The Final Mission

by Rachel Lee

  Courtney quickly looked down at the sandwich she would never be able to finish, suddenly wishing she were anywhere else on the planet.

  “No,” Dom said quietly. “She had a different job, remember?”

  “A nurse.” Kyle nodded vehemently. “I know. I just think it’s neat that Miss Courtney wants to help.”

  Courtney stole a quick look at Dom, trying to gauge his mood. He seemed fine, although the smile had vanished. “People are different,” he said mildly enough.

  “I know,” Kyle said. For him the subject was over.

  But Courtney wasn’t sure it was over for Dom. He was quieter through the remainder of lunch and she wondered what memories had just been raked up, and whether they were good ones.

  None of her business, she reminded herself. She’d be gone for good in a couple of days. But she gave herself a mental kick anyway. Not once, absolutely not once, had she even considered the pain she might inflict by coming here.

  No, she’d been so fixated on justice, and the assumption that Dom would want answers about Mary every bit as much as she still wanted them about her dad, that she hadn’t even thought.

  Her chest tightened both with sorrow and self-disgust. Yeah, just head west like some kind of idiot to ask questions. She asked questions all the time as an investigator and she didn’t often think about the impact of those questions.

  Why would she, since usually she was questioning perps and witnesses? But this was different. If she’d been able to shake her obsession for even ten minutes, she might have realized it.

  These people had made peace with the past, with the story they’d been given. So, like some kind of unexpected tornado, she whirled into their lives and upset it all.

  She didn’t have the sense God gave a gnat sometimes. All she knew about human nature had been learned as a special agent. As an investigator.

  Damn, she should have just listened to those who had warned her. Somewhere in her muddled head it should have occurred to her that she might be hurting, not helping.

  Instead she had blithely come out here, expecting Dom to feel as passionate as she about justice, and in the process she’d disturbed his peace and had his kids thinking about their mom again, a mom they could probably hardly remember.

  Maybe she needed sensitivity training. Or something.

  And maybe she’d better get the hell out of here as soon as they got the horses down the mountain.

  The afternoon passed swiftly. Courtney decided to watch from the cabin’s porch, sitting on a wooden chair. In no way did she want to create any more comparisons for Dom or the boys to deal with.

  So she kept the coffee hot on the woodstove, held a mug of her own to keep warm as the day began to cool down and watched.

  The boys were indeed helpful, but it still seemed to her the dogs did most of the work. Dogs and boys clearly enjoyed themselves, and from time to time one of the boys would wave at her and she waved back.

  The horses didn’t seem inclined to be difficult, either. They knew the ropes, evidently, and the youngsters followed the herd obligingly.

  Once the horses were all penned, the boys watched from their mounts and Dom went over them one by one, sweeping his hands everywhere, checking every hoof, sometimes pulling a tool from his pocket to pry something loose, or shave a hoof a bit.

  What got to her, sadly enough, was watching him run his hands over those horses. He took off his gloves to do it, as if he wouldn’t be able to detect things well enough through a thick layer of leather. All she could think of was those hands running over her.

  She didn’t fight off the images, or the heat they evoked in her. It seemed like too much effort when it was just a fantasy.

  And then she had the ridiculously sappy and uncharacteristic thought that it would be nice if someone cared for her the way Dom cared for his horses and his sons.

  So maybe Dom wasn’t the only one who was getting disturbed by her visit. Evidently she was as well. Thoughts like these had never occurred to her before. Not usually, anyway.

  Closing her eyes, though, she could remember the times that Mary had spoken of Dom, of the ranch, of missing her boys. The love had been so apparent. Maybe she had felt a few twinges even back then.

  A few.

  But now an ugly thought reared its head and she jumped up, going inside.

  Had she come here because she wanted what Mary had had? Or because she wanted to see if the stories Mary had told were true? That such a love was possible?

  No.

  As sure as she was standing here now, the thoughts felt so alien she was certain, absolutely certain, that they’d never occurred to her before. At any level.

  So where had that ugliness come from? Guilt? Probably. She sure had enough to feel guilty about, from disturbing this family with her suspicions, to feeling such an attraction to Dom.

  Well, attraction was normal and natural. She couldn’t help feeling it. What she could help was how she acted on it, and she was determined not to act on it at all.

  As for the other, well, she’d already disturbed Dom and maybe the boys. She couldn’t undo that. But she could finish the research she had come to do, and get out of here as soon as possible so they could all get back to normal.

  She was standing near the stove, soaking up the heat until her skin almost burned, staring blindly as she tried to sort out her emotional confusion. And worse, the heat evoked memories of a hotter climate, another place, ugliness so horrifying even pictures couldn’t fully convey it.

  She had her own desert ghosts, too, and while she had thought them largely quiet now, apparently they still lurked, ready to freeze her in a pit of awful memory. Or maybe that threatening email had set this off, reminding her anew of what had happened to Mary, of what she suspected.

  They couldn’t follow her here. Could they?

  No. Absolutely not.

  She heard the cabin door creak open, but didn’t move. Probably one of the boys, she thought, but she needed to find her center before she could interact with them. They needed a calm, cheerful presence, not someone who at the moment would find it difficult to smile.

  “Something wrong?”

  Dom’s voice startled her and she turned to see him standing in the open door.

  “No,” she answered. “Well, yes.”

  He stepped inside and closed the door.

  “The boys?” she asked immediately.

  “They’re tending the horses. We just unsaddled them, and I need some coffee.”

  At once she stepped away from the stove to give him access to the pot. He didn’t go for a mug, though. Instead he came straight toward her, pulling off his gloves. God, he smelled good, of fresh air, horses and man. Then he reached out and with one fingertip under her chin he tipped her face up so he could study it.

  “What’s going on?”

  She sighed but didn’t try to look away. “I’m kicking myself.”

  “For what?”

  “I came barreling out here without a thought for how this would affect you. I just wanted my answers and justice. I should have thought of your feelings about this.”

  “My feelings are just fine. On the other hand, yours don’t seem to be.”

  “I’m just wondering what exactly I’m doing.”

  His rugged face softened just a bit. “You’re doing what you need to do. You’re being yourself. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  “Are you? Are you really? It can’t be easy for you having me here like a constant reminder. It must have hurt when the boys brought up Mary at lunch, saying she never did this with you.”

  “No, not really. She didn’t do this kind of thing. Oh, she’d help me muck out stalls when she had the time, and she loved to ride, but taking a couple of days to come up here and gather horses? Not but once or twice. She didn’t have the time. I’m not saying she didn’t help, because she did, but she had a career of her own, and when the boys were little she had to stay and take care of them.” He sighed quietly. “And
the boys hardly remember her. They saw her on Skype, they saw her in videos and photos, but they only knew her for a month each year when she’d come home. That’s not a lot of memories.”

  “No. It’s sad.”

  “Actually, for them it might be easier. They didn’t notice the great big gaping hole as much as I did. And frankly, I dealt with a lot of that when she went to Iraq, long before she died. I lived with that hole for a long, long time.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That maybe I’ve been grieving for longer than two years.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Her chair was empty a lot longer than that. I missed her for years, and believe me, phone calls, videos and photos don’t make up for it.”

  Courtney bit her lip, wondering if she was understanding him correctly. “Are you…angry?”

  “I was at times. I’m only human. I still get mad at times.”

  “I think that’s normal.”

  “Of course it’s normal.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I supported her. I supported her need to do what she did. But that doesn’t mean I never got mad at her for leaving the boys and leaving me. Understanding doesn’t mean you’re always going to be happy about it.”

  “Of course not.”

  “So if I can handle all that, I can handle you poking around trying to get what you need.”

  “I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

  “Who said I wanted that?”

  Then he astonished her, absolutely dumfounded her, by slipping his arms around her and hugging her close.

  It was just a hug. Nothing more. But in an instant she became aware of his hard, wiry frame, of the muscles hidden beneath denim and other clothing. She was surrounded by his scents, by his arms, by his strength, and her throat grew so tight it felt as if it were wrapped in wire. And heat, delicious heat, pooled heavily between her legs.

  Had anything ever felt so good? Not in her memory could she recall ever feeling like this. Sheltered, protected, cared about. And more. A sexual awareness that was quite new in her experience. Not that she’d never been attracted before. But this was somehow different.

  Maybe because this man was different. She’d never met anyone quite like him before, with such a quiet strength and so much comfort with life and with himself.

  Sure, he said he got angry at Mary at times. He would have been less than human if he had not. But basically he seemed to accept that life had rhythms, good and bad, and he seemed far more able than she to just go with the flow.

  “I fight,” she said finally, her cheek resting against his shoulder. “I always fight. You don’t.”

  “Some things you can fight. Others, well, it’s just a waste of energy. You need to do this.”

  She bit her lip again as she felt him raise his hand and give just the lightest stroke to her hair. She had left it down this morning, and the touch felt so good she could have purred. Or could have cried.

  “So you really don’t hate me for coming here?”

  “Hell, no. It was a bit of a shock, but I’m long past it.”

  “Well, I’ll be gone soon and you can get back to normal.”

  “Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t get out of here quite so quick.”

  She tensed, hardly believing what she heard. Finally she asked, almost breathlessly, “What do you mean?”

  “That I was hoping you could stay through next weekend at least. I thought I’d take you up to see the elk migration. It won’t be a huge deal, but we might see a few on their way to Colorado. We’ll surely see some pronghorns.”

  She felt at once gladdened and frightened. And she didn’t know what to say.

  “Just think about it,” he said. “It’s fun. The boys won’t be going, though.”

  “No?”

  “Their grandparents already asked to take them for the weekend. They’ve got some kind of day trip planned. But the boys aren’t all that fascinated anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s boring for them. They have to sit still too long.”

  At that a weak laugh escaped her. “I’m still wondering how they sit still in school.”

  “It ain’t easy, from what their teachers say. Anyway, given a choice between sitting in the bushes to look for an elk or three, or some pronghorns, they’ll choose their grandparents every time.”

  He gave her a gentle squeeze, then stepped back. She almost hated how bereft she felt.

  “Now for that coffee. And you think about next weekend.”

  “I will.”

  He filled his mug, pushed his gloves more firmly into his hip pocket and headed for the door.

  She stopped him. “Whose clothes am I wearing?”

  He looked back, smiling faintly. “My mother’s. I couldn’t bear to keep Mary’s clothes around. They wouldn’t have fit you anyway.”

  Then he vanished, closing the door behind him.

  And she stood there feeling somehow that she’d just been through an earthquake. And knowing that something inside her had just somehow been changed forever.

  Chapter 8

  Twilight came early. The boys wanted to build a fire in the fire pit near the cabin but Dom refused.

  “Come here,” he said, squatting in the browning grasses near the pit. They both obediently went to him and squatted in perfect imitation of him.

  Dom pulled up some grass. “Feel how it cracks in your fingers? It’s tinder. A spark would set it off.”

  Both Todd and Kyle plucked some grass and broke it between their fingers.

  “Feel it?” Dom asked. Two young heads bobbed in agreement. “If I build a fire out here, even if I keep it small, I can’t be sure a spark wouldn’t escape and make a wildfire. So we’re not going to even risk it.”

  He straightened. “Grab a couple of handfuls of grass. I’ll show you what I mean.”

  The boys each pulled up two handfuls and followed Dom to the cabin. Courtney tagged along, enjoying this and wondering what he planned.

  Inside, he went to the woodstove where the fire had burned low. He pulled the ash bucket over. “Now I’m going to take some ash out of the stove.”

  “Like when you clean it,” Todd said knowledgeably.

  “Right, but just a shovelful.”

  He opened the stove door, picked up a small, long-handled shovel and scooped some ash into the bucket. Just a little bit.

  Then he carried the bucket a small distance away from the stove, but not near anything flammable.

  “How hot does it feel?”

  Both boys leaned toward the bucket. “Not very hot,” they agreed.

  “But even though this is ash, there are still cinders in it, the kind of thing that flies up from a fire. You know what I mean. Now give me some of that grass and stand back.”

  Todd handed over his two fistfuls, which both fit in the palm of Dom’s large hand.

  He threw it onto the ash and the effect was almost instantaneous. A puff of flame burst up.

  “Oh, cool!” Kyle said.

  “Now yours,” Dom said, holding out his hand. More grass went into the bucket and flashed immediately into flame. “And that,” he continued, “is why we’re not going to build a fire outside tonight.”

  Courtney sat at the table, smiling, watching the boys talk about what they’d just seen. Dom joined her and she turned to him. “That was a brilliant way to handle it.”

  “Don’t applaud me. My dad gave me the same demonstration once. Ranchers hate wildfire with a passion for obvious reasons. And of course, when you have a fire, people have to risk their lives to protect livestock and property.”

  “You had a good dad, I take it?”

  “Both my parents were great. I was lucky. Very down-to-earth folks. The rhythms of nature got into my blood early. In fact, I still remember my dad telling me when I was five or six that if I just listened to the horses, they’d be my best teachers.”

  “That’s a different way of looking at it.”

  “Not around my place.” He gave a quiet lau
gh. “They can’t teach you everything, but they can sure teach you a lot.”

  He looked over toward the boys. “You want to get the dogs? They need to eat and it’s going to be cold tonight. Maybe they’ll want to stay inside.”

  As it happened, they came in just long enough to scarf down three bowls of kibble, then pawed at the door to be let out again. They really did like being with the horses. That amused Courtney.

  Dinner was a simple meal made on the woodstove: canned soup and crackers, served on chipped and crazed crockery that looked almost as old as the cabin.

  Courtney was treated like a princess. When she offered to help with the cleanup, the boys refused. Apparently they wanted to show off their skills for dealing with inconveniences, which included pumping water and heating it on the stove.

  Courtney enjoyed the show, and she especially liked the way the boys were so willing to pitch in. She wondered if all kids were helpful at that age.

  “So far as I know,” Dom answered as they settled again at the table. “Give them a few years. We’ll see what happens when they’re teens.”

  “We’ll still help,” Todd announced. “Everyone helps on a ranch.”

  Dictum of the day, Courtney thought with amusement. “Well, I’ve been the least help of all.”

  “That’s okay,” Kyle assured her. “You’re new.”

  “Yeah,” Todd agreed. “We gotta train you.”

  “Have to,” Dom corrected gently. “That word gotta gets too much use.”

  “It’s all-purpose,” Courtney said, laughing. “Come on, Dad, don’t you know?”

  “It seems to cover every base,” he agreed, his eyes twinkling. “I think right now we gotta play some Monopoly or Scrabble. Lady’s choice.”

  Kyle scowled. “She’s gonna want words.”

  “Gonna is another overused non-word,” Dom said. “Maybe you need some Scrabble.”

  “Da-ad!”

  “Monopoly is fine by me,” Courtney hastened to say. “I was born to be a millionaire.”

  The boys scoffed, and it soon turned out that when it came to the board game, they knew exactly how to turn the screws. By the light of a couple of kerosene lanterns, they proved their skills.