Part 2 (2/2)
”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, s.h.i.+fted, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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””
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