"Namaste, Miss Sonnet."
"Namaste." Eyes closed, Karen waited tensely, but Mingma didnat exclaim about a man in the tent, or comment on the new animal skin.
Karen opened her eyes and scrutinized the tent that had been her home for almost three months, and would be for another two, if the mountain was generous and didnat chase her off with an early blizzard. The tent was five by seven, with enough room for her cot, a travel desk with her computer, and a trunk with her personal belongings. As usual, Karenas secret lover had swept away all signs of his presence.
He was her secret, and he intended to stay that way.
"Warm water." Mingma, her cook, maid, and translator, held a steaming basin and bowed, then placed it on the small table below the mirror.
"Thank you." But although Karen knew the water would cool quickly, she couldnat bring herself to leave her warm nest and leap naked into the cold.
Then Mingma said the magic words. "Phil is not here yet."
Karen flew out of bed. "What?"
"The men are here. Phil is not."
"That worthless . . ." Digging down in the bottom of her sleeping bag, Karen found the long underwear she stashed there every night and dragged it on.
This whole project had been nothing but bad luck and trouble, requiring every bit of Karenas concentration and every bit of Mingmaas diplomatic skills to keep the men at work. Shead never thought her a.s.sistant project manager, Philippos Chronies, would be the main delay. "Where is he?"
"He left the village last night. Was gone for hours. Returned, and now his tent billows with his snores."
Karenas father never a.s.signed his best men to her, but Phil was a new low. He knew the business, but made his contempt for the native workers clear. He tried to take imaginary Greek Orthodox holidays off, and when she pointed out that she had a satellite Internet connection, and research had turned up no holidays on that date, he sulked.
Karen did a quick PTAa"p.u.s.s.y, t.i.ts, and armpitsa"and shrugged into her clothes: khakis built for warmth and constructed to stand up in the toughest conditions, a camouflage parka and wide-brimmed hat, and st.u.r.dy hiking boots. "All right. Iam going down."
She stepped outside. The bells chimed softly.
Mingma followed. The bells chimed again.
When Karen had first come to this place, shead taken down the bells at her door. But Mingma had been so distressed, and so insistent that the bells kept the evil one away, Karen put them back. Because she didnat mind indulging Mingma in her superst.i.tion. And because as time went on, anything that kept the evil one away was all right with her.
The day was calm. Still. Silent.
Karen had learned how little that meant up here.
"The men are not happy," Mingma said.
"Neither am I." Karen sighed. "Whatas wrong?"
"They grow closer to the heart of evil."
Karen didnat scoff.
Her father would have.
Her father owned Jackson Sonnet Hotels, a chain that specialized in adventure vacations. The resorts were in prime locations, and offered cla.s.ses in flying, rock climbing, skiing, camping, river rafting, mountain bikinga" whatever an adventure enthusiast wished to learn, Jackson Sonnet Hotels could teach him. Whatever adventure a tourist imagined for himself, Jackson Sonnet Hotels offered a way to enjoy it.
Jackson Sonnet was a genius at knowing what the armchair adventurer craved, for he prided himself on being a man who could do it all, and he had made d.a.m.ned good and sure his daughter, Karen, had learned everything, regardless of her fearsa"or else. Because, by G.o.d, he wasnat going to put up with a daughter who was a coward.
Climbers and trekkers looking for the ultimate challenge flocked to the Himalayas, to the worldas highest mountain range. They wanted rough and tough, and here they got it. The alt.i.tude was high, the air thin, and with the unexpected storms and the persistent rumor of international thugs, even the most traveled paths required stamina and courage.
So Mount Anaya, set high on the dry side of the Himalayas on the border between Nepal and Tibet, seemed to be the ideal site to build a boutique hotela"at least on paper.
Mount Anaya had a reputation for being unclimbable. That was its attraction.
All the eight thousandersa"fourteen peaks over eight thousand meters above sea levela" were tough, so tough there were charts showing the death rates per ascent.
Mount Anaya was different. Sherpa guides went up unwillingly, or not at all. Mountaineers spoke of the mountain in hushed tones as if it were a living being, using words like "malicious" and "malevolent." The unlucky came down in body bags. Altogether, only fifteen expert climbers had managed to reach the top. Of those, six lost toes or fingersa"one a foota"to frostbite. One had had his arm crushed by a rockfall, and amputated it himself. Two died within a month of their triumph. One went quite insane after reaching the peak. Among the climbers who attempted the mountain, legends were whispered of a sirenas voice calling a man to his doom, or an inexplicable fire in the storm, or a demonic face shining in the snow.
Every climber looked forward to the challenge. No one ever believed the stories . . . until they got here.
She certainly hadnat. At twenty-eight, she had already supervised the building of hotels in the outback of Australia, on the African veldt, and in Patagonia in Argentina. Each one had offered its own challenges.
None had been like this.
"While you comfort the men, I will fix your breakfast." Mingma had simply appeared one day, installing herself as Karenas a.s.sistant. Karen thought Mingma was anywhere between forty and a hundred, a sharp-eyed widow who had buried two husbands and now supported herself. Her teeth were stained with tobacco, her expression was serene, and her English was good.
"Iall do more than comfort them." Karen strode across the high, flat area where shead set her tent and down the path to the construction site. Gravel rolled out from under her boots and tumbled onto the site.
The stone roots of Mount Anaya grew around the spot where the hotel would be built. Once the foundation was properly installed, the hotel would be secure against earthquakes, or so said the architects and structural engineers.
Shead been here since spring, the start of the construction season, and immediately shead realized that the architects and structural engineers hadnat taken into account the mountain itself. Granite tumbled like giant building blocks throughout the long valley, legacies of rockfalls so ma.s.sive they had obliterated the landscape. Here and there tiny green plants struggled to poke their heads up, but they were d.a.m.ned. The thin soil quickly loosened, slipped, and carried them away. Nothing was allowed to live here, for over it all the mountain loomed, ma.s.sive, bleak, cruel.
Karen tried never to look at Mount Anaya, but as always the peak drew her gazea"up the side of the hill, up the sheer stone slopes, up the glaciers and snowfields, to the top of Mount Anaya. There the pinnacle stabbed the blue sky with a point of white and gray.
Mountains, all mountains, formed the stuff of her nightmares, but Mount Anaya . . . In Sanskrit, it meant "evil course."
The natives believed the mountain was cursed.
After two months of living in its shadow, Karen believed it, too.
The mountain ruined her days, and the midnight lover haunted her sleep. She was trapped here by her fatheras expectations and her own sense of dutya"and by Phil Chronies.
A dozen men lolled around, leaned against the two ancient and exorbitantly priced backhoes theyad hired from Tibet, petted their yaks, and chatted.
As she walked up, she smiled.
Their interpreter, Lhakpa, came forward and bowed.
She leaned forward and spoke to him only. "Thank you for taking command of my men until Mr. Chronies can arrive."
"Yes. Of course. I command the men." Lhakpa bowed again.
"Last night, when Mr. Chronies reported to me, he told me there would be blasting today."
"Yes. He tells us where to place the dynamite. " Lhakpa beamed happily.
"I tell him where to place the dynamite."
As she walked toward the locker containing the dynamite, Lhakpaas eyes grew big. "Mr. Chronies will be unhappy if youa""
She swung around and faced him. "Have you not seen Mr. Chronies report to me morning and night?"
"Yes, Miss Sonnet."
"Have you not seen me direct Mr. Chronies every day, all day long?"
"Yes, Miss Sonnet."
"Mr. Chronies obeys me in all things." She smiled with toothy good humor.
It was true enough; Phil obeyed her grudgingly, but he obeyed her. She had a system, and shead be d.a.m.ned if she would allow Phil and his laziness to put them farther behind; that would erode her already precarious position as a woman in a manas occupation.
Besides, shead learned her job from the bottom up. She knew how to do every task on the site. And performing the task of setting the dynamite, she knew, would gain her the menas respect, because, like all men, these were very impressed by loud explosions that blew large boulders into small pebbles.
If she could only feel sure the mountain would be as impressed, and let her construct this cursed hotel.
He lay flat on his stomach on a boulder above the construction site, watching Karen Sonnet while resentment and l.u.s.t roiled in his belly.
Why was she here? Why couldnat it have been someone else? A man, preferably, some guy like all the rest, who knew hotel construction, who drank and smoked, who was amenable to a little graft and corruption.
Instead, he had little Miss Sweetness-and-Light.
The first time head seen her, head been waiting at the train station in Kathmandu. She caught his eye; pretty women did that, and she was pretty enough. Short, probably five-three, with a slender figure that looked good in khakis. Brown hair and perfectly tanned skin, the sort of skin they made commercials about. But he didnat think much about her, figured she was just one of the thousands of trekkers who descended on Nepal every year to hike through the Himalayas. He did grin derisively as she directed the porters to load her huge stash of camping equipment. He amused himself by wondering how many porters she would have to hire to carry it up and down the mountain trails, if she had an industrial-size hair dryer in that mess, and where she thought she was going to plug the hair dryer in.
Just when he was transferring his attention to the next female, Karen did something extraordinary.
She looked right at him, and smiled.
She had the most extraordinary blue-green eyes head ever seen, with a fringe of long, dark lashes, and that smile . . . She tapped into some inner joy, and everything head thought about her changed.
She was beautiful.
He was stricken with need.
Her smile faded. As if his staring made her nervous, she glanced away. She spoke to the porters; she was patient with their stilted English, and she knew a few words of Nepalese.
He didnat move, but called one of the pick-pockets who hung around the platform. Flipping him a coin, he said, "Find out who she is and where sheas going." Not that it mattered; he had a job to do. He didnat have time to obsess about a woman with aquamarine eyes.
Then, when he got his answer, he cursed a blue streak.
She was going to be right there at the base of Mount Anaya, within armas length, for months and months, building Jackson Sonnetas hotel.
He had comforted himself with the knowledge that shead never be up for the challenge.
Instead she bossed everyone around, and if they balked, she smiled at them. Look at Lhakpa, hovering close while she set the charges. Look at the other guys, all grinning and flirty while they got ready for the blast.
She was changing everything, and if he didnat watch it, shead change him, too.
He had to get her out of his life.
Chapter Three.
Karen made sure the men were at a safe distance, donned her ear protection, sounded the alarm that meant they were about to blast . . . and pushed the plunger. The ground shook beneath her feet. The solid rock lifted, shifted, and re-formed into a rubble of boulders, perfectly placed for removal.
She hadnat lost her touch.
She removed her ear protection and waited, tense, for the roar that meant shead disturbed the mountain, and it was taking its revenge in a rockfall to obliterate all her worka"and her men, and her. After a full minute of silence, she gave the guys a thumbs-up.
They cheered weakly. Lhakpa and Dawa walked for their backhoes. The ancient engines rumbled to life. Ngiama rounded up his team of men and yaks and headed in.
She climbed up the path to grab a quick breakfast before going back down to the site for a hands-on demonstration of why she was in charge. She was near the top when that feeling caught her, that p.r.i.c.kly sense of being watched. Shead had it frequently of late, and she turned and scanned the heightsa"and there was Philippos Chronies coming down the path from the south, his bald head shining in the sun.
Phil was Greek-Canadian, short, wide at the middle, with a body that tapered up to a broad face and down to tiny feet. She hadnat worked with him before, but it hadnat taken more than a day for her to judge his character.
Theyad met at the airport in Kathmandu, caught the train toward the work site, and within the first hour head hit on her. When shead pointed out his wedding band, head shrugged and said his wife knew her place.
Karen announced that she did not, and interrogated him about his work experience.
Things had gone downhill from there.
Now she planted her boots on the rocky ground and waited. When he spotted her, she gestured him to come up and report. Turning her back, she finished her hike to the flat where shead pitched her tent.
A tiny fire of dried yak dung burned in a fire pit dug into the ground. The spiral of smoke rose straight toward the bright blue sky.
Mingma handed her a cup of hot, milky, sweet tea.
"Thank you." Karen wrapped her hands around the cup and sipped, trying to warm the coldness in her belly.
"Eat." Mingma indicated the small, clean bowl of potatoes, meat, and vegetables mixed with spices and colored green by . . . something.
Karen didnat care what the something was. During the course of her work, she had eaten spoiled meat, rancid cheese, and artfully prepared insects. She was thin, she was muscled, she knew how to survive under the roughest conditions. She could take care of herself, but she didnat have toa"she had Mingma.
Sitting on the camp stool, she ate with a spoon made of yak horn. Shead packed her own equipment, but the night shead arrived a freak storm blew through, taking one entire box of necessities down into a gorge and scattering them into creva.s.ses and into the raging torrent that formed in an instant and disappeared by the next afternoon. Since then, Karen had discovered that freak storms were the norm here. Freak rainstorms, freak snow-storms, freak windstorms, freak storms that formed on the mountain and reached down to flick her away like a gnat off its ma.s.sive flank.
She wouldnat be flicked. She couldnat.
She paid no attention when Phil presented himself. While he fidgeted, she finished eating, and only when she put down her spoon did she say, "Phil, give me one good reason I shouldnat fire you right now."
"Havenat got one. I was just ill last night, but I should have come to work anywaya""