I’d been hanging off a Sleepy Briar cliffside all morning, screaming to the empty beach below. This is what I got for setting out on my own across the half-frozen mountainside. All I wanted was to collect some fresh herbs for myself while Gabe watched Theo.
Brody had warned me about going off on my own. But had I listened? No.
Instead, I was going to die. And that wasn’t the worst part. In an attempt to save myself, I used every last bit of clothing I had as rope in a failed attempt to haul myself up off this ledge.
Now I’d pinned all my hopes on my thong. Before today, my slingshot panties were a fashion choice—not survival gear. In the hopes of hanging on, I’d looped it around the sturdiest roots I could find, but I didn’t have the arm strength to haul myself up.
The damned thong had given me the biggest wedgie of my life before I liberated it for use as a lasso.I was not keen on introspection; I had a difficult time waiting for my nail polish to dry. All this because I’d fallen over the edge trying to get some fresh lavender.
Blackberry vines had closed around me like a net. They protected me from falling. On the flip side, extracting myself was going to be painful to my skin—and pride.
It’s too late to learn any lesson from this. Instead, my son will live the rest of his life knowing that when someone finally found my frozen body, I was pretty much naked. With my luck, that discovery would be by a tourist bus whose season didn’t start for a few more months. That was one thing to be thankful for.
I screamed for help until my throat was hoarse. My cries competed with those of the long howling mountain winds cutting through the valley.
The ledge above me trembled, loosening more of the bank. I was busy watching the earth crumble to the two-hundred-foot drop below when a shadow fell across me from the cloudless sky.
“I recognized the screams.” Brody’s mirrored aviator sunglasses peered down at me over the bank’s edge. “Need some help?”
“Swear to God, get me out of here and I’ll give you anything you want.”
“You’ll leave Sleepy Briar?”
“Except that.” I shook my head slightly. I was aware of my precarious perch, despite my feelings on the subject. “Theo belongs here. I won’t leave him.”
“You are so stubborn you’d rather fall to your death?”
“If you have to ask that question, then you don’t know me,” I said.
“This is a new use for a thong.” Brody fingered the nylon material that stretched like a rubber band between me and the branch it had snagged on.
I closed my eyes. The darkening stubble, arrogant smirk and those glasses. Even when I was facing death, Brody’s handsomeness awed me.
“Are you going to help me or not?” I asked.
Brody scanned over the edge again. His lips twitched. “Is that sage nestled against your breasts?”
His eyes looked down into mine with the slightest twinkle. Frustration boiled inside me. He thought this was funny when the ledge supporting me could give out at any time?
“Just get me out of here before I make my kid an orphan, you bastard.” My words lacked heat. Damn his attractive self.
“Injuries?” Brody lay flat atop the bank, dangling his arms toward me over the cliffside.
“Nothing’s broken,” I said.
He scooted forward. More bits of sand and rock crumbled from the ledge. My precarious situation didn’t prevent him from ogling my cleavage. Under normal circumstances, I’d have appreciated the attention.
After running his hands lightly over the edge, testing for loose earth, he stood up, brushing soil from his palms. “Did this rescue start out thong-less, or was that a later development?”
“I was trying to lasso a branch above me to crawl out. I didn’t fall over the ledge with rappelling gear.”
He produced a rope from his backpack. “I thought you were trying to signal, like Batman uses his silhouette in the sky. Only with you, it’s panties.”
“How’d you know where I was?”
“I stopped by your place. Gabe said you’d gone out alone. I came looking.”
He fed the rope down with a carabiner clip attached to it. It dangled at my stranded thong. With a few flicks of his wrist, he released the garment from the offending tree branch and reeled it to him. “I knew all that fly fishing would come in handy.”