A quick glance around confirmed that she was alone in the cave, that whatever it was that had Cochise Red so excited, Bronco had already gone to investigate. She hoped it was relief that made her, with rapidly thumping heart, exhale a long slow breath and for a moment close her eyes.
It must be relief, relief that he wasn’t there to see her while her cheeks still burned, her body’s secret places still throbbed and every nerve felt supersensitized by the dream-caresses of a lover whose face she couldn’t quite remember. But-oh, be honest-there was something else, too, a vague sense of disappointment, of longing, of need.
She sat up and saw sunlight pouring into the mouth of the cave. Wobbly as a toddler woken too soon from a nap, she started to throw aside the blanket she’d slept in- Bronco’s blanket, the same one he’d placed around her last night just before he’d wrapped her in his arms. Then she paused, moving her fingers slowly in the blanket’s folds, feeling its coarse weave, the slight scratchiness of wool. She almost-almost-lifted it to her face; the impulse was there, in her nerves and muscles, ligaments and tendons. But she stopped herself in time. There was no need to do such a thing, when his scent was all around her, permeating the very source of her warmth and comfort.
When the stallion’s scream came again, she scrambled to her feet and lurched to the cave entrance. Dazzled by the sun’s brightness, it was a moment before she saw Bronco. He was climbing toward her up the trail, wearing just his jeans and white Stetson, with his hair tightly clubbed at the nape of his neck. A sheen of moisture gave his skin the look of oiled wood and made of his body a classic sculpture rendered in mahogany.
Her heart gave a terrifying lurch and she uttered a small but distinct gasp, which Bronco heard and mistook for alarm. He shook his head in reassurance as he offered her a succinct explanation. “Wild horses.”
This time Lauren’s gasp was of excitement and delight. “Really? Oh, my God. I didn’t know there were wild horses around here. Where? Are they…?” She was about to go plunging headlong down the trail to see for herself when he stopped her with another shake of his head.
“Can’t see ’em, but they’re out there somewhere. Red knows. He’s invaded another stallion’s territory.” Bronco grinned, which Lauren thought made him look rather endearingly like a proud father. “He’s ready to challenge the local chief for his brood mares. Did you hear him?”
“Woke me up.” She smiled back at him. And then felt vaguely foolish, standing there with the sun in her eyes, overheated and inexplicably breathless. She’d almost forgotten how potent that smile of his could be.
“I tied him up-the mares, too,” he said as he joined her on the ledge, which suddenly seemed too small and very crowded. “Don’t want to take a chance they might run off with the wild herd. It’s a long walk out of here on foot.” He offered her the canteen, cool and dripping, freshly filled from the stream on the canyon floor.
She took it from him, opened it and drank deeply. When she paused to catch the dribbles that had escaped down her chin, she discovered that Bronco was watching her narrowly. In response, her heart lurched…and quickened.
He frowned as he turned away. “I expect you’re hungry.”
She followed him into the cave, where he knelt and scooped up the saddlebags that had been her pillow. She wondered, as she watched him open one of the pouches, where he had slept-or if he’d slept at all. She wondered other things as she watched the elegant ripple and flow of muscle beneath glistening skin, such as what his skin would taste like, how it might feel on her tongue.
He glanced up as he handed her a vacuum-sealed pouch filled with some sort of liquid and, misinterpreting her expression, smiled wryly. “Doesn’t look like much, but it’ll fill your belly. It’s a protein drink designed for armies on the move.”
She nodded and took it from him, not trusting herself to speak even a single word. Her stomach growled as if mocking her; she didn’t feel as though she’d be capable of swallowing.
Bronco, meanwhile, was tearing open a package of tortillas with his teeth. He offered it to her and she took one, then ripped off a piece of the flat unleavened bread and put it in her mouth. Chewed mechanically and swallowed hard. Following Bronco’s example, she twisted off the seal on the plastic pouch and took a tentative drink. It tasted rather like a tepid vanilla malt.
“I’ve always wanted to try one of those milk shake diet plans,” she muttered. He laughed, and she felt incomprehensibly pleased.
But while he made himself comfortable, half leaning, half sitting on a sloping boulder, Lauren found herself suddenly a bundle of nerves, self-conscious and ill at ease in a way that brought back painful memories of her first boy-girl party.
Turning away from the disturbing sight of Bronco’s smooth chest and broad shoulders gleaming in reflected sunlight, she wandered slowly, nibbling tortilla and sipping protein drink with feigned nonchalance, exploring the cave’s cool shadows.
Though there wasn’t a lot to explore-the portion of the cave with a ceiling high enough to allow her to stand extended no more than eight feet from the entrance. Beyond that, smooth stone sloped unevenly down to meet the boulder-strewn floor, although there seemed to be narrow fissures that extended deeply into the canyon wall. It was while she was crouched down to investigate one of these fissures that Lauren made a wondrous discovery.
“Bronco,” she cried, “come look at this! Is this what I think it is?” Getting no immediate response, she turned and saw that he was sitting where she’d left him, silhouetted against the sunlit opening. He’d taken off his hat and turned his head to watch her.
“The paintings,” he said with an offhand shrug. “Yeah, I guess they are.”
She sat back on her heels and stared at him, both hunger and self-consciousness forgotten. “You knew they were here? You’ve been here before.” The last wasn’t a question, but feeding himself a remnant of tortilla, he nodded yes to both. She uttered an impatient and wondering “Huh!” as she crouched again to examine the sloping ceiling and trace the faint but unmistakable designs with fingers that didn’t quite touch the surface. Parallel wavy lines in smoky black, an orangy-red sun with rays, something that might have been a bird or an arrow or a streak of lightning.
“Oh,” she breathed, exasperated, “I wish I had more light.” She threw Bronco a look over her shoulder. “Are they really…”
She paused and he finished her question for her. “Indian? I guess so. They’ve been there a long time, anyway.” And he added almost nonchalantly, “We’re on reservation land here.”
There was something in his voice, something that calmed her excitement and replaced it with the wary quietness of curiosity. After a moment she turned away from the petroglyphs and moved unhurriedly back toward the front of the cave, saying with what she hoped sounded like no more than casual interest, “So you used to come here when you were a boy?”
Bronco’s smile was crooked. “I spent some time here.”
Lauren tilted her head, squinting in the brilliant sunlight as she settled against the cave wall opposite him. “Camping?”
He gave a soft ironic snort-a sound that was becoming familiar to her. “I guess you could call it that. Mostly I was running away.”
“What from?”
“I don’t know, from my life-myself, I guess. It was after my dad died. I was angry and didn’t know who to be angry at, so I decided to be angry at everybody. My grandmother Rose, she told me about this place. Said it was a good place for thinking.” He gave a laugh so sharp that it made her wince, then shrugged. “Don’t know how much of that I did here, but I guess it probably saved me from a fistfight or two. Who knows-reckless as I was, it may have even saved my life.” He rose restlessly and faced the sunlight, one hand braced on the rock above his head.
Gazing at his smooth and gleaming back, broad-shouldered and sculpted in boldly masculine lines-no sign of weakness there-Lauren felt a spreading softness inside, a gentle aching in her heart. Could it be…why would it be tender
ness?
She cleared her throat, ending a perilous silence. “Have you always been Bronco?” she lightly asked. “Has anyone ever called you Johnny?”
He laughed as if the question had taken him by surprise and glanced at her over one shoulder. “My dad’s the one that started calling me Bronco when I was just a little baby-can’t tell you why. And I guess the name just stuck. My grandmother Rose, she calls me Johnny.” His smile faded and he closed himself away again, his voice growing distant. “Gil does sometimes. I think my mom probably did, too. I was too young to remember.”
Lauren opened her mouth, then closed it and looked away without asking any of the thousand questions that trembled on her tongue. She knew she couldn’t look any longer at that powerful male body while, bewilderingly, her impulse was to go to him, take him in her arms and comfort him like a small lost child. How incongruous was that? It made no sense at all!
“I have a cousin named Rose,” she offered chattily. “Well, actually, it’s Rose Ellen, and most people call her Ellie. She’s a few years younger than I am-right now she’s in college, or anyway, she’s supposed to be. If I know her, since it’s summer, she’s probably off on a boat somewhere, saving dolphins, or maybe it’s whales. She’s kind of a nature nut. She wants to be a zoo vet…” Lauren was babbling, grabbing desperately for harmless innocuous words with which to fill the space between them that had suddenly become too emotionally charged for comfort.
But oddly enough, and to her intense relief, Bronco actually seemed to be interested in what she was saying. “Where’s she live, this cousin of yours?” he asked as he settled himself once more in the mouth of the cave, this time out of the sun.
So she told him about her dad’s family farm back in Iowa, and her aunt Lucy and uncle Luke, the newspaper columnist, and her cousins Eric and Ellie. She even told him about her father’s pioneer ancestor, Great-great-goodness knows how many greats-Grandmother Lucinda, who according to family legend saved herself and her baby from maurading Indians.
“Oops.” Too late, she halted, a hand clapped to her mouth, cheeks flaming.
But Bronco only shrugged, though his grin was crooked. “Hey, my people got in a few licks, too. It happened. That’s the past, you can’t change it. How’d she manage this miracle?”
“Well,” Lauren said, her heart fluttering with laughter and an excitement she didn’t at all understand, “according to family legend, she set fire to her own house, then tied her baby up in her apron and climbed down the well and hid there while the fire burned all the way to the river…”
And the way she told it, Bronco thought, it did have the singsong quality of legend, reminding him of the stories his people told, handed down from generation to generation, unchanging and strangely comforting in their familiarity.
He asked her questions, being careful not to reveal how much he already knew, and she told him other legends of her family. How her aunt Lucy had found her future husband hiding out in her barn while fleeing from the gangsters and corrupt politicians who had firebombed his Chicago town house in an attempt to silence his public campaign against them. And how tiny Aunt Lucy defeated the bad guys who’d kidnapped her by setting fire to the empty high-rise they were holding her in. How her ex-marine uncle Ed, whom everyone called Wood, came to meet his wife, Chris, while in the hospital recovering from a truck accident in Bosnia, and how he’d managed to save Chris from a stalker even though wheelchair-bound.
“That’s quite a family,” Bronco said when she seemed to run out of stories. “And now just think-your old man’s on his way to being president.”
At that her eyes jerked away from his, focusing, instead, on her hands, clasped around one drawn-up knee. Her lips tightened and he could see her throat move with her efforts to swallow an angry retort. He felt a dangerous and powerful desire to comfort and reassure her, to bare his soul, to tell her everything. It was because he didn’t dare do so that he needled her sarcastically, instead.
“With a family tradition like that, guess we should have expected he’d try and make like a hero, sending in the troops to rescue his little girl. I’m surprised he didn’t come himself. Like the cavalry. Flags flying and guns blazing…”
He watched the color of anger flare in her cheeks, then slowly fade, and felt the cold burn of shame in his belly when she quietly replied, “Believe it or not, my father is an incredibly decent and honorable man.” Her lips quirked slightly, flirting with a smile. “And pretty darn boring, if you want to know the truth. Actually-” she shifted, as if physically casting off the unease that had crept between them “-the only exciting thing that ever happened in our family, before Dad went into politics, anyway, was when he and my mother got divorced. That was an interesting time. My brother and I were total brats-Dad didn’t know what to do, until Dixie showed up.”
“Dixie? That would be…?”
“My stepmom. She’s the best. She pretty much changed everything.” Again her gaze slid away and she grew silent, not with anger this time, but with remembering.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice suddenly tight and air-starved. Because this time it was out of his own need to know. “Between your parents.”
She shot him a look, and her voice went up a notch in pitch, as if the question had surprised her. “Why did they get divorced?” Then she went on, and he knew it wasn’t surprise, after all, that gave her voice that brittle quality. “My mother left us. She ran off with another man, that’s why.”
Bronco said nothing. A pulse thumped against the walls of his belly, and he slowly shook his head. He knew the sound in her voice now, very well. It was the sound of anger. Of hurt.
She laughed, a soft musical note that didn’t sound at all like the cry of pain it was. “Yeah, can you believe that? Ironic, isn’t it? Both of us, suffering from the same mother issues. I was going to tell you yesterday in the meadow, but I never got the chance.”
He cleared his throat, searched for something, anything, to say and at last came up with, “How old were you?” Even though he already knew, roughly.
“I was ten,” she said, confirming it. “Old enough to be angry, rather than upset by it all. My brother, Ethan, was younger-it was really hard on him. He sort of regressed to being a baby for a while-cried over everything, sucked his thumb…stuff like that. It was Dixie who brought him out of it. And then, after my dad won custody of us, my mother tried to take us, anyway.”
“What do you mean, she tried? She kidnapped you?”
“Well,” Lauren said dryly, “as I said, she tried. I-we ran away, Ethan and I.”
We ran away. Such a simple unadorned declaration. But Bronco understood, as he gazed in silence at the young woman before him, that even as a child she must have been a force to reckon with. How wise he’d been not to underestimate her.
“How come you didn’t want to live with your mother?” he asked. “I’d have thought…being a girl…”
“No.” The word was clipped, final. Then she shrugged and grudgingly explained, “I told you-I was angry with her.”
“Sounds to me like you still are.”
She lifted her head and stared at him, defiantly, almost, and didn’t reply. After a moment Bronco picked up a granite chip from the floor of the cave and hurled it into the sunshine. He listened to the skittering noises as gravel loosened by the larger stone went tumbling down the canyon wall, then said in a hard emotionless voice, “Both our mothers left us, but we haven’t got the same issues, you and me.” He could feel her look, so he turned to meet it. “When your mother left, you blamed her. When mine left I blamed myself.”
Her eyes seemed to darken the longer he looked into them, the way the world grows darker when the sun moves behind clouds. In a very small voice she said, “Why is that, I wonder?”
He thought, I don’t know, but it’s the difference between us.
After a moment Lauren said, “I’m curious. Why didn’t your father go after your mother? I mean, if she didn’t want to live out here
, why couldn’t the two of you go and live with her somewhere else?”
Bronco held himself very still and stared at the canyon walls, studded with the dark blots of juniper and piñon pines, and it was a long time before he said, “I don’t know, but I think for my dad it was a matter of self-esteem. He didn’t believe in himself enough. Didn’t believe he could make it in the white man’s world.” And Bronco understood that, because he’d felt that way himself once upon a time. But no more. No more.
“And you?” Her voice had gone quiet again. “When you got old enough, did you ever try to find her?”
He laughed, a soft wondering sound, surprised at the ease with which she’d found her way to the center of his soul. “I did, you know.” He’d gone looking for her just after ranger school, so full of pride in his accomplishment, wearing his badge of honor-his brand-new black beret. Ready at last to show her he was worthy of her love. Ready at last to forgive…
“And?”
“I found out she’d died,” he answered gently. “The year before.” He couldn’t look at Lauren’s face, but her silence was eloquent enough.
When, after several long moments she still hadn’t spoken, he ventured an inquiring look at her along one shoulder. “What about you? You still keep in touch with your mom?”
Her expression hardened, becoming almost childlike in its stubbornness. “Not really,” she said. And her voice was as frozen as her face, belying the spot of color that burned bright and hot in each cheek. She rose to her feet, dusting her hands, not looking at him; clearly, as far as she was concerned, the conversation was over.
Which was altogether fine with Bronco. Why should he care if she got along with her mother? It was none of his business.
Though he could have told her that the burden of anger and unforgiveness she was carrying around with her was going to take its toll on her eventually in all kinds of ways, and that she’d be a whole lot happier letting go of it now while she still had a chance to make it right, instead of waiting, as he had, until it was too late. He could have told her, but he didn’t. He knew she didn’t want to hear it, not from him. Not right now.
The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda Page 16
