“And mistook me for a whore.”
“Understandable if you take into consideration that I’d been told a red-haired Frenchwoman would be coming to my room for the night, and there you were.”
“Yes. There I was.” She caught and held his gaze. “And here I still am. Do you ever get tired of moving around so much, Steve? Don’t you ever want to just stay in one place, know that when you go to bed, it’s your own bed? That when you wake up the next day, you’ll see the same faces of the people who love you?”
He was quiet for such a long time, she thought he did not intend to answer her, and moved to rise from the rock where she sat, intent upon finding her bedroll.
But then he said softly, as if to himself, “It’s not that I don’t want that. Part of me does. But there’s a part of me that’s never satisfied to stay in one place for long, always restless, looking for something else. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s forever. And sometimes I think that maybe I’ve found what I’ve been looking for with you. I know that I don’t want any other woman, but I’m just not too sure what I do want.”
A shiver traced down her spine, and she clenched her hands tightly together in her lap. “Well…” She forced a laugh that sounded hollow. “That’s honest, at least.”
“Yes. I think you deserve honesty. Ginny.” He stood up and stepped around the fire, pulling her close to hold her against him. His hand clenched the hair at the back of her neck to pull her head backward until she looked up into his eyes, an inexorable tug that would not allow her to look away. “You know I love you. I’ve told you so over and over again. I mean it when I say it. It’s not something I would ever say if I didn’t.”
“Yes, I know.” A lump in her throat prevented her from saying more, and she took comfort as he held her hard against him, the thud of his heartbeat a steady rhythm beneath her cheek.
The next day, a line of squalls moved across the mountains, rendering the pass slippery and dangerous. Steve took them up into the rocks off the trail, picking a spot carefully in case of a rockslide.
“Sometimes the ground gets too soft, and boulders the size of a two-story building come crashing down the slope, taking everything in the path along with them. A rockslide can bury an entire village in minutes. I saw it once, from a ledge overlooking a valley. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do but watch as people tried to run. Few escaped. It was over too quick. Later, we could hear the cries of those trapped in the rubble, and pulled out the ones we could find.”
He said it dispassionately, but she had a sudden image of him pulling aside jagged rocks and digging through the mud to rescue those trapped. It was an image that contrasted sharply with some in her memory, of him facing a man in the street, drawing his revolver so fast it was a blur, killing without evincing regret. Two completely different images of the same man. Could he be both?
She thought then of Matt Cooper, who had taught her how to use a knife when she was a soldadera forced to follow the army with Tom Beal, and his careless kindnesses when it was convenient for him. And she remembered, too, that Steve had killed him for it, for using her as he had, even though Matt had been the only man who was kind to her during those long, wretched days of torment.
There was a kind of justice in it that she appreciated, though she’d felt a faint sense of regret when he told her.
They rode on again when the rain stopped. It was drier up higher into the mountains, where the air was thinner and it was harder to breathe. The view was breathtaking, a network of yawning canyons patchworked with furiously twisting rivers across a landscape ribbed with green-and-brown hills. Fresh-scrubbed by the rains, emerald-green basins cradled picturesque villages, the missions tiny white beacons of hope when seen from such a high altitude.
The ride down was more harrowing than the arduous ascent, as the trail seemed to drop through narrow gorges rimmed by steep spirals of rock that made her think of stalagmites. In places, no sunlight could get through. The walls were so high that only a thin ribbon of light could be seen high overhead.
Halfway down, Steve took a detour down a rocky ledge edged with thick brush and stunted mesquite. The air grew cooler, and she could hear a loud, muffled roar, like the approach of a train. Vegetation became thicker and almost tropical, reminding her of the trees near Oaxaca.
When they rode around a bend, the low roar suddenly turned into a deafening crash, and Ginny sucked in a sharp breath as she saw the source.
From high above, cascading over gray rock formations like graceful wings, water poured in a thundering rush to a wooded pool. Spume rose into the damp air, and sunlight glinted from the curve of a rainbow that disappeared into the mist.
Steve grinned at her, and beckoned for her to follow him, words useless in the noise of the falling water.
They were to spend the night here, a short distance down from where the water bombarded rocks and the shallow basin. Ginny immediately took off all her clothes and splashed in the water that was crystal clear and breathtakingly cold. She scrubbed her body, then her hair, standing waist-deep in the natural pool, toes curled into the pebbles on the bottom for balance against the swirling current. She felt like a mermaid, bare breasted, hair heavy wet ropes
