Before he could identify the unfamiliar flutterings that action generated in his heart, before the first drumbeats of response deep in his belly had time to find their own rhythm, she lifted her head and looked beyond him at the vista of the plateau spread out below and breathed a single word. “Wow.”
For a few minutes she didn’t say anything more, while the sun splashed gold across the purple land and edged the tattered scraps of last night’s storm clouds with coral, pink and mauve. And then she caught her breath. “Look. Is that…?” Far out on the lightening plateau, a cloud of dust rose and caught the sunlight and became a plume of gold.
“Looks like the wild horse herd,” Bronco said just as a piercing whinny from directly below them confirmed it.
“Oh,” Lauren whispered, “it’s so beautiful.”
Something clutched at Bronco’s heart-a longing for, a hope of, a tiny glimpse of heaven. With tightening throat he muttered, “I’ve always thought so.”
Her eyes came back to him, bright and full of smiles. Since he was beginning to realize she was one of those people who woke up fast, fresh as a daisy and ready to meet the day, he put a warning hand on her shoulder and said gruffly, “Careful-don’t sit up too suddenly.”
She cringed in the process of doing just that and squinted over her shoulder at the solid rock just inches above her head. “Oh, wow,” she said. “We’re a rock sandwich.”
Bronco laughed; he supposed she hadn’t realized when he’d squeezed them in here last night how narrow the crevice was. He’d forgotten himself. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “When I was a kid you could sit up in here. It’s gotten a lot smaller. Here-if we move farther out, we’ll be okay.”
He’d made their bed in the narrow space where a second slab of rock overlapped the upper side of the protruding boulder, leaving the sheltered place below for the horses. There hadn’t been a flat space large enough for two to stretch out under the overhang, anyway. The crevice had made a cozy enough bed, once he’d eliminated any possibility of rattlers.
Now, on his elbows he scooted himself and the blanket backward out of the crevice and onto the ledge. Lauren moved with him, pulling, tugging and straightening, until they were clear of the overhang. Then she stretched her arms over her head and drew her legs into a cross-legged sitting position.
“So,” she said, looking around with bright-eyed curiosity, “this is another one of your childhood haunts.”
He couldn’t answer immediately, distracted as he was by the incredibly arousing vision of her long pale legs and firm round breasts just barely covered by the drape of one of his old undershirts. As sudden and breathtaking as a punch in the gut came the memory of those legs coiled around him last night, and the whisper-soft brush of her thigh against his cheek, the scent and taste of her, that wild primitive cry.
“Let me guess. I’ll bet you called this Lookout Rock.” She was smiling at him, fresh and sweet as the new day.
Bronco shook his head, and not only because she’d guessed wrong about the name. He was feeling a little light-headed and having some trouble reconciling this morning’s Lauren, wholesome as milk and cornflakes, with last night’s mind-blowing, self-control-shattering wanton.
“In a way I guess it was a lookout,” he said, struggling to a sitting position himself. “But my cousins and I used to call it the Smoking Rock-not in the presence of any grown-ups, though.”
“Really? Smoking Rock…” She tilted her head, intrigued.
“We called it that,” Bronco drawled, half smiling, “because this is where we’d come to smoke the cigarettes we’d stolen from our elders. And eat the cookies we’d swiped from Grandmother Rose’s kitchen so she wouldn’t smell the tobacco on our breath.”
“Dang,” exclaimed Lauren, laughing, “you
“Told you I was. Most all the stories you’ll hear people tell about me are true-and a lot more nobody knows about but me.” He listened to his own words and felt a cold shell creep back around his heart. After a moment he threw her a smile that now felt strained and tight. “What about you, Laurie Brown? You ever do anything bad when you were a kid? Not even bad, just…you know, naughty, a little wild and crazy.”
“Before I met you, you mean?” she said dryly, then frowned at her hands, laced together across the open space between her knees. “I think I was a spoiled brat when I was very small. But-” she drew herself up straight, in ironic demonstration of what she was saying “-I grew up fast after my folks split up. I became the classic ‘good girl,’ a model child. I did everything that was expected of me-valedictorian, college, law school…” She stopped, alarmed and suddenly fragile. She feared, if she spoke one more word, her face would crumple into tears.
The wave of emotion had taken her by surprise, coming out of nowhere just when she’d been feeling so happy, so carefree. But thinking of the child, the girl, the woman she’d been… So much had happened in so short a time, and she wasn’t that person anymore! And never would be again. And that realization filled her with a sudden sharp sense of loss, of regret and fear. Somehow, in her rush to escape from her old familiar life, she’d run herself into a blind alley, and now she didn’t know where to turn.
She became aware that Bronco had taken her hands, and that once again he was gently stroking her left ring finger.
His voice, normally so warm and deep, had a sharp and sandy edge. “Your engagement-was that expected of you, too?”
She pulled her hands away. “How did you know I was-”
He broke in with his familiar snort of laughter. “Shoot, it was in all the papers. Maybe a White House wedding, they said.”
Lauren looked away, words of explanation backing up behind the swelling in her throat. She swallowed, then swallowed again, before she heard him ask, “Why don’t you wear a ring?”
Then it was surprisingly easy to say, “I gave it back. Called it off.”
He wouldn’t leave it there but asked in that soft-rough voice, “How come?” She shook her head; tears had begun to stream silently down her face. “You decide you didn’t love him?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, unable to look at him, wretchedly ashamed. “I thought I did. But I just realized one day that I wasn’t…happy. Not only that, I was miserably
“That’s what she did,” she whispered, hollow and cold inside. Even her tears had stopped-she felt too frozen to cry. “That’s what she said-my mother-when she left us. She said she wanted, deserved, a chance to be happy. I guess I did exactly the same thing, didn’t I? God, it’s funny, all those years I tried so hard not to be like her- everyone said how selfish she was-so I was determined I wasn’t going to be like her. And in the end it turns out I’m just like her, after all. Isn’t that just too…ironic?” She tried to laugh, wanting desperately to cry, aching with self- loathing. Oh, how judgmental she’d been. How self-righteous. How steadfastly unforgiving.
“Don’t underestimate the pursuit of happiness,” Bronco said dryly. “It’s a powerful human imperative-right up there behind life and liberty.”
“I guess…I understand that now,” said Lauren in a whisper and a flood of freshening tears. “I just hope I get a chance to tell her someday…how sorry I am.”
There was a pause, and then Bronco reached behind him for the blanket and began rolling it into a tight bundle. “Time to go,” he said, and once again his voice was bear-rug soft and curiously gentle.
Lauren blinked the last of the tears from her eyes and rubbed them away with her fingers. She sniffed and asked, “Where, Bronco? Where are you taking me now?”
For a long time he looked at her, with eyes glowing black and deep, like a panther’s coat. Then…
“Home,” he said softly. “I’m taking you home.”
Chapter 13
The sun was climbing up a smoky sky splotched with gray and white clouds as they made
