Elizabeth didn’t question his faith. Somehow she knew he was right. He shifted away from the building suddenly, making her flinch. The grimace that flickered across his features told her he wasn’t any more at ease with her than she was with him. Somehow that hurt her even worse.
“Walk with me?” he asked, his tone neither inviting nor intimidating. “I need to talk to you before the chopper gets here.”
This was it, she thought, her heart beginning to pound. She nodded and followed him across the lot toward the road. They walked in silence for a while. She glanced over at him. She knew from the tight line of his shoulders that he had something on his mind, but she didn’t know what to say to him. So she said nothing.
“I collected my gear,” he said without preamble. “I also checked the house. It’s still too dark to be certain, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I’m sorry. I know there were some family things you’d probably liked to have kept.”
This time Elizabeth did shiver. His tone was sincere and he was saying all the right words, but there was an underlying flatness in his voice. As if she were no more than an unfortunate victim he’d tried to help and now had to console. She shuddered again as it occurred to her that basically, that description was fairly accurate.
Was that all she really was to him? Had he left a whole string of broken hearts behind him wherever he’d been? It should have made her angry. It made her want to cry.
She pulled in a deep breath to loosen the knot forming in her chest. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
He studied her, then looked away, up at the waning night sky. Several long seconds passed before he looked at her again.
“After I give my statements, yes. I’ll be back to search for Sky Dancer, but after that …”
“You’ll go … where? To your next job? Where do you go, Kane? I know I asked you this before. Do you have anywhere to call home?”
Kane felt his chest squeeze tightly. Home. “I have a small apartment in Pocatello. I’m not there much. I … it’s rented out most of the year.” That and a P.O. box, he thought. It had always been enough. He looked at her. The pain intensified. “I don’t do well in one place. I don’t …” He let the sentence drift off unfinished.
“Fit in?”
“Maybe. I’m good at what I do, Annie. It’s enough.”
“Is it? Is it really?”
He didn’t think it was possible to feel worse than he already did. He was wrong. “Don’t pity me, Annie. I chose this life. I have no regrets.” Except not being the right man for you. If only … He shut off that train of thought. It led nowhere. Their time had finally run out.
She shifted her gaze forward, continuing down the path of the road. “I don’t know. I’d have said this life chose you, not the other way around. You did the best with what you were given. I don’t pity you for that, I admire you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t—”
“Little sun.”
She stopped and immediately looked up at him.
Kane knew she was in no shape to listen to anything more he had to say. But he knew better than she that it was now or never. He trembled with the need to touch her, taste her, just once more, but he didn’t dare. He was already asking far too much of her by not walking away without another word.
“No matter what you think of me, I want you to know that once I’d met you, I’d have never hurt you.”
“I know that. I think I always knew that. It just … I was so unprepared for your … confession.” She stepped closer to him. “But I know you’d never have hurt me. You risked your life for me.”
A sudden rush of sound brought both their heads up. The first helicopter had arrived. Beams of light cut wide paths over the nearly deserted parking area as the large aircraft swooped overhead. It began its descent, aiming at the wide section of road behind them. The noise was so loud, Kane knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him.
He reached under his shirt and vanked the leather strip from his neck that he’d tied on back at the bunkhouse. He motioned for her to lift her hair, which was whipping wildly in the windstorm created by the helicopter blades. Leaning forward, he tied it swiftly behind her neck. The small amulet, made of pulverized pine needles wrapped inside a small leather pouch, dangled below her breasts. He scooped it up and warmed it in his palm.
He slid a finger into the neckline of her shirt—his shirt actually—and dropped it inside. He then lifted her hand and placed it over the small lump it made under the soft cotton fabric, leaning down so his mouth was next to her ear.
“To keep you safe, little sun. Always, you will be with me, Eyes of the Hawk,” he intoned, repeating it in Shoshone. He pressed a hot, sweet kiss to the pulse at the side of her neck, then turned her toward the men who’d jumped out of the helicopter and were heading toward Dobs’s store.
It was past dawn when Kane boarded the first helicopter. They’d both been questioned thoroughly by the two agents and were finally being allowed to leave. He’d offered to go on the first transport, thinking she wouldn’t want to ride back with Lucheck. Or with him.
He wasn’t certain what her reason had been, but she’d quietly agreed. After determining that Sam had been picked up, Annie had asked if it was all right to go back to her brother’s apartment for the time being. Plans had also been implemented to locate and contact Matthew. They’d had no more time for private talk. But then, there was nothing else to say.
Kane stared out the domed front of the helicopter as they lifted off. He saw the second chopper circling in the distance, waiting for them to leave so that it could land. As his helicopter reached enough altitude to head out, the pilot tilted the bird, allowing him one last glance at Annie, standing in the doorway of the store.
“Good-bye, Elizabeth Ann Lawson,” he whispered as they moved off toward the distant peaks. “Good-bye, little sun.”
TWELVE
Elizabeth dug her heels into the side of the big bay mare, wishing she’d paid more attention to Brody during his incredibly patient attempts to teach her how to ride.
“Come on, old girl, we’re almost there.” Her words sent white puffs into the crystalline winter air. She patted the horse’s neck, wishing she’d trailered the animal up this mountain instead of giving in to her foolishly sentimental idea of riding into Kane’s life as he had ridden into hers the summer before. She reached up and tucked behind her ear a lock of once-more blond hair. Then, tugging the brim of her Stetson lower on her forehead, she prayed he wouldn’t make her walk back down the mountain when he saw her.
She halted the horse as she crested the next rise on the snow-packed trail. Oh my. Brody hadn’t been kidding. The land Kane had purchased three months earlier was definitely a slice of heaven.
She smiled. She hadn’t known who’d been more surprised; her at hearing Kane had bought land, or Brody for actually telling her about it. She admitted she didn’t have Kane’s tracking skills, but for an ex-secretary she wasn’t half bad.
She scanned the valley before her. It was stunning. Beautiful wide, open fields, marked only by the skeleton rows of fence posts poking up through the snow and the occasional stand of aspens. The Bitterroot Mountains provided an awe-inspiring backdrop only Mother Nature could have created. Nestled in the middle of it all was a modest log cabin, or at least most of one. There were also several corrals, a large barn, and the framework of several other buildings.
But instead of the hive of activity such construction should warrant, only the sound of a single hammer cut through the cold winter silence.
She prodded the horse and covered the final distance. There was a four-wheel-drive truck parked in front of the main cabin. She looked around. Brody had said Kane mentioned rounding up the horses he had stashed all over Idaho and western Montana, but she didn’t see any sign of them. Well, he had one now.
Nerves on edge now that the moment of truth had arrived, she dismounted, biting back the groan at the twinge of protest from her inner thighs. She tied the horse to the railing of th
e finished front porch. As she’d managed the last stair up, quietly stamping snow from her boots, a loud thwack rang out. It was immediately followed by a string of words that made her smile in a way she hadn’t been able to for five long months.
She stepped inside without knocking, leaning on the doorframe. Her breath escaped on a soft whoosh. Dear Lord, she’d missed him. She drank her fill of him. His hair was longer, she thought, though it was hard to tell the way he had it tied back. His flannel shirt was damp from his labors, his chest straining at the worn fabric as he pulled in a deep breath. He was as glorious as she’d remembered. She swallowed against the memories of how close she’d once been to that warm, powerful body. She’d never felt as safe and secure since.
She banished those dangerous thoughts and slid the small ladylike knife—it was only five inches long—from the sheath she had strapped to her belt. With all his swearing and cussing, he still hadn’t noticed her. She balanced the weight carefully, then tossed it so that it landed, pointdown, in the piece of wood Kane had just dropped back onto the bench so he could hold his throbbing thumb.
“Might as well cut it off now and save yourself the trouble later.”
He went completely still. It was another long, mind-wracking moment before he looked up.
“Annie?”
She nodded, damning the burning sensation that had come from nowhere at the unguarded leap of emotion in his eyes when he’d first seen her. It was gone now, a carefully guarded look in its place. But she’d seen it, and it gave her hope.
“I have something that belongs to you. I brought it back.”
“Annie,” he repeated, as if still unable to believe she was actually there.
Elizabeth kept talking, not wanting to give him the chance to throw her out yet. “She’s a little worse for the wear, you were right, she’s a tough old—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sky Dancer. I found her. With Brody Donegan’s help. She was up in the Selkirks. We tracked her after the first snowfall. She was a bit banged up—”
“Is that why you came here? To return my horse?”
She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t the flat, expressionless response she’d gotten. She knew how much that horse had meant to him. Knew he’d almost killed himself trying to find her. It had been her one tie to Brody. She’d been banking on it being her tie to Kane. If she was wrong, then maybe she’d been mistaken about—No. She’d come too far to question her actions now.
“No,” she repeated out loud. “You also have something that belongs to me.”
He didn’t say anything, but she noticed his hands were now tightly clenched into fists.
She knew convincing her dark warrior that he was worth fighting for was going to be tough. The fact that he’d bought land had renewed her hope. She’d been preparing for this showdown for months. Only now did she realize she hadn’t known the half of it. Maybe that was just as well.
“What?” The single word seemed to have been forcibly wrenched from somewhere deep inside him. “What do I have of yours?”
So he wasn’t as unaffected by her as he seemed to want her to believe. Please Lord, let her be right about this.
She swallowed hard and looked him straight in the eye. “My heart. I gave it to you over five months ago. I came here to find out if you still needed it.” She took a deep breath. “If not, then I want it back. I’m—” Her voice broke. “I’m having a hard time going on without it.”
He cleared the construction rubble in one graceful leap, and in the next second she was where she’d wanted to be every second of every day since the moment he’d said good-bye.
“Oh God, you feel so good,” she said against his wonderfully hard, broad chest. Her tears fell unchecked. Everything she’d kept bottled up inside her for months came tumbling out in one long rush. “I tried to go back to my life after Sam was arrested, after the trial …”
She remembered how abandoned she’d felt when Kane’s deposition had been read but he hadn’t appeared. She looked up at him. “I tried, Hawk, but I … I found out I didn’t have one.” She didn’t want to take her hands from his shoulders even long enough to swipe her tears from her cheeks.
As if he’d read her mind, he reached up and rubbed them softly away with his thumb. The tender gesture, even while his expression was still so wary, made her cry even harder. “Nothing I did seemed right. Matt tried to help me. He found an apartment for me, bullied me into looking for a new job. He even tried to find you for me.” She sniffed, a watery smile on her lips. “He swore he was going to drag you back and do anything short of killing you to get you to take me off his hands.” Her attempt at laughter was a choked failure. “I knew I had to see you again. Matt and I both tried to find you, but we had no luck. I even went to the reservation …” Kane’s eyes widened in shock, but she kept on, there was no stopping now. “It was fascinating. I learned a lot.” Such as how special the amulet was he’d given her and how hard his life must have been as a child, she thought. But they could talk about her experience later. “No one there knew where you were either. Then I remembered Brody Donegan …” She looked up at him, “I found his card. I … I called him.”
“He sent you here?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Brody had become her friend and ally in a time when she’d needed both desperately.
“I knew from Dobs that you hadn’t found Sky Dancer. I … tried to get Brody to tell me where you were. All I found out was that you’d bought this land.”
“That was several months ago.”
“I know. I sort of struck a bargain with your friend. He’s very protective of you.”
“What sort of bargain?” He didn’t comment on the rest.
“He told me you’d decided to give horse ranching a try. So in exchange for helping him track down Sky Dancer, he’d teach me everything he could about horse ranching.”
She’d surprised him with that one. Good.
She hurried to finish her explanation before he could say anything. “Only when I’d proven myself to him—and trust me when I say he’s not an easy man to impress—would he tell me where you were.”
“How long ago did he tell you?”
Kane’s quiet question jerked her thoughts to the present. “Five days.”
Again he was silent. Damn the man and his unreadable face. Despite his physical show of welcome, she had no idea what he was thinking. Her nerves were frayed almost past the snapping point.
“You went to all that trouble to find me. Why?”
His expression was one of cautious need, like that of a kid who’d been told Santa really did exist, but was waiting for the proof in case it was all a horrible joke.
“Because the night you said good-bye to me, you didn’t let me say good-bye to you.”
“Is that why you’re here, then? To say goodbye?”
“I’m here to tell you that I love you. The goodbye part is up to you.” She held her breath. He didn’t exactly look overjoyed.
“Would you say that again?”
She squared her shoulders, locked her rocking knees together, and looked him square in the eyes, pouring everything she had into her words, knowing this was her last chance. “I, Little Sun, love you, Eyes of the Hawk.”
The fierce look that entered his eyes should have made her turn tail and run. And she might have if he hadn’t yanked her tightly against his body and brought his mouth down to hers for the hardest, longest, sweetest kiss she’d ever experienced.
He took her mouth again and again. It went on and on, and she didn’t think she’d ever get enough. Finally they both had to break for air. It was then that she realized she hadn’t truly tested her courage. She looked up at him, taking comfort from the fire of desire flaming in his eyes.
It was the other emotion she saw there that had her reaching deep inside for the unwavering faith and trust she had found she still had in him. “You weren’t ever planning on coming back for me, w
ere you?”
The pain etched in his face sliced at her. “No.”
“You know, I was really angry at you for a long time after you left. But not for the reason you might think. Your role with Sam was the easy part to deal with. Your actions spoke loud enough, and after thinking about it, I understood why you couldn’t tell me. What I don’t understand is, if we shared something that was as wonderful and unique as I think it was, why didn’t you have enough faith in me to let me be part of the decision about any future we might have?”
“Your life was in Boise. Mine … I didn’t have a life.”
“What about this place? The ranch?”
“I didn’t plan this. I guess I understand what you went through. I took on several more jobs, but my concentration was shot.” He lifted his hand to her face. “I kept seeing brown freckles and hearing this soft laugh.” He let his hand drop, soft color blooming on his bronzed cheeks. “I missed you, Annie. Every day.”
“Then why—?”
He placed a finger against her lips. “I bought this land as a test. Of myself, of my life and what I had or hadn’t done with it.” He gazed deeply into her eyes. “I have no idea if I’ll last the winter here, much less make a go of this. I might be as miserable staying in one place as I was …” His voice drifted off.
“As you were?” she prompted, her heart thrumming at what she swore he’d been about to say.
“As I was without you. But Annie,” he added quickly, and she knew her hope had shown plainly on her face. “This”—he gestured around him—“doesn’t really change things. I’m still not sure what I want, where I’m headed.” He took her face in his large palms. “I still don’t have anything to offer you. Certainly not what you deserve.”
“What do I deserve, Kane?” she asked softly, determination lacing her every word. She was fighting for her life. “Do I deserve to be happy?”
“Of course. More than anything, that’s what I hoped for you.”
“And what about you? Don’t you think you’ve earned the same right? What would it take to make you happy, Hawk?”
Bounty Hunter Page 16
