Chapter 3

Three

C limb the damn mountain.

Spread her father's ashes.

Find what her father sent her for.

Be gone before anyone can come looking for her.

Namely Drake.

Esmeralda mentally ticked off the four points. Two hours ago in the shower of her tiny lodge room it had sounded like a perfectly solid plan.

Now her heart did a little jig just thinking about his warm touch and kissable lips. The way his hand felt holding hers. Gentle yet strong. Instead of stiff and damn near frozen solid like hers.

Every second that passed the once blue skies turned a murkier gray.

Snow. And, by the looks of it, a lot.

Nailing one out of three on her to-do list was pathetic. She held several self-titled degrees in how to escape assigned bodyguards yet couldn't manage to keep a low profile for more than two hours? In her defense, she still had time to make her great escape. She only needed to spread her father's ashes and haul ass back to Fairbanks and the nearest airport before any of the six Savage brothers caught on to her plan. If one thing they did well it was work together when they had a plan and if one wanted something they all teamed up. And one thing she did not want was to be the center of their attention when they had a plan.

"Why did it have to be him? Why Drake?"

She groaned, not that anyone would hear her halfway up the backside of a mountain.

Cold fingers of regret ran the length of her spine.

He smelled so good. Like Ivory soap with a mixture of pine and snow. She loved the freshness of snow.

Echoes of the past jolted her out of the black funk that had dogged her for the past few days—going on what felt like forever—in the time it took to say hello. Talk about bad timing.

When he'd uttered her name in that deep voice of his, almighty Thor's hammer would do less damage to her self-control. Another second and she may have done something unacceptable. Like tossing herself into his arms and feeling him up. God, he must really pity her.

Did it count if she rolled her eyes at her own actions? Could she have been any more obvious? She dug her toes into the firmly packed snow and hauled herself belly first over a freshly felled tree the size of a horse.

All she had to do was make it another couple of hours, pull off some highly evasive maneuvers, maybe a few Hail Mary's and make like Mick Jaggar back to the lodge. Hell, screw that. She'd call from the airplane and have her stuff forwarded back to New York.

Nah. Scratch that idea. Nosy Mr. Kravitz back at the lodge would rat her out and give anyone and everyone in town her address.

No. She could pick up more panties and bras. Losing her brand-new laptop burned, though.

Esmeralda shoved aside her scattered thoughts and refocused on her task. Two hours had passed since the encounter and from the looks of it, no one had followed her.

Loose rocks shifted under Esmeralda's weight and shook any remaining garbled thoughts away.

Focus .

One wrong move and she'd be in a bad way this high up. The so-called path she managed was more of a guideline that led to a secret lookout point tourists didn't know about than a real path. No climbing harnesses needed, but it was still a long way over the side if you managed to piss off the wrong gods.

With agile fingers, she easily caught hold of the rock face and repositioned her footing before pushing another few steps on the narrow path. Her hand shot out in reflex. With gloved fingers, she found large crevices for leverage and hauled herself forward on the steady incline before it fell away to reveal vast open sky and a sea of snow-tipped treetops is various shades of misty white to deep, lumberjack green.

Puffy vapor billowed out with every heavy exhale.

"Esme's Point." Named after her by her father for discovering it back when he loved the outdoors.

Thanks to him, climbing was in her blood and truth be told, she missed the challenge more than she realized before now.

Looking over the vast forest spread out below, the white wonderland would soon be lush and vibrant with summer. Esmeralda couldn't help but take a moment. She'd missed this. The peace and tranquility. Such a stark contrast to the constant chaos of the New York City streets.

Not many knew of the easy way around to the point. Or maybe they preferred the harder straight up and over approach. Which she normally did, but there were enough mountains to climb in her life at the moment—she didn't need to literally add another.

Sharp winds cut around the jagged rockface and tore into the smallest of openings in her thick winter coat. She bent and tucked into the blustery weather. Hunkered close to the ground, she moved away from the ledge and closer to the medium-sized rocks that rimmed a section of blackened stone that normally served as a source of heat and cooking. As a young girl and through her teenage years her dad and mom had cooked several summertime meals here. Her favorite had been homegrown corn from Mrs. Savage's garden and her dad's grilled fish. If she concentrated, she could still smell the lemon zest.

Tears welled along the rims of her eyes. Back then things had been simpler. Back before the attack stole her mother away and drove her father to bury himself in nothing but building an empire. His heart turned to solid stone that made the diamonds he mined look soft in comparison.

Her mother had loved the outdoors. With their log cabin and large expanse of property backed up to the west side of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, she would disappear for hours until one day she didn't come back.

Desperate, her father had called in every law enforcement agency, but after forty-eight hours they'd failed to find her. It had been the elder of the Savage men that had found her body mauled by a bear.

A throaty roar echoed off the walls of the two mountains Esme Point settled between. As if her thoughts conjured a reverberating memory from the rocks themselves.

She stood, heart pounding against her sternum. Wild ideas of a bear hunting her down overshadowed her thoughts for a split second. She had to stop letting her father's fears be her own. He'd been so fearful of her meeting the same fate as her mother that he moved them as far away from any animal bigger than a squirrel.

Another rumble split the silence. It had to be the rescue team out looking for the hikers.

To the right of where she stood, the ledge extended into the mountainside a few feet before tucking under an overhang that led to a small secluded den.

Apparently, winter had hit hard this year. Layers of snow partially buried the entire path on her way up, and it plastered against the rocks in a way that a baker would ice a cake.

Ominous clouds draped across the once blue horizon. Fat flakes swirled in the air and caught in the loose strands of her ponytail. With deft fingers, she popped the double-hooked clasps on her bag. She didn't have long. Kneeling beside the pit, Esmeralda slipped her flashlight from her bag as she stood to make her way into the dark den.

"Why the hell did I have to make a promise to him?" She knew better, yet the plea his eyes held tore her heart out.

"Because you're weak, Esmeralda Morgan," she quipped to her own question.

Weak because in that one moment all his past transgressions against her vanished in a poof and all she saw before her was a man desperate for one last moment with his daughter.

After hours of talking, he slipped away from her.

"So, here we are, now it's your turn, Father." Esmeralda tightened her grip on her satchel. "You promised answers for a peaceful resting place close to mom. The ball's in your court."

What answers he thought she needed to find still puzzled her. Whatever he wanted to tell her he'd insisted could only be found here.

Esmeralda pressed her hands to her face and inhaled a long steadying breath.

Holding the satchel that carried her father's ashes, she leaned in. "Any time would be nice. Feel free to toss out a divine clue of what I should be looking for."

Flashlight in hand, she entered the den for a reprieve from the harsh winds picking up. Shafts of light lanced down in crisscross patterns through the slots cutting through the cavern's ceiling. Mother Nature had created a few sunroofs and the added light helped her see. Standing in the mouth of the cave, Esmeralda bounced the light from side to side. Small crates were stacked along the far wall covered in what looked like a discarded tarp. People, probably the teenagers of Savage Ridge, still visited the point. But not for a few months at least judging from the tattered, worn material.

She pushed into the small opening that led deeper into the cavern, passed the initial wide chamber and into a place the cold wind couldn't follow.

In a few steps she kneeled by the crates and thumbed through the contents. Nothing stood out.

If she wanted to make it down before she lost all light she had to hurry. She returned to the entrance and scanned the horizon. He'd said she'd find it here, that all she had to do was look hard enough. Only, she wished she knew what it was. Frustration tore a gargled scream from her throat.

"Why can't you ever just tell the truth? Why! Why the riddles and games?" She kneeled in the growing amount of snow, placing the bag by her knee.

"This was such a terrible idea." She pounded a fist into the snow and let the horror and anger of coming all the way out here for nothing feed the drive behind her force. He fostered such a soul-deep hatred for anyone with the name Savage, why the hell would he send her back into the town that carried their name? Maybe the medicines had messed with his mind? Maybe she needed meds.

She'd come a long way and risked more than her neck to play some kind of game.

Anger forced her to her feet in a rush, and she stormed to the ledge. She had to be the biggest fool. With jerky movements, she gathered her bag. Thunder pounded against the earth. "What the heck is that?" Crouched low she scanned the horizon. Since when did thunder come from the ground?

Esmeralda turned a one-eighty as fear gripped her in its ironclad fist. Her throat closed the second a startled scream worked its way up her windpipe.

Her head jerked around and she froze in place as a bear of a man came barreling toward her.