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She urged Spooner forward. The man made no attempt to remount. Obviously, he didn’t intend to leave any more than she did. He simply waited for her as she closed the distance between them. Finally she was near enough to recognize the animal he was holding.
It was one of Samantha’s—her beloved Lighthorse Harry, a stallion that she’d brought from the Kincaid ranch when she’d moved out here. Horse thief? flitted through Jenny’s head, but that was pretty unlikely, given the fact that the man would have had to saddle and ride that valuable animal out, under Chase and Samantha’s very noses.
By the time Jenny had come to that reassuring conclusion, she was also close enough to recognize the rider. Her identification was instantaneous, with no doubt in her mind as to who he was. Not a single doubt, not even given the poor quality of the dawn light and the distance. It was the man from the wedding.
And he was watching her, she realized. Although she was not yet near enough to distinguish his features, she felt his gaze focused on her with the same intensity as yesterday. Her own reaction was almost the same as it had been then—a slow, hot, roiling in the lower part of her body.
There was no shock from seeing his face to explain that feeling, as there had been before. But still there was reaction, undoubtedly a reaction to him. She put that realization aside for the time being, promising herself that she would take it out and examine exactly what her reaction was. Later, she thought, taking a breath and pulling her horse up in front of him.
“You’re on private property, I’m afraid,” she said. “This is McCullar land.”
“’Morning, ma’am,” he responded. His voice was just as she had remembered it, deep and pleasant, despite the graveled hoarseness. And it was calm. Obviously, he wasn’t disturbed by her unwelcoming comment.
She had chided Rio for calling her “ma’am,” making her feel like his mother because she was a few years older than he. But that wasn’t the case with this man. You, I’m not older than, she thought, and that falsely polite butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth “ma’am” had grated. Far more than it probably should have. Despite her teasing comments to Rio, Jenny McCullar hadn’t really considered her age in relationship to a man’s in a long time.
“Private property,” she said again.
“This is your land, Mrs. McCullar?”
He pushed the Stetson he was wearing upward, off his brow, with his gloved left thumb. The thumb of his right hand, the hand he had told her didn’t work, was hooked into one of the belt loops at the front of his jeans.
He was wearing a denim shirt that looked as if it had been washed as many times as his faded Levi’s, which fitted the long legs like a second skin. The jeans covered the tops of worn boots. Her eyes must have traced down the length of his legs, she realized, to have discovered those. She fought the almost-unbearable urge to allow them to retrace that journey, moving upward this time. Moving upward to…
Out of an instinct for self-protection, she glanced instead toward the road that connected the two McCullar ranches, although she could see nothing of either of them from here. Only arid desert grassland stretched toward the horizon. And of course, technically, she admitted, this part of it wasn’t hers.
She looked back down and met the impact of that single dark eye. She reacted even to that, breath faltering, gloved fingers trembling against the reins as they had trembled yesterday.
The strengthening light of the morning sun was less kind to his face than the subdued lighting of the reception-room hallway had been. She had been right about the scars. Her throat tightened as she tried not to think about what might have caused that kind of scarring.
“This belongs to my brother-in-law,” she managed.
“Then it’s okay,” he said. “I have Chase’s permission to be out here.”
“You have…Chase’s permission?” she repeated. Was he someone from Chase’s days with the DEA? Or someone associated with his security firm? The possibilities about where her brother-in-law might have known this man were almost endless, given the aura of danger and quiet strength that clung to him, that fitted him almost as well as those worn jeans.
Neither Chase nor Samantha had mentioned to her that they were expecting a houseguest. That in itself was surprising, considering their closeness.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“You’re a friend of Chase’s?”
Why did everything she said to this man have to make her sound like a half-wit? First that fascinating dissertation on rice and now the implication that Chase might give a stranger permission to ride on his land.
“Chase and I go back a long way,” he acknowledged.
“I thought I knew everyone who went ‘back a long way’ with Chase.”
“And he’s never mentioned anyone like me,” he suggested.
His voice was amused again, and some of the tension seeped out of her back and shoulders. “No,” she agreed.
“Probably ashamed to own up to knowing me.”
“If you know Chase McCullar at all, then you know that’s not true.”
He nodded, and then he smiled at her. That same slow half smile he had given her yesterday. With the growing clarity of the morning light, she realized for the first time why it was one-sided.
The muscles on the right side of his face weren’t very mobile. They moved, but not much. That partial paralysis would probably have been much more noticeable if his eye hadn’t been hidden by the patch. She wondered suddenly if that was why he wore it, and then rejected the idea. This man wasn’t vain. And whatever was wrong with him was really none of her business, she admonished herself.
“You must have made quite an impression on Samantha,” she said, groping for something to say and deciding Harry was a safe subject. Then, seeing that one-sided smile suddenly disappear, she could have bitten out her tongue.
He had certainly reacted to that, the dark gaze freezing into ice. Belatedly, she remembered her sister-in-law’s vaunted beauty, something Jenny never even thought much about anymore. Dear God, could he possibly think she was making a reference to the way he looked?
“I was talking about your horse,” she explained. “Samantha doesn’t let just anyone ride Harry.” Apparently her explanation worked. The tightness in his face eased, and he looked at the big bay standing beside him.
“She asked me if I could ride.”
He had been insulted by that question. The memory of that offense was clear in his voice, and Jenny wondered about the impairment that would prompt Samantha, one of the kindest, most sensitive people she knew, to ask it. “And you told her you could,” Jenny said.
“Better than I can drive.”
He lifted the hand that was hooked into his belt loop slightly, deliberately drawing her attention to it. Reminding her. But given his level of discomfort yesterday when he’d had to ask for her help, that reminder also seemed a little strange.
“I guess she must have believed you could, since she gave you Harry.”
He looked almost sheepish, but he answered her.
“I was out and saddled before they woke up.”
“Afraid they’d try to stop you?” she teased.
“Something like that,” he admitted. Again his mouth twitched, and she realized that really had been his reason. He’d been afraid they’d try to convince him not to try to ride the stallion.
“You’re the one who chose Harry.”
“He looked like the best of the lot.”
“He looked like the one most likely to throw you off if you weren’t up to snuff,” she suggested.
She hadn’t expected him to laugh in response to her assessment of his motives, and she was caught off guard by the undeniable spontaneity of that shout of laughter. And a little surprised by the pleasure hearing it gave her.
“You seem to be a pretty good judge of character, Mrs. McCullar.”
“I am,” she said. “But it’s funny. You don’t look like that big a fool.”
It had been a damn fool thing to do. It was just like a man, she thought. Pick out the most spirited horse in the stable to prove to yourself that, despite whatever had happened to you, you could still ride. She couldn’t have explained how she knew that had been his intent, but there was no doubt in her mind about that, either.
“Well,” he said, “looks can be deceiving. At least that’s what they say.”
“Can they?” she asked softly. There had been more to that than appeared on the surface. Something else underlay the quiet humor of his comment. “Are they deceiving?” she clarified.
“Most of the time,” he said, his voice as low as hers. Again their eyes held until Jenny determinedly pulled hers away to look down at her gloved fingers, the reins threaded loosely between them.
“You should have brought a hat,” he said. She glanced up to find his gaze still on her face.
“I didn’t intend to be out here long enough that I’d need one.”
“Then don’t let me keep you, ma’am,” he said. “I’d hate for you to get burned.”
“My skin’s pretty tough.”
He examined her skin, his dark eye moving slowly over the smoothly tanned oval of her face and then down the slender column of her throat into the deep V-neck of the shirt she wore. She could almost feel it, trailing hotly over the skin of her throat. She waited for him to make some response to the inadvertent opening she’d given him, some innuendo, some suggestive remark.
Instead, he met her eyes again. There was silence for too long, and she felt the heat of a blush pushing into her neck and cheeks, the rush of blood following the exact sequence his gaze had followed back up to her eyes. She wasn’t a blusher, and she couldn’t imagine what had prompted that sweep of color, but she knew he had to be aware of it. “Don’t let me keep you,” Jenny suggested.
“You’re not keeping me, ma’am,” he said politely.
She felt her own mouth twitch at his tone. “Did you find it?” she asked.
“Ma’am?”
“Whatever you were looking for when I rode up.”
“I’m not looking for anything, Mrs. McCullar,” he said, but his tone said something else, and he had deliberately made her aware of that. If he hadn’t intended her to know she had guessed right, then she wouldn’t have. He probably was an excellent poker player.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Whatever you say, Mr….?”
She did what he had done yesterday—deliberately left the blank for him to fill in. If he wanted to be mysterious about why he was out here, about whatever he had been looking at when she rode up, he could at least provide her with his name so she could check him out with Chase.
“My name’s Matt Dawson,” he said.
And that, too, is a lie, Jenny thought. Suddenly, it made her angry. She wasn’t certain whether she was angrier at Chase for bringing this stranger here and not telling her what he was up to, or angry at this man for doing nothing but lying to her.
“Think you can ride Harry back?” she asked. “I can follow you if you like. Just to make sure you get there safely.”
That remark was beyond the pale, she knew, and totally uncharacteristic. But he had goaded her to make it. It didn’t have quite the effect she had expected, however. He mounted Harry, swinging up suddenly into the saddle and then turning the horse to face her.
But there had been something undeniably awkward about the motion. She couldn’t decide whether whatever was wrong had occurred when he lifted his left foot to find the stirrup or when he swung his right leg across the stallion’s broad back.
The remarkable thing was that Lighthorse Harry hadn’t reacted. Despite the obvious awkwardness of his rider’s movements, Harry apparently had every confidence that the man who was mounting him knew exactly what he was doing.
“Nice to have seen you again, ma’am,” Harry’s rider said, tugging his hat down a little to shade his face. “Would you like for me to follow you home? Just to make sure you get there safe and sound?”
There was a quiet satisfaction in the question, and she knew then that he hadn’t been completely certain he could pull that remount off as well as he had. For his sake, she was glad he had succeeded.
“Oh, I think I’ll be able to make it home. Maybe I’ll see you later at Chase and Samantha’s. Are you making a prolonged visit?” she asked, matching his feigned politeness.
“Looks that way,” he said softly. “It certainly looks that way.”
He turned Harry toward Chase’s house. When they had gone a few feet, he touched his heels to the stallion, and Harry broke into a run, kicking up the dry dirt. Jenny watched until they disappeared over the small rise that led down to the river.
She realized that she was smiling, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She was a little disconcerted that she’d ended up enjoying this encounter. Her second encounter with the intriguing stranger with the unusual face. And again she was conscious, as she had been last night, that she was now alone.
Annoyed with herself, she decided not to head back to the ranch. Instead, she directed Spooner to the area where the man had been looking at the ground when she’d first spotted him. There seemed to be nothing there, nothing but the same hardy grasses that were ubiquitous here. Just to be sure, she dismounted, as close to the spot where she thought he’d been kneeling as she could and began walking in a widening circle.
When she found the duct-tape-covered plastic bag, she realized it was no wonder she hadn’t seen it from horseback. The empty sack was half buried, and it was almost the same color as the surrounding desert. That was deliberate, she imagined. The sack itself was certainly innocent enough, the kind of debris that dotted landscapes all over this nation.
Except here. She knew exactly what this had been used for here. And what the three others she found in the next ten minutes had been used for. No matter what Buck Elkins had told Chase, somebody was bringing drugs across this river. Or had brought them across. Given the half-life of plastic bags, it would be hard to judge how long these had been here. Since yesterday or…five years ago?
Her eyes lifted, scanning the familiar barrenness of the landscape while she fought the burn of tears behind them. You weren’t wrong, Mac, she thought. No matter what they say, you damn well weren’t wrong about any of it.
CHASE WAS WAITING for him at the stables when he got back. Mac supposed that Chase’s overprotectiveness was natural, but it was an unpleasant reversal of what their roles had been growing up. And an even more unpleasant reminder that he wasn’t the man he had once been. During the few minutes he had spent with Jenny this morning, he had almost managed to forget that.
“Where the hell have you been?” Chase asked.
His brother was clearly furious, his big body stiff with rage he was trying hard to control, but his blue eyes were almost glittering with that famous McCullar temper.
“Your horse is fine, little cowpoke,” Mac said calmly. It wasn’t a comment designed to appease Chase’s anger. It was instead a less-than-subtle reminder of exactly who Chase was talking to.
“How many times did he throw you?”
“Me and Harry got along just fine,” Mac said, looking down into Chase’s tight-set face. “You disappointed?”
“With Doc gone, there’s nobody out here to patch you up the next time you decide it might be fun to try to kill yourself.” Chase grabbed Harry’s bridle, and it was only then that Mac realized his brother’s hands were shaking.
Not just anger, Mac realized. Chase had been afraid. A real deep-down fear. His brother had honestly expected him to take a fall.
“If I hadn’t thought I could ride the damn horse, Chase, I’d never have taken him. I’m not really a fool, despite what you’re thinking.”
Chase’s lips closed over whatever rejoinder he wanted to make. His eyes held on his brother’s scarred face. Finally he swallowed, the movement forceful down the tanned column of his throat. At the same time some of the tension melted out of his body, a visible relaxation of his fury.
“Get down, and I’ll unsaddle him for you,” Chase ordered gruffly.
“I did the riding. I’ll do the unsaddling.”
“You don’t have to try to be Superman.”
Mac laughed, the sound of it remarkably free of bitterness, considering. “Not that I’d have much chance of pulling that off,” he agreed.
Mac took a deep breath, dreading making a spectacle of himself after the bravado he’d been spouting. He had been surprised that he’d managed to mount the big bay as easily as he had down by the river. Most of that had been due to adrenaline and sheer determination. And a never-forgotten habit of rising to the bait of Jenny’s challenges. He had never failed to do that through the years, and although he had had no right this morning to expect to succeed, somehow he had.
It ought to be easier getting off than it had been getting on, he thought, steeling himself for the attempt. He swung his right leg over the stallion’s back, but when he put his weight on it to take the left out of the stirrup, his right knee gave way, and he was thrown against Harry’s solid flank as he grabbed at the saddle to get his balance. Luckily, the horse still seemed willing to put up with his unorthodox rider’s shenanigans, and Mac couldn’t imagine why.
“You okay?” Chase asked.
His anger had been replaced by open concern, and Mac found he was far less willing to deal with Chase nursemaiding him than he was with Chase yelling at him.
“I’ll let you know when I’m not,” he snapped.
