The Final Mission

by Rachel Lee

  “Future billionaires of America,” Courtney grumbled jokingly as she paid Kyle rent yet again.

  “Nah,” Kyle said. “I don’t need billions. I need hundreds.”

  Courtney eyed his stack of play money. “You’ve got more than a few right now. In fact, you have all of mine and most of your dad’s.”

  “I have some, too,” Todd announced. Then he giggled as his dad ruffled his hair.

  “Killer instincts,” Dom said. “How much money does a horse need?”

  Todd snorted. “None. But you need it to take care of them.”

  Courtney spoke. “So you want to be a rancher like your dad?”

  “We both do,” Todd answered confidently. “We like the horses.”

  “I do, too,” Courtney agreed. “I never got to spend much time with them, and I’m learning a lot here.”

  “We can teach you a whole lot more,” Kyle announced. “Lots more.”

  “I’m sure you can. I’m looking forward to it.” As soon as she spoke, she wondered if that was a mistake. She looked at Dom, but his face revealed nothing, even though she had just virtually made a promise to the boys. Maybe he didn’t freight it with as much significance as she could hear in the words when she mentally replayed them.

  Before she could ponder any longer though, Dom announced, “Bedtime. We have an early morning.”

  The boys had other plans. They wanted a bedtime story and one of them had tucked a favorite book in with their clothes. Courtney was amazed when they asked her to read it to them.

  She immediately looked at Dom, wondering if that would trouble him, to see another woman doing something Mary would have done. If he felt she was trespassing too far into intimacy with the boys.

  He merely brought a lantern over for her to read by, and returned to the table to sip coffee.

  The story was humorous, and at first the boys laughed gleefully. The chuckles grew sleepier though, and more infrequent, until she finally looked up to see they had both fallen sound asleep.

  “Tuckered out,” Dom murmured. “It’s been a busy day.”

  He moved the lantern back to the table, then went to one of the cots and got a blanket which he draped around her shoulders. “If you want to talk, let’s go outside so we don’t wake them.”

  She felt far from ready for sleep, and the chance to sit outside and watch the stars while talking with Dom was appealing. She dropped the book on the table, clutched the blanket, and followed him out.

  The porch chairs weren’t that comfortable, but given what she had learned tonight, she imagined no one considered that really necessary. Most likely whoever stayed here overnight came up to work and probably didn’t much feel like admiring the night.

  The air up here held a cold nip that made her glad for the blanket she had wrapped around her. “I haven’t seen so many stars in a long time.” She avoided mentioning the Middle East, the last place she had been with areas dark enough to actually see the full glory of the night sky.

  “Too many city lights?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” She looked around. “It isn’t often in the modern world that you get a chance to appreciate just how dark a night can really be.”

  “Moonrise will take care of that soon. Does it make you uneasy?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t want to try walking across the meadow right now.”

  He chuckled quietly. “I generally avoid overnight trips when we won’t have a moon for that very reason. Next weekend, if you decide you want to watch the migration, we’ll still have a quarter moon. It’ll be enough.”

  “I do want to see the migration.” There, she’d committed to it. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure if that made her happier, or more nervous. But this world he was showing her was beautiful, and she was reluctant to leave it. Heck, she was even developing a little place in her heart for the boys, and would miss them when she left. Attachments were growing, after only a couple of days.

  Maybe she should reverse her decision?

  But somehow she couldn’t. She tipped her head back, drinking in the diamond dust of stars strewn on the endlessly deep black of the night sky. “You forget there are so many stars.”

  “I suppose you can, if you don’t see them.”

  “I used to get myself to sleep at night by imagining that I was falling into stars.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Even as a kid I sometimes had trouble falling asleep, but if I could imagine myself falling through stars, really falling, I’d be asleep in minutes.”

  “That’s interesting. Guess I’m lucky. Sleep usually conks me right over the head the instant my head touches the pillow.”

  “Usually?”

  “Well, I can be distracted.”

  She caught her breath. Did that mean what it sounded like? Was he flirting? Trying to make her think of forbidden images, forbidden feelings? No, not likely, she told herself. He couldn’t possibly feel the kind of attraction for her that she felt for him. In fact, most men seemed to find her intimidating, and some even called her bossy. Part of the kind of job she had, she supposed. Take control. Take charge. Occupy the driver’s seat.

  She had barely started breathing again, when once again he caused her to stop by simply reaching out to take her hand. His palm was warm, callused, big, and his fingers wrapping around hers felt so good. She held her breath and didn’t dare move.

  For long minutes there was no sound except an occasional stirring among the horses, the whisper of the night breeze in the treetops, occasional rustling from the woods around them.

  “See there?” he said. “Look to your left. Through the trees. You can see a glow.”

  It took her a few seconds, but finally she realized there was a lightening. “The moon?”

  “Yup. Just watch. It happens pretty quickly.”

  A different kind of dawn, she thought. Pale light slowly brightened, bringing the treetops into relief and then silvering the meadow bit by bit.

  “It’s always beautiful,” he murmured, and for the first time she realized how close he leaned. She could even feel the warm whisper of his breath against her cheek. “So different from sunrise, especially out here where there’s almost no pollution. In the morning the light has warmth, but at night it’s cold and pure in a different way. Light without heat.”

  A pleasurable shiver ran through her, and she hoped it didn’t reach her hand. But maybe it had, because his grip tightened just a bit.

  She tried to find something to say, because the magic he was working on her with his gentle handhold and his quiet voice so near her ear, were likely to make her do something she wasn’t sure would be good for either of them.

  Finally she grasped at the first barely coherent thought that occurred to her. “Imagine what it must have been like for our ancestors at night. Waiting for moonrise, the whole world around them dark and mysterious.”

  “I’m pretty sure they stuck close to the fire.”

  “Probably.” A quiet little laugh escaped her. “One minute you’re almost poetic, and the next you’re prosaic.”

  “I’m a prosaic kind of guy. Does that bother you?”

  “No. Why would it? I just noticed the contrast.”

  “I have my moments, but mostly I’m just practical to the core. I have to be.”

  “I suppose you do. So if we were cave dwellers, we’d be sitting close to the fire rather than out here enjoying the night’s beauty.”

  “Only because their nights must have been so much more threatening. But we have dogs and horses. One or the other would alert us.”

  “True. It’s handy to have animal friends.”

  “They’re more than friends. They’re partners.”

  She nodded, liking the sound of that. “All my life, dogs were just someone’s pets. I don’t mean that I wasn’t aware of working dogs. I just never saw it up close and personal before.”

  “They impress the hell out of me, and I’ve been around herders my entire life. I’m impressed not just by what the
y can do so naturally, but by the intense focus they get when they’re working. You couldn’t distract them with a meaty bone then.”

  “That is amazing.”

  “So move our cave people forward in time to when they had dogs to keep watch.”

  “They probably slept a lot better.”

  “That would be my guess. In fact, it would be my guess that wolves may have adopted people and not the other way around. We’re wasteful. Imagine our garbage heaps.”

  That drew a real laugh from her. “Even in tight times we still manage to waste something, it seems.”

  “Yup. Even hunter-gatherers had to leave something behind.”

  She dared to turn her head so she could see his face. The moonlight, especially on the shadowed porch, made him look mysterious. “You know a lot about this?”

  “I read a lot. Mostly nonfiction.”

  “But not just about horses and ranching?”

  “Some about horses, but most of what I know about them comes from experience and generations of knowledge that were handed down to me. My people were always horse people.”

  She put on a mock investigator’s face. “Can you prove that? Do you have the genealogical information?”

  He chuckled. “Actually, yes. This family and horses go back at least three hundred years. Grooms, mainly, in the old days, until my great-grandfather settled out here around 1920.”

  “Your family has done well.”

  “Well enough. We take care of the land and the horses. And maybe when we’re gone, we’ll leave only a small footprint.”

  “That’s an unusual way to look at it.”

  He gave a slight shake of his head. “My dad and granddad always told me that if you respect and care for nature, nature will take care of you.”

  “That’s what you were trying to show the boys tonight with the dry grass.”

  “In part. We live very close to nature here, Courtney. We aren’t walled off from it by concrete and pavement. A stray spark, a bad storm, a drought, a disease… Those things have a strong and pretty immediate impact on us.”

  “I can see they would.”

  “It’s not an easy life, but it’s a good one.”

  She wondered if that was some kind of warning, and if so where it had come from. But even as the thought crossed her mind, she realized he had moved closer. An instant later, his lips touched hers. Just a light, tentative brush.

  “Dom…” What? What was she going to say when she wanted him to kiss her? Wanted it like mad.

  “Shh,” he said. His free hand cupped her cheek and the back of her neck, holding her gently as he moved in for another kiss, a real one this time. His mouth covered hers, warm and amazingly gentle. She resisted for an instant, but only an instant as desire and need swamped her. Too fast, entirely too fast, he drew back a few inches.

  “I think,” he said huskily, “that we need to consider whether to explore that any further.” Then he brushed his lips lightly against hers once more and pulled back, releasing her hand.

  “Early morning,” he reminded her.

  She had more than a little to think about as she followed him back into the cabin. And a surprising amount of it scared her.

  Dom lay awake in his cot, holding perfectly still, wondering if he had lost his mind. If he was even going to consider the possibility of getting involved again, then it seemed to him he ought to be looking at women who already lived around here, women who didn’t have careers other than ranching.

  He’d done that once, and the price had been grief. And not just grief because Mary had died, but the grief that came along with having her gone so much. There was no question in his mind that Courtney would want to continue her job, and it would take her far from Conard County. How could it not?

  On the other hand, there was a widow two ranches over who’d cast her eye his way a couple of times. She was pretty, had a son of her own slightly older than his boys, and knew how to operate a ranch. Was devoted to it, in fact. She was someone he could chat with about some of the things that interested him when they met at the feed store or after church on a Sunday, when he made it.

  That would make sense.

  What he was feeling now did not.

  Or maybe it just fit with his nature. Part of what had attracted him to Mary to begin with was that she wasn’t all about ranching and horses all of the time. She had other things to talk about, interesting things that carried him out of his absorption.

  Maybe that was part of what was pulling him here: an intersection with a life very different from his own.

  Damn, he thought, maybe he needed to get out and about more, away from the horse community where he did probably ninety percent of his socializing. Maybe the attraction he was feeling was nothing but a window to a different world.

  Then he remembered the kiss, and his loins stirred, and he knew he was looking for reasons for something that didn’t have reasons.

  Courtney might not have appeared to be his type at first look, but apparently she was very much his type in some important ways.

  And the boys liked her.

  He rolled over and forced his eyes closed, trying to ignore the humming in his body that insisted on reminding him Courtney was only a few feet away.

  Thank God the boys were here.

  But what about next weekend?

  At the thought of taking Courtney out to see the migrations, he had the worst urge to pound his fist on his pillow. Alone with her on an overnight camping trip? Was he losing his mind?

  Did he have the willpower to keep his hands to himself? He wished she’d pulled away from his kiss, wished she’d been shocked or disturbed. Instead she had welcomed him, for however brief a time.

  He’d seen the flush in her cheeks, the darkening of her eyes a couple of times when that awareness had suddenly crackled between them like lightning before a storm.

  He had known she was attracted, yet he’d been an idiot and reached for her hand out there on the porch. And he’d been even more of an idiot when he kissed her.

  The image of his lesson to the boys sprang to his mind. He was playing with tinder here and he ought to know better. This could hurt someone. This could change lives forever, and not necessarily in a good way. He needed to think about all the problems, not just the urges. Problems like his boys, problems like her career. Problems like the fact that they came from entirely different worlds. At least Mary had been local. She hadn’t suffered culture shock by marrying him.

  Marriage? Whoa. Too early to even think about that. No, he needed to think about the inherent risks in having a relationship with a woman who was leaving to go back to her job in Georgia. Never in his life had he been capable of a fling.

  Never. It wasn’t his nature. It was girlfriends who always jilted him. He was always the fool who wound up with the broken heart. Loyalty was rooted deep in his nature, and flings were beyond him. He’d never been able to just satisfy an urge without getting involved.

  So what did he do? He kissed the worst possible woman.

  Oh, man, he was digging the hole deeper with everything he did. Digging deeper and, if he were to be honest with himself, with absolutely no desire to stop.

  Yet, anyway.

  Chapter 9

  In the morning, just as the first pale rays of sunlight were poking above the trees, Courtney headed for the outhouse. It was set a fair distance from the cabin, probably for sanitary reasons, and she took her time wandering the well-trodden path.

  After she finished, she headed toward the cabin, soaking up the brightening day and chilly air. Nearby, trees began to stir as the air warmed. It was going to be a gorgeous day.

  The peace shattered in an instant, with a recognizable gunshot. Instinctively she fell to the ground and remained motionless. At once she was back in Iraq, where such sounds always meant death. She dug her fingers into the dirt, battling to remember where she was.

  The door of the cabin flew open and she saw Dom, a shotgun in hand, scanning the area. H
is gaze fell on her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” But with adrenaline now rushing through her, what she most wanted was to leap to her feet and go hunt that shooter down. Moving one arm, she instinctively felt for her gun, and she started calculating the fastest, safest route to the trees. Unfortunately, even as she wanted to take action, she simultaneously realized she didn’t have her gun and that she had no idea where that gunshot had come from. Between the trees and the surrounding mountains it could have come from anywhere. “Dom, get back inside.”

  He ignored her, of course.

  “Damn hunters,” Dom muttered. “My land is posted, but that never keeps them away.”

  He lifted his head and shouted. “No deer here. Shoot again and I’ll hunt you down!”

  Silence filled the morning, except for the uneasy stirring of the horses. Gradually other sounds returned.

  “I’m moving now,” Dom called.

  “No, Dom,” Courtney cried. “Don’t move!”

  But he ignored her, making his way swiftly to Courtney’s side. Before he got to her, she rose to a crouch, looking around. “Damn it,” she said between her teeth, “Dom, you don’t have the sense God gave a gnat.” If he wasn’t going to stay out of the line of fire, she would damn well make him.

  “Dad?”

  “Stay inside, Kyle.”

  Dom, shotgun at ready, reached her and tucked her close to his side, ignoring her quiet cussing as they hurried back to the cabin.

  “Damn hunters,” he said again as they entered the cabin. “Every single year some idiot shoots without looking.”

  “You don’t know it was a hunter.”

  He caught her eye. “Do you know something you’re not telling me?”

  “No! It’s my training, my experience in Iraq. You should never just assume something like that.”

  “Well, this isn’t Iraq,” he said logically enough. “So unless you have some reason to think someone wants to take a potshot at you, then it’s a hunter.”

  She caught his drift, saw his glance at the boys. They were both standing in their nightclothes, wide-eyed.