by Helen Conrad
“Why are these hung here?” she asked, marveling. “Why would you want the reminder?”
David shrugged. “Maybe my father thought they deserved a place in the ranch history, a place to be remembered,” he said softly.
Shawnee frowned. That didn’t fit the picture she had of Dan Santiago, a fierce, scheming autocrat who took what he wanted with no regard for others. And yet, here were the portraits, well maintained after all these years. She could almost feel the lives of these men and women echoing across the land. She shuddered, pulling her arms tightly around herself.
“There’s still at least an hour of light left,” she said, looking out of the window at the green hills of the ranch. “Let’s go out and explore.”
His hand was on her shoulder and she wanted to turn into it, to feel it caress her cheek. Something in her hungered for the comfort she knew he could give her. She had to keep her gaze away from his so that he wouldn’t see what she felt. She looked down at the bed and suddenly a vision of two bodies entwined in passion flashed into her mind. She jerked back, stung, but the image stayed, and she felt her heart beating a wild dance in her chest.
“Do you want to go out and explore?” he asked softly, his voice low and rumbling, “or do you want to stay here and . . . talk?”
She closed her eyes, facing away from him, but she knew he could feel the way her body was reacting to him, feel it right through his fingertips. She would have to move quickly, or she just might find herself turning the picture in her mind into reality.
“I…I’d really like to see the rest of the ranch,” she said, wishing she could take the tremor from her voice. “Please?”
When he didn’t answer, she steeled herself, then turned to smile brightly into his face. But something in his eyes tore the smile away. They were dark and clouded, as though some sort of storm was raging in his soul.
It’s about me, she thought with sudden panic. Something about me is disturbing him in a very scary way. He’s feeling guilty about what his family did to mine, or he’s angry that I’ve made him face it, or .. . . or he wants something from me . . .
It was definitely time to make a move. “Please?” she asked again, her voice trembling even more.
His hand slipped from her shoulder up to cup her cheek, just as she’d secretly wanted. “How can I refuse?” he said lightly, and turned away from her, toward the doorway, making her wonder if she’d only imagined the tumult in his glance.
They went down the stairs and out on to the lawn that led to the stables. “I wonder if it was this green when my people had it?” she murmured, more to herself than to him, but he answered.
“Probably not in July. I think my father put in most of the watering system.”
That was all right. She could still imagine how it had been—hills of emerald green rolling beneath a china-blue sky, the fencing making white chalk marks across the landscape holding the beautiful horses in their separate worlds. And here she was, walking down the gravel path in the midst of it all.
They went through the stables, visiting the horses and examining the modern look of the place.
“We built this complex ten years ago,” David told her. “We had to tear down the old stables to make room for it.”
That made her a little sad, but she had to admit the new structure was wonderful, so clean and gleaming and well-maintained. They walked out through the far side and past the modern bunkhouse where a few unmarried ranch workers still lived.
“The old bunkhouse it still standing,” he told her quietly, and after her first reaction of delight, she looked at him curiously. It occurred to her that he’d noticed how she was looking for remnants of the past, and he was trying to help her find them. How was she going to manage to hate a man who did things like that?
The old building lay in a hollow out of sight of the house. David pulled open the door and Shawnee stepped in, her eyes sparkling. The rough structure had stood since the turn of the century. Spare wood frame bunks still lined the walls and tattered scraps of paper, pin-ups and pictures from magazines, still clung like bits of confetti to the crumbling plasterboard. A musty smell filled the air, but underneath, Shawnee could swear she detected the ghostly scent of cows and horses and hard-working men.
How many lives had passed through here? She walked over to the table and traced her finger across a pair of initials carved into the weathered wood.
“Listen to this,” David said, reading from something written in what looked like crayon on the wall. “’Goodbye, Pete old son. You sure did live yourself to death.’”
Shawnee smiled and walked across the room to read it over his shoulder. “Did you see this one?” She pointed out a scrawl down the wall a bit.
“’There ain’t no cowpunchers in hell, cuz they already served their time here on earth.’”
David chuckled. “Philosophical bunch, weren’t they? I wonder what they write on the walls of the new bunkhouse.”
Shawnee grimaced. “With today’s mores, I’d hate to venture a guess.”
He looked down at her and she took a sudden step backwards, as though to keep out of his reach, but he didn’t try to touch her. Instead, he watched as she threw out her arms and embraced the atmosphere. What was it about this woman that reached in and tugged at him in a way no other female had ever done?
A sudden vision of what she’d looked like the day before as she came surging out of the mountain stream, water shearing off her naked body in a shimmer of gold, made him catch his breath and look away. Okay. That might have something to do with it. He looked back at her and realized he liked what he saw better every time.
“You’re glowing,” he told her, a half-smile on his lips. “You love this old place, don’t you?”
“Rancho Verde?” She took a breath and spun, skirt sailing out from her legs, arms raised as though to take in the very air around her. “Yes,” she said breathlessly, stopping at the window to wipe away a slash of dust and give herself a view of the rolling hills beyond. “It’s part of me.”
His gaze darkened and his answering voice was rough. “How can it be a part of you when you’ve never really seen it before?”
Still staring out of the window, she smiled. “I’ve seen it a thousand times. I’ve seen it through the eyes and memories of my grandfather.” She whirled and faced him, chin raised challengingly. “And if your father hadn’t cheated him, I would have grown up here instead of you.”
His gaze was dark and unreadable, but he didn’t make a retort to her charge. He was wondering how she could be so sure her grandfather was right and the Santiagos—his family—were wrong. In his own prickly way, he was beginning to resent it. He didn’t see himself as a bad guy, and though he’d had plenty of struggles with his father, he didn’t see him in that role either. What was it going to take to make her face the truth? How was he going to convince her?
“Had enough history?” he asked quietly. “How about going back to the house for a drink?”
A drink and a talk. They still had things to discuss. She swallowed and nodded. “All right.”
They started back across the grass. The sun had disappeared behind the hills and the late afternoon sky was streaked with a spray of golden peach stain. “What’s that?” she asked, gesturing towards the big barn that stood about a quarter of a mile away. “Old or new?”
“It’s still the same barn,” he told her. “It’s had a lot of work done to it, but the basic frame is still the same.” He looked at her with weary indulgence. “Don’t tell me you want to go to the barn, too?”
She nodded, and suddenly she was laughing again. “Just for a second.” Without thinking, she reached out and put a hand on his arm. “You do understand, don’t you? I mean, I’ve heard so many stories about this place, all my life. I just have to see it all.” Words to explain exactly how she felt didn’t come and she shrugged helplessly.
He covered her hand with his own. “Okay,” he said gruffly. “We’ll go to the barn.”
/> There were two paths stretching out from where they stood. Both seemed to lead to the barn, but one dipped down into the hollow while the other wound circuitously around the top of a rocky hill before turning back towards its destination.
“Ah, the proverbial fork in the road,” she said, nodding wisely. She was feeling good now, full of excitement and happiness at being so close to the old days, and maybe at being with this man. She wouldn’t think about the problems ahead, not yet. Right now, David was her friend. She smiled at him with anticipation. “Which way shall we choose?”
David didn’t answer right away. He looked at one path, then the other, and a faint grin softened his face. “My brother Stewart and I used to race here,” he told her slowly, eyes narrowing at the memory. “The lower road looks shorter, doesn’t It?”
She looked again. It not only looked shorter, it was. That much was obvious. It went straight and true while the other curled off into all sorts of sidetracks. “Yes,” she answered. “I’m sure it is.”
His grin was wide now. “Stewart was always sure it was, too.” He glanced down at her. “Want to try it? Neither one of us has on running shoes, so we’ll both have the same disadvantage.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean race, me going one way, you another?”
He nodded. “I’ll beat you,” he stated with a swagger. “I’ll take the hill path and beat you to the barn.”
Racing along in the dirt like a couple of kids? Shawnee laced her fingers together and looked at the barn. What the heck, she’d never pretended to be a sophisticate. Why start now? And there was nothing like a challenge to get her interest up.
She looked at the paths again, wondering what the catch was. “Impossible,” she said slowly. “I’ll beat you cold.”
“Then you’ll race me?” His eyes were brimming with laughter and she looked at the paths again.
“What happens? Does a dragon come out and bar my way, or something?”
He shook his head. “Nothing magic, nothing dangerous. No tricks. But I promise you, I’ll win.”
There was just no way he could. Even if he ran like an Olympic sprinter, she was a pretty good runner herself. She bit her lip.
“You’re on,” she said at last, glad she’d worn her rope sandals. “You say when.”
But his hand was in her hair. “A kiss for luck first,” he murmured, then his lips brushed hers in a stroke of delicious sensation, charging her adrenalin even higher. “Ready?”
She nodded.
“When,” he said, taking off towards the hill at an easy lope, and she shot off down the path, running with controlled energy, sure she would be the first to reach the barn.
The road was hard, pressed dirt and not rocky at all. She ran quickly and confidently, raising her skirt to keep it from slapping against her legs, but when she looked up to see how David was doing, she found her vision blocked by a row of pepper trees. All she had to do was run up on the bank and she would be able to see where he was. She had plenty of time, after all. He had least twice the distance to run that she did. So she did it.
Just as she thought, he was running along smoothly, but he had so much more ground to cover than she did, he would never make it first. She grinned with satisfaction. Just you wait, David Santiago, she thought smugly.
Suddenly the story of the hare and the tortoise came to mind, and she frowned, running just a little faster. She tried to see where David was now, but the trees were still in the way. Her impulse was to run back up on the bank, but she stopped herself in time. If she kept doing that, he would win after all.
Instead, she concentrated on running as fast as she could. Her legs were beginning to ache and her breath was coming fast, but there wasn’t much farther to go. She could see the barn, a huge red structure on the hill ahead . . .
On the hill! What a dummy she was! Just about at the end of her tether, and she had a steep hill to climb. Meanwhile, David would be on his way down from his, with enough momentum built up to carry him sailing in to the finish line. There was a catch after all.
“David Santiago, you rat!” she puffed out, but the agony of the climb cut out any more complaining until she arrived at the barn, red-faced and dying for oxygen, to find David, cool and comfortable, waiting to greet her. He leaned against the barn with casual boredom, as though he’d been waiting ever so long.
“You’re as gullible as Stewart always was,” he told her, shaking his head with teasing despair as she gasped for breath in front of him, “He’d race me that way every year, spending half his time popping up on the bank so he could catch me at the trick he was sure I’d use to beat him. By the time he got to the final hill, he’d be too exhausted to make the climb, and then he’d accuse me of cheating. Happened every time.”
Shawnee slumped against the side of the opening to the barn. “My every sympathy is with your brother,” she informed him haughtily when she had enough control to speak. “I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls away the football.”
“You may feel like Charlie Brown,” he said, moving smoothly towards her with a glint of purpose in his eyes, “but you don’t look much like him.”
“Good.” Laughing, she slipped away from the hand that came towards her and disappeared into the darkness of the barn. “Charlie’s a victim,” she called back, darting behind a high stack of bailed hay before David had followed her in, “and that’s something I don’t intend to be.”
“To be a victim,” he said, his voice following her although she was threading her way between the farm machinery, totally out of his sight, “you need to be threatened by a predator. There aren’t any predators here.”
His voice was as playful as she was feeling. First tag, she thought to herself with amusement, now hide and seek. Shawnee, my dear, what are you doing here, returning to childhood? Or are we playing a deeper game?
“Is that right?” she called back, dashing behind another wall of hay and refusing to analyze her actions any further. “What do you call the kind of man who would chase a woman through a barn?”
“That depends on what he does when he catches her.”
His voice was too close. He was just about to find her. She looked around quickly and saw a wooden ladder leading to the loft. This time she wouldn’t answer and give her position away.
But she might have saved her energies. Climbing quickly, she reached the top just as David put a foot on the bottom rung.
“Bad move,” he called up, climbing hand over hand. “Now I’ve got you cornered.”
He was right. She looked around at the loose hay and saw that there was no place left for escape. Funny how that didn’t scare her at all. Her heart was thumping a loud pattern in her chest, but not with fear.
She watched as he came over the top of the ladder. He looked huge in the gathering dusk, huge and hard and seductive, and she ached to touch him, to have his body pressed to hers. She didn’t move as he came towards her, and he stopped just before her, looking down, too close for casual conversation, but not touching her yet.
“Let me go,” she said without much conviction.
“No,” he answered with new intensity. “Not a chance.”
His hands cupped her face, fingers sliding into her hair, and he tilted her head so that she had to look fully into his eyes. “Do you feel like a victim now?” he asked her softly, his warm breath spilling across her skin like the water of some exotic fountain.
His eyes were so dark, so mysterious, and yet she felt as though she could see right through them into his soul. He wanted her. He’d wanted her all evening, from the moment he’d picked her up in his little car. She’d been ignoring it, but it had been there, unspoken, all the while. And she knew the excitement of it had helped set this evening apart from any other she’d ever spent.
It was all wrong, so wrong, but at the same time, it was the most natural thing on earth. “Do you feel like a predator?” she countered.
His fingers tightened, sending electricity coursing through her from h
is touch. “I don’t think I feel like a predator,” he said, a hint of humor in his eyes. He drew her closer, so that her slim body barely brushed his lean form. “Do I feel like a predator to you?”
“No.” Suddenly she was laughing. When had she ever laughed in a man’s arms before? “No, you feel like a—” Now how could she put this? “—a very sexy man to me.”
His smile was slow and lazy and just slightly edged with desire. “You feel pretty sexy to me, too,” he told her, purposely twisting her words again. “Much too sexy to resist.”
His kiss was a tender gathering-in, and then his arms were around her, hands moving across her back, pulling her closer. His mouth on hers was warmth, wave upon wave of warmth, a deeper, more delicious warmth than any she’d ever felt before.
David Santiago, she thought dreamily, who are you? Can the man who threatens the peace of my family really be the same as this man whose kiss I think I could become addicted to? Impossible. They were two different people, no question about it.
She smiled, arching to his touch, glad to have that settled. That left her free to enjoy the man she was with, the wonderful, warm, loving man who would never do a cruel thing to anyone.
Somehow, they’d found a bed among the hay. Somehow, David’s shirt had come unbuttoned, and Shawnee’s shoulders had become bare and their hearts and minds and bodies were twining, blending, braiding into a love-knot that would be hard to untie once it had been pulled very tight. Their kisses deepened, tongues tangling, breaths merging sweetly, building a haze of desire around them.
Then David was leaning over her, his dark hair disheveled and falling over his forehead so that it shaded his eyes, his hand stroking her breast, bringing up the nipple to an aching peak beneath the slightly rough cloth, and she moaned a soft, dove-like sound, reaching a finger to touch his temple.
