HER IDEAL MAN

by Ruth Wind

  He paused next to her. "One really tough ten-foot stretch ahead," he said, breathing hard. He blew out, and tossed the hood off his head. "Then we can rest."

  Anna nodded, unable to find enough breath to even frame the words. She'd be glad of a break, actually.

  The last stretch was steep, but when Anna stepped out to the clearing behind Tyler, she gasped aloud at the wonder of it. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and was rewarded with a rare, deep smile from Tyler.

  It was not a big space, perhaps only thirty feet square, at the pinnacle of the mountain. A few jagged rocks climbed skyward behind them, and a ring of trees clung to one side, so they weren't quite above the timberline.

  But the true wonder lay to the southern end of the small mesa. The mountain fell away to reveal a deep valley stretching as far as Anna could see. Mountains rose in burly grandeur on either side, sweatered in blue and spruce and white. Clouds of slate and pumice and blue clustered densely over the peaks, pillows and feathers breaking free to drift over the valley. Starry clusters of snow danced in the still air.

  Closer in was a neighboring slope, and Anna pointed urgently, grabbing Tyler's arm in a hard clutch.

  There, perched calmly on a rock, was a gray wolf, its paws crossed, its nose lifted to the air in a lazy manner. Anna's heart hurt at the sight. He looked as if he'd been made from the sky itself, his fur the same melding of grays and whites as the clouds, the black markings only lending him a greater drama.

  The valley between the mesa where Anna and Tyler stood and the mountainside where the rock lay was steep and unbreachable, and Anna thanked the saints for the stillness of the air, for the wolf seemed unaware of them as he looked out over the valley serenely, a wild creature in his wild world.

  Tears sprung to Anna's eyes, and she simply drank the sight in, knowing the rarity of it. As long as she lived, she would likely never see such a thing again.

  In an awed, low voice, Tyler said, "There aren't supposed to be any wolves in these mountains."

  "And yet," she said softly, "there he is."

  "God, he's beautiful. I can barely breathe."

  Anna nodded, squeezing her fingers on his arm where she yet held on to him.

  A sound in the woods behind the wolf alerted him, and in a flash he disappeared into the trees, whether in pursuit of prey or to avoid being prey, they would never know.

  Tyler turned to look down at her, and his eyes were the same colors as the wolf and the sky, grays all mingled together, a color as rare as the wolf itself. And this once, they were unguarded, and shining with rare happiness.

  Her heart gave a hard squeeze, and she knew with certainty that she could easily fall all the way in love with him, that her crush could slide from something superficial, based on a fantasy, to something as deep as the valley, if she wasn't careful.

  But she was not cautious by nature, and there was a fierce joy in her that she had shared with him such a rare and beautiful thing, that for once she had glimpsed true joy in his eyes. "Wow," she said, and grinned. "When you welcome a person to Colorado, you don't mess around, do you?"

  Fine lines, made by wind and weather and bright mountain sunlight, fanned over his cheekbones as he grinned. "Well, I do what I can." With a perplexed expression, he glanced back to the place where the wolf had lain. "I really didn't think there were any wolves here anymore. It might be a mix or something."

  "Don't analyze it," Anna said. "You'll ruin it."

  His smile was rueful. "Good advice." He swung the pack from his shoulder. "Let's eat something and head back down. I don't want to get stuck up here if it starts to get windy."

  "Should I get some branches to sit on?"

  Amazingly, Tyler actually chuckled as he pulled a small plastic tarp from the pack. "No, I was teasing. This is a hell of a lot easier."

  They ate the sandwiches and drank coffee. Without the wind, it was not terribly cold, and the view nourished something inside Anna, something that had yearned for exactly this for as long as she could remember. "You know," she said quietly, her gaze on the blue mountains, "I used to lie in my room, and outside there were sounds like cars and sirens and people talking as they walked by. Even in the quiet, it was never really quiet, you know?"

  He nodded.

  "So I'd lie on my bed and remember the way the mountains smelled, that kind of spicy smell, and I'd think about sitting on a mountain, with all the Colorado sky above me, and all the colors, and most of all, the quiet." She lifted a shoulder with a smile. "And here I am. It's like a miracle."

  "I have to be honest," Tyler said. "I'm one of those natives who hates outsiders coming in. When I was about fourteen, we used to be pretty obnoxious to tourists. Rude, actually." He paused to sip from the thermos. "And it really irritated me that my father built houses for them."

  "Is that why you don't work for your brother?"

  "I do some work for Lance. But that isn't why I didn't work for my father."

  "What's the difference?"

  "Lance just loves building things. When he was a kid, he built things out of straws, and rocks, and toothpicks—whatever he could get his hands on. My father just wanted to make money, and he didn't give a damn about the land. Lance does. He's not going to overbuild."

  Anna felt a little hurt that he was still classing her with outsiders. Technically, she was one, but—she just wanted his respect. "You can't stop it, you know, all the people coming here."

  His jaw was hard. "I know. But it's sad. Don't you think it is? I mean, look at that—" He gestured to indicate the view. "How can we let that be ruined? How can we let people build on it, and chase the animals away?"

  "Not everyone is coming in here to change it, Tyler. Most people want to be here for the very thing you're talking about. We want to—" she frowned, trying to find a way to put it into words "—become part of it, let it teach us. It sounds so silly, but I swear, Colorado claimed me the minute I stepped out of the car when I was fifteen. It was like I couldn't not come here. You know?"

  Unexpectedly, he covered her hands with one of his own. "I didn't mean you, Anna."

  "Yes, you do. You mean people like me. I hear the natives talking about easterners coming and changing things, and I hear how bitter they are about it."

  "Yeah, there's a lot of bitterness. But you're not doing what a lot of them are. They come from big cities and from California, and they come to be part of the wild, open West, where everybody is supposed to be an individualist, and free to make his own way." His brows lifted. "And then they start agitating to change the laws so things are just like the places they left. Like the damned PTA is running the world."

  Anna laughed outright. "So you moved up to a mountain where they can't tell you what to do."

  He slapped his leg mockingly. "Damn right, missy. Man's gotta be free." He shook his head. "Sorry. I'll get off my soapbox now."

  "Well, console yourself with one thing," she said. "I happen to know all of that valley is national forest, so it's protected. And I also know that more of Colorado than almost any other state is either national park or national forest, so it's safe from the kind of development you're talking about."

  He sobered. "Don't count on it, Anna. Money talks."

  She looked out to the wilderness, and listened to the stillness, and tried to imagine it being lost. It gave her a hollow, lost feeling, and she could only imagine how much worse it was for Tyler. "How do you stop it?"

  "That is the twenty-thousand-dollar question." He stuffed sandwich wrappers back in the bag and offered her another sip of coffee. "We'd better get back down the hill. Hear that wind?"

  Anna stood, listening closely. "No."

  "Low, like a moan."

  And suddenly she could hear it, a distant rustling. She looked at Tyler and grinned. "I do hear it!"

  He was facing her, his hair shining bright in the dark day, his eyes warm. Anna felt a shift in him suddenly, a softening, and he seemed to sway closer. For a fleeting second, she thought he was going to capture her fac
e in his hand and kiss her. And he did touch her face, lightly, just the barest brush of a thumb over her jaw, a feathering of fingers near her ear. Then he seemed to catch himself, and straightened, pulling himself upright, away from her. "We're going to have to make quick time," he said gruffly, stuffing the thermos into the pack. "Can you handle it?"

  The deliberate push wounded no more than his warning last night about his love for his wife. Anna calmly pulled on her gloves. "Sure. Lead the way, Captain."

  He didn't bother with even a semblance of a smile. He simply tossed the pack over one shoulder, pulled up his hood and led the way back down the mountain. Just before she followed, Anna spared one more glance for the vista behind her, and touched the memory of the wolf. Not even Tyler could take that from her.

  Then, steeling herself, she followed him down the hill.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  Tyler had been right about the hard exercise. When they got back to the cabin, both of them stripped off their coats and gloves wearily. Anna sank to the couch, where her pillow and the neatly folded quilt were waiting, and without even taking off her socks, she tipped over sideways. "Quite a workout," she said. "Thanks."

  Her eyes were already closing. Tyler turned his back and stoked the fire and, without allowing himself to look at her again, stretched out on his bed. Charley trotted over, licked his hand, and sank down with a little groan next to the bed.

  It felt good to stop moving, to let himself be enveloped in the warmth of the room. His body tingled with exercise and warming skin, and he felt enormously sleepy.

  But his jeans were clammy and uncomfortable, and if he let himself fall asleep like this, he'd be miserable when he woke up. The same was true for Anna. Reluctantly he dragged himself upright and over to the couch. He leaned over the back to nudge her shoulder.

  She barely stirred, making a low, muffled noise that meant nothing at all. He grinned to himself as she tucked her face more closely into the pillow. "Anna," he said, poking her again. "Don't go to sleep yet. You need to take off those wet clothes."

  This time, she opened one eye and looked at him in confusion. "What?"

  "Take off your jeans before you go to sleep."

  "Oh." She shifted. "Oh, yeah."

  "You can change into my sweats again, if you want. I'll leave you alone."

  She nodded, and Tyler left her. In the small bathroom, he shed his jeans and shirt, leaving on his boxer shorts for the sake of modesty, then donned his robe for the short journey to his bed. It was odd to have to think about modesty. It had been a long, long time.

  To his relief, she was already changed and covered and, by all appearances, asleep when he came through. He checked the fire in the stove and put the old cast-iron teakettle on the back so that they would have hot water when they woke up, added one more log to the fire and fell into the comfort of his bed.

  He wasn't a napper, and didn't like sleeping in the daytime hours, but he did fall into a restless sleep, never very deep, filled with strange dreams about wolves and castles and chasing something vaguely frightening into the woods. He was not quite conscious, not quite asleep, and his subconscious coughed up strange, fragmented images: Kara in a red cloak, Curtis as a baby, Anna bare and beckoning.

  The last one dragged him to full wakefulness. It was nearly dark, and he lay in the tangled mess of covers, staring at the ceiling, feeling unrefreshed and cranky. Flickering shadows from the fire played between the wooden beams, creating images that all too soon took shape and form, just as his dozing dreams had done. He saw the wolf on the mountain, so wild and free and noble, and Anna's shining eyes as she'd stared at him in breathless awe.

  She could not know, of course, that Kara would have killed to see a wolf in the wild, and never had. Of all the things he wished he could have given her, that was high on the list. A wild, free wolf, in his own environment.

  It bothered him that it had been with Anna that he saw it. He was not a superstitious man, but he did live close to the land, and he had a special love for wolves. They were what some might call his totem animal.

  Silly. He knew it was—the legacy of his superstitious Irish Texan mother who read signs into everything that happened, and saw in feathers and rocks the answers to prayers.

  And however he tried to ignore it, his gut said there was a reason he'd seen a wolf with Anna.

  Quietly he disentangled himself from the covers and slipped on his jeans. He didn't bother to button his shirt, or put on socks. He simply rounded the couch and settled before the fire. Very deliberately, he faced the sleeping woman. Until he faced her, acknowledged what he needed to know from her, or learn from her, or learn about himself, he would have no peace.

  A pretty face. Not beautiful, as Kara's had been. Only pretty, with soft features that would both sharpen and blur as she aged. Her coloring was the riveting thing—the black hair and white skin and rosy cheeks made him think of her fairy tales, of Snow White.

  She lay half on her side, the covers thrown off against the warmth of the fire so close by, her posture far too open for a woman asleep in a stranger's house. Silky black curls spilled over her cheek, around her neck. The V-necked sweater revealed the curve of one unbound white breast, and he had to take a breath against the power of the yearning that simple sight roused in him. A man didn't forget the way a breast yielded to his hand. He didn't forget how good that felt, or stop wishing for it, even if there was no possibility of experiencing it again. He would have liked to brush his hands, and his face, and his chest over that supple white flesh.

  So much.

  Resolutely, he moved on. The dip of her waist, her small, neat legs. Her stocking feet that were so small her boots looked like kid shoes.

  Now that she was quiet, he was able to think about her more calmly. Her awakened self was exuberant and bright and chatty; it gave her an aura of great sexuality he was sure she didn't even know she possessed.

  The fire heated his back to burning, and Tyler shifted a little closer to Anna to escape it. Now he was close enough that he could simply stretch out a hand and touch her, if he so chose.

  Instead, he consciously called forth a vision of Kara. Kara, with her long blond hair, glittering all over her bare shoulders and much lusher breasts; Kara with her blue, blue eyes and clear, evenly cut features. He narrowed his eyes to focus and tried to transpose the ghostly image over the sleeping figure of Anna.

  But it didn't work as well as he'd hoped. The perfection of Kara's Nordic clean blond looks could not compete with the vividness of the flesh-and-blood woman breathing in sleep on the couch in his house. The memory of long golden hair held no power over the lure of lively black curls. The faintly remembered lushness of Kara's figure had no power to rouse him as did the promise of Anna's sweet body and uptilted, nubby-tipped breasts.

  The detail caught his attention. Through her sweater, he could distinctly see the peaks of her breasts, standing straight and tall. Heat touched his cheeks, and he looked to her face, to find her gazing at him with heavy-lidded awareness. She did not move even a little, only held his gaze steadily, and Tyler found he could not quite bear it. He bowed his head.

  He wondered how long she had been watching him mentally undress her. He felt foolish sitting here cross-legged like a simpleton, hungrily eyeing a woman as if she were some exotic and unusual being newly come to his world. She would think he was the strangest man alive.

  And yet, his gaze had roused her. The thought struck him with a fresh wave of yearning, this one so intense it flooded his thighs and chest and hands with an urgent, compelling need. He looked at her again. "I was trying to—"

  Her fingers, pressed to his lips, stopped him. "Don't explain. I liked it."

  "I don't want you to like it," he said harshly, raising to his knees. "I want you to push me away."

  "I know."

  "Please, Anna," he said, and yet his hand was reaching for her, falling into those black curls. And he didn't know if he me
ant please stop him or please meet him halfway.

  Her eyes were sultry black pools, their expression as old as woman as she looked at him. Tentatively, she raised a hand and touched his chest. "You are the most beautiful man I have ever seen, Tyler Forrest. From the first time I saw you, I wanted to touch you." Her fingers drew tentative marks on his chest, dragging over a flat nipple, and trailing down his belly.

  He felt his heart thudding in a thick, aroused beat, and every nerve in his torso leaped alive. He swallowed, his hand moving almost of its own accord over the delicate, elfin ear, over her smooth cheek, back into the allure of her hair, hair as silky as rabbit fur. "Your hair is so soft." He trailed his fingers over her neck. "And your skin."

  As if his touch wounded her, she closed her eyes, and it sent something hard and bright shattering through him, the sight of those long black eyelashes falling on her cheeks, as if to hide her vulnerability. What she didn't know was that she couldn't hide, even by closing her eyes. Her lips, so red and full, were parted slightly, as if in readiness for what he would offer—his tongue, his flesh-and the faint, restless way she arched her back told him she wanted his hands on her.

  One word, whispered, undid him. "Tyler," she said, a whisper as yearning and pained as a ballad.

  He swore softly. "This is a mistake," he said—the last, lost protest of his rational mind as he fell under Anna's spell.

  He swayed toward her, feeling his hair come free as he bent over her and very delicately kissed her. Just the lightest brush of lips, that was all he meant to do, but in an instant, he was lost. He sank deep into the seduction of that mouth, fell into the velvety promise of sensual, slow pleasure. She made a small, soft noise and her hands slid under his shirt, over his bare skin, and Tyler shuddered at the stunning response of his body after so long a drought.

  Braced with one hand on the couch, the other on her face, Tyler kissed her. And kissed her. And kissed her. She tasted of the earth, of the sky, of all things made by goddesses, and her full lips fit his own as if they'd been made together, something he'd never experienced. Lost, he plunged his tongue deep and drew hers back, and Anna met him fully, completely.