Eric leaned casually against the door frame, watching her with those dark, disturbing eyes of his. “You’re up early.”
His voice sounded husky. Sleepy. Very sexy.
“I had chores to do.”
“At the crack of dawn?”
“This is a ranch, not the city. We don’t sleep till noon here.”
“Uh-huh.” He had on his jeans, caked in dried mud since they’d gone unwashed last night, but no shirt. He folded his arms over his bare chest. The bruises had faded around the edges a little, turning from purple and indigo to lavender and khaki-green. “I don’t suppose you were thinking about going somewhere without me,” he finished.
“Of course not.” Not that she wouldn’t like to. She lifted the wheelbarrow handles and rolled it toward the door. He moved just in time to save his kneecaps.
Mariah’s face grazed by a wide expanse of bronze skin and collarbone as she passed. “Don’t you ever wear a shirt?” she asked, sounding testy even to herself.
“I would, but mine seems to be in several pieces and I didn’t think any of yours would fit.”
She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I forgot about cutting yours. I probably have something of my dad’s still around here somewhere that you can wear until we get you back to wherever your things are.”
“Mike’s.”
“Hmm?”
“My things are at the cabin Mike was renting.”
“Fine. I’ll take you there as soon as I get caught up.”
“Fine. As long as you’re not going to run off without me, I’ll get out of your way and let you finish your...whatever you’re doing.”
“On a ranch, city boy, we call ’em chores. And chores are never finished.”
“All the same, I’ll get out of your way.”
Mariah couldn’t help but notice how gingerly he turned and shuffled away. After a nasty spill from a fractious colt a few years ago, she’d thought nothing could hurt worse than the bruised hip she’d suffered. Until two days later when she woke up feeling as brittle as a tortilla chip. If she’d even tried to move, she was sure she would have splintered into a thousand pieces.
“A little stiff this morning?” she asked lightly, not wanting to make a big deal of it.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
Men. Motioning for him to wait a second, she went back to the feed room and sorted through the various cans and jars and bottles on the medicine shelf. Once she found her prize, she walked back out and handed it to him.
He crinkled his nose like a child with a spoonful of castor oil held to his lips. “Horse liniment?”
“You want to be able to move, try it. If not—” She lifted one shoulder. “Your choice.”
She shrugged as if it made no matter to her whether he suffered or not, then went back to her chores, but before she walked away she caught a gleam in his eyes—something between amusement and appetite—that unsettled her stomach. She marched away without looking back. Over her shoulder she called, “Take a shower if you want, while you wait. I’ll be up in a few minutes and leave you a shirt outside the bathroom.”
Nearly an hour later, Eric climbed into Mariah’s old truck to drive to the cabin where Mike had been staying, cursing her with every fragrant breath he took. His eyes wouldn’t stop watering. His nose wouldn’t quit running. That damn liniment. She’d poisoned him, he was sure. He felt like he’d been caught in a train wreck between a tanker full of liquid menthol and a car carrying pine-scented floor cleaner.
The stuff did seem to be working, though, he admitted grudgingly. His skin tingled, and he could feel blood permeating his abused muscles.
Mariah opened the driver’s side door and climbed in. Settling into the driver’s seat, she sniffed delicately. Her lips twitched once, then clamped into a firm line. Casually, she rolled down the window.
When the Jeep bounced out of the driveway and turned onto the main road down the mountain, Manah glanced at him, and the tight line of her lips slipped a little. A half giggle spurted out. “I take it you aren’t fond of my dad’s fashion taste.”
He glared at her. The shirt she’d given him turned out to be a ratty old sweatshirt, pea-green with a multicolored peace sign on the front. “Sorry. Psychedelic isn’t my color.”
“Actually, I don’t think I ever saw him wear it, either, except to paint the house. I think that shirt even predates me. It’s a remnant from my mom’s and dad’s hippie days.”
“Your mom and dad were hippies?”
“Mmm-hmm. Flower children. Political activists. They were big-time war protesters. In a nonviolent way, of course.”
“So how’d they go from rabble-rousing to horse ranching?”
She smiled brightly. “They got pregnant with me. I guess having babies changes people.”
“I guess. Where are they now?”
Mariah’s smile fell as she manhandled her pickup around a switchback curve, shifting and turning at the same time. “They died when I was fifteen.”
“You run this place by yourself?”
She nodded.
Eric studied the acres of pristine pasture and arrow-straight fence lines that stretched as far as he could see. “Why don’t you hire some help?”
“I do, when I need it, like when we cut and bale hay, but I can’t afford to keep help around full-time.”
“The horse business isn’t lucrative?”
“It’s an up-and-down kind of business. Seems like every time I have a couple of good years and start to get ahead, the next year is really bad and sets me back again.”
“Two steps forward and one step back, huh?”
“Something like that.” She blew out a heavy breath. “This is definitely one of the bad years. I lost a winter’s worth of hay in a grass fire last year, so I’m having to buy it at retail prices. Then a silo full of oats mildewed on me for no reason. Every piece of equipment on the place seems to break down just when I need it most.” Her fists tightened on the steering wheel. She flashed her vivid eyes at him. “And don’t even think that has anything to do with your brother.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t. Mike barely had enough money to buy two cheeseburgers most of the time, much less bail out a horse ranch.”
“Ah, but big brother, the corporate-whiz kid does, I bet.”
“I suppose.”
“Executive vice president of marketing for a major oil company—I bet you do more than suppose.” Her grip on the steering wheel gradually relaxed.
“I live comfortably.”
“Mmm. High-rise apartment?”
“Yep.”
“Nice clothes.”
“My tailor thinks so.”
“Expensive car? A sports car, I bet: Something fast.”
“Porsche.”
“Red convertible?”
“Got you,” he said. “Black hardtop.”
“Ah.” She raised her eyebrows. “The conservative type.”
He smiled. She’d pegged him pretty good. “So if the ranch is in financial trouble, how come you hang on to it? Surely you could sell the place for enough to get a start somewhere else, in some other kind of business. The land is attractive.”
“I didn’t say the ranch was in trouble, I just said I don’t keep help on year-round. And as for the land, it’s more than attractive. That property sits on the edge of one of the most scenic valleys in the state. There are developers that would kill to buy that land. And for a lot more money than just enough to get started somewhere else.”
“So why don’t you let them have it? Why fight for your pennies when you could be rolling in dollars?”
She threw a reproachful glance his way. “More isn’t always better. The Double M was my parents’ dream, and now it’s mine.” Her face set in a belligerent expression. “Haven’t you ever wanted to follow in your parents’ footsteps? To finish what they started?”
“No.” His eyes registered the blur of trees and boulders outside the windshield, but his m
ind didn’t really take it in. His mother had been a stay-at-home mom, at least until after he was out of the house. Not that there was anything wrong with that. He admired her for it. He wished Mikey had had the same benefits he’d had growing up, that Mom hadn’t had to get a job while he was still in school. As for being like his father, that had never been Eric’s goal.
Mariah kept glancing over at him, as if she expected him to say something, to explain further. An interesting little furrow appeared between her eyebrows, giving her a worried look. “Come on. Everybody has a dream.”
“I don’t believe in dreams.”
“Then what do you believe in?”
He shrugged. “A good job. Comfortable home. Money in the bank.”
“Those aren’t dreams. They’re security blankets.”
“Exactly.”
“What about skydiving or writing the Great American Novel or...”
“Or what?”
“Or having a family of your own—a wife and kids,” she suggested, her voice softer.
He shifted uneasily. The ache that Mariah’s liniment had driven out of his muscles seemed to be settling in his bones.
“I don’t like heights, I’m better at math than I am with words, and I tried the wife thing. It didn’t work out,” he said matter-of-factly.
He turned his head to watch the scenery pass by again, but found himself watching her watch him instead. Her worried little frown peered at him from her reflection in the glass.
“You’re divorced?”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He wished she wouldn’t be. Why had he told her all that, anyway? His dreams, or lack of them, had no bearing on finding out what had happened to Mike.
She was a fool to believe in dreams, anyway. One day she’d realize that. Sooner or later everyone did.
Chapter 5
“My God.” The cabin had been tossed. Thoroughly, from the looks of it. Mariah stepped amid the debris, winding her way around overturned furniture, righting a table as she passed and pushing the shards of a broken plate into a pile, where they could be swept up later. “Who did this?”
“My guess would be my friends in black.” Following her through the entryway, Eric kicked aside a broken picture frame. Pieces of the floral print it once held littered the floor like large, colorful confetti. In the living room, he squatted, pushed aside a caved-in boom box and sifted through a pile of rubble, scooping up sharp little pieces of clear plastic and silver and gold. “His CDs,” he said. “Mike loves country and western music.”
They looked as if they’d been ground beneath the heel of someone’s boot.
“Why would they do this?” she asked. “What were they looking for?”
“Other than me or Mike, I don’t know. But whatever they wanted, it doesn’t look like they found it.”
From beneath the couch he pulled a guitar, broken at the neck so that only the strings held the two ends together. “Mike’s guitar.” His face twisted. “God, he can’t play a lick, but he won’t quit trying. He’s always plucking at this thing.”
Laying the guitar carefully aside, he began pawing through the rest of the litter. “Don’t just stand there, help me.”
His hands moved almost frantically as he lifted a broken lamp and looked under the base. The intensity of his search pulled at a tender place deep inside her chest. At the Double M, it had been easy to overlook his anguish. He’d buried it well beneath his furor, and his strength. Here though, his pain rose to the surface like oil on water.
Halfheartedly, Mariah gathered up the remnants of the cabin’s furnishings one by one. Ten minutes, maybe more, passed. In spite of the pain his ribs had to be causing him, crawling around on his hands and knees, Eric kept searching. Immersed in his task, he never stopped, never slowed.
Arching her back to stretch out the kinks, she watched him, and worried. She feared his preoccupation had escalated to obsession. “Eric, stop.”
“I can’t.”
“What are you hoping to find?”
“I don’t know. Something they missed. Something that will tell me where he is.”
A fist of guilt squeezed Mariah’s heart. Despite the evidence against it, Eric still believed his brother was alive.
Finally he seemed to notice she wasn’t searching. “Are you going to help me or not?” His voice sounded almost desperate. She imagined that was as close as he would ever get to pleading.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she answered softly.
On an oath, he returned to his digging with new fury. “Forget it. I don’t need your help.”
Acid turned her stomach sour as she watched him grab a broken clock and fling it into the garbage pile. He righted a bar stool and then walked on as if he didn’t notice when it toppled over again. Apparently he hadn’t seen that it only had two legs.
“Eric, you have to stop. Mike is ... Mike is gone.”
He went still as death. When he spoke, his voice was just as cold. “You don’t know that.”
“The answers aren’t here, Eric.”
He wheeled to face her. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”
She didn’t answer. He stalked toward her like a big cat and stopped just inches in front of her, looking ready to pounce. Slowly he raised his index finger and tapped her temple. “Because they’re in here, aren’t they.”
She flinched.
“Tell me what happened to my brother.”
“I—I can’t. I can’t remember.”
“Try, damn it! Try to remember!”
She gulped in a breath of air scented with rage and pain, his and hers. “I am trying. It’s just not there.”
“Then you don’t know that he’s dead.”
“You have to accept it.”
“No! I’ll never accept it. Not until I see his body on a slab and feel for myself that his heart isn’t beating.”
Feeling himself sway slightly, Eric knelt in the center of the room. His arms trembled as he crawled toward a broken lamp, and suddenly the floor pitched beneath him. For a moment, he thought it was an earthquake, but then he remembered he wasn’t in L.A.
Bright dots floated before his eyes. Throwing the lamp aside, he crawled forward, blindly groping his way along the floor. He bumped into a bookcase that had been knocked facedown and tried to set it up, but it wouldn’t budge.
His weakness infuriated him. He could lift ten cases that size. He put one shoulder against the side and shoved, his breath coming in ragged bursts. He braced with his other hand on the floor. Still the case didn’t move. He heard a savage cry and realized it had come from him. The world spun. Colors blurred as his vision narrowed to a dark tunnel.
Then she was beside him. Her fingers were cool on his flushed face. He willed her to go away. She didn’t.
Gently, she bent the elbow of the arm he was leaning on until it buckled. She picked up his hand and pressed a dish towel to his palm. “You put your hand down on glass.”
Her voice called to him from the darkness. Slowly he raised his head, his breath shaking. A red stain spread slowly across his palm. A trickle ran down his wrist. He didn’t feel a thing.
A skein of hair fell over her shoulder and brushed his forearm. The aroma filled his senses until he wanted to wrap his arms around her and bury his face in that sweet-smelling hair. He wanted to lose himself in her the way a man can only lose himself in a woman.
She could make the pain go away, like she had before.
He hated himself almost before he’d finished the thought. He didn’t want the pain to go away. The pain drove him, reminded him that he should be focused on finding Mike, not on scratching this sexual itch that Mariah Morgan somehow caused in him.
He pulled his hand away, let the towel fall and his blood splash on the floor, one red drop at a time.
“Get out of here.” The words came out as a growl. He hung his head. “Go. Now.”
She didn’t move.
“I said g
et out of here!” He didn’t mean to shout, but maybe it helped that he did. She seemed to take him seriously then.
She strode out to the deck, then went to sit on the edge of the dock, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head hanging. He wondered if the bend in her shoulders meant she was crying. It would kill him if she was, knowing he was the cause.
Dropping to the floor, he sat in much the same position as her for a good long while. When his breath came easier and his heart no longer jackhammered against the wall of his chest, he walked shakily to the kitchen, hoping a splash of cold water on his face would help him collect himself.
Absently, he reached for a carton of spilled milk on the counter. He paused at the feel of it in his hand. It was cool, as if it hadn’t been long out of the refrigerator. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up like a threatened cur. From the kitchen, he couldn’t see the deck.
He dropped the carton in the sink, already striding back to the living room. “Mariah?”
A flash of black darted from the bedroom out the back door.
“Mariah!” Eric called again.
The scream that came, as if in answer, scared him. When the scream ended abruptly in a splash, that scared him even more.
Eric plowed through the living room, as oblivious to the debris in his path as he was to the pain knifing through his ribs with each jarring step. “Mariah? Mariah!”
Why didn’t she answer?
He heard a small engine start. The man in black shot away from the dock on a Jet Ski just as Eric rushed out the back door. The craft must have been tethered in the boathouse.
Frantically, Eric scanned the water for Mariah. Where was she? God, did she know how to swim?
He heard a cough and a sputter from the other side of the dock. Lying on his side, he spotted her swimming a sluggish sidestroke toward the pier.
Virgin without a Memory Page 7
