Free Heartbreaker by Karen Robards Page A

What happens if I can’t hang on—or you can’t? Maybe you can’t fall, but I can.”
    “It’s the only way.”
    “It can’t be!”
    “It is unless you can think of something better.”
    Lynn thought.
    A gust of wind shooting up from the canyon floor made the tree bob. Lynn felt her body slipping lower as the net shifted beneath her, and she gripped the branches even harder.
    Her gaze fixed on Jess.
    She couldn’t stay where she was forever, that was clear. She wasn’t even sure she could stay put much longer. Already her fingers were starting to cramp from holding on so tight. Her legs were going to sleep. Her feet felt cold and wet and dead.
    Just like she would be if he grabbed for her, missed, and she fell.
    Lynn shuddered at the thought.
    But what were the alternatives? Was there an alternative?
    He couldn’t climb out along the delicate fir. It might break beneath his weight; it might uproot. She couldn’t climb down the tree to him; she could barely turn her head without putting herself in mortal jeopardy.
    If he threw her a rope she couldn’t let go to catch it, much less tie it around herself.
    He couldn’t leap out into space and tie the rope around her waist for her.
    Lynn stared up at the lowering sky. She thought of Rory, of her mother, of her job. She thought of how much she didn’t want to die.
    And she came to a reluctant realization: If there was another way, she couldn’t discover it.
    Which left his way.
    “Lynn?”
    “Okay,” she said.
    “Okay?”
    “Yes!” Her voice was panicky. If he gave her too much time to think, she was afraid she would tell him to forget it after all. She would just stay in the tree until she rotted—or fell.
    “Okay. I’m going to jump out and grab you. Remember, I can’t fall. Once you grab on to me, you can’t fall. This is safer than it sounds, I promise. I’ll grab you, you grab me, and you can’t fall.”
    “Okay.” If her voice was shaky it was nothing compared to the way her skin felt. Fear, icy cold, raced up and down her spine. Her life depended on a stunt that she wouldn’t wish on a professional trapeze artist.
    She couldn’t do it.
    “Here I come!” With that warning, Jess leaped out from the sheer face of the rock.

9
     
    L YNN SAW HIM COMING and braced herself for her leap to safety—or tried to. It was hard to brace oneself when enmeshed in a web of flimsy branches, she quickly discovered. Impossible, in fact.
    “Now!” Jess shouted, crashing into the evergreen beside her and grabbing her wrist. His gloved hand was strong and warm—and the only thing that kept Lynn from plunging to the rocky ground below as she was knocked from her safety net.
    She dropped like a stone. Terror shot through her body in an icy-cold rush.
    Screaming, she plummeted through the fragile foliage, clawing at the air, kicking, doing everything she could to latch on to the one thing that might save her: Jess.
    Her flailing arm hit his leg. Her pink-polished nails dug furrows in the surprising slickness of his jeans as she tried fruitlessly to hang on.
    Her other arm was all but yanked from its socket as his grip on her wrist arrested her fall. Gulping air, stomach clenching, Lynn hung from Jess’s hand and ankle like a rag doll and stared saucer-eyed at the white-capped backbone of mountains stretching away into the distance as she, Jess, and the rope arced back toward the cliff.
    Below her, the pine forest was a blue-green blur. The icy-white river rushing through the gray canyon seemed to shimmy. Overhead, the clouds with their sky-riding goshawks were equally unstable.
    Jess’s grip on her wrist was so tight that the blood flow to her hand felt permanently cut off. Lynn tried to flex her fingers but found she could barely move them. She could only dangle in space, at the mercy of his strength—or lack of it.
    Without warning she slammed backward into the rock wall. The breath was knocked out of her, and she saw a burst of multicolored stars. For a