“So this area we see below us is still on your ranch?” she asked.
“That’s right. But the Chaparral fence is only a short distance away,” he told her. “We’ll go down so that you can see the layout for yourself.”
“But how do we get down there? You might be able to scale this steep wall, but I’m not sure I can.”
“I wouldn’t let you try such a thing. There’s a trail to our left. It’s rough. But the cattle and wildlife manage to use it.”
With his hand still on her arm, he started to lead her away, but Rosalinda felt compelled to turn to him.
“Just a minute, Tyler. There’s something I think I should tell you.”
Pausing, he smiled down at her. “You called me Tyler,” he said.
His voice was like water moving over a gravel bed. Smooth, yet rough at the same time. The sound of it sent a rush of pleasure through her and before she could stop it a blush flooded her face with color. “I guess I did, didn’t I?”
“I liked it, too.”
She gave her lips a nervous lick. “Well, I just wanted to say that I don’t believe you had anything to do with this crime.”
He let out a humorous grunt. “Trying to draw flies with honey?” he asked.
Tossing him a sardonic glance, she said, “I didn’t have to tell you my feelings. In fact, a smart and crafty deputy would have kept her mouth shut. So I suppose I’ve broken one of those rules you were talking about earlier.”
He turned just enough to face her head-on and as he met her gaze, his hand released her elbow and slid slowly, provocatively up to her shoulder.
“So why did you?” he asked, his voice a low rumble.
An array of emotions rushed at her from all directions, forcing her to swallow before she could speak. “I can’t tell you exactly why. I suppose because I like you. To be honest, I’m beginning to think I like you a little too much.”
His cool green eyes suddenly took on a warm glow. “And I like you, Rosa.”
She breathed deeply. “I’m not sure what any of that means. Or where it leaves us.”
The twist of his lips had her gaze zeroing in on his mouth and the remembered taste of him caused her heart to pound with anticipation.
“It leaves us right here,” he said huskily. “Together. Like this.”
There was no sense in trying to dodge his descending head. Ever since last night, she’d thought of little else but his kiss. And every time she’d thought of it, she’d realized she’d wanted to relive those moments of pleasure again.
“We didn’t ride all the way out here for this,” she whispered the feeble protest.
“Maybe not,” he murmured. “But we don’t want the trip to be wasted, now do we?”
His lips blotted out any sort of answer she could have given him. But she swiftly decided that words between them no longer mattered. His plundering kiss was coaxing her lips open and urging her arms to slide around his waist.
Somewhere in her foggy daze, she heard his groan and the sound was so intoxicating she wasn’t even aware that her body was arching into his or that her hands were gripping the sides of his waist. Her heated response sent his tongue thrusting between her teeth and searching the moist concave of her mouth.
The intimate taste of him totally consumed her. So much so that if they’d toppled over the edge of the cliff she would have gladly fallen with him. And that could only mean she was in deep, deep trouble.
Yet even that scary realization wasn’t enough to make her pull away him. For more than four years, she’d shut herself away from men and sex, from being loved and touched and pleasured. Tyler was making her see that she couldn’t shut herself away any longer. No matter how much of a price she had to pay.
Chapter Six
If one of the horses hadn’t whinnied, Tyler figured the kiss would have gone on forever, or until one of them had passed out from lack of oxygen. But the sound was enough to penetrate his foggy senses.
While he glanced over his shoulder at the horses, Rosalinda spoke in a breathless rush. “What’s wrong? Is the horse running away?”
“Nothing is wrong. Inky realizes some of his old friends are grazing not far away. He’s just doing a little talking,” he explained in a husky voice.
Her shoulders visibly slumped with relief. “Oh. I was thinking someone might have walked up on us.”
“And see that you weren’t exactly behaving as if you were on duty?” he asked wryly.
“I don’t need reminding,” she muttered, then passed trembling fingers over her forehead. “I think we need to get moving on to the bottom of the bluff.”
He wrapped his hand around her upper arm and though he desperately wanted to pull her back into his arms, he stopped himself short. If he kissed her again like he had a few seconds ago, he’d be a goner. There’d be no stopping until the two of them were making love.
“Rosa, a while ago you told me something you thought I ought to know. Well, it’s my turn now. I—” He stopped, shook his head, then started again. “I didn’t kiss you just because we’re alone and the opportunity presented itself.”
Dropping her head, she stared at the ground. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly.
Tyler gazed at the crown of her dark, shiny hair as he tried to gather his senses and find the right words to explain himself. But how could he expect to explain anything when he didn’t know what was happening to him or why he wanted to reach for this woman every time she got within ten feet of him.
“It matters to me, Rosa. I guess because you’re the first woman since—well, you’re the first woman in a long, long time that has made me feel anything. I can’t explain why. And I’m not even sure that the why of it has any importance. All that matters is that we’ve met and that something is happening between us.”
Her head lifted and the dark clouds of confusion in her eyes hit him like the strike of a hammer in the middle of his chest.
“Whatever this is, Tyler, it’s got to stop. It’s wrong.”
Wrong. When Tyler had first started dating DeeDee, his father had continually repeated that word to him. And in the end Warren Pickens had been right about the woman. She’d been all wrong for Tyler and he’d made a huge mistake in thinking she would be a good wife to him.
But did that mean he was making a mistake now with Rosalinda? No. This woman wasn’t DeeDee. And Tyler hadn’t needed his father’s advice or support in nearly ten years. Nothing about this was the same, he mentally argued.
His hands closed over her shoulders and the heat of her flesh flowed into him like a warm drink on a cold dark night.
“Why does it need to stop, Rosa? It’s just started.”
Her lips began to quiver and he touched his forefinger to the moist curves. He didn’t want to cause this woman any kind of anguish. He wanted to make her happy.
“This—you and me—it’s compromising my job, Tyler.”
“You can’t be a woman and a deputy, too?”
“Not while I’m on duty,” she answered glumly.
His slow smile was full of promise. “Okay. I can wait until you’re off duty to kiss you.”
“We won’t be seeing each other when I’m off duty,” she countered.
“I wouldn’t count on that, Rosa.” Reluctantly, he released his hold on her shoulders and gestured toward a narrow path leading between two slabs of rock. “There’s the trail. If you’re ready, we’ll head on down.”
“Let me get my camera. What about the saddlebags with our lunch?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you’d want to eat down there. We’ll find a better spot for that.”
She walked back over to Moonpie and fished the camera from her backpack. Once she returned and they started toward the rocks, he ordered, “Stay right behind me. That
way if you fall I can stop you from tumbling to the bottom.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll watch my step.”
After several minutes of slipping and sliding down the steep trail, the two of them reached the bottom without incident. Rosalinda wiped at the sweat on her brow and looked around the blackened landscape.
The face of the bluff was at least sixty or seventy feet wide and created a natural curvature in the landscape. Tyler noticed how the flames had eaten halfway up the wall until the lack of brush and scrub trees had left it without fuel.
Rosalinda’s gaze followed the direction his had taken before making a sweeping arc of the area behind them. “Everything smells like smoke and soot. And it looks—well, it’s terribly sad, Tyler. It’s like stepping from a beautiful garden into a barren desert. No. It’s worse than that,” she quickly corrected herself. “At least a desert has living creatures and plants in it. I doubt you could find anything that’s alive in this.”
“Well, right now the trees appear to be dead,” he told her. “But I’m hoping the hardwoods will eventually leaf back out. The evergreens might not have fared so well, though.” He walked closer to the rocky cliff and Rosalinda followed. “Sheriff Hamilton says the fire was set here at the very base of the cliff. And now that I’m looking at it, I’m just thankful to God that it didn’t climb the face and burn toward my ranch.”
“Hmm. From what I understand, on the night of the fire, the wind was out of the south and then switched to a northwesterly direction. If that hadn’t happened, more of your land would have been burned instead of the Chaparral,” Rosalinda mused aloud. “I wonder if the arsonist had been anticipating a wind change or if he or she had even taken the wind into account.”
“That would depend on how smart he or she is,” Tyler replied. “And whether the person was trying to burn me out or the Cantrells.”
“That’s true,” Rosalinda agreed. She drew a camera from her backpack and began to snap shots from all sorts of angles.
Tyler asked, “Didn’t the fire marshal take photos?”
“I’m sure he did and I think he’s shared them with Sheriff Hamilton. But Brady wanted me to take some of my own. Just to see the place from a different perspective. Can you show me where the Cantrell property starts?”
He gestured to the area directly behind them and they began to walk side by side over the scorched ground. “Sawyer has already discovered that a slew of cedar fence posts have burned and the fence is down in places. It will all have to be repaired before my cattle and Quint’s cattle can run in this area again. But there’s hardly a hurry to get it back up just yet. There’s not a blade of grass around here for them to eat anyway. Damn it, but I’d like to get my hands on the creep who did this.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll get his due punishment in a court of law,” she said.
“If you catch him,” Tyler pointed out.
“Don’t say if, Tyler. Say when. Because I can assure you that Sheriff Hamilton won’t shut the doors on this case until it’s finished.”
“You sound very resolute.”
“When it comes to my job, I am,” she said firmly.
Apparently, her job was everything to her, he thought. At least, it seemed to him that being a deputy took up most of her life. She certainly wasn’t devoting any of it to a husband or children like most women her age. But that was her prerogative, Tyler thought. Just like his was to be a rancher. Still, there were so many things he’d like to know about the woman. But that would have to wait for a better time. When she was off duty and that shiny badge wasn’t pinned to her breast.
The two of them walked less than twenty yards when they came upon the downed fence. Studying it more closely, they could see that none of the barbed wire had been cut. It had simply collapsed because there were no posts left to support the strings of wire.
“So this is the fence that separates the Pine Ridge Ranch from the Chaparral?” she asked.
Tyler used the toe of his boot to kick the wire from their path. “One of many. Our ranches butt up to each other for several miles.”
“Several miles,” she thoughtfully repeated. “I can’t imagine anyone owning that much land. My family’s farm consists of a hundred acres and that’s considered large in my social circles.”
He grimaced. “You make it sound like I should feel like a heel for being well-off. I thought women admired men with ambition.”
“This woman admires a man with heart. The rest is unimportant.”
Heart? That was the one thing his twin brother had accused him of not having. And the very description DeeDee had pinned on him. But they’d been wrong, he thought. He’d always felt deeply about people and things; he’d just kept most of it hidden. Mainly because Trent had shown enough for both of them. Now, years later, he wasn’t comfortable wearing his emotions on his sleeve. Unless it was anger. Thanks to his father, that was the one thing he was good at expressing. But maybe it was time to change that, he thought. Maybe it was time he learned to let this woman, and others close to him, see that his heart was full of emotions. That he was equally capable of loving and longing and needing.
He replied, “I’ve been told mine is as hard as a rock.”
Momentarily lowering her camera, she cast a glance at him. “I truly doubt that.”
Her observation caught him totally off guard. The only person who’d ever really understood him was Gib. Could it be that Rosalinda recognized something in him that his own family hadn’t acknowledged?
Hell, Tyler, you’re trying to imagine things about this woman that most likely aren’t there. She looks damned good to you, but that doesn’t mean she’d ever love or understand you.
As he tried to push away the bitter voice in his head, he watched her snap more pictures of the adjoining Chaparral land. When she eventually turned and stared at the cliff, she said, “It looks to me like it would be a heck of a lot easier for someone to approach this area from the south. If the arsonist came from the direction of your ranch, he would have had to climb down like we just did. That would be difficult to do carrying a can or jug of accelerant.”
“That’s true. But the arsonist could have traveled the long way around to get here to the bluff,” Tyler pointed out.
She glanced at him. “The long way?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Walk to the east or west of the cliff until he found an easier descent.”
“I don’t believe that happened.” She turned off the camera and slipped it into her backpack. “I believe someone came up from the south, from the Chaparral, and he chose this spot because it’s sheltered. Because he thought that Mother Nature and the curvature of the cliff would naturally send the fire away from you and on to Chaparral land. But the wind changed and it ended up burning a part of your land, too. He’d not counted on the wind.”
“That’s logical. But why bother to come all the way up here?” Tyler asked. “If this person was out to burn the Cantrell’s land, why not just start it somewhere on that ranch?”
“To throw suspicion on you and your men.”
Frowning, he walked over to where she stood. “Do you really think that? Or are you saying it just to loosen my guard in hopes that I’ll let something incriminating slip?”
The chuckle that passed her lips was full of disbelief. “If I thought you had something incriminating to tell me I wouldn’t even be here with you right now.” She gestured up to the top of the cliff. “If you’re ready to start back, I’m finished down here.”
“Yes. Let’s get back up to the horses and find a place to eat our lunch.”
The climb back up the trail was even harder than going down. Rosalinda snatched and grabbed for holds on rocks and twigs, but she continued to doggedly make her way to the top.
Halfway up, she spoke between pants for air. “I can’t imagine a cow coming up this trail. It would
have to be part mountain goat.”
“You’d be surprised at the places they can travel. The cattle and horses are the ones who made this trail. One day before the snow comes again, I’ll show you some of the cattle trails that lead up into the mountain ranges. There’s an old cabin up there that used to be a prospector’s shack.”
When they finally reached the plateau, the horses were still standing where they’d left them. Their heads were slightly bowed, their eyes half-closed as they dozed and waited for their riders to return.
To let them know he appreciated their obedience, Tyler patted each horse’s neck before he retrieved the saddlebags filled with their lunch. Once he returned to Rosalinda she was wiping a hand across her sweaty brow.
“Let’s find a place in the shade to sit and eat,” he suggested.
“I am ready for a break,” she agreed. “I think I could drink a gallon of water right now.”
A few feet away from the horses, they found a rock large enough for the two of them to share. After they were seated, Tyler pulled the food and drink from the leather pouches, then handed one of the water bottles to Rosalinda.
She quickly twisted off the lid and downed half the contents. “Thanks. I feel better already.”
Gib had packed roast beef sandwiches, along with corn chips and homemade cookies that tasted like molasses. Rosalinda ate with a hearty appetite, and the sight pleased him just as much as the image of her capably riding Moonpie had. He liked that she wasn’t a fragile woman, liked that she could be beautiful and strong at the same time.
“Now do you see why I was concerned about you walking all the way out here to this place?” He handed her one of the sandwiches. “It would have been a very long trek on foot.”
She began to peel the cellophane off the sandwich. “But it would have been shorter to have walked from the road, wouldn’t it? That’s the starting point Brady used to calculate the distance. He’s not going to believe that you and I rode back here together.”
Surprise had him staring at her. “You’re going to tell him?”
“Of course. He’s one of my bosses. He has a right to know how I carried out my assignment.”
The Deputy Gets Her Man Page 7
