Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

  “Daniel –”

  “I know, I know. Give you time.” He uncrossed his arms, and pushed away. “At some point, Kendra, time’s going to run out.”

  Chapter Eleven

  A week later, Daniel sauntered in, bigger and more alive than anyone else in the basement room.

  Kendra firmly reminded her accelerated heartbeat that was because most of the occupants of the room were under four feet tall and less than a decade old. It didn’t help.

  That had been happening more and more often.

  She never should have let things get so carried away that night of the country club dinner. She knew the power of her attraction to him. She knew how it could shut down her brain and her common sense. She’d had proof of that not only in the middle of a hurricane, but in her own home. She had to be more careful.

  “Dan’l!”

  Matthew launched himself with no care or caution. Before Kendra could even gasp at the foolhardy leap, Daniel had caught Matthew in the air and swung him up to eye-level, boy and man who looked so alike grinning at each other.

  “Easy does it there, Matthew.”

  No one seeing the two of them now could doubt the relationship. Kendra thought she detected a couple of glances from parents dropping off children or preparing for a tour of duty at the babysitting co-op. Marti’s look from across the room was more than a glance, though her expression gave no hint of what she was thinking.

  Matthew was so young, surely that would protect him – from the gossip and from his own wondering about his father – until she’d figured out the best way to tell him. The best way to make sure he wouldn’t be hurt.

  Her son’s delighted squeals brought her back to the moment, and Daniel spinning the boy around.

  “Daniel, be careful! He could fall!”

  Daniel slowed his circles to a stop. “I’ve got a good hold on him. He won’t fall.”

  “Mo’, Dan’l! Mo’!”

  Daniel shook his head. “Sorry, fella. Your Mom says no.” As he put Matthew down, he softened the refusal with a smile that had Matthew mirroring the expression.

  “I go play,” the boy announced once he’d been set on his feet.

  “There you go, Matthew,” Daniel approved. Then he repeated in a lower tone that reached only Kendra’s ears, “There you go.”

  Three short words transported her to the middle of a hurricane, holding onto the only sane thing in a wild universe – him. She could feel his hands stroking her back, could almost reach out and touch his warmth, his reality.

  And when he met her gaze, she knew he recognized her thoughts.

  She bent her head, pretending great attention to straightening the straps of her tote bag she’d set on a chair.

  “How are you, Kendra?”

  “Fine. What brings you here?” She kept her inquiry briskly impersonal. “I thought you’d finished your co-op duty for the week.”

  “I did.” He grinned, looking boyish and extremely pleased with himself. “I knew you’d signed up for today. That’s why I came.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” He stuck his hands in his jeans’ pockets. “I want to ask you something. Rufus is letting me use a plane this afternoon –”

  Her throat constricted. “You are not taking Matthew in a plane.”

  “Kendra, I wouldn’t even consider it if I hadn’t checked it out myself. It’s a solid plane. It’s perfect flying weather, and that might not last – they’re calling for rain by the end of the week. You have to know I’d never take chances with Matthew.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  His dark eyes considered her. She broke the connection, only to discover the adults in the room were all watching them.

  “Then you come, Kendra. Let me prove how safe it is.”

  She recrossed the straps. “I have too many things to do. After we leave here, I have to make calls for a story and I have errands.”

  “A couple hours. That’s all. I can show you what Far Hills looks like from the air. Have you ever seen the ranch from an entirely different angle? Have you ever seen the sky from a new angle? Let me show you what it’s like, Kendra. I’ll prove to you it’s not dangerous.”

  “No.”

  “Kendra –”

  “No. The answer is no. I’m not going flying with you.”

  “I’ll go.”

  All eyes turned to Marti. But Kendra’s gaze quickly shifted to Daniel. He was as stunned as she was.

  “I’ll go flying with you this afternoon, Daniel. If Kendra will take care of Emily. And if it’s okay with you.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, then the corners of his mouth lifted. “This should be interesting.”

  * * *

  Marti Susland let out a long, uneven breath.

  She hadn’t said much since she’d followed him from town to the airport, except to pass a few pleasantries with Rufus. The lack of conversation suited Daniel. He was wrestling with a problem.

  Talk about the chicken and egg. How could he get Kendra to change her mind about flying if he couldn’t get her to change her mind about flying?

  Marti had watched Daniel’s preflight check – first outside the plane, then inside – without comment, but with great attention. He’d heard one sharp drawn-in breath on takeoff, but otherwise, nothing.

  Maybe discomfort about flying in small planes ran in the family. So why had Marti asked to come?

  “This is... magical.”

  He felt his smile stretching across his face, and when she turned toward him, he saw an answering smile creasing her face.

  “Kendra once told me the only way to see Far Hills was on horseback,” he said, “but I think this is pretty good.”

  She nodded. “She should see it like this. I’ve flown over on flights out of Billings, but it was no more than a speck. On the ground, I know every foot, but up there I couldn’t tell what was where. But this... Oh – there’s the home ranch.”

  He banked the plane to the right to give her a better view of the cluster of trees and buildings forming an oasis in the contoured sweeps of range and fields.

  “Oh, I like that!” She said of his turn. “It feels like the way the hills look from up here, smooth but curvy. See that pasture, over there, Daniel? Beyond that line of trees? That’s where I met my first rattlesnake.”

  She told him other stories, in between spotting landmarks.

  “There’s Ridge House – see Ellyn’s car? And there’s Kendra’s house, with the fence – I told Luke that fence wasn’t straight.”

  He chuckled. “You’re a tough taskmaster. I sure hope you don’t take surveyor tools to the section I helped him fix.”

  “You’re a novice. You’re allowed some leeway.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  He wondered about this change of attitude. She’d clearly mistrusted him at the start. Maybe his dealings with Matthew and Kendra had persuaded her he wasn’t a threat to them. If so, that was more than he’d managed with Kendra.

  “I hear you’ve been doing some volunteer spotting for the firefighters on the west slope.”

  Somehow he wasn’t surprised she knew. Would she tell Kendra?

  “A little. Filling in for Rufus.”

  He took her down close enough to see the stubble from a recently hayed field. Then climbed toward the mountains. Threads of streams sewed the patches of land into a mosaic that swept part way up the mountains before giving way to the textured green of pines.

  Marti pointed past him, out his side window. “See that rock outcropping? There, beyond those fir trees, two-thirds of the way up that mountain with the uneven peak. That’s Crooked Mountain, the western edge of Far Hills Ranch. And you can get almost as good a view of the spread from that outcropping as you do from up here. Almost.”

  Marti didn’t speak again until they’d landed, he’d shut down the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt.

  “Did Kendra tell you about the founding of Far Hills Ranch?”

  “Not that I re
member.” And he remembered it all.

  “It happened right here, in 1878,” Marti said in a dreamy voice. “The campfire burned for four days and four nights on that outcropping on Crooked Mountain, until my great-grandfather Charles Susland rode up there to see an Indian woman named Leaping Star.”

  Daniel listened to a story of Kendra’s family five generations old. He didn’t even know who his mother was. Was that Marti’s point?

  Marti ended with, “Kendra used to want to hear that story all the time when she came here for summers. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you about Charles Susland. She seems to feel she told you everything there was to tell during that hurricane.”

  “She told me some.”

  “And you told her nothing. It’s going to take some doing to get her to forgive that you know her so much better than she knows you – or so she thinks.”

  * * *

  “Daniel?”

  At the sound of Kendra’s voice on the phone, Daniel pushed aside the sectional charts he’d been studying, acquainting himself with mountains he’d be flying over to spot the fires’ progress.

  “ ‘Morning, Kendra.”

  “Daniel, I wondered – if you can’t do it, it’s all right – but I wondered if you’d be free to take care of Matthew for a couple hours today.”

  “Sure.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you, but –”

  “You can quit explaining, Kendra, I said yes. What time?”

  “Oh. Twelve-thirty? It’s the yearly meeting with the ranch accountant, Marti likes me to be there. I’ll be back by three. But you should know – Matthew was up all night with a sore throat and fever. That’s why he can’t go to the co-op. He’s better, but...”

  “I’ll come now.” He heard the beginnings of her protest and talked over it. “He was up all night, so you were up all night. You can get some sleep before your meeting.”

  “Daniel?”

  “What?” He braced for more arguing.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad you called me,” he said gruffly.

  * * *

  “So, Daniel’s taking care of Matthew,” said Marti, not for the first time. “Getting easier and easier to rely on him, isn’t it?”

  “I’d be a fool to get too deeply involved with him.”

  It was more a reminder to herself that she was a fool than an answer. Kendra did rely on him more and more, and that was a form of involvement.

  As soon as he’d shown up, he’d hustled her off to her room with orders to sleep. And she had. Matthew’s crying had awakened her once, but she’d recognized it as the sound of frustration rather than pain, and she’d fallen back asleep. Only when she was showering and dressing for the trip to Sheridan with Marti had she recognized that she’d trusted Daniel to deal with their son.

  She added aloud now, as drove up the ranch road on their return home, “He’s going to be leaving soon.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Kendra turned from watching storm clouds bubbling over the mountains. “What do you mean? Do you know something, Marti?”

  “Can’t say I know anything.”

  “Marti,” she warned.

  “Look at that,” Marti interrupted as she turned into the road to Kendra’s house. “Somebody lost a hubcap.”

  Although Kendra spotted the shiny object in the ditch beside the road, she ignored the red herring. “You haven’t said anything about going flying the other day. Did Daniel tell you something?”

  “I decided you’re right. I shouldn’t be quizzing you about the boy, so I’m keeping my thoughts about the flying to myself.”

  Kendra had never said anything of the sort – thought it, yes, but hadn’t said it. They’d reached her door, so there wasn’t time to argue. Besides, arguing might sound as if she welcomed Marti’s comments on her situation with Daniel or wanted to know what her aunt and he had talked about while they were encased in that tiny airplane.

  Neither, of course, was true.

  Marti pointed toward Daniel’s parked car. “Must be his hubcap.”

  “I’ll tell him. Thanks for the ride, Marti.”

  The only sound in the house was a faint murmur from the back of the house. She hung up the red wool jacket she’d worn over a princess-seamed denim dress and followed the sound. She stopped in the doorway to Matthew’s room.

  Daniel sat in the rocking chair, with Matthew across his lap, the child’s head cushioned against his father’s arm and a blanket wrapped around him. In a low, soft voice, with his eyes closed, Daniel sang one of the soothing songs she remembered from Santa Estella. Matthew was sound asleep.

  She’d thought so many times that for Matthew’s sake she would never keep father and son apart. Now she saw it was also for Daniel’s sake.

  She stepped back, retracing her steps soundlessly, not sure if she meant to give Daniel privacy or protect herself from having to acknowledge what she’d seen. And felt.

  In the kitchen, she clattered dishes in starting a pot of coffee. She was looking out the kitchen window at the patch of clouds now nearly on top of them when Daniel came around the corner.

  “Hi. How’d the meeting go?”

  “Fine. Marti would like to see my cousin Grif more involved, but...” She shrugged. “How’s Matthew?”

  “Fine now. I gave him more of that medicine at two like you said. That seemed to help. He’s sleeping.”

  “Good. Thanks. Oh, you tossed a hubcap turning into the drive. Marti spotted it. One of the hazards of ranch roads. And you never know when you might need a hubcap to hold a fire.”

  If she could have snatched the words out of the air she would have. What was she thinking, reminding him of their refuge from Aretha? It gave him the perfect opening to bring up their past, when she’d been working so hard to avoid that.

  But he said only, “I thought I heard something. I’ll get it after a cup of that coffee you’re making.”

  “You better go now. Storm’s coming.”

  He looked toward the back door, which showed only blue sky in its window. “I’ve got time.”

  She raised her eyebrows, but didn’t argue. He’d learn about Wyoming storms. She got out the last of the oatmeal raisin cookies Marti had brought over, and poured Daniel his coffee.

  The conversation about her meeting was easy and casual. He’d finished his coffee and four cookies when he got up.

  “Guess I’ll get that hubcap now.”

  “Okay.” She took the dishes to the sink to hide her smile.

  As soon as he was out the door, though, she followed, watching him saunter down the driveway. Sure enough, he was about two yards from the hubcap when she heard the first, fat drops hit the roof. Daniel lifted his face to the sky, as if he’d been hit, too, but picked up his speed only a little. He had bent over to retrieve the piece of metal when the skies opened.

  She was laughing hard by the time he reached the door she held open for him. He was soaked – dripping, sopping wet. He swore in a mixture of English and Spanish as he dropped the freshly washed hubcap on the porch.

  “I tried to tell you. No – stay there, I’ll get a towel.”

  “You didn’t try very hard,” he called after her as she went around the corner to the laundry area. “And there’s still blue sky.”

  “There’s so much sky here, that most of it can look clear, but if you’re under the clouds, you’ll get it.”

  She rounded the corner with the towel and stopped. One minute she was laughing, and then she wasn’t. The storm had dimmed the small back hall. The rain had plastered his shirt and jeans to his body, and he’d combed back his wet hair with his fingers.

  She would have liked to have been able to say the change in atmosphere started from him, but that wasn’t the truth. He looked up, reaching for the towel, then stopped as their eyes met.

  She took the final step forward.

  His lips were cool and wet, then hot in an instant, as their mouths met and opened. She wanted to wrap herself i
n his scent and his taste. She felt him against her, his body solid and familiar, his arms around her bringing her a warmth she hadn’t known since he had made her forget a hurricane.

  Memories.

  She jolted away from him. Pushing against his chest.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t – this was a mistake.”

  He backed off less than an arm’s length, his hands cupping her shoulders. “Mistake.”

  “The rain. And... with your hair like that, you look like you did – then. Like Paulo.”

  She’d said the words deliberately. A weapon to make him back away before she no longer wanted him to back away.

  And she could see from the way his skin thinned over his cheekbones that her weapon had struck home. She dropped her head and saw wet marks on her dress from where their bodies had met. She brushed at them, as if that would erase what had happened.

  “You were kissing Paulo?”

  She heard the anger in his voice, knew she’d pushed him toward some edge. But that was all right. Because it would pull her back from her own edge. The edge of forgetting what she couldn’t feel, what she couldn’t let happen.

  “If that’s what you want to call it. The rain, the smell. All those memories. It was Paulo. A memory – no, a figment.”

  Anger was in his eyes, too. But there was something else. Something not as easy to define – or withstand – as anger.

  With deliberate movements he placed his hands to either side of her neck, resting against the wall behind her, then slowly he bent his elbows, leaning his body toward her.

  “You’re lying.”

  She tensed to keep from responding to the heat and damp surrounding her, to him surrounding her.

  “Memories are powerful –”

  “You’re lying, Kendra. This isn’t memory. This is now. This is us. You know who I am. You know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Who am I, Kendra?”

  “It’s the rain, you look –”

  “Who am I, Kendra? Now.”

  “It’s the rain –”

  “Who am I?”

  “Daniel, it’s... You’re –”

  His kiss was relentless, demanding. She met it. Equaled it, deepened it. She felt the form of his body, under her hands, pressing against her tightening breasts, and lower, where the heat grew and spread. But she wanted more, she wanted to feel the texture of his skin again, the flow of his muscles.