Chelsea smiled as the memory brought up an image from her childhood. “She was like my little mom, always there when I woke up. My mother was a horsewoman who traveled the world riding in the top events. She was better at schooling horses than children.”
“So, who brought you up? Did you have a nanny?” He reached out and tucked back the strands of black hair that were blocking her view of him, and vice versa, and she wished he hadn’t. Bad enough spilling her guts without catching his expressions of sympathy or otherwise.
Suck it up, Chelsea, she told herself, but as he ran the tip of his index finger around the curve of one ear, his touch made her quiver.
She felt her color deepen, and lowered her eyelids as if that would hide her reaction to him. “No, just a housekeeper and Atlanta. By the time I started kindergarten she was ten and used to boss me around, but at the same time she always made sure no one picked on me. I was the black moth in a field of butterflies, too exotic for most of the cool New England blondes I went to school with. Atlanta had no problem. Her mother had been one of them and Father had loads of money, even if he was a self-made man.”
She flashed a smile meant to say But look at me now—I got by, but sensed that Kurt saw through her bravado.
“How many did you beat up?” he asked.
“Not too many. Remember I had Atlanta.”
“I have a twin. That made fighting our battles easy. Besides which we’re identical and it was difficult to know which of us to blame. Of course, if the crime was too bad, Grandma Glamuzina punished us both.”
“Poor you,” she teased.
“Don’t get me wrong—the punishment rarely fit the crime. But this is your story. What happened when you were thirteen?”
“Atlanta married Bill. She was only eighteen and Bill was almost thirty. God, I’ll be thirty myself soon, but to me he looked like an old man and I couldn’t see how she could love someone that old. I blamed it on my father. He’d made two profitable matches himself, and I knew that if Bill had been poor my father wouldn’t have let him through the door.”
Chelsea laughed as she remembered something else. Another swig of whiskey eased her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked so much straight up. “You should have seen Father when he discovered Bill had decided to give up making money and live on what he had. He went apoplectic. I don’t think my father took a day off work in his life, except to get married. Though I guess you could say that was all part of business. Thank God neither of us took after him. Cousin Arlon is the nearest thing he had to a son.”
Her stomach curdled as she remembered what had brought her to Namche Bazaar, and this tavern, and this man. “It didn’t make any difference, though. Father didn’t believe in leaving money out of the immediate family, not even to a cousin.”
And there of course was the problem. A good-paying appointment wasn’t enough for Arlon. He wanted it all.
Her gray eyes went opaque, making the dark rim around the irises stand out. Kurt wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have poured her that last drink. But she brightened up as their food appeared on a large wooden platter for them to share. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” she said as she grabbed a piece of flat bread before starting in on the barbecued meat. “Ooh, this is hot. Watch your fingers.”
“The tips of my fingers are like asbestos. That’s what years of climbing mountains does for you.” He still felt the heat, though, as he grabbed a few strips from the huge pile of meat, and for a few minutes all they did was chew and moan about how good it tasted.
“Mmm, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. I can’t remember the last time food tasted so great. I must take some of these spices home with me. Think I can buy them in the market?”
“I should imagine so. They sell almost everything else there.” As he spoke he watched her reach for another round of bread and begin filling it with more lamb. The way she ate was very sensual, without a hint of prissiness. She’d chomp down with her white teeth, laughing with sheer enjoyment as the sauce hit her chin. He was amazed how disappointed he felt when she pulled a handkerchief out of the reaches of some pocket to clean her face and hands. She’d only to say the word and he would have licked them clean.
Just the thought of it made him grow hard, and he was glad the table sheltered his problem. Bad enough her knowing that wiggling her butt against him turned him on, without letting her in on the secret of the effect watching her eat had on him.
Time to change the subject and save his hide. “You didn’t finish your story. Tell me what Bill did to create a gulf between you and Atlanta besides being an old man. I mean, you’re what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and I’m past thirty-four. So far this conversation hasn’t done wonders for my ego.”
“Okay.” She put her roll of bread and meat on the edge of the half-empty wooden platter. “Short and sweet this time. Bill took her away clear across the country and I never spoke to her again.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes at him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gulped down all that food. This seems to be turning into a guilt trip. I was a little witch back then, stubborn as they come. After that, everything I did was the opposite of Atlanta. No ballet lessons for me—I rode horses, played basketball. In short, I became a tomboy. My father went ballistic. I didn’t care. He wasn’t turning me into the perfect little daughter so he could marry me off to a rich old man.”
Chelsea sniffed, looked at her small stained handkerchief and rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her hand. “I needn’t have worried. No way did I fit the criteria for a good upper-crust wife…but that’s another story.”
Kurt searched his pocket, then handed her a handkerchief. “Here, take this—it’s clean.” He eyed her warm black sweater. It might be a slightly chunky knit, but that didn’t exclude elegant from its description. “And don’t worry, the tomboy image didn’t take.”
“But it did. I still spend a lot of time at the gym. I’m strong. Want to feel my muscles?” She held out her arm.
Nuh-uh—hands off, boy. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
He wanted to feel a lot more than her muscles, and if he started there he might not stop. From his memory of her pulled against his length there was absolutely nothing hard about her, just soft warmth that fitted against him perfectly.
No point in heading in that direction, though. Even if the unheard-of happened and the attraction did turn out to be mutual, the accident would always come between them. The memory of a tragedy whose edges were as sharp and jagged as the mountain it happened on would be equally difficult terrain to get over. From what he could tell, both of them were carrying a heap of guilt. Not a good thing to have in common.
“Well, for your information, I’m quite the basketball star. We make up a couple of teams from the embassy and play at least once a month—clinging to our roots, don’t you know.”
“The embassy?” Why was he just hearing this?
“Yes.” She looked quite proud. “I’m a translator at the American embassy in Paris. I like to keep busy.”
If ever he needed another reason not to take her up Everest, this was it. She might act as if she were alone in the world now that Atlanta had gone, but he’d met a few of those embassy types and he was certain she’d have more people watching her back than she realized.
Time to bail out. He made a show of looking at his watch, surprised to see that in Chelsea’s company time had actually spun away from him much faster than he’d guessed. “It’s getting late. I ought to walk you back to your hotel.”
Her eyebrows rose and her accent became snotty. “There’s no need. I can take care of myself. You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. You might have noticed this isn’t the most salubrious neighborhood. Why do you think I greeted you with a knife? I’ve been robbed