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“Twice what?”
“You don’t remember? You woke me up. You were on top, sitting up. You said—”
“Please, shut up.” She did remember, now, with an awful tingling thump between her legs, and radio static in her head, which had officially run out of sensible thoughts.
Rosemary had no idea what to say to this man, this Kal-with-a-K, to get him to go away, and no desire to be alone with herself after he’d gone.
Thankfully, he did shut up.
He flopped back onto the bed, closed his eyes, and shut up for so long that she found room to pace to the window and back. Ten steps each way.
She did it eight times, counting, and began to feel calm.
His stomach was flat, dark hair disappearing into his jeans. Kalden Beckett. A rather interesting man.
It was to be hoped not the father of her baby. Surely there wouldn’t, couldn’t, be a baby, when she’d been working so hard to reach peak fitness that her period had ghosted away to nothing for months now, her ovaries dark and quiet.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
London was the only reasonable answer. Indira and the rest would have gone to London. There would be interviews to give, plans to make. She would need to speak with each member of the team to see how they were doing, whether they remained game for the rest of the summits, when they could leave for Denali, if they wanted to move the timetable up or let everyone rest first.
Just thinking about it made her tired.
“I’d like to see my daughter,” she said.
She’d survived an avalanche on Mount Everest. Now she needed to lay eyes on Beatrice, if only briefly, before she resumed beating back beasts on a sand spit and transforming herself into the woman she’d always wanted to be.
“So, New York?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too.”
“Yes. You said.”
He opened his eyes. Found hers. Smiled. “Want to be my travel buddy?”
Chapter 5
Kal raked his nails through his short hair and braced his hands on the doorframe, leaning into his room.
He closed his eyes. Opened them again.
Let out a sigh.
He’d fucked up. Royally. And he couldn’t even remember doing it.
Last night, he’d felt pretty normal when he left the room with the tray of food. Pumped up on adrenaline, a little off his skis, but thinking clearly enough. The fact that he’d left his key in the lock, an open invitation to anyone who wanted to stroll in and steal all his stuff, then waltzed himself into a room with a recently naked princess, fed her, boned her without a condom, and slept for seventeen hours, interrupting his slumber only to bone her some more?
Probably this was karmic retribution for his misdeeds. Not that he believed in karma—his mom’s efforts to raise him as a Buddhist hadn’t amounted to much—but he wouldn’t go so far as to say he didn’t believe in it.
He was agnostic on the question of karma.
Also, he was an asshole.
He let himself into the room, checked by the bed to confirm that his phone was gone, yep, checked the closet to confirm that his backpack with all his climbing gear had been spirited away—there went, what, five thousand dollars on a down suit, sleeping bag, boots, regulator, oxygen mask?—checked by the sink to confirm his toiletries were gone, but no, apparently the thief hadn’t seen much use in a ratty toothbrush and a travel-sized bottle of Pert Plus, so that was a win.
Kal blew out another sigh, opened the closet, and covered one eye, squinting with the other. If the room safe was empty, he didn’t really want to know. If he’d left it wide open like the door, shoved his passport and travel documents into it with his money clip and then forgot to close it, his mom would have a fucking kitten when she found out—
