her down.”
“I’m sorry,” Lauren whispered.
“What for? You’re not the one who did it.”
“No, and neither is my father.”
He acknowledged that with a grunt. They rode a distance in silence, and after a while the horse’s steady rocking gait began to soothe her, ease the tension from her muscles and the turmoil from her mind. “Well, anyway,” she murmured, swallowing a yawn, “for what it’s worth, I’m very grateful for Plan B.”
“You’re welcome.”
The words felt like pebbles in Bronco’s throat. Because he knew he didn’t deserve her thanks. The truth was, he’d come near blowing everything. He’d cut it too damn close.
From the beginning, ever since Gil had first told him about his plan to kidnap the candidate’s daughter, he’d been trying to walk a tightrope. Trying somehow to keep himself balanced between two opposing objectives: one, to keep his cover intact, and two, to keep Lauren Brown alive and healthy. To do one or the other would have been simple enough. To do both was proving to be a whole lot harder than he’d expected, thanks to those trigger-happy idiots-and he’d be willing to bet it was the FBI who was at fault-down at the ranch. His stomach burned when he thought about them shooting down Katie McCullough like that. They’d had a reason, of course-they always had a reason. Mistaken identity. She might have drawn on them, might even have shot first. Still didn’t make it right. And just one of the many reasons he didn’t carry a gun unless he had to.
Behind him, Lauren’s head had begun to bob with the rhythm of the horse’s gait. As they started down a steep slope, her face bumped against his shoulder. She abruptly jerked upright and said, “Sorry,” in a slurred voice.
“Almost there,” Bronco said as he reined the stallion in. He swung his leg over the saddle horn and slid to the ground, and instantly the mares were right there, bumping and jostling. Looking for their feed bags, he thought, el bowing them good-naturedly out of the way as he said to Lauren, “I’m gonna walk a ways-trail’s a little steep here. You be okay?”
“Sure.” And obviously she was trying to sound wide awake and chipper.
“You can move into the saddle if you want.”
She did so, and he took the reins and they started down the trail. Though it had been many years since he’d been over it, it was a trail he knew well.
They’d been going steadily downhill and had long since left the pine forest behind. Now a clearing sky bright with stars shed just enough light to hint at shadowy shapes of bull pines and pinons, and provide a glittery backdrop for the denser blackness of canyon walls. A brisk little wind blew down from the higher peaks, cool and fresh from the earlier rain, bringing with it the scent of damp earth and sage, juniper and pine. The smells of Bronco’s boyhood.
Up ahead he could hear the trickling sounds of running water-the stream that ran along the canyon floor, dry for most of the year, brought to life by the recent rain. Just before he reached it, the ground leveled out and became sandy grassy patches interspersed with thickets of young willows and piles of rocks and gravel washed there by flash floods. Not recently, though-the ground here was dry. The monsoon clouds had dumped their burden elsewhere tonight.
After pausing to fill his canteen and let the horses drink, Bronco led Cochise Red across the stream and up the bank on the other side. Here, where the ground was rockier and rose sharply once more to become sloping foothills splayed out at the base of steep canyon walls, he halted.
“We’ll leave the horses here,” he said, moving to the stallion’s side in case Lauren wanted help getting off. It came as no surprise to him that she didn’t. He unbuckled the saddlebags and slung them across his shoulder, then went to work on the girth. “We have a little bit of a climb.”
“Can I carry something?” Her voice was still slurred, groggy. Exhausted, he thought, and no wonder.
He was careful to be all brusqueness and business, though, when he told her to bring the canteen and to keep the blanket out of the weeds. Sympathy makes you weak, not strong, he told himself.
He reached toward her shadow-shape and found her arm. A small shock went through him when he touched her, felt her warmth and substance, smooth soft skin over firm muscle, nerves jumping and pulse racing against his fingertips. He felt a strange sense of recognition, and of pleasure, and longing.
“Can you see well enough to follow me?” he asked hoarsely.
There was a pause; he thought she nodded. Then she said, “Yeah, I think so.”
“Okay, then-stay close.” And he started up the zigzagging trail he knew would take them to the mouth of a cave about halfway up the canyon wall.
He had no trouble finding it. In a way it seemed like only yesterday, the last time he’d been here, though in reality it had probably been more like fifteen years. That was the thing about natural landmarks, he thought; in the short term mountains and canyons and rock formations didn’t change much. He went in first, just to make sure nothing-or nobody-had taken up residence there in the past dozen or so years. It
“Okay, you can bed down here,” he said gruffly, and turning, found that, instead of staying out on the edge where he’d left her, Lauren had followed him into the cave and was right there beside him. So close her clothing brushed his. He heard her breathing, rapidly after the climb, and felt her body heat.
His heart swelled and bumped against his throat. All at once he knew that he didn’t dare touch her. Not even to take her hand.
“There’s food in there,” he mumbled, dumping the saddlebags onto the floor of the cave at her feet. “If you’re hungry. I’ve got to go see to the horses. Be right back.” He didn’t wait for her reply, but lunged for the mouth of the cave and out into the cool starry night like a suffocating man craving air.
Down on the floor of the canyon, he unsaddled Red and rubbed him down, then took off his bridle and turned him loose to graze. But instead of immediately testing his freedom, the stallion turned his head and nibbled at Bronco’s shoulder, then gave a low-pitched nicker of concern.
Can he feel it? Bronco wondered. There was a strange vibration in his muscles, a quivering down deep in his insides, but whether of fear, excitement or some kind of warning he couldn’t have said. He’d never felt such a thing before.
“Go on, boy,” he murmured, sending the horse off with a wave. “You’ve earned a good roll…” He hoped ol’ Red wouldn’t go
He carried the saddle to a rock pile and heaved it onto a good-size boulder. Then, taking the bridle with him, he climbed back up to the cave.
Even before he went inside he could hear the soft even sound of her breathing. “Lauren?” he called in a whisper, already sure that she was asleep. A wave of emotion rippled through him, almost like a shudder. Again he wasn’t sure what name to give it-relief or disappointment.
The moon was just lifting above the clouds when Bronco settled himself with his back against the wall near the mouth of the cave. The cool gray light reached into the cave and across the floor to touch the head of the woman who slept there with her head pillowed on saddlebags. Like a spotlight, it shone on the fall of hair that cascaded over dark leather to pool on the sandy floor, and turned it into a river of silver.
Bronco stared at that pale hair until his vision blurred, and when he closed his eyes the image remained, as though it had been branded on his retinas.
Chapter 10
Lauren awoke with her body in a sweaty throbbing fever, and in her mind the fading memory of erotic dreams.
She wasn’t sure what had woken her until it came again-a high blood-stirring scream-and she recognized it instantly as a stallion’s bugling challenge, a clarion call to battle.
A quick glance around confirmed that she was alone in the cave, that whatever it was that had Cochise Red so excited, Bronco had already gone to investigate. She hoped it was relief that made her, with rapidly thumping heart,
