Free FRAGILE: A Billionaire Romance (Part Two) by Kimberly Malone

CHAPTER 1
     
                  I’m going to die.
                  That’s literally the thought running through my head as all five foot eleven inches of me wrestles with a wooden fence that’s collapsed and falling over a cliff edge. Dangling from a rope some thirty or forty feet below me is the man of my dreams—Eli Richardson, a tall, muscular, handsome man who looks like he was chiseled from stone (and feels like it, too). His brown hair with blonde-dyed tips, normally styled in a disheveled manner, is particularly haphazard looking at the moment, and his vivid green eyes stare up at me with horror and fear. I thought at first it was fear for himself and the young teenage boy, Jason, whom he had just rescued from the cliff side. However, Eli shakes his head at me.
                  “Ruby!” Eli shouts, his deep voice echoing against the cliff side. “Let go of the fence!”
                  However, if I let go, the fence will fall on Eli and Jason’s heads. Am I supposed to let it drop on them? Even if it doesn’t kill them, it could injury them significantly. And that’s if it doesn’t crack their heads open or pull them and the rope that’s taut between the beams of the fence down forty feet to the trickling creek below.
                  Sweat pours down my coffee-colored arms, and I can feel it running from under my black curly hair and down my back. I strain against the fence, digging my sneakers into the dirt, as I balance on the edge of the precipice. If Eli and I hadn’t had sex literally an hour or two ago and been hiking for even longer than that, I might have had more strength. Of course, I can’t complain—not too many people can say they’ve had really awesome sex with the sexiest man on the planet on a hiking trip right before dying.
                  But I don’t want to die, and I really don’t want to see Eli and Jason die either. So, I throw all my strength into holding the fence up, glad I exercise regularly. Then, seeing that it’s only loosely held together and falling apart at the ends, I break the top pieces apart. An old man comes to my side, and between the two of us, we pull out the middle and lean the fence away from Eli and Jason. It falls to either side, narrowly missing Eli, but it works. I hear Jason cry a little, as the wood pieces clatter against the rocks below.
    “Thanks,” I breathe to the man. I have to wonder why the crowd around us hadn’t been helping, but maybe I was the only one crazy enough to grab a massive fence that was falling over an edge and try to hold it up.
    “Nice catch and a good idea,” he says.
    “Can you pull us up?” Eli calls.
    “I need your help,” I say to the other hikers. “Make a line, and we’re going to pull back on the count of three.”
    By this point police and park workers and one EMT have shown up. They’re trying to assess the situation, but when they see us straining on the rope, they join us.
    “Three,” I shout, “two…one! Pull!”
    I groan, as I pull back with everyone. I had imagined it being much more difficult, but we go almost too fast, and I let go of the rope to assist a park worker, who’s waiting to help Eli and Jason climb over the edge. Watching Eli, I have to wonder if he’s done this before. He’s walking up as they pull the rope, keeping himself parallel with the cliff side, and he seems to have little trouble with it.
    However, I don’t know if Eli will tell me. He doesn’t like to talk about himself. He keeps a cold wall around himself and his emotions, and if it weren’t for the amazing moments of intimacy, or when he’d helped me volunteer at Lark’s Food Pantry, or going over a cliff edge so willingly to save another soul, I’d think him a heartless fellow. But nope, Eli’s not heartless. Just mysterious. And sexy. And I can’t get enough of him.
    There’s a huge cheer behind me as soon as Eli lifts Jason up onto the