“No, you can’t,” she snapped. “I’m too heavy.”
He frowned, perusing her body for evidence of heaviness. Or maybe he was just assessing her injury. “Let me look at your knee.”
Grumbling, she sat down and drew up the leg of her pants. The wet fabric bunched around her knee, making tending to it impossible. Cheeks heating, she hobbled to her feet again, fumbling with her zipper and dropping her pants.
Shay was glad today’s panties were a dark, unrevealing blue.
She wasn’t seriously injured, just a bad scrape and the makings of a nasty bruise, but he examined her knee carefully, pressing gently here and there before applying some salve from the first aid kit and wrapping her up in an ace bandage. She remained standing, trying to ignore the fact that he was kneeling before her, his face just inches from her crotch.
When he was finally done, his gaze moved from her knee to her bikini briefs. He jerked away from her and straightened, his color darkening.
My, my. Luke Meza could blush.
Hiding a smile, Shay tried to drag her pants back up, almost losing her balance when the wet fabric refused to cooperate. Luke stepped in to offer his assistance, hands sliding all over her slippery skin.
“Did these shrink or something?” he had the nerve to ask.
She swatted his hands away and completed the task herself, her cheeks heating with embarrassment. Of course he wouldn’t understand about wet clothes and extra curves. His butt was probably hard as a rock, like the rest of him.
With his uniform shirt hanging open, and his hair all wet and choppy, he was most enticingly disheveled.
His eyes met hers and shuttered instantly, hardening into black chips of ice. “Ready?” he asked, throwing the pack over one shoulder.
She nodded, preparing herself for another long haul.
Her boots squished as she walked, growing heavier with every step, and her knee ached, but she soldiered on, leading him over scorched earth and smoldering embers, heading toward Cahuilla Ridge. Traveling so soon after a wildfire wasn’t recommended, but the temperature was dropping fast and they needed to find shelter before nightfall.
She was aware of her wet clothes clinging to her and the pervasive silence, the fuzzy gray sunset and falling ash. It was as if the fire had sucked up every breath of air and ray of light, swallowing sound and muting color, leaving nothing but dark soot, charred black bits, and quiet.
Putting one foot in front of the other, she trudged on, relying heavily on her right leg. Anyone who followed their tracks would know by the uneven depressions her boots made that she was hurt. When the burned soil beneath her feet became sandy, she knew they were close.
Cahuilla Ridge was a rock exposure made of multi-layered sandstone, carved deep by wind and erosion, too barren to provide fuel for the wildfire. The area’s only foliage, a cluster of fan palms, stood high and proud, untouched by flames. Nestled into the side of the ridge there was a small cave, tall enough to stand in and wide enough to move around. It wasn’t a five-star resort, but it would serve as lodgings for the night. Native American couples had been using the place to perform sacred rituals for centuries.
Ascending the trail along the ridge proved more difficult than she’d anticipated. The pain in her knee was bearable so she didn’t think it was responsible for her sluggish pace. She was shivering but didn’t feel the cold, aware of her surroundings but unable to focus.
She was almost to the safety of the cave when the ground tilted beneath her feet. Gravity pulled her backward, into Luke’s arms, and he caught her neatly, as if they’d choreographed the incident. “Hello there,” she said, blinking up at him.
He looked mad, or maybe that was just his face.
“You could have fallen forward,” he said from between clenched teeth. “Or to the side.”
Shay didn’t have to peek over the edge to know it was a long way down. She wanted to mumble something sarcastic about him being her knight in shining uniform, but her mouth wouldn’t form the words.
“You’re ice cold,” he added, continuing to scold.
He wasn’t, she noted, clinging to his shoulders. Despite the wet shirt, his skin was hot. She put her cold lips to his bare neck, seeking warmth.
He carried her the rest of the way. She was a tall woman and not exactly a featherweight, but he managed the task with impressive ease, as boasted. If she weren’t so disoriented, she might have enjoyed the ride.
He set her down on the floor of the cave and immediately found the basket of supplies. On her last visit she’d brought a small stack of firewood, some food and water, and-bless her industrious little heart-a multicolored wool blanket in one of those airtight space bags. Getting her warm must be his first priority, so he spread the blanket out on the ground next to her. After shrugging out of his own wet shirt, he went to work on her clothes.
The way he undressed her was insultingly impersonal. His eyes were cold and his hands were hot. While he unlaced her boots and removed them, peeled off her pants and checked her knee, she lay there like a corpse, immobile but not indifferent. For some reason, tears stung at her eyes, and he saw them.
“Lift up your arms.”
She did. He pulled the soggy tank top over her head. Beneath it she wore a plain white cotton bra, no under- wire, no padding, no artifice. He didn’t look. Rolling onto his side, he brought her body toward his, spoon-style, and pulled the blanket over both of them.
It occurred to Shay that her physical breakdown had some kind of emotional root, and she felt ashamed. Her reaction to her mother’s death had been the same. Shock. Confusion. Despair. And a complete inability to articulate her feelings.
“Tell me about your mother,” she whispered.
His body tensed, then relaxed. “She’s not Luiseno.”
“She’s white?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that by looking.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not an insult. You must know you’re handsome.”
He shifted, uncomfortable with the subject. Shay didn’t mind. Regardless of what had passed between them, before or after the fire, they were here and they were alive and she would ask whatever she pleased. “So you like her? Better than your dad?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your favorite thing about her?” she continued. “What do you miss the most, when you don’t see her?”
It was a tough question, and he gave it the consideration it deserved. “Her smile, I guess. There are so many other things, but her smile… it’s just, always there. She’s always happy to see me, even if I was with her the day before.”
Shay felt more tears coming, and she sniffed them back. “Have you ever told her that?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“I will.”
She believed him and so she quieted, resting her cheek on his bicep. It was nice to be with someone who loved his mother, even if he didn’t like her. “My mama had a beautiful smile.”
“Did she look like you?”
“No. Dylan and I both take after Daddy. She was a redhead, all soft and delicate.”
“You have her skin,” he surmised.
“Yes,” she said, thinking her mother had made pale and freckled look as sweet and fresh as a bowl of strawberry ice cream. Her mind skittered to the way her mother’s face had been made up for the funeral, and back further, to an even darker place, to how she had looked, swollen and grotesque, in the short hours after death.
“What happened to her?”
Shay didn’t talk about this-ever-but she found herself saying, “She hung herself in the barn behind the house,” in a faraway voice, as if the incident had happened to some other mother, some other girl. “I found her.”
