She snorted. “I know your type. You only want what you can’t have.”
He shook his head. “Listen, I fucked up monumentally before. I know that. I also realize that the chance of you giving me another opportunity is slim, but I had to come down here and try.”
She searched his eyes while weighing his words. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why now? Years later. What’s changed?”
“Me.” His brow wrinkled. “And you.”
“I haven’t changed.”
“Yes, you have. You know who you are and what you want now.”
Maybe he was right on that front. Her sabbatical had cleared her head. Because of that clarity, she’d felt happier and more secure in who she was and the direction she wanted to go. Until now. Once he’d wormed back into the picture as a possible future entanglement, she’d started to flounder.
But enough about her … She crossed her arms. “And how have you changed?”
“I’m not running away from you anymore.”
Her laughter rang out in the still air. “You’re so full of shit, Coop. Did you read that in some men’s magazine article about things to say to pick up women?”
She didn’t give him a chance to answer, starting off down the trail again.
“I’m trying to be honest with you,” he said from right behind her.
“Okay, then tell me honestly what I did to make you want to run away the first time around. Was I too clingy that night at the Purple Door? Because I tried to play it cool so you wouldn’t think I was an easy lay.” She took a breath and continued before he could respond. “I know it can’t have been that phone call later when you told me you don’t date local girls, because I didn’t whine, beg, or cry when you shut me down without further explanation.”
She’d waited until she’d hung up to let the tears of humiliation and river of swear words flow.
“You scared me,” he said.
She’d scared a longtime cop who chased bad guys without hesitating?
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Up ahead, she saw the stone foundation of what appeared to be the ruins of an old building. “You know what, Coop, let’s just drop this subject. I’m sorry I even brought it up.”
She jogged ahead, needing to burn through the frustration firing through her veins.
The stone foundation turned out to be what remained of the old Butterfield stage station from the late 1850s, according to the sign. Coop poked around what was left of the walls while she read about the history aloud, trying to pretend their little talk hadn’t opened up old wounds and left her raw and bleeding.
When they were on their way again, side by side on the wide trail, Natalie glanced at him under her lashes. His jaw looked taut, his forehead drawn.
Damn. She should have kept her big mouth shut and let things keep rolling along as they’d been. Now there was an awkward tension between them that added dark clouds to what could have been a fun, sunny day.
Up ahead was an old cemetery. Inside the wooden fence were white, round-topped headstones that listed the names of soldiers and their family members, along with Geronimo’s two-year-old son, Little Robe, who had died at Fort Bowie.
“See any ghosts?” she asked him when they skirted a prickly pear cactus and paused next to the headstone of one of the soldiers.
Coop had the unusual ability to see wispy folks, something that tended to haunt him up in Deadwood where the dead liked to congregate and stir up trouble.
“Not here,” he said, turning back to the trail. “But there was one back along the road into the park where the wagon train massacre happened.”
“You sure it wasn’t a hiker?”
“He was holding a double-barrel shotgun and wearing nineteenth-century clothes with an arrow sticking out of his chest.”
Grimacing, she followed him back to the trail.
They passed more ruins on the left, pausing further along to stare up the hillside at what was left of the first version of the old fort.
“Do you want to hike up there?” she asked.
He glanced at the sky before answering. “I’m not sure we have the time this trip.”
This trip? Was he planning on coming back down to Arizona again?
Coop moved along, pausing when they reached Apache Spring to check out the watering hole that had been the setting of many confrontations between the Apache, soldiers, stage riders, and others over the centuries.
They stood in the shade of the gnarled oak trees, listening to several birds in the overhead branches. Claire would be able to tell her the species of the birds after all of her college classes, along with the names of the surrounding plants and their purposes, probably. The water gurgled in the spring, sparkling like diamonds in the shafts of sunlight, making Natalie reach for her water bottle.
“Cochise drank here,” she said, and swallowed some warm water.
“So did Geronimo and Bascom and hundreds of other soldiers in charge of patrolling this section of the West.”
“It’s hard to believe so much fighting happened in such a peaceful place.” She offered Coop a drink from her bottle.
He took a swallow and handed it back. “Water was more precious than gold down here.”
“Still is.” She frowned at him, screwing the cap on her bottle. “I’m not going to have sex with you, Coop.”
What the hell? That came out of left field. She pinched her lips together.
One of his eyebrows crept upward. “Do you mean right now next to Apache Spring or later?”
“Both, smartass.” She backhanded him in the chest. “You joke, but we need some ground rules down here if we’re going to spend a week in each other’s company.”
“Rules are for fools. Isn’t that what you said last month?”
A grin slipped out. “Something like that, law dog.”
“Okay, give me your rules. But know this, one of my goals in coming down here was to get away from work and all of the rules and restrictions there. We both know that even when I’m not at the station back
