Desert Rain with Bonus Material

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Holly didn’t disagree.

  Together they attacked the twine knots holding the tarp on the horse. After a night of being soaked by rain and pulled tight by the horse’s restless movements, the knots were as hard and stubborn as wood.

  “Are you getting anywhere?” she asked after a few minutes.

  “Nope.”

  Automatically Holly reached into her pocket for the jackknife she always carried when she was in the desert. Belatedly she remembered that her knife was in her wet jeans.

  Then she thought of the saddlebags tied on behind Sand Dancer’s saddle.

  Holly reached underneath the tarp, groped for a saddlebag—and found Linc’s hand. Startled, she looked over the horse’s back.

  Linc was watching her, smiling. His fingernails curled across her sensitive palm as his hand withdrew from both saddlebag and tarp.

  With a deft motion he opened the knife he had taken from the saddlebag. The long blade glittered as he went to work on the stubborn twine.

  Suddenly Linc stopped, frowning.

  “I don’t remember fixing up this tarp for Sand Dancer,” he said, puzzled.

  “You didn’t.”

  Holly pulled twine out of the tarp’s metal-ringed eyelets and waited for Linc to get back to cutting knots.

  “You tied the tarp on Sand Dancer?” he asked.

  She laughed.

  “Can’t you tell?” she asked. “No matter how many times you scolded me, I still tie granny knots in a pinch.”

  “In a pinch, getting the job done is all that counts.”

  He cut away the last of the twine and peeled off the tarp. Sand Dancer’s bridle was neatly tied to the saddle horn. The cinch had been loosened enough for the horse’s comfort but not enough to let the saddle slide or turn.

  Linc glanced around. With approving eyes he measured the shelter provided by the tall boulders and chaparral.

  Then the muddy hobble caught Linc’s eye. He knelt and fingered the cloth. Like the cinch, the hobble was neither too tight nor too loose.

  “Sand Dancer is all right, isn’t he?” Holly asked anxiously.

  “Sand Dancer is better than he deserves after his performance last night.”

  She let out a sigh of relief.

  “He was calling so frantically that I was afraid he was hurt somehow,” she admitted.

  “He’s spoiled. He was just yelling because he was alone.”

  Linc stood up with casual grace. He looked at Holly intently.

  “What happened last night?” he asked. “I don’t remember much after Sand Dancer went down.”

  “I saw you up on the ridge. Your horse was crazy with fear.”

  Linc smiled wryly. “I remember that much.”

  “You should have jumped,” Holly said tightly. “I screamed and screamed for you to jump, but you didn’t hear me. Then it began to pour. . . . ”

  Her voice frayed into silence as she remembered her terrible fear for Linc.

  “Sand Dancer went down,” she said finally. “You threw yourself clear. You rolled twice and then the boulder . . . oh, Linc, I was so afraid!”

  Gently Holly’s fingers touched Linc’s mouth as though to feel his breath and reassure herself that he was alive.

  He kissed her fingertips and whispered her name.

  “When I finally got to you,” Holly said raggedly, “your face was turned up to that awful rain and you weren’t moving. I thought you were dead.”

  She tried to smile.

  Linc’s expression told her that it wasn’t a success.

  “I was glad to hear you groan,” she admitted. “After a while we got you on your feet and staggered to the tent.”

  This time her smile succeeded.

  “I wish I had a movie of that,” Holly said, “thunder and lightning and rain like the end of the world, and the two of us slip-sliding down the ridge. I felt like a tugboat with a runaway ocean liner.”

  Linc didn’t smile in return. He was remembering the shattering violence of the lightning that had sent Sand Dancer into a frenzy.

  “We’re lucky we didn’t get cooked by lightning,” he said.

  “Amen,” Holly said. “After we got to the tent, I took off your wet clothes and stuffed you into the sleeping bag.”

  Linc smiled crookedly. “Made you blush, I’ll bet.”

  “I was too busy,” she retorted. “Suddenly you decided that you had to go and take care of Sand Dancer.”

  “Glad to hear I hadn’t lost my senses entirely.”

  “You weren’t in any shape for it, so . . .”

  “So?”

  Holly shrugged and waved her hand at the scraps of twine scattered around their feet.

  “So I made a lot of granny knots in the rain,” she said.

  “You should have waited until the storm let up.”

  “You’re a lot stronger than I am, even when you’re half dead from cold and getting rapped on the skull by a boulder. You didn’t want to wait.”

  “You mean I sent you back out into that storm to take care of Sand Dancer?” Linc asked tightly.

  “It was you or me, and I was in better shape at the time.”

  “My God, Holly.” He pulled her roughly against him. “You should have let me go. You could have been hurt.”

  “You already were hurt,” she pointed out.

  “Still—”

  “Linc,” Holly interrupted, exasperated. “What kind of person do you think I am? You were hurt!”

  “And you were alone in a wild storm with a stallion that went crazy every time the sky lit up.”

  “I blindfolded him,” she said simply.

  Linc’s hands framed her face as he studied her deceptively fragile face. His thumbs stroked her cheekbones.

  “You’re incredible,” he whispered. “Clever and long legged and wild, with eyes like gold coins . . .”

  Suddenly Holly was acutely conscious of the sunlight glinting in Linc’s hair and mustache and eyes, of the tempting line of his lips, of his tongue so quick and moist.

  A muscle moved and tightened along his jaw. He struggled to control the impulse to kiss Holly until they were both breathless. Very carefully he let go of her and turned his attention to Sand Dancer’s hobble.

  “Where did you get this?” Linc asked as he worked over the knot. “I don’t remember having a spare shirt in the saddlebag.”

  “It’s my blouse. That’s why I wasn’t wearing anything under my jacket when you—”

  Abruptly, Holly stopped talking. The thought of the moment Linc had unzipped her jacket and looked at her naked breasts made heat tremble deep inside her body.

  Linc saw her betraying shiver.

  “Holly,” he said wonderingly, “it’s a miracle I can keep my hands off you from one minute to the next. But I’m trying. God knows I’m trying.”

  Linc removed the hobble and untwisted the fabric of Holly’s blouse. The material was stained. Fine sorrel hairs stuck to it in random patches.

  He held up the blouse and shook his head.

  “I’d stick with the jacket if I were you,” he said.

  “I’ve got another blouse.”

  “Too bad. I like the way the jacket fastens.”

  “It doesn’t. The zipper is jammed.”

  “Like I said.”

  Linc’s eyes lit with silent laughter as he untied the bridle and slipped it over Sand Dancer’s head.

  “Come on, boy,” Linc said. “Let’s see how thirsty you are.”

  He tugged on the rains. Obediently Sand Dancer stepped forward.

  Holly and Linc both watched the horse move until they were sure that the animal suffered from nothing more serious than a few stiff muscles.

  Linc nodded, smiled approvingly at Holly and took her hand.

  “Seems like old times,” he said. “Hidden Springs, the smell of sage, a horse and”—he gave Holly a teasing sideways look—“a rumpled munchkin watching me with gold eyes.”

  Suddenly Linc’s glance changed,
probing Holly’s face as a new thought came to him.

  “Why are you here?” he asked. “And why didn’t you call and tell me you were back in California?”

  Seven

  For an instant Holly went cold. She had forgotten that she was the Royce Reflection rather than the innocent sixteen-year-old of her memories.

  And Linc’s.

  Holly remembered all too well how he had reacted to “Shannon” in Palm Springs.

  I don’t like jet-setters and their prostitutes.

  Holly walked the short distance to the springs in silence. With every step she felt Linc’s watchful eyes on her face. She didn’t want to tell him that she was Shannon, yet she couldn’t bring herself to lie.

  “I didn’t call,” she said, “because I didn’t know if you’d want to see me.”

  “What?” Linc demanded in shock and disbelief.

  “You never wrote to me,” she said simply. “Not even a Christmas card.”

  Holly’s voice and her expression showed the hurt she had felt when her own cards had gone unanswered.

  “I wrote three times,” he said flatly.

  She made an odd sound and turned to look at his face.

  “You did?” she whispered.

  “The third time I wrote, I got back a note from Sandra,” Linc said. “She told me to stop writing, that my letters upset you. I gave up then. I assumed Sandra had taught you to hate me.”

  “Hate you?” Holly stopped and stared at him. “Why on earth would I hate you?”

  Without answering, Linc looped the reins around Sand Dancer’s neck. He gave the animal a swat on his gleaming haunch. The horse started forward eagerly, thirsty for the liquid wealth of Hidden Springs.

  When Linc turned back to face Holly again, his face was impassive.

  “My father was driving the car that hit your parents,” Linc said calmly.

  His tone was as blunt as his words. He was utterly still, watching Holly’s response.

  When he saw neither surprise nor revulsion on her face, he let out his breath in soundless relief.

  “You knew,” he said.

  “Sandra told me.”

  “Figures,” Linc said grimly.

  “But what does that have to do with hating you?” Holly asked. “It was an accident. A rainy night and a rotten mountain road and a car that went out of control.”

  Holly’s lips trembled for a moment. She took a ragged breath and wondered if she would ever get over the pain of losing her parents.

  “I found out later that your stepmother died, too,” Holly whispered. “An accident. That’s all. Nobody was to blame. Certainly not you.”

  Linc lifted Holly’s hand and kissed her palm.

  “Not everyone would be so forgiving of the McKenzie family,” he said. “Sandra sure wasn’t.”

  “I could never hate you,” Holly said simply.

  Linc looked into her eyes.

  “Did you write to me?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Her voice broke. “Oh, Linc, I wanted to see you so much, to hear your voice, to have you hold me when I woke up in the middle of the night cold and shaking and frightened. I was so alone.”

  Linc folded Holly into his arms, holding her as though he would make the lonely years vanish with the sheer warmth and strength of his body.

  “I never should have let you go,” he said savagely. “I wanted to keep you so badly.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Holly asked in a muffled voice.

  “Sandra. She couldn’t believe that I felt anything more than lust for you.”

  “She thought that of every man,” Holly said curtly. “She was right most of the time, but she was wrong about you.”

  Linc smiled and kissed Holly’s nose.

  “I wanted your tender little body,” he said huskily. “But that wasn’t all I wanted. I’d watched you, watched your parents. They loved each other and they loved you.”

  “Of course.”

  Linc almost smiled.

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” he said. “Living together doesn’t necessarily mean loving together.”

  Holly remembered the rumors she had heard about Linc’s mother and stepmother—and Linc’s father, who drank far too much before he finally died.

  Then she realized something else.

  “Sandra never showed your letters to me,” Holly said.

  Linc wasn’t surprised.

  Holly was. She and Sandra had never grown close, but Holly hadn’t thought her aunt would lie to her.

  “Sandra has a lot to answer for,” she said in a clipped voice.

  Linc looked at Holly’s eyes. They were hard and narrow, showing an anger that was repeated in the tight line of her mouth.

  “Don’t blame her too much,” he said after a moment.

  “Why not? She has it coming.”

  “When she first saw you with me, your face was swollen from crying, your hair was every which way and you were curled up in my arms asleep. You looked no more than thirteen.”

  “So?”

  “If you were my daughter or niece,” Linc said, “and some hard-looking man said he was going to marry you, I’d have done the same thing Sandra did—scream and swear and generally raise enough hell to get my ass hustled right out of the hospital.”

  “Maybe,” Holly said. “But you wouldn’t steal somebody else’s mail. And neither would I.”

  Linc’s lips flattened.

  “No, but I’m not surprised that Sandra did,” he said bluntly.

  “Did you know her?” Holly asked.

  “I didn’t have to. If there’s one thing Dad taught me, it’s that you can’t trust beautiful women.”

  The leashed savagery in Linc’s voice sent a chill over Holly’s skin.

  “That isn’t true,” she said.

  “The hell it isn’t. Take it from an expert.” Linc smiled sardonically. “Sandra’s a bitch, but no one can say she isn’t beautiful.”

  Ice condensed in Holly’s stomach as she looked at Linc’s face. It was the cruel face of the stranger who had watched Shannon the way a cat watches a butterfly hovering over a blossom.

  Predatory. Ruthless.

  “Beauty doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Holly said tightly. “I know ugly women who are mean right to the marrow of their bones, and beautiful women who are kind.”

  Linc’s hand stroked Holly’s face tenderly.

  “You’d see kindness in a rattlesnake, niná,” he said in a soft voice.

  Holly felt a curious melting in her bones. Once she had hated it when Linc called her niná, “little one,” but now the word was as sweet and warm to her as his lips.

  “Kind Sandra,” Linc continued, his voice different now, raw with remembered rage, “kind Sandra swore she wasn’t going to let her sister’s baby girl marry the son of an alcoholic and a whore. She called me a savage bastard who knew nothing about love.”

  Holly flinched at the hatred in Linc’s voice.

  “So Sandra waited until I was at my stepmother’s funeral,” Linc said, “and then she stole away the only person who might have taught me how to love. You, Holly. Very kind of Sandra, wouldn’t you say? And so like a beautiful woman.”

  His voice was like a whip, and like a whip it stung. He looked as unyielding as he sounded.

  When Holly spoke, her voice was ragged with Linc’s pain and her own fear.

  “It’s all in the past,” Holly said, her voice almost pleading. “I’m not sixteen any more. Sandra can’t take me away again.”

  Linc’s arms tightened, holding Holly against his body with a strength that left her aching.

  “She’d better not even try,” he said flatly. “Did she come here with you?”

  “She stayed in Manhattan. Summer is a busy season for Sandra Productions. Everyone is shooting the spring line.”

  Holly smiled at Linc’s blank look.

  “Clothes,” she explained succinctly. “In order to have all the ad campaigns ready for spring, they have
to shoot in the summer.”

  Comprehension came. Linc’s face drew into lines of distaste.

  “Yeah, I remember now,” he said. “Sandra makes her living selling tits and ass to magazines.”

  “Linc!”

  He saw the horrified look on Holly’s face.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Holly was too shaken to say anything.

  My God, she thought frantically. What am I going to do? How can I convince Linc that I’m not what he thinks Shannon is?

  Linc saw Holly’s pallor, sighed, and ran his hand roughly through his hair. Sunlight gleamed off his naked arm.

  “I don’t like models,” he said finally. “My mother and stepmother were both models. At least, that’s what they called it. Looked like something else to me. And it was.”

  Holly closed her eyes. She wished she didn’t have to open her mouth and see her dream die again.

  But she couldn’t lie to Linc, not even in silence.

  “I’m a model,” she said starkly.

  “What?”

  “I’m a model.”

  Holly opened her eyes, expecting to see Linc’s contempt.

  Instead, she saw disbelief and amusement.

  “A model,” he said neutrally.

  “Yes.”

  Linc laughed softly. Then he looked Holly over from her rumpled braid to her jacket stuffed into wrinkled cotton pants. His eyes lingered on her sturdy, dirty shoes.

  “What do you model?” he asked. “Teddy bears? Swing sets? All-day suckers?”

  Anger snaked through Holly.

  “I didn’t realize I was so unattractive,” she retorted in a clipped voice.

  His laughter vanished. He looked at Holly again, but this time his eyes remembered her as she had been in his arms, her body changing with caresses, her naked skin glowing with desire.

  “If you were any more beautiful to me,” Linc said tightly, “I would be afraid to trust myself. Or you.”

  “Being beautiful doesn’t mean being untrustworthy. Beauty is just something done with mirrors and makeup. I can be beautiful and still be worth loving!”

  “Hey, hey,” Linc said, hugging Holly against his chest. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

  “But I was! I’m—”

  Holly’s words were lost beneath the sweetness of Linc’s tongue inside her mouth. His kiss told her of gentleness and caring and the passion for her that infused his every breath.