Her Mountain Man Read online

  “I’m at the Western Hotel. And yes, I just got here—my flight out of Denver was delayed.”

  “I hate it when that happens,” he said. “But it’s a beautiful drive from the airport, isn’t it? What kind of rental did you get?”

  “Some little car. I’m not sure what kind. I don’t own a car, so I never pay attention.”

  “Yeah, well, we thought the subway would be finished by now, but they ran into a vein of gold while they were blasting the tunnel and decided to mine that instead of building track.”

  She stared at him, as if debating his sanity. Usually women laughed at his jokes; maybe his brand of humor didn’t play well east of the Mississippi. “Why don’t we just get on with the interview?” she asked.

  “My house isn’t really in any kind of shape for company,” he said. “I’ll just stow my climbing gear and we can go over to the Western Saloon for a drink,” he said. “How long are you staying?”

  “My return ticket is for next Monday.” She didn’t sound very happy about that.

  “Then we’ve got a week. Plenty of time.”

  He began to roll up the rope, carabiners and harness. “Why don’t you use a ladder, like everyone else?” she asked.

  “Because I don’t own a ladder. Besides, this is more of a challenge.” He stashed the gear in a box on the front porch. “Let me get my keys and I’ll drive you back to the hotel.” He glanced at her feet. “I can’t believe you walked over in those shoes.”

  “I like to walk.” But she didn’t protest when he returned with his keys and motioned for her to follow him to the red Jeep Wrangler parked beside the house. Indy hopped into his customary place in the backseat, tail wagging.

  “There are a lot of great trails around here,” he said as he backed the vehicle into the street. “But you might want to think about a pair of hiking boots. They wouldn’t go with your outfit, but they’d be a lot more comfortable.”

  She ignored the remark and pointed to the dog. “Does she go everywhere with you?”

  “He. Indy, after Indiana Jones. And yeah, he pretty much goes everywhere with me when I’m in town. When I’m on an expedition my neighbor keeps him for me. Do you have any pets?”

  “No.”

  “Not even a cat?”

  “No.”

  “I thought all single women in the city had cats or little dogs—like they came with the apartment.”

  She laughed. “No.” Then sobering. “I had a cat once. Oliver. He got sick and died.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s tough.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you never got another one?”

  “No. It was just too hard.”

  They stopped at the end of the street. A pickup truck rumbled past on Main, the driver sounding three toots on his horn and waving. Paul returned the greeting. They passed two more pickups and another Jeep between his house and the Western Hotel and Saloon. Every driver slowed and waved, grinning at Paul.

  “You have a lot of friends here,” she observed.

  “I do, but they couldn’t care less about me today. They’re interested in you.” He parked at the curb and climbed out of the Jeep, motioning for Indy to stay. With a sigh, the dog lay down on the backseat.

  “In me?” Sierra asked.

  “Yeah. They want to know who you are, where you’re from, if you’re single and what are the chances they could score a date with you.”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  He held open the door for her. “An attractive young woman always draws attention in a small town where males outnumber females,” he said.

  Every time Paul stepped into the Western Saloon he half expected to see John Wayne bellied up to the carved-oak bar. The tin ceiling, scuffed wood floors and brass spittoons looked straight off a movie set, but Paul knew they were the real deal.

  “Are there really more men than women in this town?” Sierra asked as he guided her toward a booth at the back.

  “Have been ever since it was founded by miners in the 1800s. Like those guys there.” He nodded to a black-and-white photograph of a group of solemn-faced men with elaborate moustaches that hung over the booth. “They came here planning to get rich and go home, but a lot of them ended up staying. There are a lot more women here now, but even more single guys. They come for the climbing and hiking and skiing and Jeeping and the outdoor lifestyle.”

  “You don’t think women like those things?” she asked.

  “Not as many, I guess.” He thought of her high heels and miniskirt. “You don’t strike me as the outdoorsy type.”

  “Not really, no.”

  The waitress, Kelly, sauntered over. “Hey, Paul.” She rested one hand on the back of his chair and smiled warmly. “What can I get you?”

  “I’ll have a Fat Tire. What would you like, Sierra?”

  “I’ll have a glass of water, thank you.” She arranged the small tape recorder, two pens and her notebook on the table in front of her.

  He eyed the tools of her trade warily. Right after his discovery of Victor Winston’s body he’d been eager to talk to the one person who might understand the mixture of grief, admiration and frustration the find had kindled in him. He’d imagined Victor’s only child would understand his admiration for her father and that she’d be able to tell Paul things about his idol he’d always wanted to know. But Sierra was nothing like he’d expected.

  He’d tried to find information about her online, but other than her byline on a few articles, he hadn’t discovered much. He’d imagined a tomboyish, outdoorsy type—a female version of the young Victor Winston.

  Confronted with this beautiful, sophisticated, coolly businesslike woman, he realized how delusional he’d been. Why should this woman want to commiserate with him, much less share intimate details about her life with her father?

  She switched on the tape recorder. “Tell me about Paul Teasdale,” she said. “I did a bit of research on the Internet, but I’d like to hear your story in your own words.”

  He shifted in his chair. This was why he didn’t do interviews—he hated talking about himself. “What exactly do you want to know?” he asked.

  “What led you to become a mountaineer?”

  “I enjoy the challenge of climbing, and the sense of discovery. Mountains are one of the last frontiers left to us, remote and largely untouched by development.” He climbed places where he was likely the first man to ever set foot, and felt awed and humbled by the experience.

  “You say you enjoy the challenge—so is it an adrenaline thing? You get a charge out of the risk?”

  He frowned. “That makes me sound reckless. I’m not. My goal is always to climb safely.”

  “Safety is a relative term at nineteen thousand feet.”

  “Things have changed since your father’s day,” he said. “We have more high-tech gear now, though I prefer to climb without supplemental oxygen as much as possible.” He watched as she made note of this. “How technical do you want me to get here?” he asked. “I can bore you with descriptions of safety harnesses, if that’s what you really want to know.”

  She looked up from her notes, hazel eyes meeting his, her expression troubled. “What I really want to know is what would lead a man to repeatedly risk his life on the side of a mountain?”

  The question was less an accusation than a plea. Paul searched for some way to answer her. “Climbing mountains is only part of any climber’s life,” he said. “A big part, but the climbers I know aren’t irresponsible about it, whether it’s their job or their avocation.” He rearranged the salt and pepper, as if lining up his defenses against her probing looks and questions. “I don’t look at it as abandoning my responsibilities,” he said. “I mean, I don’t really have any.”

  “So you’re single. No significant other?”

  He shook his head. He hadn’t exactly avoided serious relationships, but his schedule—away half the year or more—made attachments difficult.

  “What about your parents? Don’
t they worry about you?”

  “My parents have been my biggest fans. They’re very happy for me.” He paused while Kelly put down their drinks. Ordinarily he would have encouraged her to stay and chat, but Sierra didn’t seem to want to linger on niceties.

  Her question about his parents fueled his curiosity, and he leaped at the opportunity to turn the conversation momentarily away from him. “What about you? Tell me about growing up with Victor Winston,” he said. “What was it like having such a legend for a dad? Did he share his love of mountains with you?”

  It was her turn to look uncomfortable. “I’m supposed to be interviewing you, not the other way around,” she said.

  “Yes, but the whole reason I agreed to this interview was to get a chance to meet you.” He leaned across the table. “Your dad was my hero when I was a kid. I was fascinated by the incredible things he did. He wasn’t content to follow in other climbers’ footsteps. He insisted on finding new routes up some of the most challenging peaks. And he was one of the first to create high-quality films of his expeditions, so that others could share the experience. I wore out a tape of a British documentary made about him. You know the one—about his ascent of K2?”

  He grinned, remembering a point in the film where others in Victor’s climbing party wanted to turn back in the face of adverse conditions. Victor had insisted on forging on, and stood at last at the summit, a solitary conqueror, wind whipping back the hood of his parka, the huge grin on his homely face saying all that needed to be said about his triumph. Paul had watched that part over and over, imagining himself in Victor’s boots, victorious after overcoming insurmountable odds.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think I ever saw that one.”

  “Aww, you gotta find a copy. You’re even in it.”

  “I am?” She looked surprised.

  “Well, you were probably too young to remember, but there’s this great shot of him carrying you in a sling on a training climb.” Amazing to think that the woman before him was that baby. “He said he wanted you to learn to climb almost as soon as you could walk.”

  Her expression softened. She looked…almost wistful. “I don’t remember that. How old was I?”

  “Two? Maybe a little older. I’m not good at judging ages. How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “The documentary was made in 1986, so you would have been two.”

  “And you were four. How old were you when you saw the film?”

  “Ten. It wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1992, after Victor became more well-known.” Before she could ask why he’d been watching the film—a subject he didn’t care to discuss—he shifted the conversation again. “Are you hungry? I forgot to eat lunch and I’m starved. I bet you didn’t get a chance to eat, either.”

  “I had a pack of pretzels on the plane.”

  “I’ve gotten to where I pack a lunch when I fly. You never know when you’ll get a chance for real food. Do you care if we order a pizza?”

  “Uh, I guess not.”

  He signaled Kelly and ordered a pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza, and another beer for him and more water for Sierra. He really was hungry, but mostly he was glad of the chance to shift the conversation away from his least-favorite topic—the dark circumstances that had driven him to climb mountains for a living.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SIERRA KNEW PAUL was evading her questions; she just couldn’t figure out why. She’d steeled herself for a swaggering braggart who would try to impress her with tales of his mountaineering exploits. Instead she’d met a disarming, slightly goofy, regular guy who seemed reluctant to talk about climbing mountains at all.

  He was also decidedly better-looking than the blurry Internet photo she’d found had indicated. Not too tall, with short, spiky brown hair and brown eyes, and the great legs she’d expect from a climber. He had a smile that would stop any female in her tracks—but if he thought he could use that smile to distract her from her purpose here, he’d be disappointed. She, of all people, was immune to the charms of a mountain climber.

  “Why don’t we get back to the interview,” she said when they were alone again.

  His brown eyes were wide and innocent. “I figured you’d be sick of listening to me talk by now.”

  “You keep changing the subject.” She tapped her pen against the pad of questions. “Tell me more about yourself.”

  He threw one arm across the back of the booth and looked out over the saloon. Was the pensive profile an act, or was he really that uncomfortable with her? “I don’t know why you want to know all that stuff about me,” he said. “The real story is your father and all he did. I’m only a small part of it, the person who found his body. I thought you came to talk about that.”

  She never liked to talk about her father, yet he was, in truth, the reason she was here. Because the magazine wanted this story from the point of view of Victor Winston’s daughter. And because she was determined to uncover some insight that would help her reconcile the father she’d adored as a child with the man who’d abandoned her when she was older. In some ways, Paul seemed to know Victor Winston better than she had; could he be the key to reconciling her two views of her father?

  “I need to know your background in order to give readers a complete picture,” she said. She consulted her notebook. “I read that the first mountain you climbed was Long’s Peak, here in Colorado. Why did you pick that one?”

  He faced forward again. “Because I was living in Boulder at the time and it was close. Say, did you and your mom ever go with your father on his climbs?” he asked. “I know you didn’t climb with him, but were you at base camp? Or waiting in a nearby village?”

  “No. We never accompanied him on his climbs.” The idea of her pampered, patrician mother in some frozen base camp was preposterous. “I’m sure he would have thought we were in the way.”

  Even as she said the words, a memory flashed in her mind of her at six or seven, weeping and clinging to her father as he prepared to leave on an expedition, begging to go with him. Victor had knelt and embraced her. “Maybe I’ll take you with me someday, sweetheart,” he’d said. “When you’re a little older. We’ll go climbing together.”

  She blinked rapidly, and sipped water to force down the knot in her throat. She hadn’t thought of that memory in years.

  “Base camps are like little villages, you know,” Paul said. “There are all kinds of people there—men and women, and some children, too. There’s a fourteen-year-old boy who’s already summited four of the seven sisters. His parents climb with him.”

  “Not my idea of fun family bonding,” she said. Though if her father had asked her to follow him into the icy, forbidding wilderness that was a high mountain peak, there had been a time when she would have gladly done so.

  The waitress, Kelly, delivered plates and silverware. “Pizza will be out shortly,” she said.

  “Great.” Paul rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “I’m starved. I remember reading about your dad waiting at base camp for two weeks for conditions to clear enough to climb Everest,” he said. “He lived off oatmeal and peanut butter for the rest of the expedition.” He made a face. “I hate oatmeal.”

  “But you became a mountain climber despite the hardships. Why?” This was a question she would have asked her father; the one her readers would surely want to know.

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try.”

  He hesitated, then said, “There’s a tremendous sense of accomplishment in climbing. The freedom of setting your own pace. The challenge of testing yourself.”

  “That describes how climbing makes you feel, but is that the only reason you do it—for the adrenaline rush?”

  “You don’t think that’s enough?” The grin was a little more lopsided now, a little less sure.

  “Most people don’t spend their lives looking for a rush,” she said. “Is that really all you get out of mountaineering?”

  “Let’s put it this w
ay—why did you become a reporter?”

  “You’re trying to shift the conversation away from the interview again.”

  “No, no, this relates, I promise. You’re asking me to explain what I do for a living. I want to hear your reasons. Did you always have a burning desire to write? Or did you just fall into the job after college?”

  “I always wanted to write,” she said. She’d majored in journalism and had gone to New York after she’d graduated, determined to get a job at a magazine. She’d never even thought about a different job.

  He nodded. “I guess mountaineering is like that for me. It feels like what I was meant to do.”

  “Climbing mountains? Come on—that isn’t a real job. It doesn’t offer a service or entertainment or improve the world. And unless things have changed since my father’s day, the pay is pretty lousy.” Her mother had had the money in the family; in darker moments, Sierra had wondered if that was the chief reason her parents had wed.

  “He made money selling the film rights to his expeditions, didn’t he?” Paul said. “He was one of the first climbers to do that. Today, it’s all about sponsorships. I have a couple of mountaineering-equipment manufacturers and outdoor-clothing suppliers who sponsor me. And I’ve got an agent who’s trying to get me to go on the lecture circuit.”

  “My dad did some of that, too. There was nothing he liked better than a captive audience.”

  “Really?” He leaned forward, eyes alight with interest. “Was he like that at home, too?”

  The man was good, but she’d dealt with tougher interview subjects. She focused once more on her notebook, reserve firmly back in place. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why do you climb mountains?”

  “There are some people who think that each person fulfilling his or her potential is enough of a reason to do anything,” he said.

  “Let me guess—you picked that up from a Sherpa you met on Everest.”

  “I met him on Nanga Parbat, actually. Do you like your job? Do you enjoy what you do?”