Willa screamed. She jumped up, then back, tripped over a discarded boot, and fell right back on her derriere.
The thing in the grass was still coming at her, faster and faster. Crab crawling, she scurried backward away from the slithering reptile, screaming again, demanding that it get away from her and breathing so hard she feared her lungs might explode.
Behind her, the bushes shook with the ferocity of a 7.0 quake. Good Lord, she’d roused a bear! Terror leaped into her arrhythmic heart and stopped it cold.
“What? What is it?” A masculine voice demanded. Not a huge furry brown thing after all, but a man—a fine-looking pastor whose sultry-smooth voice jump-started her heart and pushed the air back into her lungs. At least until it whooshed out again in appreciation of those wonderfully broad shoulders.
“A s-s-s—” She couldn’t say the word. Hyperventilating, she frantically searched the grass for the slithering monster.
“A snake?”
“Yes, uh-huh.” She nodded, vigorously.
“Okay.” He searched the grass. “It’s gone. You scared it away. You’ll be fine,” he said casually, too casually considering she almost lost her life. He gestured toward the area of flattened grass and her discarded socks and boots. “You really shouldn’t lie down in the middle of a grassy field.”
She guessed not.
He stared down at her bare feet. “Those look pretty nasty. Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk. I can go anywhere as long as I get out of here.”
He laughed; the deep warm sound resonated in his wide chest. She liked it. It sounded real, genuine and totally foreign to her. Sunshine glinted off sun-streaked hair and a sparkle twinkled in his eyes. Eyes as brilliant as that blindingly blue sky above her. She didn’t think it right that anyone should have eyes that color, or that it’d look so good on a mere mortal. And why on earth did she have goose bumps on her arms?
“All right, then. We’re camped not far from here. If you want, you can rest there and fix up your feet.”
“Thanks. I’d appreciate that. You don’t know how much. For a minute, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see a living, breathing, life-saving human being ever again.” Let alone one nature-loving heart-stopping youth minister.
His grin tilted.
She zipped her lips, then smiled back, wide and foolish. She couldn’t help it. His crooked little grin was infectious and she couldn’t believe he’d found her.
His gaze slowly perused her face. “I know this sounds crazy way up here, but have we met? I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something familiar about you.”
“Nope. Can’t say that we have,” she lied, suppressing a guilty twinge. They hadn’t, she told herself, at least not technically. She’d decided on the trek up there that the best course of action would be to go incognito, grab the pen and get out. If that poor girl was on the brink of falling into a life on the streets, the last thing she needed was for all her peers to discover what she’d already done—or had been about to do, she amended, hoping for the best. Who knew what the girl had told the preacher man. No need to make things more difficult for her than they already were.
“Welcome to our little corner of paradise.” He easily swung her pack onto his back, for which she was more grateful than she cared to admit, and led her out of the field. She picked up her boots and followed as quickly as she could, but found herself wincing each time she took a step. How would she ever get back down off this mountain? She played with the idea of getting the captain to airlift her out, but he was still mad at her, and then she would have to admit she couldn’t handle a few hiking trails and a little wilderness.
Maybe she could get this handsome man to carry her down. She smiled at the thought while watching him walk ahead of her. She lost her smile as she hobbled into the circle of tents and saw the expectant faces of six kids.
“Everyone, I want you to meet a fellow packer.” The pastor turned to her. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
She held out her hand. “Willa Barrett.”
“Miss Willa Barrett.”
Willa turned to the kids and plastered on a be-gentle-with-me-I’m-clueless-about-kids smile. They all greeted her warmly, all except the girl she’d taped selling her soul to Jack Paulson. Wariness narrowed the girl’s big, brown eyes. Surely she didn’t recognize her? If not yet, chances were good she would soon. Better to find the camera and get off this mountain as quickly as possible, before one youth minister and six scrub-faced innocents became entangled in the ugly side of life.
“Make yourself at home,” the pastor said, pointing to a chair.
A real canvas chair. Cleopatra’s throne wouldn’t have looked so good. After her tortuous hike up the mountain, their camp had the makings of a four-star resort. Seven small tents nestled in a cluster of pines surrounded a fire pit. The kids sat around it, resting on rocks and blankets.
“Wow, look at your feet.” A boy no more than thirteen stood before her staring down at her swollen toes.
She wiggled them. “Yeah, new boots,” she offered weakly, then collapsed into the chair.
“I have a first aid kit, if you’d like.” His cheeks turned a soft crimson as he pushed his glasses farther up on his nose.
She smiled at his awkwardness. “Yes, thank you. I’d like.”
“Good.” He turned and walked toward the green tent closest to them and started digging through his pack.
“I’m Jeff MacPhearson,” her rescuer offered. “We’re all on an outing from the Morning Star Church. I’m the youth minister there.”
“It’s nice to meet you all. I’m certainly lucky you came along when you did.”
“Especially since it will be getting dark soon.”
Willa looked up at the sky; it didn’t look anywhere near dark to her.
“You can set up camp here with us, if you’d like.”
“Here?” Willa looked at the dirt-encrusted ground and the multitudes of little-legged things crawling all over it.
“You did bring a tent, didn’t you?” He glanced toward her overstuffed pack lying where he’d dropped it.
“No, I don’t think I did.” She tried to remember the list of items the clerk had stuffed into the pack. She didn’t remember a tent being among them. “I wasn’t planning on staying an hour let alone the night,” she explained, then shuddered. She’d have to sleep out here, at night, in the dark, with all those beady-eyed creatures watching from the trees and scurrying along the ground.
“Have you ever been backpacking before?” he asked. There it was—laughter in his voice. She swung her gaze from the dark depths of the trees and met the twinkle in his eyes head-on.
“Sure, lots of times,” she said, stiffening her back. There she was, lying again. And to a pastor no less. Although she had to admit he didn’t look like a pastor. At least not any pastor she’d ever conjured up. She took in his muscular legs, wide chest, and strong, tanned arms. Nope. More like a construction worker. She could easily picture him with a hammer in his hand. A very large hammer.
“Found it!” The rosy-cheeked boy held up the first-aid kit in triumph.
“Thanks, Charles,” Jeff said, and took the kit from him. Willa smiled as the boy shuffled his feet and spent an unusual amount of time studying the ground beneath them. She would never understand kids.
Bending before her, Jeff lifted her foot. She jumped at the unexpected contact, causing her chair to tilt. “Oh!” With her right hand, she braced herself, taking all her weight on her already sprained arm. Pain shot through her as her arm gave out.
“Whoa, there.” Jeff caught her just before she fell, his hands on either side of her grasping the arms of her chair. She couldn’t tell if it was from the shock, the pain or this incredibly handsome man’s close proximity, but what had happened to her breath?
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she muttered, unable to tear her gaze away from him. “It’s a sprain, is all.”
