Wild and Free

by Vella Munn

  Dean watched her longer and closer than she felt comfortable with. “Are you sure?”

  Calley didn’t have to be told what was on Dean’s mind. The question might have dealt with two individuals sharing limited space while the elements held them prisoner, but she knew it went deeper than that. Something could happen between them tonight that would change what they were to each other.

  But Calley knew herself better than that. She had enough years under her belt, enough experience, that she knew how to handle impulse. If nothing else, Calley was a self-controlled woman. “We’re not a couple of teenagers,” she pointed out. “I’m offering you use of my tent. It would be selfish of me not to.”

  Dean wasn’t sure he believed her, but he didn’t turn down the offer. It wasn’t because he objected to waiting out a storm while lying on his back in a pup tent. He’d done that more than once. He agreed to sharing the larger tent because experiencing a storm together could turn into a rare opportunity to get to know this young woman better. It could also lead to talk about more personal matters.

  It bothered Dean to know what he did about Calley and Mike. He didn’t have all the facts. The woman might have had reasons other than a spoiled love affair for leaving the project, but if she’d run away from the responsibilities of her job because of a man, Dean wasn’t sure he wanted her doing field work with him. That might be a hard-line approach, but Dean wasn’t going to apologize for it. The job, their very lives, could depend on each other’s commitment and stability. His co-workers had to be ruled by their heads and not their emotions. They had to have staying power. That was what he still needed to learn about Calley Stewart.

  After dinner, Dean helped Calley put up the canvas covering on her jeep and secure her belongings. He brought some reading material from his tent to hers along with his sleeping bag. “Zane Grey,” he admitted when Calley asked about the book. “I’m trying to make up for what there wasn’t time for during my childhood. I was going to read Zane Grey then, but I always found something more interesting to do outside.”

  Calley showed him the book she’d tucked into a corner of her tent. The illustrated nonfiction was a series of diaries and letters written by pioneer women. “They wrote so simply,” Calley explained. “Just a few words to describe a birth or death. And yet they were the right words. I really think the women in the covered wagons were shell-shocked. Can you imagine women today crossing the country on foot with babies in their arms, wondering if those babies would be alive by the time they reached their destination?”

  “I can’t imagine anyone doing that,” Dean admitted. “We don’t understand enough about what motivated the pioneers. I think I’m doing pretty well with this back-to-nature business, but I got here in a truck, sleep in a tent I bought at a sporting goods store and eat prepackaged foods. I’m hooked up to the rest of the world with a CB. I’ve seen the trail taken by miners during the Klondike gold rush. The Golden Stairs was a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one.” He shook his head. “You’re right. Our ancestors looked pretty brave in those old Western movies, but I don’t believe that was how it was at all.”

  Calley liked hearing Dean admit that he was dependent on modern technology. Not every man would own up to that. True, she enjoyed watching him go about his work while she pretended that he was a mountain man or Indian, but he wasn’t losing himself in a romantic image of what he was doing. “You like the idea of a medic pulling up in a four-wheel drive in case you break your leg, don’t you?” she teased.

  “I don’t ask for that much. Some things I’ve had to learn to do on my own. I hate to tell you this but—” Dean lifted his head skyward. “It looks like we’re in for it.”

  Calley and Dean were in for more than a rainstorm. Although their view of the sky was limited by the surrounding trees, enough of the powerful, sudden lightning lit up the sky to impress them both. Calley was aware that a forest fire could start as a result of the lightning unless it started raining soon, but worrying about that wouldn’t erase the possibility.

  Instead, she sat curled up near the opening to her tent and peered out at the jagged slashes of silver that transformed the sky into a thing of both potency and beauty. She slipped out of her tennis shoes and wriggled her toes in relief. She felt the vibrations from the thunder as it rocked the earth beneath her almost as clearly as she heard it shatter the forest stillness.

  Even as a child, thunder and lightning had fascinated but not frightened Calley. It reminded her that there were still things left in the universe that were beyond the ability of man to harness. Maybe it was the electricity given off by the lightning; maybe it was the way her body accepted the shock waves from the thunder; at any rate, she was being filled with the force of nature’s energy.

  Calley leaned forward, sticking her head outside the tent, and accepted the first tentative splashes of rain on her uplifted face. Tonight was a segment cut away from the reality of life. The rest of the world couldn’t touch her; she felt no loyalty or ties to that world.

  “I take it this isn’t your first storm,” Dean said as drops became a downpour. His body was inclined toward her so he could be heard.

  “Hardly. The cattle on the ranch would go crazy when it stormed like this.” Calley closed her eyes, remembering. “I was so busy trying to contain them that there wasn’t time to be afraid myself. I—” She laughed softly. “I used to get so wet that the water would pour out of my boots. I ruined more than one saddle because I’d be out in it for hours.”

  “Do you ever go back to the ranch these days?”

  Calley opened her eyes. Already the ponderosas were shedding their wet load. The ground quickly absorbed what the trees couldn’t hold. “I lived there for the past year. But it wasn’t the same. Nothing was the same.”

  “Because you’re not a child anymore?”

  Calley appreciated the tenderness in Dean’s voice. “Because my parents had changed. Or maybe I was seeing them through adult eyes for the first time. I’m sorry.” She drew into herself. “I really don’t want to talk about that.”

  As Dean slid closer to her at the tent opening, Calley turned toward him. Raindrops thudded angrily against their canvas roof, daring them to venture out. He’d put his wool shirt back on, but it hung open in front, which let her see the fine ridges of his ribs. He didn’t jump when the thunder rolled; he accepted it in the same way she did. “It’s awesome,” she said during a break between thunderclaps. “I keep wishing I had a better way of describing a storm like this, but all I can think of is awesome.”

  “It’s a statement of nature’s dominance.” Dean was looking at her and not the sky. “We’ll never be able to control that. At least I hope to God we won’t.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to harness this power?” Calley challenged. She was wise enough not to risk meeting Dean’s eyes. Not many men felt comfortable enough about themselves to expose their most basic emotions. Dean was coming to that point; she didn’t want to risk their losing that intimacy. “There’s so much potential here.”

  “Because I believe there are some things that should remain greater than man.” He was looking at Calley’s hands as they rested on her knees. “I don’t believe man was destined to rule his environment. We don’t have the wisdom.”

  This time Calley risked a closer look at the man who was sharing nature’s show with her. If anything, the sense that they stood apart from everything that could be called civilization was growing. They were on their own, cut off. Nothing existed beyond this spot in the forest. When lightning cut a swath of gold over Dean’s face, she acknowledged the intelligence glimmering deep in his eyes. She might not know much about Dean Ramsey yet, but she felt united with him in their isolation.

  When once again she looked at him, his eyes were watching her. “It might rain all night,” he said, touching her hands.

  “But not the thunder and lightning. That part of the storm is going to exhaust itself soon.” Calley didn’t have to say that another storm was coming to
life inside the tent. His hands on hers were a simple gesture but one with limitless potential.

  Dean turned Calley’s hands over, examining them closely. “Your hands are what I expected,” he said in a voice that reached her more as a vibration than as words. “They’d be softer if you had an indoor job.”

  Calley accepted what she knew to be a compliment. “My father has the most expressive hands I’ve ever seen on a human being,” she explained. “They were made for a farmer. Big, with calluses that have been there for thirty years. He—he’s fought so hard for that damn ranch.”

  Before she’d finished speaking, Dean had lifted her hands to his lips and was moving his mouth over her palms. She was aware of the contrast between his soft lips and thickened flesh at the base of her fingers. She wasn’t sure having him touch her like this was safe, but she didn’t pull away. “You have your father’s hands,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Calley whispered, touched by what he said. She leaned closer to Dean, accepting his slow, gentle exploration of her hands. Although she’d never had a man do that before, his lips on her palms felt as intimate as a lover’s hands on her breasts. “Dad’s stubborn, and he doesn’t know how to let his emotions out, but I’ve always respected him.”

  “You fascinate me,” Dean said.

  “Why?” A spasm of emotion passed through Calley, but it was lost in the greater force of a thunderclap.

  “I’m not sure.” Dean met her eyes in honest confusion. “Part of it is, I guess, because you’re doing things with your life that not many women would want to. Or at least they’d only daydream.”

  “And the rest of it?” Calley ventured. She realized that she’d been looking intently at Dean for close to a minute now, although she could see his face only when lightning flung away the forest-deep darkness.

  “I’ll tell you that when I understand it a little better myself.”

  When Dean dropped her hands, Calley again draped them over her knees. She was sitting cross-legged, her knee grazing the side of his thigh. “I saw a doe and her fawn today,” she said after several minutes of silence. “The fawn still had spots. The doe was a little seared, but they were both fat and sleek.”

  “So was the raccoon I came across. I’m guessing he weighed over forty pounds. It’s been a good summer for animals.”

  “It could also mean he’s putting on a lot of fat for a long winter. A raccoon out in the daylight?” Calley questioned. “It must have known it was going to rain and there’d be no hunting tonight.”

  Dean frowned as if considering the possibility. “It could also be because I tripped over his log home, but he didn’t stick around long enough for me to ask many questions.”

  Calley liked the direction the conversation had taken. She helped it continue in that vein. “Animal instinct is a lot better than ours.”

  “True.” Dean laughed. “He knew enough not to hang around me.”

  Calley cocked her head, pretending to be pondering his last statement. “I hope he doesn’t know something I should.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Calley.”

  If she hadn’t caught the somber note in his voice, Calley might have kept up the light conversation. But Dean, perhaps unwittingly, was telling her something about himself. Something precious. “I know that” was all she could manage to get out.

  “I hope so.” Calley thought Dean was going to touch her hands again, but he didn’t. “I wasn’t sure how you felt about being here alone with me.”

  “Dean?” She touched his cheek in an attempt to bridge whatever gap existed between them. “Out here we don’t have any choice but to trust each other.”

  Dean covered her hand with his, pulling her toward him. The savage light show was cloaking his face with a vibrant mix of glitter and shadow. She wasn’t ready to have the mood change so quickly, so radically, but when it did, she didn’t try to fight.

  Calley leaned forward to meet Dean’s seeking mouth. The contact was awkward and not intimate enough to be very satisfying. But Calley knew that he could make her forget the strong gusts of wind that blew fat raindrops onto her face and hair. Dean’s lips were more than soft, warm flesh. They were promise and hope and the capacity to kindle something. Calley was ready to explore what that something could be.

  “That’s not going to work,” Dean said before gripping her shoulders and pulling her against him. “There,” he whispered. Then, with the rain-laden wind blowing her hair back from her face, Calley surrendered herself to emotion. Tomorrow, in the sunlight, she would rediscover the woman she recognized.

  Tonight she didn’t care. Her outer thigh was touching Dean’s but the contact went further than that. He wrapped a work-tempered arm around her shoulder and brought her against his warmth. Before he took her chin in his free hand and turned her face toward him, Calley reached out with her tongue, bringing into her mouth the taste of a wilderness storm.

  The cool raindrops slid to the back of her throat as Calley closed her eyes, ready for the lips that would make her warm. Their kiss was what she expected and more. Despite the mountain-tempered hardness of the rest of his body, Dean’s lips were incredibly silken. Or maybe they only seemed that way because Calley needed to be touched by something that would take her away from her surroundings. The storm exploded around them, shaking the ground with a force that caused the creatures of the forest to crouch low to the ground. But Calley barely noticed nature’s fury.

  She was experiencing an explosion of her own, less fierce, perhaps, but just as consuming. The lightning cascading throughout the heavens seemed to be taking its cue from an electrical current that burst to life inside her. She could tell herself that she was sensitive to the storm raging around her. She could tell herself that the cramped quarters and the body next to her were responsible for this moment.

  Calley did neither of those things. She was unaware of any impressions other than the desire to take what Dean Ramsey was offering her.

  Although his kiss was gentle, Calley sensed that he was holding back with an effort. She was vaguely aware of the fat raindrops landing with loud splats on the canvas roof, but it wasn’t until the sound escalated that she swam back to reality. Until the moment when the heavens burst forth with its promised burden, Calley was aware of nothing save what was happening to her. She felt as if she were two people, one a seasoned woman, the other a trusting child. There was no war with the two emotions; they were capable of existing side by side.

  Calley moved her hands from their hold on Dean’s shoulders and boldly explored the mass of curly hair covering his cheeks. It was a delight to bury her fingers in the thick tangles. I could spend the rest of my life doing this, she thought. The coarseness of his beard fascinated her because it reminded her, just a little, of the mat of fur covering a bruin.

  Her thoughts were shoved aside by the power from above. As they’d been threatening to do for sometime now, the potent raindrops transformed themselves into a driving force that pressed against the tent roof and, whipped on by the wind, slapped at the two sitting by the entrance.

  Dean whispered, his mouth no more than an inch from hers. “We’re going to get soaked.”

  I don’t care. No, that wasn’t right. She should care about such things. “The flap’s still tied up. We can’t get it down without having to go out into the rain,” she said with what she hoped was a degree of intelligence.

  Dean rocked to his knees, gripped Calley by her shoulders and started to pull her back toward the middle of the tent as if she were some lifeless bundle he didn’t want to get wet. “Then I guess the only thing to do is get out of the way,” he explained when she muttered a complaint at the way she was being handled. When another shaft of lightning lit up the tent, he spoke again. “Your hair is soaked. It looks like you have diamonds in it.”

  Calley positioned herself so that she was sitting on her sleeping bag and waited for Dean to join her on the narrow cushion. She was glad he hadn’t tried to close the tent flap. Despite
the cold, she didn’t want to be cut off from the storm. “I’d like to have diamonds in my hair sometime.”

  “Would you, really?”

  “Of course not,” she said with a laugh. “I’d much rather have raindrops.” She was thinking a little more clearly now that he wasn’t touching her, but she still couldn’t remember anything of the past or think forward to the future. This moment was all that existed.

  Dean’s voice dropped to a whisper. Calley could barely hear him over the sound of rain beating down around them. “You don’t have a lot of daydreams, do you? You’re content with reality.”

  Calley wanted to take the words and wrap them around her heart, but the emotion died before it could blossom. Answering him would have to wait until she knew him better. “I’m glad it’s dark,” she said instead. “I’d never win a beauty contest.”

  Gently, reverently even, Dean brushed her hair back from her wet cheeks. Calley felt herself moving with the gesture, drawing closer to him. She was starting to shiver but wasn’t sure whether the storm outside was responsible for what she was feeling. “I’m not interested in beauty contests,” she heard him say before she surrendered to what he was offering her.

  This time it was no chaste first kiss. Dean slid around until they were sitting side by side and then turned toward her, wrapping his arms boldly around her. She didn’t protest when he stretched her out on the sleeping bag and leaned over her, sealing their lips together. This time his mouth was open.

  Calley felt his fingers lace their way through the hair along her temples, touching her pulse before securing a thick lock. She sensed a moan growing deep inside her and stopped it only with a supreme effort. If she touched him at all, she should have confined herself to wrapping her hands around his neck. Instead, she reached for his waist and burrowed past his shirt until her fingers were over the ribs that were separated from her only by a thin layer of cotton.