Max held her hand the entire way.

There were plenty of situations in which holding the hand of the man you loved was a thing to look forward to with unabashed pleasure. Hawaii, for example, seemed like an appropriate setting for such a thing. Quinn and Samar were probably doing that right now, the pair of them entwining their fingers as they made further plans to entwine their lives.

Paris seemed like a nice place for it, too. Strolling along the Champs-Élysées on a rainy afternoon, or maybe on one of those old side streets made of cobblestones and worn down with centuries of foot traffic.

Elena would never know those joys. Hawaii and Paris might as well be Mars as far as she was concerned. Her anxieties would never let her board an airplane or cruise ship long enough to discover them.

Which was what made this moment so surreal. She’d finally gotten Max to clasp her hand in his—but not as a gesture of romance. It was because she was literally living her worst nightmare. She’d seen the entire side of a mountain come crumbling down; watched as a precariously dangling man pulled a knife out of his boot and cut the rope that was the only thing holding him attached to it. If Ace had acted any slower, if he’d hesitated in any way, he would have brought Wilcox down with him, the pair of them trapped in that rocky, powdery landslide.

The accident had happened all so quickly, too. That was the part that bothered her most. She’d barely had time to register what was happening before Ace’s huddled form had shouted for help. A lifetime of anxiety and a buildup of fear over just such a situation, and the catastrophe itself had lasted mere seconds.

It didn’t seem right, somehow. Almost like years of loving a man to find that the only thing that would compel him to hold your hand was disaster.

“You holding up okay?” Max asked for what had to be the tenth time in as many minutes. When she reared, every instinct she had warning her to escape, his glove-covered grip on her fingers increased in pressure. He wasn’t planning on letting her go anytime soon. “The trail is starting to get covered from all the fresh snowfall, so I’ll need you to direct me the rest of the way.”

“I’m fine,” she said, also for the tenth time. It was a lie, of course, but what else could she say? No, I’m not. Take me back. Please stop so I can be sick. “Won’t we go faster if you let me go so I can lead the way?”

“Probably,” he said. But he didn’t relinquish his hold.

The journey back to the ranger’s cabin with Ace using her as a crutch had seemed interminably long, but it was nothing compared with the amount of time it seemed to take to return to Wilcox and the Georges. The wind howled through the trees, icicles biting her nose and numbing her cheeks. And she had the benefit of movement. Even with the shelter afforded by the mouth of the cave on the rocky ledge, Team Delta had to be feeling the cold so much worse, especially since half their equipment had slid away with the mountain. She tried to imagine herself in their place, sitting and waiting, dependent on a man with a broken leg and a chicken-hearted nanny without even the benefit of age to guide her.

Yeah. That wouldn’t have made her feel any better, either.

“All this for a stupid sloth,” she muttered.

“What’s that?” Max asked.

She’d promised herself not to say any more to him than was necessary, to be a cool and efficient rescue worker he could depend on, but her plan fell flat. As was the case with everything else in her life, she lacked the courage to do this on her own. She needed Max—needed his conversation and his smile. Needed his strength.

“A sloth,” she said, resigned. “That’s what they think Bigfoot really is, did you know that? A giant prehistoric sloth.”

Max didn’t answer her right away. She thought for a moment that he was going to ignore her and her desperate plea for him to distract her from their task, but he eventually replied with “People believe weird things sometimes. The Georges and Wilcox think they’re going to find a creature that’s eluded humanity for thousands of years. Ace thinks he’s going to find fame and fortune helping them to do it. And you, Elena—”

Her heart stopped in her throat, and she swiveled to glare at him. If that man knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t finish that sentence.

You think you have a chance with the one man you can’t have, he’d say. You think you have a chance with me.

Which was true, yes, but also not even remotely the issue here. She liked Max, she loved Max, she wanted to marry Max and have dozens of little Max babies. It was as true now as it was the day she’d first laid eyes on him. But not, she realized, at the cost of her dignity. She’d come out here determined to make him fall in love with her, but somewhere along the way, she’d changed her mind.

What she really wanted was for him to see her as a capable, confident human being. What she really wanted was his respect.

And that, unfortunately, was the one thing he’d never be able to give her.

“You have no idea what I want, Max, so don’t try to guess,” she warned. “Nothing good will come of it.”

He stopped just long enough to stare at her, drinking her in from head to toe—all the quivering, fearful parts of her. He might have made the mistake of saying something, too, except they heard a shout in the distance.

Elena glanced around, seeking the familiar sights Ace had pointed out on the slow stagger back: the boulder shaped like a shipwreck, the twin birches growing from a single trunk. She’d wanted to mark the path with scraps of cloth tied around trees, but she hadn’t been able to leave Ace’s side long enough to do it.

“Around the porn tree and down the hill,” she recited, catching sight of the twisted, knotted trunk of a white pine that looked as though it had an erection. Ace had said it would help if they named each piece of nature based on its distinguishing feature. He’d cackled for a full twenty seconds over the porn tree—with his insides shattered to pieces and everything.

Mountain climbers were tough. And weird.

“The porn tree?” Max echoed.

Elena only took long enough to point out the phallic branch near the bottom of the trunk before picking up her pace to lead the way.

A few more hours and this would all be over. A few more hours and she could go home and forget that she’d once thought a man like Max Stafford could see her as anything other than the weak, scared nanny she’d always been.

And, considering the way each step closer to the site of the accident became harder to bear, would always be.

---

“You mean the only thing that’s keeping you from falling to your death is my body weight anchoring you from the bottom?” Elena stood at the base of the rock face, staring up at Max with eyes preternaturally wide.

“Well, that’s an oversimplified explanation for it but, yes.” Max tugged on the rope that bound the two of them. There was always something deeply personal about hooking a harness to another human being and trusting them with your life, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt a connection this profound before. And not just because there were three very cold, very desperate people waiting above them. It was the way Elena looked right now, so terrified it was a wonder she was still breathing.

He’d been half afraid, on the hike over, that she was going to have a panic attack or faint dead away.

But she hadn’t.

He’d also been half afraid that she’d forget the way—a perfectly natural thing when so much of her energy was taken up with remembering to breathe.

But she didn’t.

Then he’d asked her to step into the harness, and her panic levels had ratcheted off the charts. He’d had to put his hands up much higher on her thighs than the situation warranted and squeeze until she came back down again. It was underhanded of him, he knew—or, rather, overhanded, considering how close he’d been to the curve of her ass—but it had worked. Just as she’d relaxed into his foot massage at the pizza parlor, just as she’d sat beside him on the cabin steps and nonchalantly sipped coffee in the middle of the night, she seemed to draw strength from his presence, his touch.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but this much was undeniable: he’d never felt so powerful. Or been so scared at what that kind of power meant. Power like that could easily corrupt a man. It could bury one.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, as the case may be—explaining the physics that would allow him to move step by step up a crumbling rock face with Elena as a counterweight had her back to being terrified.

“How do you know it won’t fall again?” she asked as she looked up at the jagged edges of the recent rockslide.

“I don’t,” he said, unwilling to lie. If she was going to do this, she needed to do it with a full possession of the facts. This was dangerous work. There was every chance another rockslide would pull him down and bury her at the bottom. And if there was any other way to get to Wilcox and the Georges before the harsh weather conditions froze them in place, he’d do it. “But it’s my only way up, which means it’s their only way down. We’re just going to have to risk it.”

“Risk it?” she echoed.

“Yes. And you need to stand in place to serve as my anchor until I can get the bolts in place. You’ll give me slack and tension as I call for it, and sometimes you’ll feel a strong tug, but you can’t panic. You have to stay where you are, okay? Otherwise, I might fall and there won’t be anything to catch me.”

She nodded in mute terror.

“Once I get up there I’m going to send female George down first, since she’s closest in size to you. It should be a quick descent, and most of the weight will be carried by the anchor system. As soon as she touches down, you can switch harnesses and let her help the rest of us while you wait on your rock. Do you have all that?”

She blinked at him, his words seeming to bounce right off her bewildered stare. “I can’t move from this spot?”

“No. But don’t worry—standing still is the easy part. Now, brace your feet right here.” He pointed out a large rock that had wedged at the base of the cliff. “Follow my commands. And don’t look up.”

Her laugh had a panicked edge to it. “Isn’t that backwards? I thought looking down was the scary part.”

No, he wanted to tell her, looking forward is the scary part. Accepting that the past was over and done with was the scary part.

He tucked one hand under her chin and lifted until her eyes met his. “You can do this, Elena. I know you can.”

The fear from her expression was wiped away and replaced with the gentle fall of her lower lip. The time was wrong and the place was wrong and the sooner he got Team Delta down and under cover the better it would be for everyone, but he couldn’t prevent himself from swooping down and capturing that parted mouth with his own.

As usual, her lips were both hot and willing. Every time he touched this woman, she responded. Every time he kissed her, she kissed him right back. Even now, furious at him and terrified out of her skull, she couldn’t help the natural response that occurred whenever their bodies met.

It was an exhilarating prospect, this feeling that arose no matter what the situation. She’s so alive. He’d known it from the start, had feared it long before he realized how deeply she’d touched his life. She was alive, and he’d been mostly dead for years. She was alive, and he would do anything to capture even a fraction of it.

But time was running out, so he cut the kiss short before his instincts took over and he left those poor people up on the ledge to die at the hands of Mother Nature and giant prehistoric sloths. Tearing his mouth from hers, he placed his hands on her shoulders and pressed them. She felt solid under his hands.

“I mean it,” he said and waited until he knew the words had penetrated her terrified daze. “I wish I could take the time to distract you properly, but the sooner I get up there, the sooner this will all be over.”

She nodded once. It wasn’t much of a reply, especially considering how severe her expression was. There was no sign of the sunny, smiling woman he was coming to know so well—no indication that she’d ever forgive him for thinking the worst of her.

But that was kind of how it worked, right? You were scared. You faced your fears. Sometimes things came to a satisfying conclusion; other times, men fell off the side of mountains and shattered their bones. You had to keep putting yourself out there anyway.

“Are you ready?” he asked, testing his weight on the rope. She held her end tight, just like he’d taught her, and gave a nod.

“No.” Her voice wobbled. “I can’t do this, Max.”

“You can,” he said and then, because he didn’t know how else to convince her that she was the single-most capable human being he’d ever met, he added, “For me, Elena. You can do it for me. You can do it because I need you to.”

It worked. With a lift of her chin and a hard look of determination, Elena did the impossible. She smiled.

“Okay. If this is what you need, then I’ll do it. Be safe up there, all right? And, er, break a leg.”