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“Tempest...Thornbury?” She frowned again. “Not the Tempest Thornbury from New York, who used to sing and act on—”
“One and the same,” Shaman said cheerfully, loving the shocked expression on his sister’s face.
Kendall glanced at the picnic basket, then back at her. “No wonder you don’t want to come home, Shaman.”
He laughed. “And you thought I just spent all my time on the roof.”
“I think you’re crazy. But at least if she wants to have a baby, she won’t be after your money, too. I guess.” Kendall shook her head. “Be nice to my big brother, or I’ll send mean critics after you. Love you, Shaman. Please come home soon and give Xav a man-to-man chat. This well-planted daisy is on the level of Gage’s first wife, if you know what I mean. Bad all the way around.”
Kendall left, a smooth slide of silk and high heels moving out the door. Shaman followed, walking her to the car, then making sure she was safely belted inside. “I love you,” he told her. “I’ll come home at some point. I just don’t know when. And no family chats with Xav. It’s his life.”
“Make it soon.” She drove away, and Shaman went back inside.
Tempest was pouring two glasses of wine.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he told her, ignoring the wine and pulling her close.
“Really?” She snuggled against his chest, and Shaman closed his eyes, loving the feel of her in his arms.
“Yes. I miss you.” He kissed her hair, breathing the scent of her in. “You know, they say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
Tempest ground his foot under hers, which didn’t do any damage because of the steel-toed work boots he wore, but he got the message. “So back to this baby talk you and Cat had.”
“It was Cat’s idea,” Tempest said, and he said, “Oh, come now, Cupertino, teenagers don’t think that kind of stuff up. Don’t blame my precocious niece.” He scooped her into his arms. “You carry the wine, and we’ll go talk some more about how babies are made. I want to see where you’re going with this.”
“Soldier, I think you know just fine.” Tempest grabbed the glasses and let him carry her down the hall.
Chapter Three
The funny thing was that once Tempest had mentioned “baby” to him, Shaman found himself actually thinking about it. A lot. Wasn’t a man supposed to run at the thought of a woman who wanted to get pregnant with his child?
He didn’t.
It had been a week since she’d been by with her picnic basket, and he was still mulling over her offhand comment. Maybe she’d been playing around. Maybe the baby suggestion had been her opening line, like sex talk. Sure, that was probably it.
It had worked. He’d made love to her all night.
A spray of water caught him in the face as he wandered around the barn, making him blink with surprise. “Cat! You little devil!”
He ran after his niece, dedicated to the idea of tossing her in the creek for her just deserts. She eluded him, jumping into the creek herself, fully dressed, and just as he began tugging off his boots to land the cannonball of all cannonballs on his niece, he realized they weren’t alone.
Fiona Callahan stood a hundred yards off, grinning at Cat’s square hit on her uncle. He’d bet Fiona had bought the water blaster for Cat. Seemed like something a woman who’d raised six Callahan boys would think was a necessary ingredient to childhood.
“Hi, Fiona,” Shaman said. “Good to see you again.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” she called. “I distinctly thought you were about to cannonball your niece.”
The thought was so tempting. “Best to do that when she doesn’t suspect,” he said, wiping his face, smiling at Cat splashing gleefully in the creek. “I’m sorry she’s not a happy kid.”
Fiona smiled. “Yeah. Miserable.”
“So, are you out here doing Jonas’s bidding?”
“Pretty much.” Fiona seated herself in one of the wrought-iron chairs permanently ensconced in the mushy dirt surrounding the creek. “Actually, Cat pleaded with her dad to let her come out here and see her uncle, and Tempest. I said I’d run her over here. Gage wanted to take Chelsea to the ob-gyn.” Fiona pulled out a wad of knitting from the bright pink plastic bag she carried. “Don’t let us keep you.”
Cat had grabbed a raft and was floating on her back, gazing up at the sky, a kid with no worry that winter was on its way.
“So what does Jonas want you to tell me?” Shaman asked.
Fiona didn’t look up from her knitting, studying it with a furrowed brow. One thing Shaman knew was how to knit, and he could tell she’d dropped a whole ton of stitches from her looped needles. Beginner’s mistake.
“He wants the barn up before the snows come. Probably late October. He wants to bring out more horses by then.” Fiona gave Shaman a kindly smile. “I thought I’d let you know, since you’re probably not aware of the weather in New Mexico.”
“Jonas hasn’t even chosen an architect or a plan.”
“You and Gage are responsible for that.” She shook her head at her knitting, perplexed.
“Jonas didn’t like the first set of plans. He wanted a different architect.”
“You’ll get it figured out.” Fiona sighed at the hot-pink ball of wool. It was a good quality yarn, but if she didn’t quit ratting at it, it wasn’t going to be fit for anything except lining bird nests.
“Here,” Shaman said, “let me see if I can help this along for you.” He sat in the wrought-iron chair next to hers and began unraveling stitches until he got to the place where she’d dropped a few. Then he reknit it. “Is this your first project?”
“It is, and I don’t think I’m much of a knitter.” Fiona looked depressed about that. “I was going to make my friends scarves this year, but it’s not quite as easy as I hoped it would be. Where’d you learn to do that?”
“From my mother. And believe it or not, there are times when knitting soothes the savage beast.” Knowing she was carefully studying his method, Shaman knitted a few more rows for good measure, then handed it back to her. “Okay, Fiona, you know as well as I do that a state-of-the-art barn can’t be ready in a couple of months. Jonas needs to select the architect and the plan. I only oversee the project. Why is he handing this off to me?”
“Because your brother Gage owns a small part of the property now. It was in their agreement. Gage would work here, and in lieu of a paycheck, he’d get some acreage. So Jonas knows Gage has skin in the game. And,” Fiona continued, “Jonas is busy. He’s a father, you know, and we’ve stuck the mayor’s hat on him, too, in Diablo.” She proceeded with the knitting, moving the needles more confidently now that she’d had some tutoring. “Once it starts snowing around here, it can snow for days. Jonas wants everything ready.”
“All right. I’ll talk it over with Gage.” Shaman would do whatever he needed to do to keep the boss man happy. “Have you already been by to see Tempest?”
Fiona nodded. “Cat says you’re thinking about marrying her.”
Shaman blinked. “Uh, that’s news to me.” He wondered if Cat had said the same to Tempest. If she had, he figured he’d never see Tempest again.
“Well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That’s what we say around here,” Fiona said cheerfully. “Thanks for saving the scarf. If I get good at this, I’ll make you one for Christmas. Come on, Cat, honey. We’ve got to drive back to Rancho Diablo. I still have to whip up dinner.”
His niece slogged out of the creek joyfully. “This is the most beautiful place on earth,” she said, “besides Rancho Diablo. I guess you float in the creek all the time, Uncle Shaman.”
He hadn’t, not once. “Maybe I should.”
She nodded at him solemnly. “You should.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. I’m glad you came by to see me, honey.” He kissed her on the head. “Don’t forget your water cannon. I’m going to go grab you a towel.”
“It’s okay. I brought extra clothes. Nana Fiona knew I wanted to take a swim.”
“Bring a swimsuit next time, okay?” he said, walking them back to Fiona’s truck.
“Not as much fun that way. ’Bye, Uncle Shaman!”
He waved as the ladies drove off. The sun was hanging low in the sky, a fireball harbinger of fall, and Shaman felt a tickle of unease. It was the dinner hour, long past the time when Tempest usually showed up, and the drive was empty of gorgeous blonde. And she’d been chatting with Cat, his darling niece, who dropped hints about babies and marriage like they were gumdrops in a fairy tale.
Maybe it was time he broke his self-appointed exile and did picnic basket duty.
* * *
SHINNY SMILED AT SHAMAN when he made his first stop at the ice cream shop. “Howdy, cowboy!” the older man said. “We don’t see you in town much. Almost never. What brings you out from Dark Diablo?”
“I’m looking for Tempest. Have you seen her?” He had no idea where she lived. In fact, he knew nothing—or very little—about her, beyond the fact that she was crazy-sexy and cooked like a dream. He didn’t even have her cell phone number.
Shinny flung a hand over his shoulder, pointing to the back of the shop, Shaman guessed. “She’s probably in the B and B.”
“B and B?” He didn’t want to admit how little he knew about Tempest, but Shinny appeared to be happy to fill in the blanks.
“What we sometimes call the guesthouse. It’s really her home, when she’s in town, which isn’t often. You can go around back and see if she’s in. She’d said she was going to be practicing, but I don’t think she’d mind a break.”
“Thanks, Shinny,” Shaman told the shop owner. He went out the front door and headed around back, seeing Tempest’s car in front of the small adobe house. He knocked on the rustic wooden door, waiting, feeling like a guy on his first date.
It would be a first date, he realized—if he could get her to go out with him.
She opened the door, clearly surprised to see him. His heart hammered as it hadn’t in months, not since he’d known he was coming back to the States, and had landed at the military base almost a civilian.
“Shaman!”
He nodded. “In the flesh.”
“What are you doing here?” She didn’t smile, but he didn’t think she was totally annoyed that he’d surprised her, either. Clearly, she had been practicing whatever it was she practiced, because she was slightly glowing. Black leggings and a white top clung to her body so tightly he nearly had a rise just looking at her.
Heck. He did. Shaman shifted, forcing his mind back to his mission. “I figured it was my turn to bring the picnic basket.” He felt sort of silly saying it, but she looked at him with curiosity in her big eyes.
“So where is it?”
Where was it, indeed. “Actually, it’s a picnic basket in theory. I was hoping you’d let me drag you out to Cactus Max’s for a date. I hear that’s the place in town to get great food.”
She blinked. “You’ve never been there?”
He shook his head. “Pretty much I survive on what you bring out to the ranch, gorgeous.”
She studied him for a long moment, which gave him a chance to drink her in. Her blond hair was pulled up in a shining ponytail high on her head, and she wore long, dangling silver earring strands. She looked like heaven, and Shaman began to realize that this woman was much more to him than just an occasional bedmate.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked. “I’ve probably got something in here I could whip up for you to eat.”
He certainly did. But he knew where that would lead—right into bed. And suddenly Shaman realized that Cupertino—Tempest—had no intention of ever moving their relationship beyond the bedroom. If he succumbed to the red-hot desire fogging him right now, their relationship would never be anything but casual.
And suddenly, that wasn’t good enough for him anymore.
“Look, Cupertino,” Shaman said, “let’s eat out. It’s date night.”
She pursed her lips. “We could have date night here.”
“No. We want to do this right.” He wasn’t going to skulk around with her anymore. If she didn’t dig him the way he dug her, he could deal with that. But it was time to take whatever it was they were doing to the next level.
“What is it that we want to do right?”
He leaned over, kissing her on the lips. “I’m trying to date you, Cupertino, if you’d quit trying to be on top all the time.”
Then he kissed her again, deeply, fully. She tasted like peppermint, and his brain was screaming at him to go through the door into the golden known, finding the pleasure with her that he craved so much. But he was pretty sure she was avoiding him, and he wanted more from her than she wanted to give.
“You make it hard to say no,” Tempest said breathlessly.
“I’m trying to.” Shaman leaned against the doorjamb, crossing his arms. “I’ll wait while you get dressed up real pretty for me.”
She arched a brow. “You don’t think I’m pretty now?”
“I think you’re gorgeous.” He grinned at her bruised femininity. “I’ll wait outside while you do whatever it is girls do before their first date.”
Tempest studied him, seeming to come to a decision. “It may take me a while. You could wait the better part of an hour.”
“Spoken like a true diva. I’ve kind of heard that about you showbiz types.”
She made a face. “Hope you like waiting.”
He grinned as she closed the door. It was a beautiful night, and he had nothing to do but feel smug about the fact that he was taking out the hottest woman in town. Even if she showered, powdered and sprayed for an hour, he was willing to wait for their first date night together.
She opened the door not five minutes later, dressed in blue jeans with a huge shredded hole in one knee, beat-up brown flats and a T-shirt that had New Mexico Lobos plastered across it. She wore a white cap with a blue Ralph Lauren polo horse on it, her ponytail pulled through the hole in the back. “I’m ready.”
“Absolutely stunning.” He kissed her on the nose. “I can’t wait to take you to dinner, angel cake.”
She took the arm he offered. “Not Cactus Max’s, though.”
“Somewhere fancier?” He helped her into his truck.
“Someplace different,” Tempest said.
“Whatever you want, beautiful. The picnic basket is on your terms tonight.”
Maybe there was an outdoor burger joint in town she favored. In Tempest, he figured just about any place was probably delicious—as long as he was with her.
* * *
TEN MINUTES LATER, Shaman had followed Tempest’s directions to a falling-in, run-down shack off the main road. “Here?”
“This is it.”
“I don’t think we’re going to find anything to eat here.” He got out of his truck, walking up the overgrown path to the ramshackle house, careful to keep an eye on Cupertino. There was no telling what might be hiding in the dense foliage and cactus surrounding the property. It was a mess.
“There never was much to eat here,” Tempest said, pushing open the front door.
