Against his will, Mac remembered with dizzying vividness the softness of that mouth, and had to rest a hand on the wall. When he could think again, he read understanding and compassion on her face. She looked...involved. As if she really cared. And he didn't get it. Husband-stealing bimbos didn't talk like this.
"Almost as if she felt guilty about something," Poppy finished.
Alice guilty? Mac's hands clenched and his friendly thoughts evaporated. If Poppy thought she could blame all the problems on Alice...
"Guilty?" Tom sounded as doubtful as Mac felt. "No. What could she be guilty of? We've lived in each other's pockets for five years, ever since we settled here on the ranch. I'd know if she'd been seeing another man. There's no way she could have had an affair." He choked the words out as though they hurt.
"There are other things to feel guilty about, you know."
"Alice wouldn't do any of them."
Good for Tom. Mac smiled at the automatic defense.
"Just one possibility." Poppy shrugged, and he way the fabric of her shirt slid over her breast diverted Mac for a moment.
Tom sighed and got to his feet. "I'd better get some lunch." He pulled Poppy up. "I'll talk to Alice."
Mac tiptoed into the hall and headed for Poppy. She stood with her back to him, gazing into the distance.
"You and Tom were out on the porch," he said without preamble when he reached her.
She lifted one eyebrow. "That's illegal in Montana?"
"Of course not. But I want to talk to you. What the hell do you mean, accusing my sister of—whatever?"
"You were eavesdropping."
"Sue me. But first tell me what you think Alice did."
"I don't know. I asked a question, that's all."
"Alice wouldn't do anything to feel guilty about."
"Your sister's above being human? All right, all right." She threw up her hands and he knew she'd seen the anger flare in his eyes. "I asked Tom that question—not you, let me point out—because sometimes she gets an expression like she knows something bad is going to happen. Or like she's done something bad."
He couldn't argue with that. He'd seen it himself. "Damn. I wish I knew what to do."
"Let them work it out for themselves?"
"But I've always looked after her. Always." He watched her gaze fasten on a fat black bee that buzzed from one purple lupine to another. A breeze scented with sun-warmed pine stirred her hair. She looked concerned. Worried. Beautiful. "So are you going to leave Tom alone now?"
In the space of a heartbeat, her expression went from open and caring to shuttered. "Talk to him," she said.
"I will."
"Mac, I'm not the problem. I'm not."
"But if you come between them—"
She looked up at him, and he saw only sympathy and concern in her expression. "You're afraid they'll get a divorce?"
"The whole point is family. They're my family. If they aren't happy, I don’t have a family."
She took his hand, her fingers soft and warm and comforting. "You must be the best brother in the world. But Alice is all grown up now. She and Tom have to work their relationship out for themselves. You don't get to play."
She sounded genuinely concerned. He wanted to believe—he did believe her. That shouldn't have lightened the little cube of fear he'd carried ever since Alice's phone call, but it did.
He leaned over and kissed her. He meant the gesture to be nothing more than a friendly acknowledgment of his gratitude, but the instant his lips touched her, the instant her scent and warmth flooded his senses, the kiss changed. He tried to say her name, but it came out a low groan of need. His hands closed on her shoulders.
Chapter 13
Tom stuck his head through the door and cleared his throat. "You riding this afternoon?"
Mac's ideas for the rest of the day didn't include anyone except Poppy. "Get Moses to go. I'm busy. Poppy's busy."
"Now there's a surprise." Tom didn't exactly look happy, but he left.
Mac turned back to Poppy. "How about going prospecting?"
"Gold? You have gold?"
Ah, easterners and gold. The eternal lure. "Not gold. Remember the sapphires? Want to go find one of your own?"
"Here? But Tom said—"
"We keep a pretty low profile on the claim. It's the one place we never take guests."
"You’re going to show it to me?"
"Yep. The well-kept family secret will be in your possession."
In the garage, she inspected the sturdy, topless Jeep. Her gaze lingered over the hefty winch on the front bumper, and he wondered if she'd ever seen one before. She looked at the vehicle as though it were from outer space. "It looks like it could climb trees."
"It just about can, but there's a road." Sort of. "Fasten your seat belt and hang on."
He leaned across to check that she'd pulled her seatbelt tight enough. It gave him the perfect opportunity to trail his fingers down her leg and kiss her. Eventually he started the engine and drove onto a rough track that wound past his almost-house and back into the hills.
"Not much traffic out here," she said, after the road had faded to two barely perceptible dents in the ground.
"Nope. As I said, we never bring guests out here. And no one else drives on the ranch property."
She slid a sideways glance at him that made his heart stutter. He stopped at a gate barring the road. "Ranch lesson: opening gates is the passenger's job. But this one's locked. I'll get it." He unlocked and opened the gate and drove through. When he stopped, she jumped out and closed it, and he realized she never shirked her share of a job. All too rare a quality in the women he'd known. When she climbed back into her seat, he said, "You get an A in gates."
"Logic. You leave them the way you find them, right?"
"Right. I like smart women." And there weren't many people as restful to be with as Poppy. He jerked the car into gear, uncomfortable with the direction his thoughts were taking.
Past the gate, the road got rougher and rougher until her hands clenched around the roll bar so hard the knuckles turned white. "I think I see why you don't bring guests out here," she gasped between bounces.
He kept his eyes on the rough track. "The road isn't the reason. We're just being selfish, honey. If every guest took home a handful of sapphires, it wouldn't take long before we'd have to change our name from Montana Blue to Montana Plain Old Dirt, and who'd pay money to stay here then?"
"Well, I'm honored." The next bump would have tossed her out if she hadn't been belted in. "I think."
"You'll be the only guest who's ever been out here." The sun hung high and hot when he stopped the Jeep at one end of a long, grassy mountain meadow. "Here we are."
She unclamped her hands and looked around. "It looks like a hundred other little valleys we've been through this morning."
He tried to imagine what it looked like to her city-bred eyes. He saw enough jewel-blue sky, snow-topped mountains, and forest in a thousand shades of emerald, enough space and freedom, to make a man's heart stumble. If she couldn't see beyond the lack of pavement and fancy stores... A deep, yearning ache for her to love this country as much as he did filled him.
She looked dubious, but strolled over to the stream that purled over rocks a few feet in front of the Jeep, knelt, and scooped up a double handful of water to splash her face.
"You were expecting something more like Tiffany's?"
"No, but...if there are sapphires, shouldn't it look special somehow? Or is this a snipe hunt? I've read about people hauling victims out into the country to catch imaginary birds or fish while they go home and laugh themselves sick."
He put his hands on her shoulders. The thought of her wandering lost and alone in the mountains put extra depth in his voice. "I wouldn't leave you out here alone." Wouldn't ever leave her. Panic jolted through him. Where had that come from?
She looked up at the unexpectedly serious note in his voice, and he had to swallow the words that were on the tip of his tongue. He had t
o remember that he didn't do permanent. So what in the name of all grand hell had he done, bringing her out here, letting her in on the best-kept family secret, thinking thoughts that began with l and ended with o-v-e?
He turned away and lifted two shovels out of the back of the jeep. "Here. You carry those and I'll get the screens. This way. And watch out for snakes."
That erased the questions he'd seen in her eyes. But she followed him along the stream without any of the tiresome shrieking or dithering he'd come to expect from dudes. Every time he glanced over his shoulder, she walked right behind him, placing her feet carefully among the rocks, her gaze fixed on the ground.
No one had been out here since last summer, so the hunting should be good. He really hoped they'd find her a first-class sapphire. He dumped the screens beside a small pool, where the stream widened and slowed. "Here we are. The gem store."
She looked at the water, running clear over rocks and gravel. "Definitely nothing like Shreve's—Shreve, Crump, and Low is Boston's answer to Tiffany, for you westerners." She sounded downright snooty but her grin spoiled the effect, and he felt a tug at his heart. "Where do the sapphires come from?"
"Not sure. If geologists have figured it out, they haven't let the rest of us in on it. The crystals weather out of some rock somewhere and get washed down into the stream. They're heavy, so they collect in the slow parts of the stream. Just like gold. We can pan for them, just like panning for gold."
"Sounds like work."
"Sure. The fun is in the anticipation. You never know what you might find. Sometimes what you think is a plain old rock is a rare jewel. You can't always judge by first appearances." Her eyes widened and he knew he'd said something significant. To distract himself, he wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and tugged her close enough to kiss.
"Anticipation," she repeated when the kiss ended, her voice breathy, and when she opened her eyes, it took a minute for them to focus.
He enjoyed a moment of politically incorrect triumph before the certainty that this was more than sex slammed into him, an earthquake that left him reeling inside.
She didn't seem to notice, just poked at the gravel with the toe of her boot. "You're saying I can anticipate sapphires in this pile of dirt?"
"Yeah. Probably. But we have to work for them." He stacked the screens and scooped a shovel full of gravel into the top one.
He knelt by the stream shaking the screens, his mind spun out of control. What the hell had gone wrong with him today? Every thought in his head seemed to start with love or forever, and those were two words he never wanted to hear in the same week again. Not until now. And there he went again, dammit.
When he separated the screens, she knelt beside him to pick through the largest bits of rock. "Nothing." She sounded disappointed.
"Most of the sapphires here are pea size or smaller."
He gave her a screen loaded with smaller gravel and moved behind her to guide the proper motion for shaking the screen under water. Up and down, back and forth, a rocking motion designed to concentrate the heaviest rocks on the bottom. The hypnotic, arousing rhythm and her firm, round bottom nestled against his thighs might have put a quick end to gem hunting if she hadn't also managed to splash enough icy water to drench herself and him.
"That's enough. Ready for the next step?" he asked, grateful for something to think about other than the way her shirt plastered against her front like a second skin.
She grinned up at him, looking as happy as a horse in tall clover in spite of the ice cold water.
"Let me show you." He took the screen from her. "It's hard to describe." He gave the screen a final swirl, and in one smooth motion flipped it over so that the contents ended up undisturbed on the ground, the heaviest gravel now on top. "And it takes practice."
She squatted on her heels and studied the little mound of gravel. "Did we get any?"
"Sure did. See those stones that are glassy looking? That kind of pink one, and the dull blue one. And the one that's kind of barrel shaped?" He handed her a pair of tweezers and small glass vial.
One by one, Poppy picked up the pebbles he indicated and dropped them in the vial for safe keeping. "These are sapphires?" She sounded as if she didn't believe him.
"Would I lie to you?"
"I don't know. Would you?" She looked up at him, and the bright morning stopped, frozen in a moment around them.
"No," he said slowly. "I wouldn't. Would you lie to me?"
Red washed across Poppy's face and she dropped her gaze.
Mac reached down and pulled her to her feet. "I don't like being lied to, Poppy," he said.
"No one does. I haven't exactly lied to you, but..."
"There are things you won't tell me. I know. But you will one of these days. You have to."
"I would if I could." She held his gaze for a moment and then looked at the tiny barrel-shaped stone in her fingers. "So this is really a sapphire?"
"Yep. Inside that dull surface there could be a gem that rivals anything in the world." At the look of doubt on her face, he added, "Or not."
"It's not even blue."
"Sapphires come in all colors except ruby red."
"Well, I guess you know about these things." She dropped it into the glass vial. "But isn't the jewelry store easier?"
She didn't fool him. She glowed like a kid in a toy store. "Yes, but not nearly as much fun. Think what you'd miss. The ride up here, carrying all that gear, shoveling tons of rock, getting soaked to the ears in ice cold water."
"However could I resist?" She laughed up at him. "Let's do another one."
Mac put his arm around her. It felt...right.
Her laughter faded into a thoughtful look. "When I first got off the plane, this country scared me, but now, well, I guess it sounds stupid, but there's so much more sky here than in Boston. I feel bigger, somehow."
The sudden race of his heart had nothing to do with climbing hills or altitude or even her tempting nearness. "It doesn't sound stupid at all," he said, and his voice sounded far away in his own ears. "It sounds like the way I feel about this country. I've been going crazy living in the city." He wanted to know if she'd ever think of living here, but habit—and all those suspicions—kept his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth and the words didn't come.
"Why do you do it then?"
He rubbed his fingers together in the age-old gesture for 'money'. "Alice and Tom and I own a company. I run it, they run the ranch. That's what kept us afloat until the ranch started paying its own way. But now the company's for sale and I'll be living here as soon as we unload it. I can't wait to get out of Denver and move into my own house." And there was that image of a red-headed woman standing in the doorway again, welcoming him home.
His face must have shown some of the confusion he felt, because she glanced at him and quickly looked away. Her gaze fixed on the distant mountains and after a moment she said, "I'm beginning to understand that attitude."
He handed her the shovel and watched her dump a load of gravel into the top screen. She bent to the task, her face alight. Her motion got smoother, more competent, with each load, and less water went down her front.
He had a sudden vision of Poppy curled up on the sofa, intent on planning the breeding of a new crop of foals. She'd have the same intense expression, and she'd look up at him when he came in the room, and smile, and... His heart kicked over like a faulty engine and for a moment he couldn't breathe.
When the screen shook, so did Poppy. He could have watched the tantalizing, seductive shimmy all day, but it wouldn't have been fair to make her work that hard. "I think that's ready to turn out," he said roughly.
She did a creditable job of inverting the screen, and he knelt to peer at the little pile of gravel. He leaned closer to look over her shoulder. Suddenly she turned her head and flashed a smile at him. "It's like Christmas!"
"Don't get your hopes up too high. There aren't any guarantees in this business. Remember, this pan might have noth
ing but rocks." But her enthusiasm caught him up and before he knew it, he knelt beside her, poking through the wet gravel. "This is just like watching one of my mares foal—maybe this time it'll be a champion."
"That's right. Tom told me you spend a lot of time figuring out the breedings."
"Interested? That's your specialty, isn't it?"
She nodded as she poked through the gravel.
He saw the marble-sized stone a split second before Poppy did, and drew his hand back, leaving it for her. She pounced on the bright orangey red pebble like the barn cat on a mouse. "Oh look, oh look, oh, oh, oh," she said breathlessly and held it up. In her excitement she lost her balance and ended up sitting in the little stream, icy water riffling around her. "Isn't it beautiful?"
Mac meant to tell her that she'd found a once-in-a-lifetime stone, one that wouldn't even need heat treating to bring out the color. Instead, he looked at the pure joy in her glowing face, at the wisps of fiery hair that had come loose and straggled around her face, at the smudge of mud where she'd swiped at her cheek, and knew he'd lost his heart forever. "Not half as beautiful as you." He pulled her up out of the stream and held out the vial so she could drop the stone into it. His hands trembled when he snapped it into his shirt pocket. "Poppy," he said in a voice as hoarse and unsteady as his hands he raised to cup her face. "Poppy."
She looked up at the deep note in his voice. The lighthearted delight of her expression melted into something serious and joyful and...there was that forever thing again. He swallowed past the lump of emotion that clogged his throat and kissed her, the kiss saying all the things he couldn't put into words.
Not just his woman. His woman forever, God willing, even if he couldn't say it. He pulled her up out of the water and into his arms. "I love you," he muttered between kisses, and began peeling away her sodden shirt. "I love you."
He felt shock zing through her and terror gripped him. What had he done? His breath came short and he pulled back to look at her.
Tears glimmered in her eyes. "I love you too," she whispered and closed her eyes. Two fat, crystal tears hung for a moment from her eyelashes, and he leaned down to kiss them away before he lifted her and lowered her to a soft patch of grass. "I didn't think I'd ever hear you say that."
Reckless Promise Page 16
