Lazlo’s Last Stand

Chapter 8

It was more like fifteen minutes later when Lucia ventured onto the clean-swept front steps of Josef and Kati’s cottage, grumbling under her breath, hugging herself and shivering theatrically. Corbett, who had obviously been pacing, judging from the path his footsteps had worn in the snow, gave her an annoyed stare, which warmed her heart considerably.

The truth was, she felt invigorated, and not the least bit cold. She knew she was playing a risky game, taunting him so, particularly since she didn’t know him well enough to be able to predict what his reaction might be under these unaccustomed circumstances. Since her impassioned declaration of love, which obviously hadn’t fazed him, she’d felt a new sense of freedom. As if a reckless and wicked imp had come to sit on her shoulder and was constantly whispering in her ear, What have you got to lose?

It was another lovely sunny morning, cold and sparkling, looking more than ever like a pen-and-ink drawing with snow still lying thick on the ground but melted off rooftops and the black skeletons of trees. Refusing to acknowledge the beauty of it, Lucia focused instead on the object on the ground near Corbett’s feet.

“What,” she inquired darkly, “is that?”

He reared back, as if astounded by her ignorance. “It’s a sled.”

“Uh-huh. Where did you find it?”

“It was in the outbuilding.” Bending down, he picked up the gleaming wood-and-metal contraption by one end and bumped it against the ground to dislodge the bits of muddy snow that were clinging to its runners. “We dug it out last night, Josef and I, after you passed out at the dinner table.”

He’d spent hours cleaning and oiling it, actually. In a way, it had been therapy for him, working methodically with his hands and thinking about everything that had happened that day.

Everything. Thinking about her, mostly. And Adam. The possibility one of them could have betrayed me. Telling myself it couldn’t be her. Not Lucia.

Asking himself when she could possibly have done it. Then remembering that she’d been alone in the cave house all night that first night. Knowing that with her computer knowledge she could easily have sent off a message…

No. I won’t believe it. I know I don’t know her as well as I thought I did, but still…My God, look at her.

Even bundled up and red-nosed, her body round and as shapeless as a bear’s, she was still so adorable she made his throat ache with a repressed urge to laugh out loud. Even when she directed a frigid stare at the sled, then at him, and said frostily, “What part of ‘I don’t do sports’ don’t you understand?”

Lifting his gloved hands to his mouth to cover a smile, Corbett huffed out a cloud of freezing vapor, then said in a stern but patient teacher’s voice he knew would annoy her, “This is not sports. It’s a child’s toy. All you have to do is sit on the thing. Or you can even lie down on it. Look.” He dropped the sled onto the snow, gingerly lowered his backside onto it, grasped the rope holds on the sides and leaned back. “You see? You steer with your feet-like this.”

She folded her arms on her chest and shook her head. “Oh, no-no way. I watch the Olympics. I’ve seen the people that do this sort of thing. I thought they were crazy. And they were wearing helmets. No way, Jose.”

“All right, suit yourself.” He got up, dusted off his pants and bent down to pick up the sled’s pull rope. As he started walking toward the gate, he heard ski boots clomp down the wooden steps behind him.

“All right, since you’ve got me out here…Hey, wait, hold up a minute, okay?”

Wearing what he hoped was a look of long-suffering and not a reflection of the satisfaction he felt, he paused and waited for her to catch up. “I want to see the castle,” she said, breathing hard, cold-reddened lips making charming vapor puffs in the frosty air. “You did say you’d show it to me.”

“Ah. So I did.” He made a great show of thinking it over. “All right, here’s the deal. I’ll take you up and show you the castle, if you agree to come down-” he tugged on the sled’s rope, lifting it a few inches off the snow “-on this.”

She cocked her head, bit down on her lower lip and looked at him for a moment, then answered, “Deal,” so readily he knew she was already thinking of ways to get out of it.

The hike up the mountain to the castle ruins was less strenuous than Lucia had expected. For one thing, for someone accustomed to California’s Sierra Nevada, it wasn’t much of a mountain-more of a hill, really. And then the path, which was wide enough in most places to be called a road, wound upward in a gentle spiral that afforded them everwidening views of the snowy hills and woods that surrounded them, and the valley and villages far below. As they trudged unhurried along the path, making new footprints in the undisturbed snow, Corbett had plenty of time to fill her in on the area’s history and geography, some of which she already knew from her own research. By mutual, though unspoken, agreement, they didn’t mention their own complex pasts, or the consequences affecting their immediate future. The Lazlo Group, Cassandra DuMont, her son Troy, Adam Sinclair and Paris-those things seemed far away, though not at all out of mind, like a bank of thunderclouds piled up on distant mountains.

The castle, Corbett told her, most likely dated from the Turkish Wars, sometime in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It was thought to have been a relatively minor military outpost and not worth the effort to excavate or restore.

“If it had been,” Corbett said, “I doubt the Hungarian powers that be would have been willing to let it pass into private hands. So, naturally, I’m quite satisfied with it as it is.”

They had emerged from the last small stand of forest onto the edge of the rocky, windswept summit.

“There’s not much to see,” Lucia said, trying to hide her disappointment.

He snorted as he plodded past her, towing the sled. “Not if you were expecting Disneyland. All these rocks you see-” he waved one arm in a wide sweep “-were once part of the walls and battlements. Most of the part that’s still standing is over here, on the lee side of the hill-maybe because it’s a bit more protected from the wind and weather. Over the centuries nature’s taken a much greater toll than the Turks ever did. Here, I’ll show you.”

He half turned and held out his hand, and she gasped and caught at a breath as if a gust of wind had snatched it from her. Seeing him there, tall against a backdrop of scudding clouds, his eyes vivid mirrors of the patches of blue sky, jaws dark with stubble and cheeks reddened by the cold, wind riffling the fur on his hat and collar, she felt a wave of desire so intense and raw it rocked her like an unexpected blow. Stunned her, so that she reached blindly and let him take her hand and pull her, unprotesting, against his side.

“See there?” he said, pointing, and through the haze of her passion-fogged senses she could see the definite outline of a rough square in the snow. “That’s the foundation of one of the towers. And over there is another one.”

She drew an unsteady breath and gulped. “Oh, wow.”

Having recovered most of her wits, she pulled away from him and went slipping and sliding down a short embankment to where a tumble of squareish blocks ended in an upright section of wall. As she came closer to the yard-thick wall she saw that it stood a good bit higher than her head, except for one squared-off section about chin height that could only have been a window. She was trying without success to hoist herself onto the ledge when Corbett came to join her.

“Determined to break your neck, are you?”

Still trembling inside, she smiled winningly at him over one shoulder. “Come on-give me a leg up. I’ll bet the view is amazing from up here.”

“Hmm, rather intrepid for someone who doesn’t do sports.” But she caught a thrilling glimpse of a grin before he laced his gloved fingers together and bent down to offer them as a foothold.

She placed the toe of her boot in the cradle of his hands and one hand on his shoulders, held her breath…and a moment later, gave a small squawk of surprise as she found herself perched in the opening of the ancient wall.

“Oh, man…” She rose unsteadily to her feet, bracing against a wave of vertigo with one hand on each side of the opening. “This really is cool. You should see…” She leaned to see more, but pulled back at a strangled sound from Corbett. “What?”

He was shaking his head and staring resolutely at the ground. “Nothing. Do go on.”

“Well, you can see Kati and Josef’s cottage from here, did you know that? It’s directly below us. I guess that means-” she turned in the opening and pointed back toward the ruins “-the chimney must come out somewhere over there.”

“It would, if it went up in a straight line, like a man-made chimney.” He held up his arms and made a beckoning gesture. “However, since it was made by Mother Nature, and nature, as they say, abhors straight lines-”

“A vacuum.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nature abhors a vacuum. I suppose she could also have a thing against straight lines, although I’ve-”

“Oh, do shut up,” Corbett said cheerfully. “I’ll be happy to show you where it comes out, if you insist. But first, please come down from there before you hurt yourself. There’s a good-”

His last word was lost-fortunately for him, as far as Lucia was concerned-in a grunt of mixed surprise and pain as she dropped from the window ledge straight into his arms.

She murmured, gazing into his eyes with deep concern, “I forgot about your ribs. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

“I’ll survive,” he said, without benefit of breath. Although, the longer he stood there holding her and looking down into her eyes, the less aware he was of either the pain in his ribs or the lack of air in the lungs beneath them. It took willpower he didn’t know he had to drag himself back from the brink of insanity. “I have just one question, though. Why this obsessive interest in ancient geothermal rock formations?”

She drew back-as he’d hoped and prayed she would, since he lacked the moral strength to push her away-and stared at him with a look of puzzlement. “I’m interested, yes. You told me about it, and I found it fascinating. I want to see it. I’m curious-wouldn’t you be?”

He stared at her a moment longer, then conceded stiffly, “All right, yes, I suppose I would be.” He turned around and pointed. “See there, that curved wall, that’s an old cistern.” He started walking toward it and she fell in beside him, listening intently.

Too intently? Why?

He gave himself a mental shake and went on with his lecture.

“Built to collect rainwater, probably sometime later than the castle itself. I imagine the original inhabitants of the castle were in the process of digging themselves a cistern when they broke through to the cave underneath. They wouldn’t have bothered to finish building the thing, since now they had a ready source of both water and escape. Later on, though, this cave, and the others in the region, were used by all sorts of people-smugglers, rebels, refugees-who might have had good reasons to want to hide the entrance to the tunnel. So-” he paused at the edge of the crumbling rock wall that surrounded what appeared to be a shallow, hand-dug well about ten feet deep “-they built the cistern around it. As I said, though, the tunnel, or chimney, or whatever you want to call it, hasn’t been used in years. I don’t know if it’s even passable. And,” he quickly added, as Lucia leaned to peer over the side, “I don’t intend to start exploring it now, in case you were thinking of weaseling out of our deal and hoping to get home that way.”

She looked up at him and said quickly, “I wasn’t thinking any such thing. I’m not completely crazy.” She backed away from the ruined wall, brushing snow from her gloved hands, and he noticed she’d began to shiver.

“You’re cold,” he said gently, smiling a little, both at her automatic glare of denial and his equally reflexive urge to pull her close and warm her. “Are you ready to go home?”

Lucia tucked her hands into the pockets of her borrowed ski jacket and glared at him with dark foreboding. While it was true that most of her objection to the sled had been a put-on, merely a way of taunting Corbett, there was a knotted-up feeling in her stomach that was all too real. And all too familiar. It was the same feeling she got whenever she thought of the way her relationship with him-the way her life-was changing. Too fast! Thrilling, yes, but not quite under her control. And getting on that sled with Corbett had begun to seem rather like an analogy for it all.

“Oh, all right,” she said in a grumpy tone she hoped would hide the fact that her heart was pounding and her breathing had become quick and shallow. “But just so you know, if we run into a tree and kill ourselves, it’s on your head.”

“No trees,” he said cheerfully, pointing toward the place he’d chosen for their descent. “See?”

“Oh, my God,” said Lucia. Straight down was what it looked like to her. All the way to the first loop of the road. Then another straight drop to the lane that ran past Josef and Kati’s cottage. She turned a horrified look on Corbett. “You must be kidding.”

“Not at all. It’s not as steep as it looks, you know. It’s all a matter of perspective.”

“Insane, then,” she muttered. “Completely mad.”

“Oh, come now. This from the woman who attacked an armed man with nothing but her bare hands and feet. Here-you don’t need to do a thing except hold on. Sit right here.” He guided her gently but firmly until she was perched on the sled, arms and legs pointing in all directions, like a newborn calf’s. “Okay, relax. Now, put your feet here, in the middle of the bar. I’ll do the steering.”

She caught and held a breath as the sled began to move, then stopped, teetering now on the very edge of what seemed to her like a precipice. A cliff. She caught another breath when she felt him settle himself behind her and align his legs alongside hers, fold one arm around her and bring her close against his chest. With the other he took a firm hold on the tow rope. She felt his body rock back…then sharply forward.

“O-o-oh…my…Go-o-d…”

The earth dropped out from under her and all the breath in her body emerged in one long wail of sheer terror.

Tears were snatched from her eyes by the wind. Her ears filled with the sounds of the wind rushing by at mach speed and the screech of sled runners slicing through snow and ice. In what seemed like no more than a few heartbeats she felt a bump and a slight slowing, and then another sharp drop as the sled swooped onto and then over the wide path and on down the hill.

She was just starting to get over the terror and beginning to enjoy herself when she heard Corbett yell in her ear, “We’re coming to the road! Lean when I tell you!”

She nodded. A moment later she felt the sled begin to tip to one side. “Lean!”

This she was only too happy to do. Every instinct in her brain was telling her body to throw itself in the direction opposite the way the sled was tipping in order to keep it upright. So that’s what she did.

The next thing she knew, the sled was slipping sideways down the hill, then skewing around and around, and she and the sled and Corbett were all cartwheeling, rolling, tumbling down the mountainside in a wild melee of flailing limbs and clouds of snow.

And then…all was still.

A few seconds passed before Lucia decided she was indeed alive. Shortly after that she decided she must be lying on her back, and since nothing seemed to hurt too terribly, all of her body parts must be intact and in working order. To test this theory, she spat out a mouthful of snow and attempted to sit up. And discovered she couldn’t move.

Panic seized her-for the few seconds it took her to figure out that she was not paralyzed, but that something heavy was lying on top of her, and that the something, or someone, was Corbett.

“Kindly…don’t do that…” His strangled whisper came from somewhere near her ear.

“Do what?”

“Move.”

“Oh.” There was a pause, and then: “Oh! Oh, my God! Corbett-your ribs-are you all right?”

“Not really, no. Though it wouldn’t be quite so bad if you’d only stop wiggling.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She let her head drop back into the snow. Then popped it up again. “It’s your own fault, you know. You told me to lean.”

“Of course I did.” Corbett’s face loomed above hers, eyebrows and lashes woolly with snow, cheeks chafed and wet with it. He’d lost the fur hat, and his hair hung damply onto his forehead. “Dammit, I wanted to turn.”

“Well, I leaned, and look what happened!”

“You leaned the wrong way, you…you-You shot the bloody sled right out from under us.”

“How was I supposed to know?” She propped herself on her elbows, bringing her face almost nose to nose with his. “It felt like the sled was going to tip over. Call me crazy, but that seemed like a bad thing to me. So I leaned the other way to keep it from doing that!”

“What? Didn’t you take physics in high school? Don’t you ever watch the Olympics? There’s this thing called centrifugal force-”

“It would have been nice if you’d explained that to me before you put me on that…that death sled! I told you I was no good at sports, but did you listen to me? Hell, n-mmf…”

He’d stood it as long as he could, he really had. Lying there with her body pinned beneath him, even with his wretched ribs on fire, had been enough of a torment. Then, to have that mouth of hers, the mouth he’d tried hard not to watch or think about for so many years only to have it invade his dreams and slip into his waking mind when he least expected it…to have that mouth right there, so close to his, red and swollen, wet and cold…Well.

And there was the added plus that it was a great way to get her to be still.

He kissed her.

Forcefully, at first, just to cut off the tirade. Forcefully enough so that he felt those lips stop moving and go still with shock, then quiver and begin to warm and soften against his. He drew back, then-not far, just to see her reaction. Her eyes gazed up at him, glistening like liquid silver.

“Well, it’s about time,” she said huskily. “I was beginning to think-”

Before she could finish, Corbett lowered his mouth to take hers again, this time with all the tenderness and care he had in him, and all the longing he’d kept hidden and the joy he’d denied himself for so long.

He pulled his hand from where it had been entombed in the snow, leaving his glove behind, and laid his cold fingers against her cheek. He wiped the snow-melt moisture away and felt the velvety softness of her skin and put his mouth there, too. Then to the cold, pink tip of her nose, one quivering eyelid, and back to her mouth again. He both felt and heard her faint little sigh, and now when he drew back to look at her, he found her eyes closed, and teardrops shivering on the tips of her lashes.

“You don’t know…” Her lips looked blurred and barely seemed to move.

“Yes,” he said softly, “I do.”

“No, you don’t. I tried to tell you-”

So he kissed her again. And this time he felt her arms come around his neck and her body lift under him, and he heard a whimper of passion. He turned slightly to give her room, scarcely aware of discomforts in any part of his body, save one. And that was one discomfort he was willing to live with-for a while. He didn’t even mind making it worse, temporarily, as when he let his hand wander along the side of her body, then around to the small of her back and over the taut rounds of her bottom, then pressed her, with her full cooperation, against the part of himself that was suffering the most.

Though he couldn’t help but groan.

She heard him, of course, and, drawing the wrong conclusion, stiffened. But before she could pull away, he tightened his arm around her and pressed her even closer, and with her lips curving under his in a smile of understanding, felt her legs shift to make a nest for him.

And as he was rocking against the cradle she’d made for him, his body tensing and tightening in familiar ways, seeking a union impossible under those circumstances, it struck him. First, as frustrating and infuriating, then as ridiculous, and finally, as hilariously funny. He withdrew gently from her mouth and rested his forehead against hers, his body shaking with laughter.

“Ow,” he moaned, and went on laughing.

“What?” she whispered, still holding him, but tensely now. “Did you hurt your ribs? What’s funny?”

It was a moment before he could answer, in a voice choked with pain and a kind of mirth he hadn’t known in a very long time. “This is-We are. Us.”

It was all he could manage. How could he tell her he felt ashamed he’d ever thought himself too old for her, when here he was behaving-and even more remarkable, feeling-like a randy adolescent? How could he explain that the joy he felt at this moment of discovering her was inextricably entwined with sadness for having waited so long? And perhaps most complicated of all, how could any words capture the bitter irony in having such a thing happen to him now, when his life was in chaos and everything he’d worked to build about to topple around him.

He raised his head and looked down at her, smiling and cupping her face in his hand. “We really can’t do this, you know. At least, not here.”

She tilted her chin upward in a way he recognized and said fiercely, “Why not?”

He kissed her forehead, laughing silently. “Now who’s crazy? For one thing, my dearest, we’re on the side of a mountain, in full view of a public road. Oh, and there’s the small fact that it’s quite likely we’d freeze to death. You do realize we’re lying in the snow?”

“Hmm,” she said, “I hadn’t noticed. Though now that you mention it, I’m surprised we haven’t melted it for quite some distance around.” Then they were both laughing, holding each other and shaking helplessly with it.

When the laughter had died away into fitful murmurs and sighs and an occasional plaintive, “Ow,” Corbett kissed her once more, then said gruffly, “We do have to get up. I’m sorry…”

Her eyes were closed, the long, thick lashes stuck together in spiky clumps. There was a long pause, and then instead of answering she clamped a hand over her eyes. Her mouth had a crushed look that made him hurt inside.

“What is it?” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head and he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then a single sob escaped her before she quickly gulped it back.

He took her hand and pulled it away from her face. “Open your eyes…look at me. Now…tell me.”

Those remarkable eyes gazed back at him…silver blue ringed with indigo. And he knew before she said the words.

“Oh, Corbett, I don’t want to let you go. I’m afraid…”

“Afraid?”

Oh, she was, she was. She stared up into his face-now wearing a stern expression she’d come to know and dread-and trembling, began to speak rapidly, trying to say everything before he stopped her.

“Of letting you go. Of letting this go-this moment. Afraid you’ll back away again. That you’ll step back behind your boss-teacher-mentor barrier the way you’ve always done when we’ve almost…when we’ve gotten…close. And then act as if nothing happened.”

There. And he hadn’t stopped her.

For a long suspenseful moment he went on looking at her, while even her heartbeat seemed to slow down. Then he rolled carefully away from her. Deep within her the pain began, and cold sickness flooded through her body. She’d known this would happen. Known he would do this.

Holding one arm protectively across his ribs, he pushed himself to his feet, then reached down to give her his hand. Too weak-kneed and shaky to rise on her own, Lucia took it gratefully.

Just let me survive this, she thought. If I do, I’m leaving, I swear. I’m leaving the Lazlo Group, and I’m never coming back.

And then, somehow, miraculously, warm arms and a hard, strong body were enfolding her. Cold fingers tipped her chin upward and warm lips brushed hers.

“I think we’ve pretty much gone beyond the point of no return, don’t you?” Corbett said softly.

A tiny cry was all that escaped her before his mouth opened in perfect sync with hers, and her head fell back and her mind shut down.

As he deepened the kiss, then deepened it some more, he felt Lucia-whose mind he’d held in awe, whose charm and beauty had enthralled him and whose strength and courage had saved his life-melt in his arms in complete and total surrender. Joy spread through him, and in his mind was one triumphant thought:

So…even brilliant minds go silent in awe of miracles.