He faced forward again. “Because I was living in Boulder at the time and it was close. Say, did you and your mom ever go with your father on his climbs?” he asked. “I know you didn’t climb with him, but were you at base camp? Or waiting in a nearby village?”
“No. We never accompanied him on his climbs.” The idea of her pampered, patrician mother in some frozen base camp was preposterous. “I’m sure he would have thought we were in the way.”
Even as she said the words, a memory flashed in her mind of her at six or seven, weeping and clinging to her father as he prepared to leave on an expedition, begging to go with him. Victor had knelt and embraced her. “Maybe I’ll take you with me someday, sweetheart,” he’d said. “When you’re a little older. We’ll go climbing together.”
She blinked rapidly, and sipped water to force down the knot in her throat. She hadn’t thought of that memory in years.
“Base camps are like little villages, you know,” Paul said. “There are all kinds of people there—men and women, and some children, too. There’s a fourteen-year-old boy who’s already summited four of the seven sisters. His parents climb with him.”
“Not my idea of fun family bonding,” she said. Though if her father had asked her to follow him into the icy, forbidding wilderness that was a high mountain peak, there had been a time when she would have gladly done so.
The waitress, Kelly, delivered plates and silverware. “Pizza will be out shortly,” she said.
“Great.” Paul rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “I’m starved. I remember reading about your dad waiting at base camp for two weeks for conditions to clear enough to climb Everest,” he said. “He lived off oatmeal and peanut butter for the rest of the expedition.” He made a face. “I hate oatmeal.”
“But you became a mountain climber despite the hardships. Why?” This was a question she would have asked her father; the one her readers would surely want to know.
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
He hesitated, then said, “There’s a tremendous sense of accomplishment in climbing. The freedom of setting your own pace. The challenge of testing yourself.”
“That describes how climbing makes you feel, but is that the only reason you do it—for the adrenaline rush?”
“You don’t think that’s enough?” The grin was a little more lopsided now, a little less sure.
“Most people don’t spend their lives looking for a rush,” she said. “Is that really all you get out of mountaineering?”
“Let’s put it this way—why did you become a reporter?”
“You’re trying to shift the conversation away from the interview again.”
“No, no, this relates, I promise. You’re asking me to explain what I do for a living. I want to hear your reasons. Did you always have a burning desire to write? Or did you just fall into the job after college?”
“I always wanted to write,” she said. She’d majored in journalism and had gone to New York after she’d graduated, determined to get a job at a magazine. She’d never even thought about a different job.
He nodded. “I guess mountaineering is like that for me. It feels like what I was meant to do.”
“Climbing mountains? Come on—that isn’t a real job. It doesn’t offer a service or entertainment or improve the world. And unless things have changed since my father’s day, the pay is pretty lousy.” Her mother had had the money in the family; in darker moments, Sierra had wondered if that was the chief reason her parents had wed.
“He made money selling the film rights to his expeditions, didn’t he?” Paul said. “He was one of the first climbers to do that. Today, it’s all about sponsorships. I have a couple of mountaineering-equipment manufacturers and outdoor-clothing suppliers who sponsor me. And I’ve got an agent who’s trying to get me to go on the lecture circuit.”
“My dad did some of that, too. There was nothing he liked better than a captive audience.”
“Really?” He leaned forward, eyes alight with interest. “Was he like that at home, too?”
The man was good, but she’d dealt with tougher interview subjects. She focused once more on her notebook, reserve firmly back in place. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why do you climb mountains?”
“There are some people who think that each person fulfilling his or her potential is enough of a reason to do anything,” he said.
“Let me guess—you picked that up from a Sherpa you met on Everest.”
“I met him on Nanga Parbat, actually. Do you like your job? Do you enjoy what you do?”
“Most of the time, yes.”
“I enjoy mine, too.” He leaned back to allow room for Kelly to set down the pizza.
“What is there to enjoy about risking frostbite and hypoxia on some lonely mountain peak? About living on peanut butter and oatmeal for days in the middle of a blizzard?”
“All those things you mentioned—the frostbite and danger and lousy food—that part of mountaineering sucks,” he said. “But the climbing itself—pitting myself against the elements and then reaching my goal—in those moments, I feel so incredibly alive. I think it’s the closest any human can get to immortality.”
She stared at him. “Aren’t you a little young to be worried about immortality?”
He dragged a slice of pizza onto his plate and refused to meet her gaze. “High mountains are one of the few places still relatively untouched by human development. The scenery is spectacular, like nothing you’ll find on the flatlands. Your father must have felt the same way. Didn’t he ever talk about it?”
“No.” She laid her pen aside and helped herself to the pizza.
“Then I don’t really know how to explain it to you. Tomorrow, let’s go up into the mountains so you can see for yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll take a Jeep tour. Go up above tree line. It’ll give you a whole new perspective on what I do and why I do it.”
Would it? Or was this just another way for him to avoid answering her probing questions? “And if I refuse?”
“You want to get a good story, right? I’m better at showing what I do and why than sitting here talking about it. If we were up in the mountains, I think I could explain things better.”
She could see his point. Putting a subject in an environment where he felt comfortable could sometimes get him to reveal a side of himself she might not otherwise see. “If I go with you, you’ll answer my questions?”
“I’ll do my best.” He offered another charming smile. “Hey, you came here to work, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, too.”
“Barreling up a mountain in a Jeep isn’t really my idea of fun.”
“Then you don’t know what you’re missing. Better skip the skirt and heels,” he said. “And wear a coat. It gets cold up there.”
“Anything else I should bring?”
“No, I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Just come prepared to talk.”
AN HOUR LATER, with blisters the size of half-dollars on both heels and heartburn from the delicious but too-spicy pizza, Sierra climbed the stairs from the Western Saloon to the hotel overhead. Unlike her tiny, contemporary apartment, the accommodations were spacious and furnished with an old-fashioned brass