a bitch who pulled her hair. I’d like to kick his ass.”

“That makes two of us.”

And later in the story.....

You saved her life, man.

The thought struck Gabe right between the eyes, seeped through him, leaving him with a bone-deep sense of… satisfaction. He was used to saving lives, but not like this. To know that Kat was alive tonight because of something he’d done…

Maybe you don’t suck after all, Rossiter.

He turned the water in the shower and stepped under the warm spray, washing dirt, sweat, and blood from his skin, letting the water loosen his tense muscles. Then he got out, dried off, and dressed his wound, the sting of antiseptic making him cuss a blue streak. He’d just covered it with a large bandage when his doorbell rang.

He skipped the underwear and slipped into a pair of jeans. Taking no chances, he picked up his HK .40-cal semi-auto—he’d seen the last of the Glock, which belonged to Mountain Parks — and walked quietly to the door. He looked through the peephole — and felt his heart knock against his breastbone.

Kat.

She stood on his doorstep flanked by Hunter and someone else — a man in a black leather jacket whose face he couldn’t see. He tucked the firearm into the waistband of his jeans, unlocked the door and opened it. And for a moment all he could do was stand there, staring into her eyes. She looked exhausted, overwhelmed, beautiful.

Had she been crying?

“Good to see you in one piece, rock jock. I see you took a hit.”

Gabe tore his gaze from hers, gave Hunter a nod, rubbed his fingers over the bandage. “It’s just a graze. Hey, Darcangelo, how’s it going? You hang with this guy? That’s ironic.”

Julian Darcangelo, the best damn detective Gabe had ever met, shrugged then reached out and shook Gabe’s hand, a grin spreading over his face. “What can I say? Every superhero needs a sidekick. Plus, it’s a good way to keep an eye on him, keep him out of trouble.”

Hunter glared at Darcangelo, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “fuck you.” Then he frowned, pointing back and forth between the two of them. “So, you two know each other?”

“Of course we know each other. We met chasing your sorry ass through the snow. Rossiter here is pure hell on a pair of skis.” Darcangelo shifted his gaze back to Gabe. “Is Kat going to be safe here with you tonight?”

Gabe met Kat’s gaze again. “Yeah, she will. Do you boys want to come in?”

Hunter’s gaze dropped to Kat, as if trying to gauge his response from her. “I think we’ll head home and let you two get some rest.” Then his gaze shifted to Gabe. He drew out a business card and held it out “Give me a call. Let us know what we can do.”

“Will do.” Gabe pocketed the card, watching as Kat thanked her friends and said her good-byes. Then he took her hand and drew her inside, the two men’s voices drifting back as they headed down his front walk.

“You didn’t tell me Kat’s rock jock was Gabe Rossiter. He’s not a rock jock, Hunter, he’s a rock god.”

“How the hell was I supposed to know you knew him?”

Gabe closed the door and locked out the night, while Kat hung her coat on the coat rack and slipped off her boots. They turned and faced one another, and for a moment neither of them moved or spoke, Gabe drinking in the sight of her, from the dirt smudge on her cheek to the shadows in her eyes. Then he did the only thing he could do. He drew her into his arms, and held her, just held her, his face pressed against her silky hair, the honey scent and soft feel of her a balm for all the rough edges inside him.

I just had to share this right now. Jennifer Johnson made it for me this evening, and it will soon be up on my Web site as downloadable wallpaper beside the other fun wallpaper she's made for the I-Team series.

It won't be up online for a while, so if you just can't wait, email me and I'll send it to you.

Thanks, Jennifer!

I'm in the middle of a massive Web site update. There are many new foreign covers, as well as an excerpt from Naked Edge and the novel-length author's note. OK, it's not quite that long. It's only eight pages, but for an author's note, that's looooong. My editor read it and said, "It's a lot more than I expected but then you never do anything half way."

Work at the paper is ratcheting up for the holidays, and things are busy with this book even though I'm done writing it. I'm almost done proofing the second round of copy edits to make sure no one added mistakes to the book. In some places, the accents on the Navajo words were changed, which if you know anything about Navajo, is a big deal. So I'll get those fixed. And then the book will head off to the presses. Before long there will be Advanced Review Copies (ARCs), and I'll be holding contests here and on my Yahoo group to give some copies away.

For now, though, just wallpaper. And this excerpt...

Haha! Yes, it's torture time again!

From Naked Edge:


Geee-zus!

Gabe sucked in a breath, shocked by the blistering impact of Kat’s unexpected kiss, heat shearing through his gut at the first clumsy press of her lips against his. Even as his body responded, some part of his brain knew this shouldn’t be happening. “Kat, you’re upset and tipsy and—”

She kissed him again, tilting her head to better slant her mouth over his.

Christ!

He turned his face away, felt her lips brush his jaw. “Honey, you don’t really want this. You’ve just lost—”

She made a little sound of protest, her arms sliding behind his head, drawing his lips closer to hers, as if to show him that she did really want it.

Good. So did he.

Ignoring the pathetic warnings of his conscience, he took control of the kiss, drawing her tight against him, capturing her mouth with his.

God, she tasted sweet! She smelled sweet, too — like honey and woman. She gave a little whimper, melting against him in a way that was utterly feminine, every inch of her soft body molding to his, her breasts pressing against his ribs, her lips parting to give him access. He swirled his tongue over hers, felt her body tense. And through a pheromone fog, he realized she wasn’t just a virgin between her legs.

Kissing — real kissing — was new to her, too.

Not just virgin, buddy — extra virgin.

He reined himself in, gentled the kiss, slowed it down, brushing her lips lightly with his, teasing their outline with the tip of his tongue, nipping their fullness, his lust for her at war with some strange urge to protect her from himself. In his world, any night that started with kissing ended soon after with fucking. His cock had already risen to the occasion and strained painfully against his fly, looking for the surest route out of denim and into her. But that couldn’t happen — not tonight, not when she was vulnerable and afraid and hurting, probably not ever. She wanted happily ever after, and all he could give her was sex. Still, he could keep kissing her…

Hell, yeah.

He claimed her mouth in a no-holds-barred kiss, penetrating deep, taking her tongue with his, sucking it into his mouth, biting down. She whimpered, kissed him back, meeting the strokes of his tongue with her own, her fingers curled in his hair, her body almost undulating against his, communicating in a primal language of its own, one Gabe’s body understood only too well.

Katherine James might want to save her virginity, but her body had other plans.

With a groan, he drew her beneath him, testosterone shorting out his brain, his body taking over, his blood running hot and fast. He found her throat and pressed his lips against the rapid beating of her pulse, kissing a path over soft, sweet skin, tasting her, nibbling her earlobe. And he wasn’t finished — not by a long shot.

Kat heard herself whimper and turned her head to the side, surrendering her throat to Gabe, the heat of his lips raising goose bumps on her skin, his male scent filling her head, the hard press of his body on top hers making her belly flutter.

She’d never felt anything like this, never even imagined it — the heat, the intensity, the overwhelming physical force of it. Her body trembled, and her heart raced, her breathing uneven as if she’d been running. And she was running — from her grief, from her fear, from everything that hurt. Some part of her knew this, but that only made her run faster.


The rules don’t apply tonight.

She didn’t stop him when he slid a callused hand beneath her sweater to trace tiny circles up her ribcage. She didn’t object when his clever fingers found the clasp of her bra between her breasts and unhooked it. And when he cupped her left breast, when his thumb flicked her nipple...

She gasped, stunned, the sensation too astonishing, too arousing, too wonderful to be real. Jagged shafts of heat seemed to shoot straight from her breast to her belly, turning to liquid between her thighs.

“You like that, don’t you?”

At the husky sound of his voice, her eyes flew open. She found him looking down at her, his breathing as rough as hers, his blue eyes burning, a smile on his wet lips. She forced herself to hold his gaze, shocked by the intimacy of watching him as he watched her, as he watched the effect his touch had on her, his hand still cupping and shaping her breast, his thumb tracing lazy circles over its aching crest.

And the heat in her belly became a wildfire.

Then he pushed her sweater up, baring her breasts, his gaze raking hungrily over her. “God, Kat, honey, you’ve got beautiful breasts. They’re so… Mmm.”

Whatever he’d been about to say became a moan as he ducked down and drew one of her nipples into the scorching heat of his mouth.

“Gabe.” Kat’s body jerked at the initial shock of it, the pleasure staggering as he suckled first one nipple and then the other, tugging at her with his lips, teasing her with velvet strokes of his tongue, tormenting her with nips of his teeth. It was sweet, so sweet, and terrible, too, the fire between her thighs now a throbbing ache. She heard herself calling his name, felt her hips lifting toward him, wanting, wanting…

Wanting him.

He groaned, settled his weight between her thighs, and answered her need, grinding what could only be the thick ridge of his erection against her… there. Slowly, so slowly he moved against her, taking the edge off the ache, only to make it so much worse. She was wet, the emptiness inside her burning, her inner muscles clenching around nothing. And she knew.

If he kept going, if he pressed her, she wouldn’t be able to stop him. She wouldn’t want to.

Gabe’s body was strung so tightly he thought it might snap. He’d been a damned idiot to take it this far. He’d wanted to give her the comfort she so obviously needed, and one thing had let to another. Or that’s what he’d told himself. In truth, he’d wanted to kiss her and hold her — and so he had.

He needed to stop. But how could he when Kat was coming apart in his arms, her response burning him up? Her little mewls and whimpers were driving him out of his mind, her wine-dark nipples drawn into tight buds that begged for his mouth, her hips moving in a way that was both feminine and undeniably erotic. He didn’t want to stop — oh, hell, no! He wanted to fuck her long and hard. He wanted to make her come again and again. He wanted to forget himself inside her.

And then what, buddy? You’ll pluck her sweet cherry and show her the door? She deserves better than that, and you damned well know it.

Gabe dragged his lips from hers, forced his hips to hold still, sexual need grinding in his gut, blood pounding through his veins. “Kat.”

She looked up at him, so beautiful it made his chest ache, confusion and longing in those hazel green eyes, tear stains on her cheeks, her lips red and swollen, her delicious breasts rising and falling with each rapid breath — no makeup, no silicon, nothing but sweet, soft, sexually aroused woman.

He fought the urge, so elemental, to kiss her again and settled for running his knuckles over her cheek. Somehow, he managed to string a few words together. “If I don’t stop now, honey, we’re going to be at this all night.”
(c) 2009 Pamela Clare
----------

Kat is the first contemporary heroine I've written as a virgin — and for reasons that become apparent in the story. It was an interesting experience. But more on that in another post. I have pages to copy edit!

I just had to pop in quickly to say that my agent read Naked Edge this weekend and just called to tell me that I am ridiculous and have no sense of the quality of my own writing. This is very good news because I told her I thought Naked Edge was the worst thing I'd written so far.

She said she sobbed at the end and that she found the climax of the story every bit as nail-biting as was the climax of Unlawful Contact.

I have to give a shout out to some FOPs (that's an acronym for Friends of Pamela — you ken who you are) who have actually read the manuscript. The whole time I was writing it, I was thinking, "This sucks! This sucks! This sucks!" But these sweet FOPs kept saying, "No, it doesn't! Keep writing!" If not for them, I'd be out looking for my lost sanity.

I still want to do some minor revisions before I turn it in. This ghost-writing project is delaying that till the end of the month or early September.

How about an excerpt to celebrate the non-suckiness of the story (according to my agent and FOPs)?

Here's one I posted in my notes on Facebook. If you saw it there, sorry! And remember, Kat is a virgin — my only contemporary virgin thus far. And there are cultural reasons for this. But you'll see on March 2.

From Chapter 25 of Naked Edge

Kat willed herself not to break eye contact with Gabe, her heart pounding. He stared down at her, his pupils wide, the astonishment on his face turning to something darker, his brows bent in a frown.

He ran the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. “Are you sure?”

She couldn’t say when she’d reached this decision. Maybe it had been this morning when she’d prayed for him, looking for some way to help him regain the part of himself Jill had stolen. Maybe it had been that terrible afternoon when he’d saved her from being shot, proving his courage. Or perhaps it had been the moment she’d realized that the wind knew him, that he belonged to this land as much as she did.

Regardless, her heart had decided.

She had finally found a man who was worth it, a man she loved so much that going without him felt unthinkable.

“Yes, I’m sure.” She caught his hand where it cupped her chin and kissed his palm. “I love y—”

“Shhh!” He pressed his fingers to her lips. “Don’t say it. ‘Yes’ is enough.”

He ducked down as if to kiss her, then abruptly stopped, glancing around them. “No. Not like this.”

“Gabe?”

He stepped back. “Why don’t you go soak in a hot bath and pamper yourself a bit? The sun only set about an hour ago, so the water ought to still be fairly warm. There’s a camping lantern on the counter.”

Take a bath? Did she smell bad?

Something of her feelings must have shown on her face, because he leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. “Hey, trust me, okay? If I can’t be man enough to keep my hands off you like I should, then at least let me be man enough to do this right. I’ll tell you when you can come out.”

Confused, Kat walked into the bathroom, turned on the camping lantern, and shut the door behind her. She found herself staring at her own bemused reflection in the lantern’s half-light. This certainly wasn’t the response she’d expected from him.

If I can’t be man enough to keep my hands off you like I should, then at least let me be man enough to do this right.

What did he mean by that?

And then her pulse began to race again as she realized what was about to happen.

Gabe was going to make love to her. Tonight.

Suddenly, she was grateful for the extra time. What she’d said a few moments ago had been entirely spontaneous. She hadn’t stopped to think that it had been a couple of days since she’d shaved her legs or that she needed to brush her teeth or that she might want to take a bath first.

Quickly, she set her razor and a washcloth near the tub, then turned on the water, relieved to feel it was still quite warm. While the tub filled, she flossed and brushed her teeth and tied her hair up in a knot. Then she undressed and stepped into the soothing heat, noises coming from the other side of the door—the clanging of dishes, the opening and closing of doors and drawers, the creaking of floorboards, the front door opening again and again.

She might have tried to figure out what he was doing if she weren’t so nervous. Instead, it was all she could do to focus on shaving her legs, questions chasing one after another through her mind. How much would it hurt? Would she be able to have an orgasm with him inside her? Would he compare her to Jill and be disappointed? Would he push her away afterward as he had so many women?

Stop doubting, girl. Trust yourself. Trust Gabe. Trust that you’ve come to this place and time for a reason.

Her belly full of butterflies, she reached for her soap, inhaled its sweet honey scent and remembered how much he seemed to like it. Then she lathered her skin, trying not to worry about things she couldn’t control. She’d just pulled the plug from the bathtub drain and begun to dry herself, when he knocked on the door.

“Kat? Whenever you’re ready…”

Her heart gave a hard knock. Was she ready? After all these years was she ready for what was about to happen? She wrapped herself in a soft towel, drew a deep, calming breath. Then, without glancing at the mirror, she opened the bathroom door—and stared in amazement. “Oh, Gabe!”

The cabin had been transformed. The dirty dishes had been cleared from the table, and the kerosene lamps had all been stored away. Dozens of small emergency candles sat here and there on saucers and in bowls, the room warm with their radiance. Pine boughs had been wrapped around the bed’s four posters and its headboard, their scent fresh and enticing. The air was warm, a strong fire burning in the woodstove.



His gaze fixed on her, Gabe stood in the middle of the room, wearing only his jeans, the candlelight giving his skin a tawny glow, seeming to accentuate the ridges and valleys of his muscles. And Kat felt that familiar flutter in her belly.

Oh, yes, she was ready—for him.

He crossed the space between them in two lazy strides, slid his fingers into her hair, and undid the knot, spilling it down her back and around her shoulders. Then he brushed his knuckles over her cheek. “I can’t make any promises about tomorrow, Kat, but for tonight at least, I’ll do my damned best to be worth it.”

Then he reached down, tugged off her towel, and let it fall to the floor.



-----

The rest of that scene will be available on March 2. (Is my sadistic side showing?)

My new mattress

Busy, busy week in newspaper land. Looks like I'm revving up for a big investigation. Can't say more about it than I think I'm going to enjoy this one. I love making life difficult for people who've worked hard to be jerks.

The big news at home this week is that I bought a new bed. I've been sleeping on the same box springs and mattress since I was five months pregnant with Benjy — that's 20 years ago — and even though it was top-of-the-line in its day, it hasn't been comfortable for several years. The price made me sweat bullets, but then I thought of what it would be like to sleep and I handed that credit card right over.

How's that for edge-of-your-seat excitement. A new bed! Woohoo!

Other news:


Lilac attack


My lilacs are so lovely I can't stand them. Benjy and I planted the bushes a few years ago. At the time, they were not taller than my knee. But now they're up to my chin and dripping with beautiful, scenterrific blossoms. My garden is starting to take off — Benjy is outside right now in the last phase of weeding the front beds — so the "What's Blooming Now?" feature on the left panel here isn't going to be enough to keep you up to date.


Lily of the valley


Lilacs, hardy geranium and lilly of the valley are all in bloom right now. The geranium will bloom all summer. The other two are fleeting but sweet.


Hardy geranium


My Russian sage bush seems to have bit the dust. It's a huge bush and well-suited to dry climates. But we had such a bitter cold snap early in the winter, followed by no moisture till late March. I think that was too much. Fortunately, though other plants suffered, it appears to be the only casualty.

My climbing rose died back to the ground after three years of growth making it more than 10 feet tall. And all of the rose bushes except for the Blanc Double du Coubert died back to the ground. All of the canes are D-E-A-D dead. Fortunately, they're all sending up new canes, or I'd be rolling on my lawn and wailing. I love roses so much!

The tulips are either gone or past their prime, and asiatic lilies are pushing their way up.

Okay, now that I've bored you into oblivion with the minutiae of my garden, I thought I'd share a humorous but (hopefully) still sexy excerpt from Naked Edge.

This is from Chapter 19, which I haven't quite finished yet. So it's hot off my finger tips:

-----------

Feeling replete and contented, Gabe cradled Kat’s head against his shoulder, watching through half-closed eyes as she trailed a fingertip through the pool of ejaculate on his belly. She dabbed at it, made little circles in it, rubbed it into his skin like lotion, her actions somehow both innocent and amusing.

“So this makes a baby.” There was a note of awe in her voice.

“Not like this.” He reached for the box of tissues on his nightstand. “Mostly, it just makes a mess.”

# # #

Five minutes later, Gabe sat at the table in his boxer briefs, watching as Kat, wearing that same old T-shirt of his she’d worn this morning, made them a dinner of buffalo steaks, roasted potatoes and salad. Where she came by this sudden burst of energy when he could barely think and would rather be dozing in his bed with her still in his arms was beyond him. He supposed it was one of the great mysteries of life — how having a good orgasm knocked a man out, but re-energized a woman and left her ravenous.

Maybe it was an evolutionary thing that had enabled women to fatten up for pregnancy and produce healthier offspring back in the day when life was hard and food scarce. He could kind of see that. A cave woman has sex with a cave man, and while he’s lying on the mammoth skin in a post-coital stupor, she raids his cave for leftovers. Still, Gabe supposed human males had it easy. If he were a male black widow or praying mantis, Kat would be munching on him right now, not carrot sticks.

Not that he and Kat had mated. Not that they’d actually had sex. They’d done nothing more than get each other off like a couple of high school kids. And yet it had satisfied him in a way that three years of hard-core fucking hadn’t. Later, when his brain was working again, this would probably scare the shit out of him. Which was why he didn’t want to think about it now.

He watched Kat sprinkle salt and pepper on the rib eyes. Then she bent down to slide them in the oven to broil, and his gaze shifted to the curve of her ass and her cute lavender panties. And some of his daze lifted.

She shut the oven, then stood and turned to him, half-eaten carrot stick in hand. “Do you like onions in your salad?”

Despite what had happened today, she seemed relaxed, almost happy, the ordeal she’d been through temporarily forgotten. Some macho part of him found this more than a little gratifying. Distracted by the sweetness of her face, he barely heard himself answer. “Uh-huh.”

It was a good thing she hadn’t just asked him if he liked rat turds in his salad.

You’re in over your head, buddy!


Yeah, he was. But at the moment that didn’t seem so bad.

A view of the real climb after which the book is named. You can see how it got its name. The edge sticking out is the arête.

With the video of Dan (below) in mind, here's where we first meet Gabe in the prologue to The Naked Edge. Enjoy!

--------------------------------------------

Gabriel Rossiter crimped the chalked fingers of his right hand around the small handhold, then carefully shifted his weight onto his fingertips, drawing himself to the right. He didn’t notice his skinned shin or the people far below taking pictures of him and pointing, or the sweat trickling down his temples, his mind focused entirely on the rock as he worked the arête on a bad-tempered geological accident known as The Naked Edge. Scraped fingers reached again, caught rough stone and held.
He maneuvered his way around the jutting, razor-sharp edge for which the climb was named—no ropes, no cams, nothing beneath him but 600 feet of air.

Some people needed heroin. Gabe preferred adrenaline.

He looked up and picked his way up the rock face with his gaze, thinking his way through his next move in a language without words. This was what he needed—internal silence, emptiness, oblivion. He needed to forget.

He reached with his right foot… And then he heard her scream.

He caught just a glimpse—rocks spilling down the side of a nearby slope, a woman falling with them—and felt a moment of vertigo as she tumbled out of sight. And then a decade of experience kicked in.

So much for your day off, buddy.

He fired himself around the arête and thrust his fist into an overhanging handcrack, liebacking his way on hand jams to the final pitch and an easy finish. Then, with no ropes or gear to pack up, he was off.

It was a long, exposed scramble down the Eastern Slabs, but the rock was dry, enabling him to move quickly. He knew the terrain as if it were his own backyard—and, really, it was. He’d been climbing here since he was sixteen, and he’d been a Boulder Mountain Parks Ranger since he was 24—eight years. He’d spent almost every waking moment of his adult life in these mountains. He’d done his fair share of rescues over the years—and had helped bring down his share of bodies.

And that’s what you’re going to find today, Rossiter—a body.


He didn’t let the thought slow him. If by some miracle she had survived, she was going to need his help.

He moved down the steep rock face, his cell phone out of his pocket and in his hand the moment his feet hit dirt. He dialed 911. “Sixty-forty-five, off-duty.”

“Go ahead, sixty-forty-five.”

“Rockslide in Eldorado Canyon State Park approximately one half-mile north of Redgarden Wall. Saw a woman go down with it. I’m en route, but I don’t have a damned bit of gear with me. I’ll call again when I have her location.”

“Copy sixty-forty-five—”

That was all he needed to hear.

He hung up and took off through the trees at a run.

# # #

It took Gabe almost ten minutes to reach the base of the rockslide area. Sucking wind, his heart pounding from exertion, he searched for her amid the rubble—boulders as big as trashcans, smaller rocks, mangled tree branches. He found a lone turquoise earring and a backpack that must have belonged to her. But he didn’t find her.

There was really only one possibility.

She was dead and buried, crushed somewhere beneath all that rock.

“Damn it! Goddamn it!” He pulled his cell out and dialed 911 again. “Sixty-forty-five, at the site.”

“Sixty-forty-five, can you repeat? You’re breaking up.”

“At the site. No sign of the victim, but there’s no way she walked away from this. She’s probably buried. There’s a good ton of rock here. We’re going to need—”

A cry.

Stunned, he stopped mid-sentence.

Another cry—the sound of a woman in pain.

“She’s alive! Are you getting a lat and a long on me?” Gabe hoped the signal from his phone was strong enough to give dispatch a solid GPS reading.

The answer came in a burst of static—and then the call disconnected.

Damned cell phones.

He pocketed the phone, hitched her pack over his shoulder, and ran uphill through the trees toward the sound.

She screamed again.

He adjusted his direction, quickened his pace.

And then he saw her.

Her jeans torn and muddy, she was crawling, or trying to crawl, her right leg dragging behind her, probably broken. She inched forward, crying out as her injured leg dragged across the damp forest floor. Then she sank onto her belly, whimpering. But before he could call to her to let her know help had arrived, she pushed herself up again and struggled forward another few inches, her scream catching behind clenched teeth.

She was heading toward the trail, he realized. She was trying to rescue herself, trying to get to where help could find her. Lucky for her, it already had.

“I’m Gabe Rossiter with Boulder Mountain Parks.”

She looked up at him with a startled gasp and tried to sit, but succeeded only in sinking onto her back, the movement making her moan in pain.

“Easy, there.” He walked over to her. “Just lie still. I’m here to help you.”

The first thing he noticed was her eyes. An usual shade of hazel green, they watched him warily as he knelt down beside her. Agony was etched on every feature of her pretty face, a streak of mud on her bruised cheek, pine needles in her long, dark hair, the other turquoise earring dangling from her left earlobe. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, no taller than five-five and small-boned—a red flag when it came to fractures. There were deep scratches on her arms and hands, but no obvious bleeding.

“The rocks… They fell.” She spoke with just a hint of an accent.

American Indian?

“I saw. Last night’s rain must have eroded the ground beneath them.” Because he couldn’t seem to help it, he looked into her eyes again, relieved to find that her pupils weren’t dilated. “What’s your name?”

“Katherine James.”

“How old are you, Katherine?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Do you know today’s date?”

She shivered, cold sweat on her forehead. “It’s Sunday… August twenty-sixth.”

In shock, but coherent. Probable broken leg. Scrapes and bruises.

“Help is on its way.” He kept his voice soothing. “In the meantime, I’ll do what I can for you. Can you tell me where you hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

“I’ll bet.” He dug into her pack. She wasn’t carrying a first-aid kit, but she had brought a sweater. He draped it over her. “I’m a paramedic and a park ranger. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to check you to see how badly you’re injured.”

She eyed him suspiciously, still shivering, her gaze dropping to his bare chest, with its chalk marks, to the chalk on his hands, to the climbing shoes on his feet.

Okay, so he looked like some kind of half-naked freak to her. Fair enough. “I’m off-duty. I was rock climbing nearby and saw you fall. Let me help you.”

She seemed to measure him, then nodded, wincing slightly with her next breath.

Broken ribs. Possible internal bleeding.

He put his hand on her shoulder, tried to reassure her. “I’m going to feel on the outside of your clothes, and you tell me where it hurts, okay?”

“O-kay.”

He stood, walked around to her other side and started with the obvious, sliding his hands over her jeans along the length of her right thigh. “Does it hurt here?”

“No.”

Thank God it wasn’t her femur. He’d seen more than one woman bleed out from a severed femoral artery, dead before help could arrive.

He slid his hands past her knee and heard her gasp just as he found the bulge on her shin. “Your tibia is broken.”

Not quite a compound fracture, but bad enough.

Her right ankle was tender and swollen, as well, either broken or sprained.

But of more concern to him than the broken bones was the fact that she was beginning to fade, slowly falling into unconsciousness, her dark lashes now resting on her cheeks, her eyes closed. He’d bet his ass that she had some kind of head injury. With a fall like that, she wouldn’t need to hit her head to injure her brain.

“Stay awake, Katherine. Stay with me.”

Stay with me.


Kat thought time must be playing tricks on her. He’d just spoken those words a moment ago, and yet it seemed like hours. She forced her eyes open, saw him watching her, a worried look on his face, his hands moving gently over her, seeming magically to find all the places she hurt most—her right leg and ankle, the ribs on her left side, the deep scratch on her left arm.

As if through a fog, some part of her noticed that he was a very attractive man, rugged and tall, with deep blue eyes. His square jaw was covered with dark whiskers, his temples trickling sweat, his thick, dark hair curling at his nape. There were calluses and chalk on his fingers and scrapes on his knuckles and his left shin. He was wearing only shorts and strange shoes, and although Kat had seen many men without their shirts, she’d seen very few men who looked like him—all lean muscle from head to toe, as if an artist had carved him from marble and then brought him to life.

Strange that she should notice such an unimportant thing right now.

His callused fingers worked their way gently along her collarbones, over her shoulders and into her hair. “Did you lose consciousness when you fell?”

She tried to think. She’d heard the rocks scrape, felt the ground give way, felt herself falling, and then…

The next thing she remembered was looking up at the sky, her right leg hooked over a rock, her entire body wracked with pain. “I think… I must have.”

Apparently done checking her, he sat back on his heels, looking down at her. “You are one amazing woman, Katherine James. I don’t know many people, men or women, who would have been tough enough to do what you just did. You crawled almost two hundred feet, dragging that broken leg behind you.”

But Kat hadn’t been brave. She’d been terrified. Once she’d come to herself, she’d realized that no one knew where she was and that unless she could make her way back to the trail where hikers could discover her, she would die right where she lay. Fear had gotten her onto her hands and knees, driving her forward each unbearable inch, the pain excruciating.

Without warning, the full weight of what had just happened hit her. Tears burned her eyes, spilled down her temples, her body shaking uncontrollably.

You almost died, Kat.

The ranger took her hand, held it, his fingers warm. “It’s going to be all right. I know it hurts, but they’ll be here soon.”

She looked up at him. “Y-you saved my life.”

He shook his head. “You’d have been all right without me. You’d have made it to the trail eventually. It wouldn’t have been fun, but you’d have made it.”

But she wasn’t so sure.

# # #

She lost track of time after that.

The park ranger telling her to stay awake, stroking her cheek, telling her everything was going to be all right. People crowding around her. An oxygen mask over her mouth. The prick of a needle in her arm. A warm blanket.

There was a moment of terrible, sharp pain when they put a splint on her leg, and she heard herself cry out. The ranger’s warm hand squeezed hers, his voice deep and soothing. Why couldn’t she remember his name?

“It’s almost over, Katherine. In twenty minutes you’ll be in Denver, and Saint Anthony’s will take good care of you.”

Was he coming with her? A part of her hoped he was.

She didn’t really know him at all, but somehow she trusted him.

“She fell from there?” a man’s voice said. “Holy shit! Why is she still alive?”

“I can’t believe she crawled all that way with a badly broken leg,” said a woman. “Just the thought makes me queasy.”

“So, you were free-soloing The Naked Edge when you saw her fall. Gee-zus! You have a death wish, Rossiter. One of these days we’re going to be rescuing you, only there won’t be anything left of you to save.”

And then Kat was bouncing along as they carried the stretcher out of the trees toward a helicopter, the ranger walking beside her, his voice her anchor.

“Stay awake, Katherine.”

Only after the helicopter had lifted off did she realize the he was gone.

And she hadn’t even thanked him.

I hope you all like the new design of my blog. Barbara at Happily Ever After has such an amazing blog that I asked her to help me do something different with my darn Blogger account. I was suffering from a really bad case of Widget Envy and couldn't make my blog do a darned thing. It turns out that part of my problem was having the old Blogger template from just after the dinosaurs went extinct. Blogger 10,000 B.C. or something like that.

So thanks, Barbara!

Anyway, I thought I'd share something with you all, a little sneak peek at Naked Edge, which finally seems to be moving in the right direction after a rewrite or two...

In this scene from Chapter 10, Gabe is having a hard time, grappling with his ghosts and with the emotional turmoil Kat has brought to his life. Enjoy!


Not far from a certain butte outside Boulder...


Gabe turned onto his side, rearranged the pillow beneath his head, jerked the blanket up to his chin, willing himself to sleep. It didn’t work. The arm of the couch bent his neck at an unnatural angle. His feet hung off the other end. Worse, the seam of his boxer briefs cut into his nuts like piano wire.

He rolled onto his back, adjusted himself, his hand closing around his cock. And for a moment he considered jacking off. He could kill two birds with one stone — relieve the tension roiling inside him and make himself fall asleep. There was only one catch: what he wanted was in his bedroom, lying in his bed, wearing one of his T-shirts. Touching himself seemed pretty lame when compared to touching her.

What would she do if he went to her, if he stretched himself out beside her and started kissing her? Would she tell him to get out, or would she kiss him back? And what the hell was wrong with him that he was even considering it?

He closed his eyes again, his head crowded by thoughts, images, memories. Jill lying dead at the morgue. Two Crows lying dead at Mesa Butte. Kat crawling, dragging her broken leg behind her. Kat being dragged out of the sweat lodge by her hair. Her tears as she’d knelt at Two Crows’s side. Her whimpers as Gabe kissed and sucked her nipples. Falling at the rock gym. Almost falling outside his own damn door, drunk on his ass.

Somehow it all came down to one thing: he wanted Kat.

He shoved the blanket aside and stood, glancing down at the Glock and deciding to leave it by the couch. The alarm would give him plenty of time to retrieve it if he needed it. Before he could think too hard about what he was doing, he crossed the room, walked down the hallway, and silently opened his bedroom door.

She lay on her side facing the door, her hair a dark halo against the white pillowcases. He moved closer and saw that she was sound asleep, her face relaxed, her breathing deep and even, her lips slightly parted. Her arm rested on top the comforter, his T-shirt slipping to reveal the soft curve of her shoulder.

For a moment, he stood there, watching her sleep, feeling oddly like a trespasser in his own bedroom. Then he reached out, brushed a lock of hair from her cheek, rubbed the strands between his fingers, feeling their softness.

What was it about her that got to him? If only he knew, he’d get vaccinated, find a cure, look for some way to stop it. Hell, he’d wear a rope of garlic around his neck if he thought that would do the trick. He didn’t want to want her, didn’t want to get any more tangled up in her than he already was, didn’t want to feel.

As if to prove to him how impossible that would be, she sighed in her sleep and nuzzled deeper into her pillow, and the same feeling of protectiveness he always seemed to feel for her growing inside him.

Then something slipped from her hand onto the sheet.

Her cell phone.

The damned thing was still on.

He picked it up. Letting his gaze linger on her face for a second longer, he turned, walked out of his room, and closed the door behind him. When he was sure the sound wouldn’t wake her, he flipped the little device open and turned it off. He’d be damned if anyone was going to scare her again tonight. Then, setting the phone beside the Glock, he lay down, stared up at the ceiling, and waited for morning.