Lone Rider

by Lindsay McKenna

“My God,” she whispered, her hand moving to her lips as she stared up at him.

  “I got lucky,” he groused, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  “Oh,” Tara murmured, reaching out, grazing his jaw, “it was much more than luck. You’re a combat corpsman. You’d shoot straight even if hell was charging you.”

  He managed a snort, avoiding the pride and respect in her gaze and voice. How unlike Olivia was Tara. It was so black and white that Harper could hardly believe it. In the military, it was wrong to cry at any time. But that dawn firefight and subsequent flight to Bagram in the medevac had torn Harper in two. The men who died on the deck of that helo he’d been with on three earlier deployments. They were brothers to him, not just comrades in arms. His throat tightened, but he forced out the words, “I couldn’t let you be injured or hurt, Tara. It was the last thing I’d ever let happen. What was left of my mind at that point was that the grizzly was going to have to go through me first to get to you. I shot because I had nothing to lose at that point.”

  Tara stared, her lips parting. “Oh, Harper …”

  Making himself look at Tara, he saw tears of gratitude in her eyes. Not censure. Not anger. Just … humanity. One human reaching out to touch another. His heart thudded, but this time, it was all those wonderful, wildly escaping feelings of goodness spreading throughout his chest as she whispered his name and came forward, opening her arms to him.

  Tara came and leaned against him, her arms around his waist, her head on his shoulder, her brow resting against his jaw. Harper wrapped his arms around her, this time gently, not squeezing her as he had before. Kissing her knit cap over her hair, he rasped, “You’re the most important person to ever walk into my life, Tara. You have to know that … believe it …” He nudged her cheek, asking her to lift her chin, and she did. Never had her lips tasted as sweet, as wonderful as right now, sliding against his. A groan came from deep within him as he felt her push her belly against him, letting him know just how much she needed this connection, too. Somewhere in his shorting-out mind, the wash of the flashback emotions meeting and surging with newer, more heated ones, told him how important Tara was to him.

  He heard her make a happy sound in the back of her throat, her arms tightening around his waist, her breasts solidly against his jacket. If only they were back at the ranch, back in their home, he’d have instantly picked her up into his arms and carried her to his bed and loved her until she fainted from pleasure. The scent of her velvety skin against his, their breathing growing ragged and harsh, the urgency to absorb her into every cell he owned, became primary. Tara was life. She instilled hope within him once more. She was his. And never had Harper known it more than just now. He understood as few others did that a near-death experience made a person want to prove they were alive, that they had survived. Her mouth opened and he took her with new fierceness, glorying in her wetness, her eagerness and hunger that matched his own.

  It was only after he reluctantly eased from her glistening lips, eyes barely open, staring into hers, that Harper realized there were no remnants from his flashback. That amazed him because it usually took hours, sometimes half a day, before he was fully back in the present, back into his body, in the here and now.

  Stunned by the realization, he framed Tara’s face, drowning in her lustrous blue eyes that were barely opened. He could feel how dazed she’d become as their mouths had clashed urgently with each other. She was no less affected by the danger they’d suddenly found themselves in. Luckily, she’d escaped being triggered into a flashback.

  With his gloved thumb, he smoothed it across her cheek. “What we have,” he began in a growl, “is something I’ve never had before, Tara. When I look at you? You’re like a lake, smooth as glass, beautiful, but you have such depth. I want the right to explore you, hear what you have to say, what you think …” He saw her lashes sweep downward.

  “… Yes,” she whispered, “I want the same from you, Harper. Nothing less …”

  *

  Tara waited patiently beneath the boughs of the pine tree where the rifle sat. Within an hour, a vehicle bearing a wildlife biologist and two rangers arrived. Tara had never seen a grizzly killed while living in Wind River Valley, so she didn’t know the protocol or how the rangers were going to react to the event.

  Because they’d had an hour alone, Harper had been able to climb out of the depths of his flashback. By the time the Forest Service people arrived, he was his normal, unflappable self. The woman ranger, Wendy Jenkins, had taken Tara’s statement on what had happened. The male ranger, Thomas Bosveld, had taken Harper’s statement. They had separated them, and Tara could guess why. They wanted to compare each of their stories. If they matched, all was well. In the meantime, a gray-haired biologist carrying two big suitcases of equipment checked out the dead grizzly. No one seemed upset about the event.

  Later, after the statements were taken and compared, Harper was allowed to come to sit near her. The rangers went to help the wildlife biologist. Tara frowned. “Are we in trouble?”

  “No,” Harper said. “Bosveld said this happens. While there’s no hunting of grizzly, these kinds of unfortunate meetings do occur, especially in the spring.”

  “I would think they would be happy we weren’t mauled to death.”

  Grinning a little, Harper said, “You’re getting testy. Are you hungry?” He reached for their packs, bringing them forward. “It’s noon.”

  Her stomach grumbled.

  Harper laughed a little, opening his knapsack. “I made peanut butter sandwiches. Would you like one?”

  “Yes, I guess I’m coming down from the shock of the bear charging us. I’m hungry now,” and she reached for the neatly wrapped sandwich, thanking Harper. Sitting there and munching on it, she said, “What will they do now?”

  “The biologist has to take all kinds of tests, blood and otherwise, lots of camera shots and measurements. Each bear is tracked, and if they’re killed or die, that data is added to their main headquarters database in the Tetons.”

  “How do you know so much about this?” she asked, canting a glance in his direction.

  “Garret had to kill a grizzly last year. He was out in the Tetons, on a heavy-equipment job, when a male attacked him in the yard where he was digging a trench line.”

  “Oh, no,” Tara said, worried. “What happened?”

  “Garret carries a Glock 19 on him. He has a legal license for open carry. He put two slugs in the bear’s head and killed him instantly. He got swiped by him, though. The bear had charged and his claws ripped up his jeans on his lower left leg. He had to be taken to the local hospital for about thirty stitches from those claws.”

  Tara stared at the bear in the meadow. “We were lucky.”

  “Very,” Harper said, munching on his sandwich. “I’m afraid we’re not going to make it to that cabin today, Tara. We’d have another five miles to hike up the canyon before we reached it.”

  “This was enough excitement for one day,” she agreed.

  “Bosveld said this bear isn’t from around here. He has a tablet with the bear database for this area. He thinks it was a five-year-old looking for new territory he could hunt in. Normally,” and Harper made a general gesture to the north of where they sat, “the rangers have tracking collars on the grizzlies that live within the park boundaries. They know their habits, their trails, and they can get people out of those areas, protecting them in the spring and rutting season in September.”

  “But out here,” Tara said, waving her finger up and down the canyon floor, “we didn’t know the bear was in the area.”

  “Well,” Harper admitted, “there’s a website the rangers share with the ranchers, and I went onto it this morning before we left. This area was said to be free and clear of bears. But this one is a wanderer, so there was no way anyone could have known he’d be in our vicinity.”

  “It was a shock,” and she gave him a concerned look. “How are you feeling now with the flashback recedi
ng?”

  “It’s pretty much history.” He finished the sandwich, wiping his hands in the surrounding dried pine needles. “Thanks to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He glanced over at the cluster of rangers around the bear and then devoted his attention to Tara. “Just between you and me? When I would get a flashback, it was usually a sound or something that spiked my adrenaline, and then that firefight at dawn would download. It would take me a minimum of a day to dig myself out of it.”

  “You don’t look burdened by it right now, Harper. Or am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re not wrong.” He reached over, smoothing his hand across her jacketed shoulder. “It was what you did that helped it dissolve. I’ve never had it leave so quickly, Tara.” He dug into her widening eyes. “It was you, what you did, holding me, talking me back to now, helping me to pry away from the past with your voice.” Giving her a shy look, he added in a lowered tone, “I wish I could give it the words it deserves, but I can’t put them together. You have magic.”

  Heat stung her cheeks and she looked away for a moment, trying to tame her explosion of feelings. “I knew the bear must have triggered your flashback,” she said, turning her gaze to him once again. “I have them myself. I recognized the signs, Harper, that’s all.”

  “And I got that you did. I was trying to control it, control myself.”

  “But it doesn’t work that way.”

  Shaking his head, he muttered, “No. I wish to God I could control it. That whole dawn firefight passes over me like a steamroller. I can’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it when the bear suddenly charged us either.”

  “I’m glad I could help you. I felt pretty helpless really. You were shaking and I wanted so badly just to hold you, to make you feel safe when I knew that was the last thing you were feeling at the time.”

  He watched her brush a strand of hair away from her cheek after taking off the knit cap and laying it nearby. “You have no idea how much it meant to me. Being held? That was an incredible gift you gave me, Tara. And your hand just smoothing across my shoulders and back stabilized me so fast it stunned me. Your voice? Well, your voice called me home, to you.”

  Swallowing hard, Tara stared down at her hands around her drawn-up knees. “I … didn’t know … thanks for telling me. That sounds pretty miraculous in itself.”

  “No disagreement,” Harper said thickly. “But we’ve probably never been in a situation where the person or people around us knew what was happening and figured out what we needed. This was a first for me.”

  “I know,” Tara murmured in a low voice, picking up a dry pine needle and breaking it between her fingers, “when I got home, I warned my parents about my flashbacks. But they weren’t ready for my screams, my wildness, my craziness once I was caught up in it. I can’t blame them. They didn’t know what to do to help me. And I was so worn out and emotionally exhausted afterward, I just didn’t want to talk. I try not to think about it, Harper. Just thinking about it makes it come back sometimes, and it scares me. That’s why I moved out of my parents’ home. No one was getting much sleep.”

  “I know that one,” he admitted, frowning. “Only mine was with Olivia. She was a civilian. She didn’t know military. I was over in Afghanistan for deployment after deployment. She was safe and sound stateside. I’d come home and not want to sleep in the same room with her because I was afraid I’d hurt her in one of my flashbacks. I couldn’t control when they might happen and I never wanted to hurt her during one.”

  “Oh, that … yeah … My dad tried to pick me up off the floor one time and I swung on him.” She grimaced, her voice filled with regret. “I gave him a black eye. It was awful. They’d never laid a hand on me growing up, Harper, and here I swing on my dad. I didn’t see him, I didn’t know it was him … I was so caught up in that firefight.”

  “It’s rough on everyone. Olivia didn’t understand. There were times I’d scream so loudly that it would wake her up in the bedroom across the hall where she was sleeping. She’d come in and I’d be caught in the flashback and it scared the hell out of her. I don’t blame her. I was out of control. I was back there, in Afghanistan.” His mouth curved inward at the corners. “My PTSD broke our marriage wide open. I never blamed her for wanting a divorce. I couldn’t talk about it. I clammed up. I was at fault in that more than she ever was.”

  “But you didn’t strike out at me, Harper.”

  “Well, you know from seeing Taylor and getting that adaptogen? How it calmed my anxiety?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the time I was married, the only thing the military doc had was antidepressants and sleeping tablets. I refused either one. But since taking that adaptogen last year, I don’t have the anxiety any longer. Anxiety is gasoline being poured on the fire of a flashback.”

  “I don’t have it anymore either. I think it’s incredible and I’m so grateful that Libby Hilbert urged me to make an appointment to see Taylor about getting my cortisol level checked. It’s wonderful not to have that constant hyperalertness and anxiety always eating at me.”

  “Yeah,” Harper said, giving her a sour grin, “you’ve definitely ramped down since the medicine shut down the cortisol in your bloodstream. You’re not so nervous and restless. You sleep through the night. You’re getting a good eight hours, and that helps so much.”

  “It does,” Tara agreed. “So? You think the difference between then and now is the anxiety being gone? That when I went to hold you, you wouldn’t lash out at me?”

  “Yes, I do. It took away my sense of dread that someone was lurking around to kill me. All those emotions make you ready to fight back. Today I had the flashback, but I didn’t have the anxiety. That made a huge difference in how I reacted.”

  “A good one. Too bad that adaptogen can’t stop our flashbacks.”

  He laughed a little. “Yeah, I told Taylor that and she agreed. But just getting rid of the anxiety? I feel damn near human again. Except,” and he waved his hand toward the bear, “when I get charged by an animal with five-inch fangs and claws coming at me at the speed of a freight train.”

  Laughing with him, Tara said, “Well, anyone would have had an adrenaline reaction to that.”

  “Yeah, but in my case, it triggered the flashback.”

  “How long has it been since you had one?”

  “Six months. This one took me completely by surprise.”

  “Getting charged by a mature grizzly is enough to jolt anyone, Harper.”

  He said nothing for a moment, moving several dried pine needles between his fingers, frowning and staring down at them for a moment. He looked over at her. “Whatever we have between us, Tara? It’s good. It’s decent and it’s two-way. What you did for me today? I feel nearly normal now, and I shouldn’t. This stuff hangs around me like a bad cold for days afterward. But it’s gone.” Mouth lifting a little, he said, “I’m not glad about the bear triggering this, or that I had to kill it. The good thing that has come out of this day is the affect you have on me.”

  Chapter Eleven

  May 16

  Cree’s mouth turned into a slow smile as he read the Tetons Gazette, the county newspaper. There, splashed on the front page, was a dead grizzly that had been shot by Harper Sutton. Even better? Tara Dalton’s name was mentioned. He was on break from his dishwashing job at the saloon and had grabbed the paper. Always looking for a better-paying job, he’d wanted to look at the sparse want ads for Jackson Hole. Instead, the big photo on the front page had snagged his attention.

  So? Tara was hiking in the Salt River Mountains. It irked the hell out of him, made him angry that she had a boyfriend. He wanted to kill the bastard. Tara was his. And this time? He wasn’t going to screw up with kidnapping her and make good on keeping her.

  Still, his mind turned over the possibilities. He had grown up in Wind River Valley and he knew the Salt Mountains area. Prater Canyon was a big tourist attraction, a very popular hiking spot. There were several miners’ cabin
s up farther above the canyon itself, well beyond where most tourist hikers would venture. He’d made the mistake of going to the first broken-down cabin in a meadow to keep Tara there. Scratching his unshaven jaw, Cree folded up the paper after reading the brief article. He knew of a mine ten miles beyond that area where the bear had been killed. And it wasn’t a cabin either.

  He’d been looking for a place to take Tara, one that would help him make sure she didn’t escape this time. On his day off, he would hike that area and check out that mine. Very, very few people even knew it existed. He doubted it was on any maps, but he worried about topographical maps that did have things like mines on them. That could prove an issue. He wasn’t going to worry about it just yet. First, he’d buy the topo map for that area to see if the mine was indicated on it or not. If it wasn’t? Well, that made his hideout even better because he was sure a group of men would be looking for him and to rescue Tara.

  Not this time. No, this time she was going to pay for fighting him and trying to escape. He wouldn’t make that mistake twice. And Cree was clear that with this second attempt, if he did get caught kidnapping Tara, they’d put his ass in prison and throw away the key forever. Her father would see to that, being an influential county judge.

  Mouth flexing, he quickly perused the want ads, seeing nothing. He was stuck at the saloon. Well, that was all right. Everyone who owned a restaurant needed a dishwasher, and this job served him well. At least for now.

  May 24

  Just the rhythmic movement of a horse between her legs lulled Tara into a dreamy state. Ahead of her was Harper on Ghost, a gray quarter horse gelding with a black mane and tail. They were repairing fence posts this afternoon under a clearing sky, the wind coolish, the sun warming her head and shoulders.

  Socks, an eleven-year-old chestnut gelding with four white socks, was an old pro at this fence-fixing routine. Tara allowed the quarter horse to grab mouthfuls of the rich green grass that was growing swiftly now that most of the snow had melted. There were still stubborn white patches here and there along the pasture fence line where they rode. Harper wore his cowboy hat, had long, leather chaps that were splotched with the wet grass when he knelt onto the ground to dig around a rotted post. Her chaps were spotted with wet grass, too. She had on a gray down vest over her long-sleeved red-and-black-flannel shirt to drive off the cold air sweeping the valley after a chilly front had just passed on through.