“I think it’s time I took you home.”
“Oh, no. Really. I don’t want to leave.” She could have kicked herself for sighing so audibly. She hoped the warmth of the fire could account for the heat she felt rising to her cheeks. “I mean, I’m sorry. I…my mind wandered for a moment.”
“It’s been wandering for more than a moment. What are you thinking about? The party?”
“Yes. The party.” It had been at the back of her mind, so it wasn’t completely a lie. “I think it will be wonderful here. It’s all coming together nicely.” In fact, she’d spent almost no time at all on party preparations since the children had arrived. Thank goodness there were only minor details left to be decided.
Details that gave her an excuse to come back here again.
She managed a smile and was pleased that it felt natural, not forced. “I’m going over the plans one more time with the people here. Probably next week, and then all we have to do is sit back and relax and enjoy.”
“I like the sit back, relax and enjoy part.”
“Me, too.” She took another sip of her coffee. It had cooled as they talked. She made a little face.
“Do you want your coffee warmed up?” he asked. “I’ll call the waitress over.”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve had enough. Any more and I won’t be able to fall asleep, decaf or not.”
He signaled the waitress for the bill and five minutes later they were standing outside under the vaulted portico waiting for the valet to bring out Miguel’s truck. The bulk of the building rose up behind them, as sturdy as the rock and cedar from which it was hewn, its windows glowing warm against the darkness.
“My mom’s dying to get up here and check this place out,” Miguel said.
“It’s spectacular. I think everyone will be impressed.”
The truck rolled up and Miguel helped her into the passenger side.
“Mind if we take a little detour on the way home?” he asked, settling into the driver’s seat.
She stiffened a little, turning her head to study his face in the last glow of twilight. What was he asking of her? He had promised this evening wouldn’t include anything physical and she meant to hold him to his word—for both their sakes. “I don’t want to be too late. The kids—”
“This won’t take long.” A few minutes later he turned the truck off the main road onto a track that was barely visible, rutted and apparently seldom used. Devon wrapped one hand around the armrest and braced the other on the dashboard. The truck had four-wheel drive—without it she doubted they would have made it more than half a mile up the steep slope he’d turned onto.
They drove in silence, fir boughs scraping both sides as the track narrowed, and now and then a branch dragged across the windshield. “Miguel, where in heaven are you taking me?”
“Exactly.” She could see him bare his teeth in a grin, and then he stopped the truck. “Heaven. Or as close as you can get around here.” He got out and came around the hood to open her door. “It’s only a few yards. You can make it even in those shoes. There’s something I want you to see.” He held out his hand and she took it. This place was obviously special to him, and the certainty in his voice left no room for doubt.
Miguel led the way and Devon followed in his footsteps, not trusting her night vision as he did his. It was a short climb, but almost straight up. He pulled her over the last few feet, brushed aside the boughs of a wind-sculpted pine and drew her up beside him. Devon sucked in her breath at what lay before her. They were close to the edge of the ridge line. Not ten feet in front of them the rocks dropped away into nothingness. But it was what lay beyond the sheer drop that held her spellbound.
Half of New Mexico spread out beneath them, or so it seemed. Far off in the distance, Taos was a pale shimmer in the black velvet sky. Closer by she could see Enchantment’s streets laid out in a grid of lights. Around them, here and there on the mountainsides, tiny pinpricks of gold, like fireflies twinkling in the darkness, marked houses and cabins. One of them would belong to Miguel’s grandfather, and somewhere hidden in the folds of the mountain was the old ghost town of Silverton. If she turned her head far enough, Angel’s Gate shone like glory above them. And higher still, dwarfing all else, the dark bulk of Mount Wheeler. There was more moisture in the air at this altitude, and the scent of pine and cedar swirled on the night air.
“How did you ever find this place?” She turned her head from the beauty of the view and looked up into his eyes, as dark as the eastern sky.
“My grandfather brought me here when I was very young. I camped out in the pine grove back there off and on when I was a kid. It’s a hell of a bike ride when you’re ten. But when I really started spending a lot of time on the mountain was when I came back from Somalia.”
The summer after she’d graduated from high school. The summer she’d thought he would ask her to marry him.
Miguel tugged gently on her hand, inviting her to sit with him on the large, flat boulder that marked the edge of the cliff. Her eyes had adjusted to the night and she no longer felt as if she might step into nothingness if she moved her feet. Devon lowered herself to the rock, feeling the slight warmth the stone still held from the afternoon sun, and the more compelling heat of the man beside her.
“Is this where you kept disappearing to all that summer?” she asked at last. It was hard for her to talk about those days, even now. They’d been inseparable before that time. She’d written to him every day he was in boot camp and when he’d gone overseas. She’d dreamed of him every night, even forgoing her senior prom because he couldn’t come to San Francisco to be her date.
“It was the only place I could feel at peace.”
“You never brought me here.” They’d made love in the back of his pickup, on the banks of Silver Creek, but never here on the mountain. His special place.
“I wanted to.”
“Would it have made a difference?” She spoke her thoughts aloud before she could stop herself.
He didn’t answer for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “I couldn’t even help myself for a while there.”
In those days she’d understood little of what was happening in that faraway, war-torn African country. She’d known only that people were dying of famine and clan wars. She had been proud that Miguel was there to help feed the hungry and keep the warlords at bay, but self-absorbed teenager that she was, she’d resented his being taken from her, duty or no duty. Now, of course she knew more. That it had not been so simple or straightforward a mission and it had ended in tragedy, and what surely to a proud Marine, had been defeat.
She listened to the sounds of the wind in the firs and the lonely whistle of a freight train on its way to Santa Fe that carried up to them from the valley below as she waited for him to speak again.
“I stayed up here three days straight once.”
She nodded, remembering. “I was a nervous wreck worrying about you, but I never knew where you’d gone.” It had been over the Fourth of July. He had stood her up for the town picnic and the parade and fireworks.
He picked up a pebble and pitched it into the void. Devon listened, but she didn’t hear it land. “If it helps any, my mom tore a strip off my hide when I got back to town.”
“I think I remember throwing a glass of lemonade in your face for the same reason.”
“I remember.”
“You just turned on your heel and walked away.” She had raged and sobbed and clung to him by turns, too young and inexperienced to know how to reach him, and she regretted it to this day.
“I needed to get my head on straight. The trouble is it took a hell of a lot longer than three days to do it. By the time I could talk about it, you were gone and I didn’t know how to get you back.”
“Tell me about it now.”
For a moment she wasn’t sure he would. Then he began to speak, slowly, without anger or bitterness. “Somalia wasn’t like any place I’ve ever been. Every time we went out on patrol, we�
�d be mobbed by little kids begging for food. Only, we couldn’t give them any because as likely as not their big brothers were waiting around the corner to ambush us when our guard was down. Do you know what it’s like to hold a gun on a kid? And know you might have to use it?” His voice cracked and he was silent for a long moment, pitching another stone over the cliff. “No law and order. No electricity. No water. Teenagers riding in the back of pickups with machine guns bolted to the beds. And God help us, they knew how to use the damned things.” His voice had hardened and Devon shivered beneath her light cotton jacket. She wrapped her arms around her knees and looked up at the stars, so many the sky seemed carpeted with them. “Every time we went out on patrol, someone got killed. Usually a couple of them, but sometimes our guys, too.”
Miguel turned his head and seemed to search her face. “That wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Some of the older guys had been in Desert Storm. They knew who the enemy was. They had the resources and the backing they needed to get the job done. But this was different. Politicians dropped us in there and two years later they pulled us back out after a lot of good Marines and Army Rangers were killed, and the place is still a hell hole.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t storming the beach at Normandy. It wasn’t raising the flag on Iwo Jima. My grandfather was a Code Talker. His buddy, Manny Cordova won a Silver Star on Okinawa. My dad was Recon in Vietnam. I was Meals on Wheels, and the people we were trying to keep from starving to death would just as soon shoot us as look at us.” He rested his forearm on his knee, and she could see his hand ball into a fist. “For a long time I couldn’t handle it—there, or when I came home.”
“So you avoided me.”
“I avoided everyone. I got past it, though. I finished my hitch. I put what the Marines taught me to good use, got my degree in criminal justice and joined the force here in Enchantment.” He reached out and brushed his fingers across her cheek so lightly she barely felt it. “But by then it was too late for us. You were gone. I’ll always regret it was you I hurt the most.”
“No more than I hurt you.”
“Coming back to you was all I thought about while I was over there. I lived for your letters. I made plans for us for when I got back.”
“Not plans, Miguel. Dreams. I had them, too, but they were only dreams. They couldn’t stand up to real life.” She’d been infatuated with the tall young Marine. With the romantic fantasy of a Navajo warrior, but not the stark reality of the angry, disillusioned young man who returned to Enchantment that summer.
Miguel leaned forward. She could still feel the heat of his body and she wanted to be wrapped in his arms the way she’d been those long-ago summers, and that not-so-long-ago night. He must have read her mind—it was too dark for her thoughts to be visible on her face—for he asked quietly, “Were you in love with me?”
“We were too young to know what love is,” she responded, but the statement lacked the conviction she meant it to have.
“Maybe it wasn’t love,” he agreed, and she felt sadness steal into her heart. She’d thought he loved her, too, then. She’d been certain of it. “But it was as close as I’ve ever come. And it was a lot more than a teenage infatuation. I think we proved that a few weeks ago.”
She lifted her fingers to his lips, stopping his words. “We agreed we wouldn’t bring that night up again.”
“You’re still single. You told me about the doctor. Have there been other men in your life?”
“One or two.”
“Has there been anything to compare to what we had back then?”
Images of the boys she’d met in college, the young doctor she’d tried to make herself believe she could love. None of them had come close to filling her thoughts and her heart as Miguel had done. “No,” she whispered, unable to stop herself from speaking the truth.
“For me, either.” He was so close now they were touching. He put his arm around her and angled her even closer to his body. She made no attempt to stop him. She wanted to be close to him. She wanted to be in his arms. His aftershave was subtle and enticing, and if she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, she thought of sagebrush and sunshine, scents that would always remind her of him.
Miguel turned and kissed her with a slow, drugging thoroughness that left her breathless and shamelessly seeking more. Devon turned so her breasts were against his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck. The hair at his nape was thick and soft as silk. Her good intentions, her promises to him and to herself to not let things get out of control evaporated like mist in the sunlight. She had ached to be held like this since that night in the spring.
He ended the kiss and she clung to him for a moment, breathless and floating, her eyes closed against the sparkle of starlight within and without. “The past is behind us,” he said. “We’re not the kids we used to be. We’re adults. We know our own minds. We deserve another chance, Devon.” His voice wasn’t quite steady. His hands on her arms weren’t quite steady, either.
But sanity had returned with the end of the kiss, and she knew she couldn’t give him the reply he wanted. She shook her head. “My life is as out of sync as yours was all those years ago, Miguel.” How she longed to tell him so much more. He had grown into the kind of man she knew he would be. Strong, loyal, full of integrity and the capacity to love. But what had she matured into? A woman who was filled with myriad self-doubts and conflicts. A woman who was breaking the law, even if for the best of reasons.
And he was a cop whose first responsibility was upholding the law.
He laid his finger against her cheek and turned her head to face the valley. “Your future could be right down there, the same future as mine.”
She closed her eyes against the longing for what he offered, love and home and family. But she couldn’t tell him everything that weighed on her heart, and she wouldn’t begin a relationship based on a foundation of lies. She swallowed hard against the tears that threatened. “I can’t see anything but starlight and shadows. I—” She gasped as he pulled her to her feet. “What’s wrong?”
“Fire,” he said, pointing. Devon narrowed her eyes and looked in the direction he indicated. Way off in the distance, halfway up the mountainside, she saw a dot of orange light that separated into two, then three smaller pinpricks as they watched. “Some fool idiot has gone and started a fire out by Manny Cordova’s place.” He gripped her arms and gave her one more hard, quick kiss. “Okay, you’re as mixed up as I was all those years ago. I’ll give you that. I rushed my fences tonight.” He jumped down off the boulder and held out his arms so she wouldn’t have to scramble down on her own. “We’ll work it out later. But get this straight, Devon. I’m not a confused eighteen-year-old anymore. I’m a man and I know what I want. Understand?” It wasn’t a question, it was a command, and she responded with an automatic nod. “And one more thing you should know about me. I usually get what I want in the end.”
CHAPTER NINE
DEVON WALKED to the window of Dr. Joanna Carson’s office, past the ornate wooden desk and heavy, stained-glass lamps, holdovers from Joanna’s predecessor, and opened the equally dark and heavy drapes. The view from the pediatric clinic was almost the same as the one from The Birth Place just half a mile father along Desert Valley Road. She scanned the mountainside for signs of smoke. There wasn’t any, thank goodness. There hadn’t been all morning, but that hadn’t stopped her from watching. And worrying. The fire had indeed been at Manny’s ranch. Miguel had skidded to a stop at the foot of her driveway last night, leaned across her to open the passenger door and promised he’d let her know how things were going as soon as he had a chance. Then he’d roared off.
That was more than twelve hours ago. The fire had started in Manny’s chicken coop and spread through the dry grass in his pasture, but it had been out for more than half that time. She knew that because she’d listened to the police scanner for most of the night. Miguel had probably been too tired to call and was sleeping in this morning. Miguel in bed… The image of him nake
d, his arms wrapped around her, his erection pushing hard against her was vivid enough to make her catch her breath. She raised her fingers to her lips, thankful she was alone. Beyond the door, Joanna’s waiting room was full, and the sound of children’s voices, some happy, some querulous with fever, drifted down the hall.
One of the laughing children was Maria, whom Devon had just left in the play area. Joanna had given the little girl a clean bill of health. The congestion in her lungs was cleared up. Maria had answered Joanna’s questions without hesitation and shown little fear of the stethoscope and otoscope that the pediatrician wielded with gentle skill.
Dr. Jo, as most of her patients called her, was examining Sylvia now. Ideally Devon supposed she should have made an appointment for Sylvia with Dr. Ochoa, but he couldn’t work her into his schedule for at least ten days, so Joanna had agreed to check her over. Devon turned from the window as the exam-room door opened and Sylvia stepped outside, followed by Dr. Jo, whose pregnancy was almost as advanced as Sylvia’s.
But there the similarity between the two ended. Joanna’s face was alight with joy and contentment. Sylvia’s was dulled with anxiety and the hint of tears. Joanna spoke first. “Sylvia’s doing well. She’s slightly anemic and underweight, but iron and a vitamin supplement, and a couple of fruit shakes a day should take care of that in no time.”
“Good,” Devon said.
“The baby appears healthy, at least as far as I can ascertain without further tests,” Joanna continued, her smile losing a little of its radiance.
“I don’t want to go to the hospital for tests,” Sylvia insisted. “I hate hospitals.”
“We don’t have to make that decision today,” Devon said gently.
Joanna spoke carefully, her voice clear but pitched not to carry beyond the spot where the three of them were standing. “I don’t think you should delay too long. Sylvia is unsure of her due date. I’m a pediatrician, not an OB/GYN, but I estimate the baby is within a month of term. She needs to be making plans for her delivery and for the baby’s future. You’re very lucky to have Devon for a friend, Sylvia. She can help you with both those decisions.”
The Midwife and the Lawman Page 9
