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She looked at him and smiled and Sawyer decided for the next six months he was going to have a hell of a time trying to keep his mind on his work. There was something totally sexy about the way the corners of her lips tilted upward and her green eyes glimmered like sunlight on the water.
“Me, too,” she said, then her expression turned thoughtful. “Maybe we have more in common than I first thought.”
He tried not to grin, but he couldn’t help it. She made him feel very happy that he was a man. And as of this morning, a very lucky man. “Oh, I expect we’re going to discover we have a lot in common, Vivian.”
The tone of his voice must have given his thoughts away because she suddenly rolled her eyes and focused her attention back to her driving.
She said, “As long as the hanky-panky isn’t one of the things we have in common, then we’ll get along fine.”
He laughed. “Oh, Vivian. You’re so prim and pretty.”
Shaking her head, she said, “And you’re so—ridiculous.”
“Oh, come on. You know you want to laugh with me. And you know you already like me. Don’t you?”
He could see the corners of her lips twitching as she fought to hold back a smile.
“Stop it. Stop it right now,” she ordered in a voice that was more playful than demanding.
“No. You stop, Viv, right now.”
Her head jerked in his direction and she frowned at him in stunned fascination. “What?”
“Back up. To the campsite we just passed on my side. The guy was changing the oil in his truck.”
“That’s not exactly a crime, Sawyer,” she pointed out.
“No. But I want to make sure he doesn’t think he’s going to dispose of all that used oil back at the sanitary station.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted. “And I should have. We’ve caught people trying to dump all sorts of environmental hazards into the sewer tank. Hopefully this guy plans to haul the oil to the nearest town and dispose of it properly.”
“We’re going to make sure he does.”
Vivian jammed the vehicle in Reverse and slowly backed to the entrance of the campsite.
“I’ll let you deal with this one,” she said smugly, as the two of them climbed out of the SUV. “You’re the one who spotted it.”
“Thanks,” he said drily. “I always like to start my day off being a jerk.”
“Don’t you mean doing your duty?” she asked, as she walked alongside him.
Sawyer looked at her and chuckled. “Sometimes they’re one and the same.”
He’d called her Viv. Such a simple little thing that really meant nothing. And yet, here it was nearly three hours later and Vivian still couldn’t quit thinking about the way his shortened use of her name had made her feel. The way he made her feel. It was crazy.
“Do you always eat like a bird?”
He was sitting a few feet away from her on a sunbaked boulder just off a hiking trail. Less than three yards in front of them was the edge of a rock bluff overlooking a portion of the lake. It was a beautiful view of the water among the desert hills, and they’d chosen the spot to stop for lunch.
For the past fifteen minutes Vivian had watched him wolf down two sandwiches, a bag of chips and a banana. Now he was topping it off with a chocolate cupcake with thick confectioner’s icing. As for her, she’d managed to nibble her way through half of a bologna sandwich, but even eating that much food had been a major chore. Being in Sawyer’s company had caused major butterflies in her stomach. At this rate, she’d be skin and bones before Louis came back to work.
“Normally I have a big appetite. I’m just not hungry for lunch today. Guess I had too much eggs and chorizo for breakfast.”
“You cook breakfast before you leave for work?”
No, Vivian rarely cooked anything. Not because she disliked it, but because Reeva, the longtime house cook for Three Rivers Ranch, always kept delicious dishes on the family table. But Vivian wasn’t quite ready to reveal to Sawyer that she and her daughter lived with her mother and brothers on one of the largest ranches in Arizona. He saw her only as a working woman. And for now that was the way Vivian wanted to keep it.
“I cook whenever the urge hits me.” Which was true enough, she thought.
“Guess your husband enjoys it whenever you do make his favorite meal.”
His remark was more than obvious and the idea that he was interested in her marital status was flattering, along with disturbing.
“I wouldn’t know,” she replied. “I’ve not seen him in more than eleven years.”
Even though he’d slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses earlier this morning, she could tell he was staring at her. The idea made her want to jump to her feet. Instead, she wrapped up what was left of her sandwich and stuffed it back into her lunch bucket.
“I take it he’s an ex-husband.”
“That’s right,” she said stiffly. “I was married for two years. Long enough to have a daughter.”
He continued to stare at her and Vivian wondered what he was thinking. Most likely that he wasn’t going to waste his time flirting with a single mother in her midthirties. And he’d be thinking right. She wasn’t in the market for a man. Even if her family was often pushing her to find one.
Her family couldn’t understand her aversion to getting back into the dating scene. After nearly twelve years of being single, most of them figured she was over her short, disastrous marriage. Her little brother Holt was the only one who seemed to understand her feelings about risking her heart again. Not because he’d been married before, but because out of all her siblings, she was closest to him and he to her. Holt recognized that it wasn’t men Vivian mistrusted, but rather her own judgment of them.
“You have a daughter?”
“Yes. Hannah. She’s twelve going on thirteen. Although, to hear her tell it, she knows more than a twenty-year-old.”
He grunted with amusement. “Don’t we all at that age?”
She cast him a wry smile. “I suppose. I remember I was around that age when I told my mother I was going to be an astronaut and nothing could stop me.”
“Obviously something stopped you.”
She let out a soft laugh. “I got on an airplane with my two older brothers for a trip to California. Once the plane landed I was so terrified I begged them to rent a car for the return trip. They refused and I hid my eyes during the entire flight back home.”
He grinned. “So you learned you didn’t like leaving the ground.”
“I figured out exploring the desert is much more fun to me.”
“Most women like office jobs. What made you decide to be a park ranger?”
She shook her head. “I’m not the indoor type. And my parents pushed all of us kids to get at least some college education, so I studied for four long years and ended up with a degree in natural resource management and nearly enough hours for a degree in agribusiness. Later on—after I divorced—I was glad that I’d acquired all that knowledge. It was just what I needed to get a job here at Lake Pleasant.”
“Hmm. You’ve got me beat in the education department. I’m still working toward my degree in wildlife ecology. A few more online courses and I should be finished by the end of this coming spring.”
Just about the time Louis would be returning, she thought. By then she’d either be very glad to see Sawyer go, or very sorry. At the moment it was too early to predict how she’d be feeling about telling him goodbye.
“I’m sure you’ll be excited to get that behind you. Are you planning to stay at Dead Horse Ranch after you get your degree?”
He nodded. “Next year a management job will be opening up. I’ll need my degree to have a shot at it.”
“And you want to work at a park that doesn’t take you far away from your grandmother,” she stated.
He crumpled the empty cupcake wrapper and stuffed it into a sack with the rest of his lunch trash. “That’s right. Lake Pleasant is really farther away from the reservation than I’d like to be. But this job is only for a few months and Nashota, that’s my grandmother, insisted I take it. See, she has a mystical nature and something told her that my time here will bring me good fortune.”
“You believe in that sort of thing?”
A crooked grin slanted his lips. “I believe in Grandmother. Because I sure as heck can’t argue with her. She has a stubborn streak.”
He made talking to him oh, so easy. And that was dangerous, she thought. If she wasn’t careful, she’d soon be telling him things about herself that were better kept locked away.
She turned her gaze away from him and tried to focus on a giant agave plant growing off to her right. “I don’t know what kind of good fortune you might find around here,” she said, “but it doesn’t hurt to dream.”
He asked, “Do you ever think about asking to be transferred to a different park?”
The question brought her gaze back to him. “Not ever. I’ve never lived away from my family. It would take something very special for me to ever move away.”
In spite of the sunglasses covering his eyes, she could tell his gaze was thoughtfully searching her face. Which surprised Vivian somewhat. So far, Sawyer seemed to be a lighthearted jokester, who appeared to consider flirting nothing more than a fun game.
“You have family living in Wickenburg?”
Thankfully he hadn’t yet connected the Hollister name to Three Rivers Ranch. And for today, at least, Vivian was glad he didn’t know she was an heiress to a cattle empire.
“Yes. A mother, four brothers, two of whom are older than me, and a younger sister. My sister is currently living away, though.”
“You didn’t mention a father. What about him? Or is that question too personal?”
She very nearly laughed. He’d talked about her lips being kissable. Could he get any more personal than that?
“No. It’s not too personal,” she told him. “I didn’t mention Dad because he’s been dead for several years. A horse accident.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She sighed. Officially, Joel’s death had been ruled an accident, but as far as the family was concerned, there was too much mystery surrounding the incident to pass it off as an accident. But she’d only met Sawyer a few hours ago. She didn’t know him well enough to share the few facts they had about her father’s death with the man.
“Yes. I still miss him terribly.” Her voice strained to speak around the lump in her throat. “What about you? Do you have siblings?”
“No brothers. No sisters. It’s only me and Nashota. My dad died when I was eight years old—a construction accident. After that happened, my mother moved away with another man. I’ve never seen or heard from her since.”
Looking at this strong and striking man, it was very difficult to imagine him growing up without a father and a mother who’d basically chosen to desert him. Given that sort of childhood, it was commendable that he’d turned into a responsible man.
“That’s tough.”
He shrugged. “Life is often tough. More for some than for others. I happen to think I was lucky. I had Grandmother to grab me by the seat of the pants and keep me on a straight path. Some of my childhood friends didn’t have as much. I wouldn’t want to tell you how they’ve ended up.”
This morning his playful flirting had made her uncomfortable, yet surprisingly this genuine side of him disturbed her even more. The idea of him wanting, hurting and needing in the most basic human ways touched her more than he could ever guess.
“Yes. Lucky you.” She rose from her seat of slab rock. “We’d probably better be going. We still have one more hiking trail to cover before we hit another set of campgrounds.”
While she gathered up her partially eaten lunch, Sawyer left his seat and walked over to the edge of the bluff.
“This is an incredible view,” he said. “From this distance the saguaros look like green needles stuck in a sand pile.”
She looked over to see the strong north wind was hitting him in the face and molding his uniform against his muscled body. The sight of his imposing figure etched against the blue sky and desert valley caused her breath to hang in her throat.
She walked over to where he stood, then took a cautious step closer to the ledge in order to peer down at the view directly below.
“I never get tired of it,” she admitted. “There are a few Native American ruins not far from here. We’ll hike by those before we finish our route.”
A hard gust of wind suddenly whipped across the ledge and caused Vivian to sway on her feet. Sawyer swiftly caught her by the arm and pulled her back to his side.
“Careful,” he warned. “I wouldn’t want you to topple over the edge.”
With his hand on her arm and his sturdy body shielding her from the wind, she felt very warm and protected. And for one reckless moment, she wondered how it would feel to slip her arms around his lean waist, to rise up on the tips of her toes and press her mouth to his. Would his lips taste as good as she imagined?
Shaken by the direction of her runaway thoughts, she tried to make light of the moment. “That would be awful,” she agreed. “Mort would have to find you another partner.”
“Yeah, and she might not be as cute as you.”
With a little laugh of disbelief, she stepped away from his side. “Cute? I haven’t been called that since I was in high school. I’m beginning to think you’re nineteen instead of twenty-nine.”
He pulled a playful frown at her. “You prefer your men to be old and somber?”
“I prefer them to keep their minds on their jobs,” she said staunchly. “And you are not my man.”
His laugh was more like a sexy promise.
“Not yet.”
Chapter Three (#u2ae6c223-a554-52fc-8562-8a230b840636)
Later that night in the big family room on Three Rivers Ranch, the Hollisters were enjoying drinks before dinner when Hannah plopped down on the couch next to Vivian.
Eyeing the beseeching grin on her daughter’s pretty face, Vivian said, “Okay, I know that look. What are you wanting? To add something to your Christmas list?”
Hannah wrinkled her pert little nose. “Oh, Mom, I’ve only asked for two things.”
“Only two? A horse and a saddle. You already have both.”
“Yes, but a girl can’t have too many horses or saddles,” her daughter pointed out, then gave her long blond braid a flip over one shoulder. “Anyway, I don’t want anything else on my Christmas list. I wanted to ask if you’d take Nick and me down to Red Bluff this weekend.”
Frowning, Vivian placed her drink on a nearby table, then turned her full attention to Hannah. “Red Bluff? Whatever for?”
Hannah rolled her eyes in droll fashion. “We’ve not been down there to see Aunt Camille in ages. And it’s so warm and pretty there. We want to go riding down the canyon.”
Red Bluff Ranch was another property of the Hollister family. At thirty-five thousand acres, it was only a fraction of the size of Three Rivers, but it was equally important. Located at the bottom of the state, near Dragoon, the climate remained much milder than Three Rivers. Each autumn her oldest brother, Blake, who managed the family ranch, shipped several hundred head of cow/calf pairs to Red Bluff for winter grazing.
