She smiled faintly at the ring before looking up at Crystal. “When he didn’t return, I quit going to parties. I quit meeting young men. My one true love was dead. My life was over. There was nothing left but endless mourning.”
“Aunt Winona, I never knew. That’s so sad—”
With purpose, Winona dropped the ring back into place. “It is sad. And it’s poppycock. Regardless of what I thought at the time, Henry Dumaine was not my one true love, and my life was not over. Heavens, if he’d actually come back to keep his promise, I probably would have run the other way. He was so stiff and straitlaced, and I was impulsive and capricious. Our whole affair was so romantic—the brave, noble soldier heading off to war, the pretty young girl waiting at home and praying for his safety. But if he’d come home, if we’d been forced to go through with the marriage, we would have been at each other’s throats in no time. He would have hated the real me, and I would have learned to hate the real him.”
She laid her hand on top of Crystal’s. “My point, Crystal, is I let that experience close me off to all other possibilities. All those years I was mourning Henry, I could have met someone I might really love, someone who might have really loved me. I missed all those prospective Mr. Rights because of one man. I don’t want to see you do the same.”
Pulling her hand free, Crystal took her cereal bowl to the sink, rinsed it, then scowled at her aunt. “I’m not looking for Mr. Right.”
“Why? Because of what happened back home? Let me tell you this, young lady. James Rich-man Johnson the Third isn’t half the man Sloan Ravencrest is. He didn’t love you, Crystal! He loved the woman your parents tried to force you to be, but that’s not the real you. The first time he got a glimpse of the real you, he turned his back. He betrayed you. He didn’t love you!”
“But I loved him!” Crystal angrily dashed a tear from her eye. “I loved him, Aunt Winona, and he used me, and he betrayed me.”
“So blame him for it! Hate him! But don’t take it out on someone you didn’t even know at the time. Don’t judge Sloan by James’s shortcomings. Don’t condemn yourself to growing old alone, to never having children, to never having your own family, because you’d rather mourn what you’ve lost than find something to replace it.”
“I’m not mourning James,” Crystal said defensively.
“Right. You’ve had long conversations with Sloan for two days in a row. Can you even tell me what color his eyes are?”
“Brown.” There was a note of triumph in Crystal’s voice. She ruined the moment, though, when the next words tumbled out, heedless of her desire to stop them. “Dark, intelligent, sensitive brown.”
Winona’s brows arched toward her hairline and she came out of her chair with a big smile to catch Crystal around the waist and waltz her around the kitchen. “Oh-ho. Maybe young Crystal’s not as grief-stricken as she once was. Have you also noticed that he’s one of the best-looking men in the county? That his smile could be lethal to a susceptible woman? Have you noticed that he’s just the slightest bit sweet on you?”
Sweet on you. It was an old-fashioned phrase and too easily reminded her of another one. Maybe to court you.
What would it be like to be courted by Sloan Ravencrest? No doubt, totally different from any time she’d ever spent with James. James had taken her to the finest restaurants their small city had to offer, to parties with the county’s and even the state’s movers and shakers, to political dinners and debutante balls. Sloan’s idea of a good time was probably a picnic lunch on the riverbank, burgers and dancing at the Branding Iron or watching the sun set, then making love under the stars.
A tingle stirred low in her stomach—a tingle of lust, desire, sexual awareness. She’d thought that part of her had died, but it wasn’t dead, merely dormant, and Deputy Ravencrest was the wake-up call it had needed to return to life.
Not that she was ever going to do anything about it, she assured herself. A cop who’d already shown himself not averse to blackmail to get what he wanted was not deserving of her trust.
Even if he did have incredible eyes and a lethal smile. Even if he did appear to be endearingly, old-fashionedly sweet on her.
Pushing the thoughts away until she had time to strengthen her defenses, she gently disentangled herself from Winona’s embrace. “If you don’t still love Henry,” she began as she wrung out a dishcloth to wipe the dining table, “then why do you still wear his ring?”
Winona’s head bobbed in the direction of Crystal’s left hand. “For the same reason you still wear James’s ring. To remind myself of what my foolishness cost me. But our purposes are different. You want to make certain that you never risk any part of yourself again. I want to be certain that a day doesn’t go by when I don’t risk every part of myself. Life is short, Crystal, and too precious to waste. I don’t want to find myself old someday and regretting what might have been if only I’d been brave enough, bold enough, foolish enough.”
After her experience with James, Crystal knew she would never be brave or bold, and she’d been foolish enough to last a lifetime. Not wanting to repeat her mistakes didn’t make her somehow less than Winona. It just meant their goals were different. Winona wanted a full, rich life with every chance taken, every path explored.
And Crystal wanted to be safe.
Before she could be forced to acknowledge what a pathetic goal she’d set for herself, the sound of a slamming door outside caught her attention. “We have an early customer,” she remarked with a glance at the clock. “Do you want to open up, or should I?”
Winona lifted the curtain to peer out, then flushed crimson. “Oh, dear. I talked too long about Henry and lethal smiles and rings and purposes, and never got to the real point of it all.”
Feeling a mild dread dancing up her spine, Crystal placed her hands on her hips and squarely faced her aunt. “What point?”
Outside, footsteps echoed up the steps and across the porch. Winona smiled nervously, clutched the ends of her shawl together and blocked the door while hastily explaining, “I called Sloan last night and in the course of the conversation he mentioned that he had offered to show you around today and you had refused, and so I told him that you’d changed your mind and would like to go, after all.”
The knock was perfectly timed, punctuating her last rushed word. Throwing a helpless, flustered, pleading smile Crystal’s way, Winona opened the door and effusively greeted their guest in the same rushed manner even as she pushed past him. “Why, Sloan, it’s a pleasure to see you this morning. I do wish I could stay and chat, but someone’s got to open up the store this morning. Do have a good time and take good care of my niece.”
Once Winona was outside, she gave Sloan a none-too-gentle shove inside, then closed the door. In her mind’s eye, Crystal could easily see her scurrying away as if the more distance she put between them, the likelier her plan was to work.
Well, she was wrong. It wasn’t going to work. She was going to expose Winona for the meddling busybody she was, tell Deputy Ravencrest that she hadn’t changed her mind at all and wasn’t setting foot outside this trailer with him, and then she would spend the day the way she’d intended to spend it—working in the back room. Alone. Safe.
And pathetic.
She was grinding her teeth in an effort not to shriek her dismay and frustration to the heavens when he spoke. “I would plead total innocence, but I knew when she called last night that you hadn’t changed your mind.”
“And yet you came, anyway.”
“It would have been rude to not show up when she was expecting me.”
She finally allowed herself to look at him and wished she hadn’t. Instead of his black-and-gray uniform, he wore faded jeans and a snug black T-shirt under a denim jacket. His cowboy hat this morning, cradled in his hands, was black, and his boots were well worn. He looked handsome and sexy and so damn male.
She tried to speak, but her mouth had gone impossibly dry. Tried to walk away, but her feet were rooted to the floor. Desp
erately she reminded herself that this was the man who’d blackmailed her, who’d threatened to expose her to ridicule, and that helped. It didn’t cool her blood, but it helped her find her voice. “I’m sorry you drove all the way out here for nothing.”
“I’ve seen you. That’s not ‘nothing.’”
She silently scoffed at the notion that merely seeing her was worth anything to anyone as he turned to leave. With the door open, he turned back to face her. “You know, if you don’t go with me, the old lady’s going to pester you all day long. She’s going to tell you that you’re too young to live cooped up out here the way you do, that you have to learn to take a chance now and then, and she’ll be right.”
“I don’t take chances,” she said flatly.
“Sure, you do. You left your home, your job, your family, everything familiar, and came here to live.”
“With my elderly great-aunt.”
“But you hardly knew her. She told me she hadn’t seen you ten times in your entire life.”
Crystal acknowledged that with a cool smile. “She left Georgia nearly sixty years ago. She found too much family closeness stifling—at least, with our particular family.”
“So you took a chance coming to live in a new place with a virtual stranger. Take another one. Spend the day with me.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“I’m not asking you to…yet.”
“You blackmailed and threatened me.”
He came a few steps closer. “That was a bluff. I never would have told the Montgomerys about you.”
“Easy enough to claim now that you’ve gotten what you wanted.”
His eyes darkening, he closed the distance between them and lowered his voice, made it thick and dark and husky with promise. “Oh, Crystal, that’s not all I wanted. Not by a long shot.” He punctuated his words with the light touch of one fingertip on her arm, warm pressure starting at her elbow and sliding up the back of her arm, underneath the short sleeve of her T-shirt, up to the sensitive place just below the shoulder, where his touch was a tickle, a heated sensation. Her first impulse was to jerk away from him. Her second was to move in closer, to silently plead for more. She settled for doing neither, but merely holding herself rigid, and he withdrew soon enough—too soon—on his own.
“Take a chance, Crystal.”
“I don’t trust you,” she repeated with less certainty than before.
“So live dangerously. Just once.” He grinned, reminding her for all the world of an abundantly good-natured kid. For that moment there was no hint of danger around him, no overwhelming aura of intense sexuality—and believing for even one moment that he was neither dangerous to her nor sexy as hell was the biggest danger of all.
That was why she opened her mouth to refuse him once again and send him on his way. And for some reason, that was also why the words that came out of her mouth didn’t have a “no” in the bunch. “All right. I’ll need to change clothes first.”
Because wanting nothing more from life than to be safe was sad. Because life was too precious to waste. Because she was twenty-six and had nothing to look back on but regrets.
Because she desperately wanted more than regrets.
She left him standing by the door and went down the hall to her bedroom. The room was typical of a decades-old mobile home—small, square, cramped. When she’d first come to visit, it had been furnished with a full-size bed, but once she’d decided to stay, she’d traded it for a twin bed from the shop. She was never indulging in sex again, never sharing her bed with anyone ever again, so why give up valuable floor space for unused bed space? she’d reasoned.
Still breathing deeply for control, she kicked off her skirt and stepped into a pair of indigo blues. Over her short-sleeved T-shirt, she added a sweatshirt bearing the logo of her alma mater, then sat on the bed to lace up her tennis shoes. That done, she checked her appearance in the mirror over the built-in dresser in the corner, then realized what she was doing with chagrin.
This wasn’t a date, or even anything she wanted to do, and Sloan Ravencrest absolutely, positively, was not a potential Mr. Right. As long as she was clean and neat, that was all that mattered.
Yeah, right, her inner voice retorted as she touched up her lipstick. She tucked the tube in her pocket, returned to the kitchen, got her keys and a jacket and waited pointedly for Sloan to leave first so she could lock up. Once that was done, they walked together but apart across the yard to the parking lot.
Left at home with the deputy’s uniform was the deputy’s truck. Instead he was driving his own vehicle, a fairly new, wholeheartedly red pickup that required a high step into the cab. She climbed in before he could offer assistance, fastened her seat belt and directed her gaze straight ahead.
What in the world are you doing? her common sense demanded. Going off to spend much of the day alone with a man she didn’t know—a man who, so far, had infuriated her, frightened her, intimidated her and aroused her. A man who made her think too much about things she wanted to forget, who threatened the new life she’d made for herself, who was dangerous and appealing and boyishly charming. Was she crazy? Was she out of her mind?
Or was she coming back to it?
Three
By noon, they’d checked out four clearings on hillsides without any luck. Though she didn’t say so, Sloan knew Crystal thought they were searching for a needle in a field full of haystacks, and though he didn’t say so, he more or less agreed. Still, they might get lucky. In fact, he already had. He was spending the day with her, wasn’t he?
He’d planned their route to bring them around lunchtime to that place on the river he’d told her about the day before—his place. They were too late for the sunrise and way too early for sunset, but it was still the prettiest place in the county, and he still wanted to show it to her.
Not that she was likely to be impressed. So far, judging from the unchanging flat expression she’d worn all morning, nothing had impressed her, least of all him.
But he hadn’t even seriously started trying.
When he turned off the highway onto a dirt road, she glanced at him but didn’t say anything. Three miles later, when he turned off the dirt road onto what was little more than a faint trail, she finally spoke up. “Where are we going?”
“It’s lunchtime. I know a place up here.”
“A restaurant? All the way out here?”
“A place,” he repeated. “I told you yesterday that I would provide lunch.” With a jerk of his head, he indicated the ice chest secured in the back of the truck. “I’m not much of a cook, but I do all right with sandwiches.”
“Isn’t it a little chilly for a picnic?”
“In Montana, we call this unseasonably warm,” he said with a grin, though she was right. It was cool, but in the sun with their jackets on, they’d be comfortable. And if she needed more heat than her jacket could provide, he’d be generous. He would help her generate it.
The trail snaked through the woods, over ground rough enough in places to jar his teeth, before finally emerging in a meadow. He parked in his usual spot, then circled the truck to walk with Crystal to the bank of the stream. “This is the Little Blue River.”
“With emphasis on ‘little.’ Back home we’d call this a creek.”
He couldn’t argue that with her. The river was no more than forty feet at its widest point, with a depth ranging from one foot to fifteen or so, but it was clear, clean and cold, and the fishing was good.
“Those are the Crazy Mountains,” he went on, gesturing to the jagged-peaked mountains to the west. “Whitehorn is that way, and the rez is over there.”
“What’s it like?”
“The reservation? It’s…a place,” he said with a shrug. “There are houses, people, cattle, horses. A general store, a gas station, a post office, some tribal buildings. Lots of empty land.”
“Do you live there?”
As far as he could recall, that was the first personal question she’d aske
d him. Since most of the time in their brief association he would have sworn that she hadn’t experienced a moment’s curiosity about him, he was pleasantly surprised…and pleased. “I grew up there, but a few years ago I decided to get a place in town. It was easier for the job.”
“Do you have family there?”
He laughed. “It would be easier to count the people on the rez who aren’t connected to my father’s family than the ones who are. My dad is one of thirteen kids, and most of them still live out there.”
“What about your mother’s family?”
“I’ve never met them,” he said, then casually added, “Never met her, either.”
That made her look at him, with a mix of surprise and sympathy darkening her eyes. “Is she dead?”
“I don’t know.” He turned back to the truck, intending to get the quilt he’d stuffed behind the seat and the ice chest. She walked alongside. “My father met her when they were in college. He thought they would get married after graduation and come back here to raise a family, like his father and his older brothers. He didn’t realize that, for her, sleeping with an Indian was…I don’t know. Daring. Exciting. Forbidden fruit, and all that garbage. But marrying him was out of the question. So was raising his child.”
“I’m sorry.”
He reached inside the truck for the quilt, handed it to her, then lifted the ice chest out. She chose a spot near the river to spread the blanket, then gracefully lowered herself to sit cross-legged in one corner.
“It was for the best,” he said as he sat opposite her. “She minded that I was half Cheyenne, while my father couldn’t care less that I’m half white. She was afraid to even let her family know she was pregnant. My father’s family raised me, and they treated me no differently than all the other kids.”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious about her?”
Big Sky Lawman Page 4
