“I won’t have to worry about you at all if you do as I say,” he tossed back. “The whole point is to get both you and Laura out of there in one piece. As long as you do what I say, when I say, we shouldn’t have any problem. So what’s it going to be? Do I have your word?”
The answer should have been easy, Naomi knew. Yes. That was all he needed to hear. But he was asking for more than a guarantee that she would follow orders, no questions asked, and they both knew it. If she was going to accompany him, he had to know that she trusted him. And that was asking more of her than he could possibly know. Because the last man she had trusted was the same man who had dragged her daughter up into the mountains without a thought to her safety. How could she trust any man after that?
But Hunter Fortune wasn’t just any man, she silently acknowledged. If she knew nothing else about him, she knew that. He’d put his life on hold, just walked away from his business without a backward glance, to come to the rescue of a little girl he didn’t even know, and she didn’t know many people who would do that. Considering that, how could she not trust him?
“Yes,” she said quietly. “You have my word.”
She thought it would be easy. After all, how difficult could following orders be? He wouldn’t ask anything unreasonable of her. He was only looking out for her safety. As long as she did what he said, when he said, she wouldn’t get into any trouble. Or so she told herself, until they returned to Elk Canyon and the spot where James had left his car.
With sure, swift movements, Hunter unloaded his snowmobile from its trailer and strapped her backpack on the back along with his. Then he swung his leg over the machine as he took his position in the driver’s seat and motioned her to climb on behind him. “Make sure you hang on tight at all times,” he said as he pulled on gloves and goggles. “I’m not going to go very fast, but I don’t want you falling off if I have to make some sharp turns.”
In the process of pulling on her own gloves, Naomi went perfectly still, the thumping of her heart so loud that she’d have sworn Hunter could hear it in the sudden silence that engulfed the canyon. She’d known, of course, that they would be riding double, but she hadn’t given much thought to the fact that to do that, she would have to put her arms around his waist.
She hadn’t held a man in almost four years. Not since she’d made love with James and conceived Laura, only to learn later that he was a married man.
“Naomi? Is there a problem?”
Caught up in her thoughts, she blinked Hunter back into focus and found him frowning at her, his dark eyes narrowed and searching—far too sharp for comfort. Flushing, she looked quickly away. “No. I was just…thinking.”
If he thought it odd that she’d picked now, of all times, to indulge in a daydream, he kept it to himself. “If you’re having second thoughts about going, it’s not too late to change your mind,” he said quietly. “You can take my truck and go back to your house to wait. I’ve got my cell phone. I’ll call you the second I find Laura.”
“No. It’s not that. I want to go,” she insisted, but still, she stood right where she was.
She wasn’t, she told herself, afraid of him. Or, for that matter, afraid that he was going to take advantage of the situation. Lucas Greywolf would’ve never recommended him if that had been the case. It was just that she hadn’t expected to get that close to him. He was an extremely good-looking man. Why, of all times, did she have to notice that now, when they were about to race off into the wilderness and would be alone together for God knew how long? Why, when she would have sworn that she wouldn’t have uttered a word of protest if every man on the planet flew back to Mars, was she suddenly aware of just how big, how hard, this particular one was? Even with the protective clothing they both had on, there was no way she would be able to put her arms around his waist without being aware of every lean inch of him.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too, a voice snapped impatiently in her head. If you want to be there when Laura is found, quit acting like a ninny and get on the damn snowmobile before the man thinks you’re afraid to touch him because you’re attracted to him.
That got her attention. She’d never heard of anything so ridiculous in all her life. Of course she wasn’t attracted to him. And to prove it, she lifted her chin, stepped determinedly up to the snowmobile and swung her leg over the seat behind him.
There should have been plenty of room for two people. The gear strapped onto the back didn’t take up that much space, and she wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a large woman. She should have been able to sit well back on her portion of the seat without even touching Hunter except to hold on to him at his waist. Then she sat down, and before she realized that the space left for her was smaller than it looked, she found herself plastered to his back.
“Oh! Wait!” she began, startled.
But it was already too late. Hunter turned the key in the ignition with a flick of his wrist, and the motor roared to life. With a low growl the snowmobile lurched forward and sent Naomi’s heart shooting into her throat. Gasping, she latched on to him, her fingers biting into his waist as she hung on for dear life.
She held him as if she was afraid he was going to give her cooties, Hunter thought. Wondering about the paradox that was Naomi Windsong, he revved the motor and sent the snowmobile racing into the cover of the trees. She was an unwed mother who’d had an affair with a married man, so she was hardly what he would call innocent. Yet she touched him like she’d never held a man before. Was she afraid of him?
Heading up toward the spot where he’d found Barker’s tracks earlier in the day, he immediately rejected the idea. As desperate as she was to find her daughter, Hunter knew she never would have come with him—especially when she didn’t have to—if she’d been afraid of him. No, it was some other emotion that had her trying to hold him at arm’s length, and if he had to guess, he’d say it had something to do with Barker. Thanks to him, she probably hated all men, and Hunter couldn’t say he blamed her. The jackass had gone out of his way to teach her that she couldn’t trust her own instincts when it came to men, and that was a lesson a woman didn’t soon forget.
Still, she was as safe with him as if she’d been in church. He knew trouble when he saw it, and though there’d been a time in his life when he’d been a sucker for a woman looking for someone to charge to her rescue, those days were long gone. He had enough headaches of his own without taking on another one. If he was racing off into the wilds with the lady, it wasn’t because he was trying to make points with her. He just couldn’t stand the thought of a child being in danger.
He hit a bump in the snow then, and the sudden jarring of the snowmobile sent Naomi plowing into his back, hard. And in the split second before she hastily pulled back, her breasts were nestled snug against him. It was just a quick, tantalizing brush of a soft female body against his, something he shouldn’t even have noticed, considering the thick layer of clothes they each had on. But in the time it took to suck in a sharp breath, Hunter was hot and hard and he didn’t even know how it happened. He just knew that they’d barely left civilization behind, and the lady was already giving him ideas, all without saying a single word. And all he could do was swear.
Four
He should have turned around right then and headed back to town. It would have been the smart thing to do. She was distracting the hell out of him, and he had a feeling the situation was only going to get worse the longer they were in each other’s company. He would turn back now, take her back to her place and recommend she call Joe Little Hawk. He was a good tracker and old enough to be her father. Maybe Joe could take her with him on his snowmobile and not feel anything, but he sure couldn’t. And if she gave him any trouble about backing out on her, he just might be tempted to tell her that.
But even as he started to brake, an image of a little girl flashed before his eyes. He didn’t have to see a picture of her to know that Laura Windsong looked like her mother. Some things were just inevitab
le. She would have the same dark hair, the same wide gray eyes, the same stubborn chin. And right now, she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in in her life, and she needed him. Him. Not Joe Little Hawk or Michael Crow or any of the other men he’d met on the reservation who had a knack for following a trail. They were good—he didn’t doubt that. But he was better. Time and again, he’d found lost souls who’d been long since given up for dead because he refused to give up. And he wasn’t giving up on Laura Windsong.
And when her mother came face-to-face with the lowlife that had stolen her heart, he was going to be there, he thought grimly. He didn’t know why it was so important to him, but he knew with a certainty that went soul deep that he had to be there for her. In the meantime, there would be no going back. He would have to find a way to deal with her, and he didn’t for a second fool himself into thinking it was going to be easy. Not when it was colder than hell, and the woman only had to touch him to make him sweat.
They picked up James’s tracks right where Hunter had found them earlier and started up into the mountains. Naomi had thought it would be simple enough—all they had to do was follow the snowmobile tracks and they would lead them right to Laura. But she quickly learned nothing was that simple. In his rush to get away, James hadn’t, unfortunately, forgotten to be cautious. Obviously expecting to be followed, he seldom traveled in a straight line. Instead, he darted in and out among the trees, winding up and around and back again, seeming, at times, to be heading in no particular direction. And every time he’d left the protection of the trees for more open ground, the previous night’s snowfall had obliterated his tracks.
Holding on to Hunter as he lost the trail, then found it again, only to lose it once more, Naomi soon appreciated his skills as a tracker. There were times when the trail appeared to just give out in a smooth expanse of snow. There was nothing to show which direction James had gone next, nothing to show that he had even been there at all. If the decision had been left up to her, she wouldn’t have a clue which way to turn, but Hunter had no such problem. With a patience she couldn’t help but admire, he dismounted from the snowmobile and carefully inspected the area on foot. And where she saw nothing, he found broken limbs or clumps of snow that had been carelessly knocked from low-lying branches to point the way.
Still, it was a tedious process. Hunter had warned her that finding the spot where James might have been watching them with binoculars earlier in the day wouldn’t be easy, and he was right. With painstaking slowness, they kept climbing, but never seemed to get anywhere. James’s tracks—when Hunter could find them—always wound higher up the mountain, with no end in sight.
And every time they lost the tracks, they lost precious time. In spite of that, Naomi hadn’t been able to let go of the hope that she would hold her daughter in her arms again before nightfall. But as the sun began its downward descent and the temperature started to drop with it, Naomi had no choice but to accept the fact that that wasn’t going to happen.
Exhausted, realizing for the first time the enormity of what they were up against in their search, it was all she could do not to lay her head against Hunter’s back and cry. She was so tired…and not any closer to finding Laura than she had been that morning.
“It looks like we may have gotten a break,” Hunter said suddenly over the low roar of the snowmobile’s motor. “There’s a line cabin up ahead.”
Lost in her misery, Naomi hardly heard him at first. Then his words registered. “What? Where?”
“In the clearing off to the right,” he said, nodding to the area fifty yards ahead of them. In the gathering shadows, the small, single-room dwelling looked deserted, but Hunter had no intention of driving right up to the front porch without checking it out first. Naomi didn’t think Barker had a gun, but Hunter wasn’t so sure. Any man who would kidnap his own daughter and drag her up into the mountains just to torture her mother was capable of anything.
Braking to a stop well short of the cabin, he cut the snowmobile’s engine and said quietly in the sudden silence, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
He knew what he was asking of her, and for a minute he thought she was going to insist on going with him, but he only had to shoot her a narrow-eyed look to remind her that they had an agreement. She didn’t like it—in fact, if looks could kill, the resentful look she shot him would have slain him on the spot—but he had to give her credit. She was a lady of her word. Her mouth compressing in a flat line, she sat back and didn’t offer a single word of protest as he soundlessly slipped off into the trees that surrounded the cabin.
He was back almost immediately, his rugged face carved in shadows as he moved toward her as silently as an eagle gliding through the pines. In his hand he carried a small stuffed teddy bear that was worn and tattered and missing an ear. “Recognize this?”
Naomi took one look at it and cried out softly as she quickly dismounted the snowmobile and reached for it. “Oh, God, it’s Chester—Laura’s bear! She never goes anywhere without him. Where—”
“In the cabin,” he said, anticipating her question. “It looks like Barker holed up here with Laura last night, then took off after he spotted us down in the canyon with binoculars this morning.”
“And he made her leave Chester behind?” she said indignantly, her gray eyes snapping. “How dare he! He knows what that bear means to her. She won’t even go to sleep at night without it. The one time he got misplaced, she cried for hours.”
“We don’t know that Barker deliberately made her leave without it,” he said. “In the rush to get away, he might have just overlooked it.”
“No. You don’t know him. He did this on purpose to taunt me. He wants me to think she’s been crying all afternoon.” Her throat tightening at the thought, she could do nothing to stop the tears that suddenly flooded her eyes. “Damn him, he’s not going to get away with it,” she said huskily. “He couldn’t have gotten that far. If we hurry—”
“We wouldn’t get a quarter of a mile,” he said flatly. “I know you’re upset and you’d like nothing more than to get your hands around Barker’s throat as soon as possible, and I don’t blame you—the man’s a bastard—but we’re not going anywhere tonight. Look around you,” he said when she started to object. “It’s already dark and we’ve both had a long day. That adds up to an accident waiting to happen. If you want to help Laura, the best thing you can do for her right now is get a good night’s sleep and start fresh in the morning.”
“But—”
“This isn’t open to discussion, Naomi. This is the end of the trail for tonight.”
If she hadn’t been teetering on the edge of exhaustion and worried to death about Laura, she might have reacted differently. As it was, all she could think of was one more man was trying to come between her and her daughter, and she’d had just about enough of it. No one was telling her what she could and couldn’t do when it came to Laura.
“Maybe for you, but not for me,” she said coolly. “As long as there’s any daylight left, I intend to keep searching.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—”
Ignoring him, she turned on her heel and began to retrace her steps to the last spot they’d seen James’s tracks. While Hunter had been in the cabin, the sun had completely disappeared behind the tallest peaks to the west, and the shadows were already darkening under the trees. If she was lucky, she might have another thirty or forty minutes before she completely lost the light. And that was thirty or more minutes that they wouldn’t have to waste tomorrow looking for James’s tracks.
Her head down, her eyes trained directly on the snow-covered ground at her feet, she found the trail left by James’s snowmobile less than fifty feet from the cabin. They headed west, deeper into the mountains. Her jaw firm with resolve, she started to follow them.
Watching her, Hunter was half-tempted to let her go. He’d told her what could happen to her up here in the mountains, warned her how quickly she could get into trouble if she didn’t do as he said
. But did she listen? Hell, no. Instead, she was hell-bent on going off on her own, and it irritated him no end. Did she think he wanted to spend one more minute than he had to, chasing Barker all over the godforsaken mountains? He had a life to get back to and work to do, dammit! And the sooner they found Laura, the quicker he could get back to it.
But they weren’t going to find her in the dark, and the only thing Naomi was going to accomplish by traipsing off by herself was to get lost. Then he’d have to spend half the night looking for her in the dark, and by God, he wasn’t going to do it! Not after the day he’d had. And if she didn’t like it, that was just too damn bad! Muttering curses under his breath about stubborn, hardheaded women, he stormed after her.
“Dammit, Naomi, I’m not letting you do this!” he growled as he caught up with her at the edge of the clearing that surrounded the cabin. “It’s too dangerous.”
Up to her knees in snow, her shoulders hunched against the wind, she never took her eyes from the tracks that were barely visible in the gathering darkness. “You’re not my keeper, Hunter. I don’t need your permission to look for my daughter.”
It was the wrong thing to say to a man who had reached the end of his patience. Swearing, he snagged her arm and hauled her around to face him. All he intended to do was shake some sense into her, but the snow was deep, and he caught her unaware. Gasping, she lost her balance and fell right into his arms.
Too late, he realized he never should have touched her. She’d spent most of the day with her arms around his waist, clinging to his back. As they’d made their way up the mountain, her breasts and thighs and hips had brushed against him with every dip and sway of the snowmobile, teasing him unmercifully. She hadn’t, he knew, set out to drive him out of his mind—she’d had no choice but to hold on to him or fall off the snowmobile—but the result was the same, nevertheless. She’d lit a fire in him that had been burning low in his gut all day. And it just got hotter.
A Fortune's Children Christmas (Anthology) Page 23
