Montana Mavericks, Books 1-4

by Diana Palmer

  But the fierceness that glittered from under his half-closed lashes matched the ardor that consumed her.

  “Now,” she demanded. “Come to me now.”

  He drew a ragged breath, then cupped her face with one hand and settled his lips on hers again. He moved over her, rubbing his body against hers through the clothing that separated them. She tore frantically at his shirt until she had it open. He lowered his weight on his arms until his chest pressed like a solid sheet of fire against hers.

  She closed her eyes again as savage heat poured over her and held on to him as tightly as she could.

  All the bright dreams of her youth rose inside her, demanding notice, seeking satisfaction. No, no, she didn’t believe in those anymore…but it would be easy…so easy to fall into those gentle delusions once more…so very easy….

  “You’re beautiful,” he murmured over and over to her. “No other woman does this to me…makes me forget everything but the moment…makes me so wild I’d die before I let you go….”

  “Yes,” she whispered, barely hearing his words over the roar in her ears. “Oh, please…”

  When his hand settled between their bodies, she twisted to the side to give him room. He unfastened the snap and zipper of her jeans. She held her breath as he slipped a hand inside, sliding under the lace band of her French bikinis, and caressed her abdomen.

  “Judd,” she said with a sigh. She ran her hands under his shirt and stroked all along his back, then pulled him hard against her.

  “I’ve dreamed of doing this,” he admitted harshly. “Every minute of every day. Thoughts of you tag along with me no matter what I’m doing. I think of your skin—how smooth it is, how pale, as pale as milk, and soft…so soft.”

  He pushed lower, cupping her mound in his palm. He stroked her intimately, causing her to murmur and writhe as the terrible need drove her toward completion with him.

  “Come to me,” she demanded. “Please, love, come to me.”

  He took a deep breath and pushed up from her with a powerful thrust of his arms. She opened her eyes and looked at him. Their gazes locked as he stood and tossed the loosened shirt aside. His hands went to his belt, but his eyes never left hers.

  She waited anxiously, afraid it was all a dream, that she was going to wake and the moment disappear.

  The telephone rang instead.

  They both jumped. Judd cursed, low and eloquent. He glanced at the phone in irritation.

  “I have to answer,” he said.

  She nodded.

  He picked up the instrument and spoke his name, then listened. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  The magic evaporated. A shiver passed over her. She sat up and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “There’s been a bad car accident. The hospital needs blood. I have to go.” He reached down, picked up his shirt and pulled it on, fastening it with angry, impatient movements.

  She looked around for her own clothing.

  He brought her shirt and bra to her. “Will you stay?”

  His voice was so low she had to strain to hear it. She hesitated, one part of her desperately wanting to say yes, another part glad of the reprieve and a chance to regain her senses.

  She shook her head. “I think I’d better go.”

  A stark expression flickered over his face and was gone. He nodded. “I’ll drop you by your place on the way.”

  “Do you think…should I go to the hospital? If they need blood…” she added at his quick glance.

  He shrugged. “I suppose.”

  She slid from the bed and, with her back to him, pulled the undergarment on. She heard his footsteps behind her, then on the stairs.

  “I’ll meet you at the truck,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Fine.” She finished with her clothing and ran quickly down the steps and outside. Judd waited in the truck, the motor running, the lights on, ready to go. She ran across the lawn and climbed in.

  He turned the police lights on, but not the siren as he took Route 17 to Highway 191, which ran by the county hospital.

  When they reached the hospital, she saw two ambulances already at the emergency entrance. Another could be seen in the distance, coming north on the highway, its siren wailing through the night.

  She followed Judd inside.

  Sterling McCallum was there, talking to a doctor. When Sterling moved aside, she recognized the sharp profile of Kane Hunter. She’d known Kane on the reservation. He was a couple of years younger than she was and completely dedicated to healing.

  “What happened?” Judd asked when he came abreast of the two men. He left enough room for her to join the group.

  “Drag racing,” Sterling replied. “The cars sideswiped. One flipped over, the other crossed the median into oncoming traffic.”

  “Kids,” Judd concluded.

  Sterling nodded. “Drinking. Whites and Indians.”

  Kane muttered under his breath. Tracy felt his frustration with his tribal members in particular and with youth in general. He ran an alcohol-prevention program on the reservation. “Can you guys donate some blood? We’re going to need a lot.”

  Tracy said yes when the other two did.

  “Hello, Tracy,” Kane said. A smile warmed his face momentarily. “I knew you were back, but I haven’t had time to look you up yet. It’s good to see you again.”

  They had no chance to talk more. The third ambulance arrived and delivered its load of injured. Kane, head of the trauma team, went to check on a youth who looked about seventeen. Blood was all over him. A girl was helped out of the front of the vehicle. She held a compress to her head.

  A hand closed over Tracy’s wrist. “This way,” Judd said.

  A nurse took them along a corridor to another room. With quiet efficiency, she checked their vital signs, then settled them in reclining chairs rather like those in a dentist’s office. In a few minutes, Tracy and the two men were hooked up.

  Other people arrived as the news spread over the town grapevine. When Sterling was done, another donor took his place at once. Tracy smiled as she recognized her old friend.

  “Tracy, Judd,” Jackson Hawk greeted them. His dark eyes flashed from one to the other. “Everyone is turning out for the emergency, I see.”

  Tracy felt heat creep into her cheeks. She sensed that Jackson saw much more. She had assumed everyone in the emergency room would be too busy to notice that she’d arrived at the hospital with Judd, but that was probably wishful thinking. In a small town like Whitehorn, the hospital staff would just file the information away until they got a chance to comment on it.

  When she and Judd had separated before the divorce, the news had spread like a flash fire. Telephones had started ringing minutes after he’d packed and walked out the door.

  “Okay, you’re finished,” the nurse announced. She removed the needle, pressed cotton and a bandage over the vein and cautioned Tracy about sitting up too quickly.

  When she and Judd left the room, they went into the cafeteria, where orange juice, coffee and cookies were laid out for the donors to replenish their fluids and blood sugar. Other people—family members and those who couldn’t give blood—were there, too. As in the past, an emergency drew the county together.

  Tracy remembered coming to this room for cup after cup of coffee while the surgical team tried to save Thadd. The town had turned out for them, too.

  Several people called to them. She stopped and talked to former neighbors she hadn’t seen in years. A cup of juice was pressed into her hand. She glanced into dark eyes that observed her closely, but without discernible emotion.

  “Thank you,” she said to Judd. She quickly drank the juice down as a slight dizziness washed over her. She wasn’t sure the dizzy spell was from the drop in her blood pressure or from the way Judd looked at her. The moment passed.

  When he walked off, Tracy watched him go, aware of a tug at her heartstrings. He was silent, as attentive as ever…and wary.

&
nbsp; She understood the latter. They were daily becoming more entangled in the hot caldron of mutual desire. She was aware of him as she moved about the room, chatting with acquaintances and finally sitting to eat a piece of cake with Lily Mae Wheeler.

  “That Judd,” Lily Mae said in approval. “He’s a rare type of man, he is.” She sighed, then glanced at Tracy from the corner of her eyes. “I didn’t see that little blue car you drive in the parking lot.”

  “I rode over with Judd,” Tracy admitted, giving Lily Mae a bland, innocent look.

  “Working late, weren’t you?”

  Tracy refrained from telling the friendly, nosy widow where to get off. “Um,” she said noncommittally, not wanting to tell an outright lie. She patted back a yawn and realized how tired she was. She glanced around the crowded room.

  Judd was talking to two couples, one Anglo, the other Indian. Parents of the injured teenagers, she assumed. They looked ravaged by despair and anger brought on by the helplessness of the situation. She knew the feeling.

  “He’s a handsome man,” Lily Mae continued. “Some woman is sure to nab him soon.”

  Tracy forced a smile. “He’s not a stray dog to be taken in and made a pet of.”

  “No, he’s more like a mustang, smart and wary as they come. But he could be roped in by a sharp woman. He’s lonely…and he’s a man, the type who feels responsible for his partner. If he were lured into bed, he’d marry the woman…if that’s what she wanted. Oh, there’s the new teacher. Have you met her?” Lily Mae stood.

  “No,” Tracy said. “I think I’ll head home.”

  She saw Sterling McCallum going toward the door. Maybe she could hitch a ride. She asked Lily Mae to tell Judd she was leaving, bade the woman good-night and rushed for the door.

  “Sterling,” she called, racing down the steps and across the drive to catch him before he left.

  He paused at his car.

  “Could I get a ride home?” She steadied herself with a hand on the vehicle. Running had made her dizzy.

  “Be careful,” he cautioned. “It’ll take a few hours to build your blood volume back up.”

  “Yes, I keep forgetting. It’s been awhile since I was a donor.” She smiled at him. “I’m okay now. Do you have time to drop me by the cottage?”

  His hesitation was brief. “Sure. Hop in.” He opened the door for her.

  She felt like a criminal sneaking away from the crime scene as they reached the highway and accelerated. A few minutes later he was pulling up at the cottage.

  “Jessica wants to know if you’ll come out for supper tomorrow night—”

  “Oh, I just remembered. I’m supposed to go to Jackson’s house. I’ve never met his wife.”

  “Um, I think Jessica was going to call them, too. Let me check with her.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the ride.” She jumped out as soon as he stopped. With a wave over her shoulder, she dashed for the house.

  Once inside, she locked the dead bolt behind her. She felt as if she’d just returned from combat. And was lucky to be back in one piece.

  She washed and changed into her pajamas and robe, then sat on the sofa in the living room and turned the lamp off. In the dark, she contemplated the evening just past. She wasn’t in one piece, she realized. She’d lost her heart to that wild mustang, the sheriff of Whitehorn County.

  Tracy stood in the council office, a cup of coffee in her hand. Frank Many Horses—Uncle Frank to her—was seated at his desk. They were discussing the case.

  “So you don’t think the bones belonged to an Indian?” the tribal chairman asked, frowning thoughtfully at her.

  “Well, I can’t be positive,” she admitted. “The thigh bone has a slight twist to it, which indicates Caucasian rather than Mongoloid, which usually has more of a twist. But those are generalities.”

  “Jackson tells me you could do DNA tests?”

  She nodded.

  “The parents are anxious to find out if the bones belong to their son. He disappeared fifteen years ago.”

  “If I can find the skull, I’ll be able to tell more without running tests.”

  “They will pay,” Frank Many Horses added. “Their son’s remains, if it is their son, must have a proper burial.”

  “Kane can take blood samples from the parents to check against the sample from the marrow of the bones,” Jackson interjected. “If you will approve the tests.”

  “Of course,” she murmured.

  She stayed another thirty minutes out of courtesy and spoke of trivialities such as the weather, which was threatening rain. Jackson accompanied her outside to her car when she left.

  “Jessica called Maggie and asked if we would come to her house tonight for dinner rather than trying to have a cookout. She said Sterling had already invited you.”

  “Yes, he mentioned it at the hospital last night.”

  “Good. Sterling said to tell you Judd would pick you up this evening around seven. Okay?”

  Tracy murmured that it was, but her heart was jumping around in her chest. She hadn’t gone by the office this morning because she hadn’t wanted to face Judd after their tempestuous episode at his house. Now she was to be his date for the evening, apparently.

  And would most likely end up in his bed.

  After saying her farewells, she drove out to the site and went immediately to the ledge where she and Jackson had found the thigh and hipbones. She laid out her tools—tweezers, trowel, brush, magnifying glass and a small screen nailed to a wooden frame.

  She began the laborious job of sifting through the dirt. Two hours later, she wondered if this was a good idea. Her back ached, her allergies were making her eyes and nose itch and the air was hot and ever more humid.

  Hearing a noise, she glanced up. The clouds were spreading over the mountains like the gathering of a witches’ coven.

  It made her uneasy.

  She went back to work. At last, finding a suspicious patch of darker soil under the eroded end of the ledge, she took some samples. After sifting more of the dark soil through the screen, she checked the debris left on top of the sieve.

  A hair.

  Using the tweezers, she carefully put her find in one of the small sample bottles and stored it in her pack. When she went back to the hole under the ledge, she heard a sound like a moan. The hair stood up on the back of her neck. She glanced all around.

  A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.

  She studied the cloud formations, then went back to work. A squirrel chirred loudly, then went silent, the racket broken off as if the creature had been choked.

  Tracy shook her head in exasperation. Nerves. Hers were reacting to every little thing today.

  With her senses acutely tuned to her surroundings, she scooped another trowel of dirt onto the wire screen and sifted it. She found a few more hairs.

  Curious, she took out her magnifying glass and examined the evidence. The hairs were short, dark brown to sandy blond. Male, she concluded. Caucasian. Sun-bleached hair. A cowboy, perhaps.

  Now if she could only find the skull. Teeth were the most reliable visual method of identification.

  Something hit the side of her neck and slipped down her shoulder to land in her lap. A stone.

  She stared at it as if she’d never seen one before, then looked up at the sky. Strong updrafts could sometimes pick up rocks and debris and deposit them miles away.

  Except there was no wind blowing up the lip of the bluff.

  As she turned to look back at the woods, another pebble hit her. She gasped and put a hand to her cheek. It hadn’t hurt, but she was alarmed. Who was throwing rocks at her?

  She stayed low as she swung around for a full view behind her. Nothing. She surveyed the woods, noting the absolute quiet.

  Her heart began a fast, heavy pounding. It seemed like a warning. She clenched the sample jar as she tried to talk herself out of this foolishness.

  Honestly, her imagination was running away with her. There was no danger here
in the woods. She’d been working up here for days without any disturbances.

  Yeah, but she was getting close to identifying the bones. And everybody in the country knew it after the TV and radio broadcasts yesterday, full of speculation about a break in the case at any time.

  She was about to start back to work when a jingling sound started in the woods. Her breath caught. She forced herself to be calm.

  The jingling came again, but to her left this time. She glanced that way. Then it came from the right. She swung her head around, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  Then the jingles started again, coming from both directions at once and increasing in volume.

  Fear crawled down her back like a thousand-legged insect. Her skin seemed alive with them.

  Without taking her eyes from the woods, she reached out and pulled her day pack toward her. She removed the rock pick, then slipped the container of hairs inside and zipped the pocket.

  The jingling stopped all at once.

  Tracy felt the silence as a threat. She got to her feet, her mind busy picking out an escape route over the rough terrain. Luckily, from her recent explorations, she knew every rock and cranny.

  The bluff presented the greatest danger. The rocky outcropping was the highest point above the creek below. If she fell from there—or was pushed—the fall would kill her.

  The jingling started again, first left, then right, then both. Then came laughter. Raucous and cruel, it reverberated from the rocks and trees until it seemed to surround her.

  Fear flew all around her, scattering her thoughts so that she wanted to cower under the ledge and hide from the terror that stalked the woods.

  Judd, help! She instinctively sent the plea out, directing it toward the town and the man who meant safety to her.

  As if his spirit were suddenly there, she felt calm return. A coldness came over her. Someone was trying to frighten her, and she was letting them!

  She straightened up, pushing the day pack under the ledge with her foot. She didn’t want anything to trip her if she had to move fast.

  When the laughter and the jingling stopped again, she was prepared. Tightening her grip on the pick, she waited, alert and ready to bolt if she had a chance, willing to fight if she had to.