Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Hope’s only regret about her present situation was that she didn’t know Rio well enough to use his shoulder as a pillow rather than the dry, unforgiving ground. The thought of curling up against his living strength made her smile.

  She was still smiling when she fell headlong into sleep.

  Rio watched Hope for a long time, repeating to himself all the ways he was wrong for her and she was wrong for him. Then he lay down beside her and eased her head off the hard ground and onto his shoulder.

  She stirred vaguely but didn’t pull away. Instead she moved even closer, sighed, and relaxed against his body with a trust that made him want to shake her awake and tell her what fools they both were being.

  Trying not to think at all, Rio lay utterly still, caught in the gentle, bittersweet pleasure of holding a woman in his arms who trusted him more than he trusted himself.

  Five

  THE SUN BALANCED in crimson glory on the black outline of a distant ridge. Long shadows reached under the battered water truck, dark forerunners of night. The stock tank was more than half-full. Its clean water reflected the last burning light of day.

  No cattle milled around the tank. Having drunk their fill, the Herefords were out grazing over the rumpled land. The cattle looked like carved garnet statues set among the nearly black flames of piñon trees.

  The elegant gray mare dozed three-legged next to a clump of sage that gleamed a ghostly silver in the rich light. The single roping rein Rio preferred to use hung loosely around her neck, allowing her freedom to wander as she pleased. She needed no physical tie, for she was held by invisible bonds of training and her affection for the man who lay quietly beneath the old water truck.

  Rio looked from the thick, dark lashes lying along Hope’s cheek to the stunning transformations of sunset in a wild land. He had known many such times, days inevitably changed by condensing darkness, cool scented winds sweeping down from water-rich heights. Yet he had never known a sunset just like this one.

  In the past he had been alone with the land, and now a woman lay in his arms as quietly as sunlight in a hollow.

  It was a strange sensation to hold Hope, pleasure laced with uneasiness, as though he was a trespasser in an intriguing, forbidden land. He wondered if his Swedish grandmother had felt this way when she lay with her Indian lover, a Zuni shaman whose very existence was an affront to the Christianity that she had come to teach on the reservation.

  The mare snorted and stamped her front foot, discouraging a persistent fly. It was the only sound Rio could hear. Even the wind was quiet.

  Cool velvet shadows lapped over his feet. He knew it was past time for him to awaken the woman sleeping in his arms. He should have done it at least a half hour ago, when the hose had finished transferring the last of its water to the trough.

  Reluctantly, gently, he shifted Hope’s head back onto her hat. She made a protesting sound. He brushed his lips over her hair, breathed in the fragrance of land and woman and earth, and then leaned against the dusty tire once more, no longer touching her.

  “Hope,” he said softly.

  She didn’t stir.

  He allowed his hand to rest on her shoulder, to stroke it, to feel the woman-heat beneath the faded, dusty cotton. The temptation to slide his fingers into the shadowed opening of her collar swept over him, shaking him with its intensity. He wanted to touch the sweet curves of her breasts, to follow his hands with his mouth, to unwrap her, to take her right there, with the night blooming around them in a thousand luminous shades of darkness.

  “Hope.” The word was rough, almost painful, as though it had been dragged unwillingly from his throat.

  She woke in a rush, disoriented.

  He had been expecting it. He held her shoulder down so that she couldn’t sit up before she was fully awake. His hand was all that saved her from cracking her head on Behemoth’s metal belly in the first heedless instant of waking up.

  Her eyes opened dark amber, a color as clear and pure as the evening itself. For a moment she was embarrassed; then she smiled crookedly, accepting the fact that she had fallen asleep on the most interesting man she had met in her life.

  “Did my snoring keep you awake?” she asked wryly.

  Rio had seen both the instant of unease and her humorous acceptance of reality. His smile transformed his face the way moonrise transforms night. Lines that had been harsh became gentle, and angles that had been forbidding became merely strong.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “but you didn’t snore even once.”

  “Must have been your lucky day,” she said, stretching luxuriously. “God, I didn’t know the ground could be such a soft mattress.”

  “It was,” he said, referring to her first comment about luck. “It isn’t,” he added, referring to the softness of the ground.

  She blinked and shook her head. Before she could ask for an explanation, Rio stood and went over to his horse. He led the mare to the tank and watched while she plunged her muzzle into the clean water.

  After a few moments Hope stood, dusted off her jeans with her palms, and walked over to Rio. She would have given a lot for the freedom to peel off her clothes and float for just a few moments in the cool water. With a small sigh she turned away from the tempting liquid.

  “The only water this tank will ever see is Turner water,” Rio said, watching his mare drink. Then he turned quickly, catching the despair on Hope’s face as his words sank in. “If you want me to drill here, forget it. It would be a waste of my time, your money, and your cows’ lives.”

  Silently Hope counted the rings expanding through the water as the horse drank. It wasn’t that Rio’s words were untrue or even unexpected. But they were so very final.

  It was the end of her dreams spoken in a stranger’s calm, certain voice.

  She wanted to protest, to ask Rio how he could be so sure, but she didn’t. In the quiet, deep center of herself she didn’t doubt him. She sensed that he knew the land in a way that couldn’t be described or wholly understood. It had to be accepted on trust, the same way she trusted the sun to rise in the morning and stars to come in the evening.

  Hope fought against the useless tears closing her throat. She felt defenseless, neither truly asleep nor yet awake, suspended between the end of one dream and the beginning of an unwelcome awakening.

  She had enough money to drill her namesake well deeper. She didn’t have the resources to find and drill an entirely new, probably much deeper well from scratch. She didn’t realize how much she had secretly counted on being able to revive the Hope until now, when she finally and fully accepted the fact that her well was dead.

  The despair was numbing.

  “Hope—”

  “It’s all right,” she said huskily, interrupting him. She knew that Rio hadn’t meant to hurt her with his blunt assessment of her dream. “I understand.”

  He wondered if she truly did. Then he cursed himself for his unforgiving description of her well. Yet as long as she held on to an unrealistic dream, there would be no way to give her one that had at least a fighting chance of coming true.

  And that was what she had asked him for. A fighting chance.

  “I hoped that if I just drilled farther down, through the bedrock, I’d strike artesian water,” she said in a low voice. Then, slipping through her defenses, came the dying cries of her dream. “Are you sure? How can you be so sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  Silently Rio watched her with eyes as deep and clear as the water she had hoped to find. He was sure. But he couldn’t explain his certainty to Hope. It was a combination of instinct and education and long experience in dry lands.

  “Well,” she said, her voice steady despite its unusual huskiness, “thanks for being honest with me. You could have cleaned out my drilling account and then walked away.”

  “Is that what you heard about me?” Rio’s tone was distant, hard.

  She shook her head, making her hair shift and shimmer darkly in the dyi
ng light. “No. And even if I had,” she added, meeting his eyes directly, “I wouldn’t have believed it after being with you. You aren’t a liar or a thief.”

  For a long moment they looked at each other, silently accepting what was being offered. She trusted him not to lie to her. He trusted her to believe him without any proof other than his word.

  “If there’s water on your land, I’ll find it for you,” Rio said. His voice was as soft and certain as when he had told her that the Hope well was dead.

  She smiled sadly. “Unless the water you find is close to the surface, I can’t afford to go after it.”

  “First let’s find the water. Then we’ll worry about drilling the well. I’ll work nights and weekends here until I’m finished with Turner’s horses. Then I’ll work full-time.”

  “I can’t afford to—”

  “My pay will be room and board for me and my horse,” he cut in, knowing what she was going to say.

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Do you have any old drilling equipment in your barn?” he asked.

  “All the way back to the first well. Why?”

  “We’ll salvage what we can. I’ve got some equipment of my own that I’ll have shipped in. Between us we’ll put together a drilling rig that won’t cost you much. Your biggest expense will be pipe, ‘mud,’ and fuel.”

  “And your fee,” she said firmly. “It isn’t fair that you work only for room and board.”

  His smile gleamed briefly in the dying light. His eyes were even darker now, as mysterious and radiant as the twilight expanding throughout the land. “It isn’t fair that you have to do the work of three men just to hang on to your ranch.”

  She shrugged. There was no help for it, so there was no point in complaining about it.

  “You’re going to work until rain falls—or you do,” he said dryly. “Right?”

  His choice of words almost made her smile in spite of the grief of losing an old dream.

  “I’m no different from anyone else,” she said matter-of-factly. “I do what I can for as long as I can, and I hope to God that it will be enough.”

  Rio thought of the men and women he had met who had worked as little as they could for as short a time as possible, and bitched every step of the way about bad luck and bad people and the unfairness of a world that didn’t give them everything they had ever wanted. Those were the people Rio avoided.

  The other people—the ones like Hope who worked their hearts out for a dream and didn’t whine when the going got rough—those were the people Rio was drawn to as inevitably as rain was drawn to the thirsty ground. Those were the people he helped, sharing their dreams for a time, giving what he could, taking only what they could afford in return.

  When the dreams changed or came true, he moved on like his brother the wind, speaking only in the wild silences of the land, searching for something that neither he nor the wind could name.

  “I’ll help you,” Rio said softly, “and hope to God that it’s enough.”

  “But I can’t afford—” she began.

  “I don’t want money as payment. If I bring in a well, I’ll leave ten mares to be bred to Storm Walker. You’ll treat the mares and their foals as your own, no better and no worse. From time to time I’ll come to the Valley of the Sun, take the horses I want, and leave the mares to be bred to your best stallion. For as long as the water in my well flows.”

  When she started to speak, he put his finger on her lips, surprising her into silence. There was sensuality in the touch and something else, something indescribable that made her heart stop and then beat more quickly, more deeply.

  “Think carefully before you answer, Hope. Not one of my wells has ever gone dry.”

  He lifted his hand, freeing her.

  She closed her eyes, but still she saw Rio, his sun-darkened skin, his eyes deep and clear as the night. Echoes of his velvet voice moved like a caress over her skin, touching her more deeply than anything ever had, even her dreams.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice as calm as his eyes. “Ten mares. Storm Walker.” Then she looked directly at him. “And more, if you want. Horses, cattle, whatever. I have a lot of land and no water. Yet.”

  He watched Hope’s expression, felt her truth, heard her trust in him, and knew both pleasure and uneasiness. He had taken one dream from her and given her another: water unending, sweet water reviving her dying ranch.

  But he couldn’t guarantee that the second dream would be any more possible than the first. He could only guarantee that if it was possible, he would give it to her.

  “Sometimes there’s no water to be found anywhere, by anyone.” His voice was both quiet and rough.

  She smiled wearily. “Yes, I know. If that happens, your mares will still be bred and the foals cared for until I no longer own the Valley of the Sun.”

  “No well, no payment.”

  “Your mares will be bred,” she repeated, her voice firm. “Ship them in anytime.” With a wry twist to her mouth she added, “Storm Walker will thank you for it. This last year I’ve had to use my four remaining mares for working cattle rather than for breeding.”

  Rio’s smile gleamed in the gathering darkness. He held out his hand. She took it without hesitation, letting the warmth of him seep into her as the last of the sun’s crimson light fled the sky. His touch was a warm, living reality that gave substance to all hopes, all possibilities, everything.

  Eyes shining, heart beating rapidly, Hope allowed herself to dream again.

  “For as long as the water flows,” she said, pressing her hand against his, both clinging to and giving back his touch.

  The echo of his own words went through Rio like a wild wind, shaking everything it touched. He wanted to tell Hope not to trust him so much, not to believe in him so deeply.

  Yet that wasn’t what he wanted to say, not really. She could trust him with her dream of water. Her heart was a different matter. And it was her heart that accelerated at his touch, making her pulse quicken visibly beneath the soft skin of her inner wrist.

  And she wasn’t even aware of it. He could see that as clearly as he had seen her courage and determination while she worked herself to exhaustion to save her cattle and her ranch from drought. She thought it was the new dream that was stirring her blood and her heart.

  He knew that it wasn’t, not entirely. The same sensual hunger burned in his own blood as the heat of her skin slid over his.

  Rio couldn’t draw back from Hope. Her dream was as deep and compelling as she was. That was why he wanted to—why he must—help her. He had stopped dreaming long ago. The emptiness that had come with the end of dreams was a void that even the wind couldn’t fill.

  “When can you start?” Hope asked. She felt oddly breathless, suspended between Rio’s male warmth and the intimacy of desert twilight.

  “I already have.”

  “You have? What did you do?”

  “I looked at all your wells.”

  “Oh.” Hope said no more.

  Neither did Rio. There was nothing more to say. The Valley of the Sun’s wells were dead.

  She drew in a deep breath. “I see. Since you’ve already started working, it’s past time for me to make good on my promise of room and board. Mason will have dinner waiting by the time we get back. Nothing fancy. Beef, beans, bread, and salad.”

  Rio’s black eyebrows rose. “Salad?”

  “Don’t tell me,” Hope said, groaning. “You’re another one of those cowboys who can’t stand rabbit food.”

  Gentle laughter curled around her like a caress, like his voice when he finally spoke. “No problem. I get real hungry for fresh vegetables.”

  “Good. We’ll gang up on Mason and demand our rabbit rights.”

  Still smiling, Rio pulled the cold hose out of the stock tank and began wrapping the canvas coils around the rack bolted to the end of the truck. Hope helped as much as she could, feeding coils to him. By the time the hose was stowed away, they were both wet and
more than a little muddy.

  “Feel free to take a dip in the tank before you ride in for dinner,” she said as she wiped her hands on her jeans. “I usually do. It’s more fun than a basin bath at the ranch.”

  He smiled slightly. “Is that like a bucket bath?”

  “Nope. Less luxurious. Buckets are bigger than our washbasin. Until I can take time out from watering cows to make another run to Turner’s well, that’s all there will be at home—a washrag and a basin of water. But,” she added, smiling crookedly at him, “the washrag is of the highest quality.”

  Rio smiled in return, though he would rather have cursed. Obviously the water shortage at the ranch house was little short of desperate; Hope couldn’t supply the house and the scattered range cattle at the same time. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day or strength in her body to do what had to be done.

  Again he wondered what had happened to Mason. It wasn’t like him to let a woman work herself raw if he could help her out.

  Without a word Rio turned toward his horse and whistled. The rising sound carried as cleanly as a hawk’s cry through the silence.

  The mare’s head came up and she trotted over to Rio. He held the roping rein and looked at Hope.

  “Give her a few seconds to get used to your lighter weight,” he said. “She’s the best night horse you’ll ever ride.”

  “But—” she began.

  “I’ll take the truck,” Rio continued without a pause. “Don’t wait dinner for me. I’ll be a while.”

  Automatically Hope’s fingers closed over the rein he handed to her. She hesitated, then decided not to ask the obvious question about where he was going and what he was doing. She either trusted Rio or she didn’t. In any case, she wasn’t the kind of employer who needed to keep her men under her thumb at all times.

  “Reverse gear is really dicey,” she said. “Avoid it if you can. If you can’t, I wish you luck. You’ll need it. You’ll have a hell of a time getting into another gear. I once backed ten miles to the ranch house so that Mason could work his magic on the gearbox.”