by Beverly Bird
Shadow climbed up the slope, conscious of the feel of his eyes on her back. She knew that if she turned around to look at him they would close down again. A part of her wanted to do it just to try to establish some sort of one-upmanship over him. Another part knew—probably wisely—that it was best not to provoke him. She was going to have to spend the night here, after all.
Oh, how she dreaded it.
It wasn’t just the chindis, although her skin already felt crawly at the thought of being trapped amid so much death. It was him. There was definitely something about him that didn’t sit right with her, something that put her nerves on edge. Her instincts felt...endangered.
She reached her mare and guided her back to the canyon by hand, something she hadn’t been willing to do earlier when she’d still harbored some misguided hopes of getting in and out before dark. She thought briefly of simply camping up here on the rim, then she discarded the idea. If the man said he had heard cats, then they were probably a more immediate threat than chindis and legends. She had only a .22-caliber handgun.
The horse fought her. She had to work slowly, coaxing her. “If I can do it, you can do it, old girl. We’re in this thing together.”
The mare gave her a reproachful look. Shadow supposed that if the mare could talk she would tell Shadow that coming here hadn’t been her idea.
They finally reached the canyon and Shadow began circling it, looking for the best way to get the mare down. Surreptitiously, she looked for the man as well. He was back at his tent now and it looked as though he had finally put the gun away. At least she didn’t see it in the gathering darkness. If he was going to harm her, logic told her he would have done it already.
So why didn’t that make her feel any better?
She found a wall in a switchback that was more sloped than the others. The mare was white eyed, sweating with nerves, but she allowed herself to be led down with reasonable obedience now and, Shadow thought, probably a good bit of resignation. They reached the canyon floor and came out of the switchback, and Shadow paused to try to place the ruins.
The one he was digging was to her left, and his campsite was between her and it. That was good. If memory served her correctly, there were three other ruins to her right. Two were distant, but one was sort of catercornered across from her. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since anyone had tried to dig there, disturbing old spirits, but she wasn’t inclined to take any chances.
Reluctantly she moved a little closer to the man’s camp.
She felt his eyes on her again as he worked up a fire, but she ignored him. She tied hobbles around the mare’s fetlocks to keep her from straying, then she untacked her, untying her duffel bag and dropping it on the ground. She rummaged through it for her water and chugged gratefully. Her thirst sated, she looked around, trying to figure out the quickest, easiest way to get through the night.
“I’ve got a little extra wood,” he volunteered.
She saw some dry sage and a dead juniper halfway up the opposite slope. “No need.”
She found her knife and climbed up to tackle the tree. The work took a while because she was hanging onto a precarious finger hold with one hand, chopping with the other. It would have been infinitely easier and probably more sensible to accept his wood, but for some reason she couldn’t really define, she was loath to do it.
It was probably just as simple as the fact that he wouldn’t cooperate with her. And it was obvious that he resented her presence here. But this was Navajo land and she had the blood right to wander wherever she chose upon it, undoubtedly more right than he had. So she would spend the night here whether he liked it or not, and she would do it on her own terms.
She was efficient, he thought. Desertwise and determined. He watched her bring the wood back and pile it. He wished she hadn’t moved so close to him that he couldn’t escape awareness of her presence, and wondered if he could have forgotten she was here even if she had stayed out of sight. Yes, she was very good-looking. There was something about the darkness of her hair and eyes that suggested a hot-blooded passion beneath her cool skin.
He found himself enjoying the diversion that watching her provided, even as it disgruntled him. “Matches?” he offered.
“I have them.”
A moment later her sage sputtered and lit. A short time after that, the juniper blazed. The flames threw orange and black shadows up at her face. Mac jolted. In that moment, again, she reminded him of the vague image he held in his head of what She Who Waits would look like.
He wrenched his eyes away, irritated with himself.
He finally got his own fire going and went downstream, where he had left the last of the venison he had hunted up a few days earlier. The cold water and the aluminum foil he had brought with him were just enough to keep it from spoiling. He gave her campsite a wide berth both going and returning, and found himself relatively convinced that she would know of some way to eliminate the need for the aluminum foil—just one more thing he had to pack and carry to all his sites.
He settled at his fire and spitted the meat, and damned if he didn’t hear himself calling out to her again.
“Hungry?”
“I brought food just in case.”
Why wasn’t he surprised?
It occurred to him then that while he had fully anticipated that she would chatter her way through the night, she hadn’t spoken one single word to him that he hadn’t provoked, at least not since she had come back with the horse. He shifted his position a little, to be able to watch her more easily. She seemed so at ease with her own company and silences.
He noted that she ate with quick intent, more for sustenance than enjoyment. But then, her meal consisted of a candy bar and a prepackaged sandwich, not exactly mouth-watering fare. She washed it all down with the water she had brought.
So what did she think she needed the fire for? Not for cooking and certainly not for warmth. The night air was warm and clinging. Then he figured it out. The chindis. He thought he remembered hearing somewhere that fire kept Navajo ghosts at bay.
So there was a soft, vulnerable spot inside her somewhere. He wasn’t sure if he was pleased or not. He thought it probably had more to do with her being Navajo than with her being a woman.
She finished eating, neatly replacing the wrappers in her bag. Then she fussed around with her tack some, positioning the saddle just so, covering it with the saddle pad, keeping the side up that wasn’t damp with horse sweat. When the moon started to rise, she dug out a little place in the ground for her hips and laid down. She seemed to do it carefully with her head against the makeshift pillow, her back to him. Almost as an afterthought, she reached behind her and pulled the knot in her hair out.
Her hair spilled to the ground, pooling there, long and silky. He had the stunning, almost overpowering urge to go over there and run his fingers through it, through something so sleek and alive with its own light.
How long had it been since he had touched anything that was alive?
He clenched his hands into fists, then she called out to him for the first time.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“What?” he asked hoarsely.
“Your name.”
“Mac Tshongely.” Too late, he realized that she probably had some sort of ulterior motive for asking. She clearly wasn’t prone to casual conversation—unless she was discussing the ancient Anasazi.
“Hopi?” she guessed.
“That’s right. Half of me is, anyway.”
“What’s the other half?”
I don’t have another half. It left when I was ten. He was stunned to hear himself answer anyway, talking to her back.
“Some Navajo but she was mostly white.”
“I guess that explains your eyes.”
After that she was so entirely still he had to wonder if she was already asleep. But when he spoke again, she answered.
“What do they call you?”
“Shadow.”
Shadow. Shade. Ghost. Like the image of a long dead woman plunging down a canyon wall to land at his feet.
Mac got up abruptly and went into his tent. It was long past time he stopped talking to her.
* * *
Shadow couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the fact that she was outdoors without a bed. She was accustomed to that—she almost always camped out whenever she went to one of Jericho’s medicine sings. No, it was the idea of Mac Tshongely that kept her awake, the maybe-archaeologist with hard eyes and a rough voice and a mongrel mix of Hopi-Navajo-Anglo blood which theoretically put him at rights to be here also.
It was the thought that he was undoubtedly sound asleep himself no more than ten yards away. Leaving her alone. Giving her a wide berth.
What was wrong with her?
Why didn’t men ever react to her? Was it, as Catherine had once said, that there was something just so no-nonsense practical about her? Cat had meant it as a compliment, but did it make her seem sexless? She didn’t actually want Mac to come sniffing around her campsite—something about him told her that touching him would be an unsettling, dangerous experience indeed. If she ever did get around to loving a man again, she would prefer him to be someone with some heat, and Mac Tshongely seemed to be all cold antagonism.
No, it wasn’t that she wanted him; it was just that she was very tired of being unwanted herself. She twisted and turned, and then she found herself thinking about his hands again.
She had watched them only briefly in the flickering light of his own fire, but they wouldn’t leave her mind. They were definitely archaeologist hands—or at least they belonged to someone who dug in the dirt often. His nails were blunt, his fingers deft and strong. His skin had looked tough, hard, callused. In spite of herself, she wondered what such a cool touch would feel like against smooth, tender skin that never saw the blistering sun.
She heard herself groan aloud and was appalled at herself.
It didn’t matter anyway—he couldn’t have heard her. Almost simultaneously, she heard movement from his tent and knew that he had come outside again. Her heart began thundering and her palms went damp. Would he approach her? They were, after all, a man and woman very much alone.
And what would she do if he did?
Then she heard his footsteps receding. She waited a safe time and rolled a bit to see where he was going. He walked to his dig site, his sleeping bag jumbled up and thrown over his shoulder. She watched disbelievingly as he dropped it near the refuse midden and hunkered down to straighten it out.
That was when she realized he slept naked.
The strong lines of his body showed in the moonlight, gold and silver and shadowed. There was no spare meat on him despite his size, just lean, hard muscle. His buttocks were tight, his thighs powerful, his shoulders broad. Shadow’s heart slammed and her throat went dry, then it closed over unshed tears.
Did he think she was asleep? Did he not care one way or another? Was it simply a foregone conclusion that thirty-year-old practically-spinsters weren’t supposed to get turned on by ruggedly handsome, naked men?
She was turned on. Oh, God, she was turned on. A sharp, stunning sense of need ripped through her.
He laid down, pulling the top of the sleeping bag up over his shoulders.
Apparently, ten yards had been too close.
Chapter 3
Shadow saddled her mare again before the first new light touched the canyon floor. She worked stiffly, without looking anywhere near the refuse midden.
The small of her back ached and there was a sharp pain in her neck from holding herself rigidly on her back all night. If she’d rolled left, she would have been confronted by the sight of Mac Tshongely, naked inside his sleeping bag. To her right were the ruins and she’d been afraid to look that way, too—she had worried that she would see something ghostly moving there. Now she was tired and she hurt and she was irritable.
When her campsite showed not a single sign of human trespass except the vague indentation where she had lain, she finally glanced over at Mac’s dig. He was gone. She breathed a little more easily, then her breath hitched. She didn’t entirely like not knowing where he was, either. It left her with a vulnerable, exposed feeling.
Well, she could put an end to that by simply leaving. She had a lot to take care of today—first and foremost a sweatbath to rid herself of the threat of ghost sickness from spending the night here. Then she would go to the tribal-police subagency in Shiprock and report Mac Tshongely. She should probably check in at the museum, too, to see if Diamond Eddie had any work for her. After that, she would drive up the mountain to check on Cat and her brother.
She closed her eyes briefly. She wondered if Jericho knew any chants to erase the image of a naked Mac Tshongely from her mind. Somehow she doubted it.
Where was he?
She briefly considered looking for him, but it seemed absurd to search him out just to say goodbye. He hadn’t wanted her here and she hadn’t wanted to be here, so she would just go.
She gathered up her mare’s reins and led her back up the sloped switchback wall to the rim.
She was halfway up when a flash of something caught her eye near the side of the trail. She paused, scowling. She hated litter. It was an affront to the earth, to the raw beauty the Holy Ones had given to the People. It was bad enough that Mac Tshongely was digging up the soil—as an anthropology student, she had long ago accepted the necessity of that. But to spoil the land with his trash, his refuse...that was something again.
She bent and snatched up the sparkly thing angrily, then she winced. It cut into her hand.
She uncurled her fingers slowly, looking down at the object. It was a very small, very sharp piece of Anasazi pottery.
* * *
Mac watched her from the top of the wall.
The carcass of another small buck lay at his feet and he rested one boot against its ribs. Conveniently, the animals gathered at a watering hole farther up the mountain at dawn. It had been all the excuse he’d needed to get up before the sun and get the hell out of that canyon.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. He needed a shave and decided he’d put it off until tomorrow. Today he was bone-deep exhausted.
He was getting too old to be laying awake all night like a teenager, hard and wanting something he couldn’t have. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. Couldn’t was too prohibitive a word. Shouldn’t was more apt. It would have been insanity to have answered her silent call.
He hadn’t wanted any woman so much in as long as he could remember. The mere fact that she was spending the night had put her off-limits. But out of sight hadn’t equaled out of mind.
Moving out of the tent hadn’t helped. In the tent, he had sworn to God he could hear her slow, even breathing, so nearby. But at the dig, he had sworn he could smell her on the air, some soft, feminine scent, warm and musky and inviting. He hadn’t known then and he didn’t know now what made him so damnably aware of her. He had made the move to the midden instinctively, feeling like a hunted animal, needing to get away and put distance between them. He hadn’t even realized until he got there that he had forgotten to dress again.
Not that it mattered. Something told him that naked men wouldn’t skew her orderly world. She had probably been asleep, but on the off chance that she wasn’t, he was pretty sure she had taken it right in stride without any blushing or gasping.
And now she was finally leaving. Now he didn’t have to worry about it at all. He simply had to step back into the brush as she passed here and she would go on her way never knowing he was nearby.
But she didn’t pass. She paused and stooped to pick up something from the dirt.
He laid his bow against a rock in the tangle of growth, then he bent and hefted the deer, slinging it over his shoulder. Despite his determination to keep hidden, he moved out into her path.
Shadow gasped, jerking to her feet, clearly startled. Her hand closed protectively over whatever she had found, then something in her eyes flared.
The look caught him by the throat, strangling him, making him want her with an ungodly, mind-boggling rush that came out of nowhere. At first it was only suspicion and wariness in her gaze, but then her eyes widened ever so slight and her breath seemed to catch.
He knew instantly that she had been awake last night. Maybe she hadn’t blushed or gasped, but there sure as hell was something probing and curious about her gaze now, something that made him want to satisfy her curiosity very much.
“Leaving so soon?” he snarled.
“It was the company.”
She was quick, he’d give her that. He finally stepped back.
“Then don’t let me keep you.”
“I hadn’t intended to.”
She started moving again, leading the horse. Let her go. “Are you going to come back with the cops?”
She looked around at him, vaguely startled. “Why should I?”
“So you can see for yourself that I’m legitimate.”
“If you’re so concerned with my opinion, then why don’t you just show me your papers now?”
His eyes narrowed. “Maybe I want to see if you’ll give up without a fight.”
“No,” she said simply. “I never do that when something’s important.”
He had known that, and it was precisely why he didn’t want to give them to her. He guessed that she would pretty much organize the people in her life the way she attacked an unplanned night in the outdoors. Something perverse in him refused to give her that power, that satisfaction, even if it meant he had to deal with the tribal police later.
He turned away abruptly. “Have it your way.” His best hope was that the legends and the chindis would keep the cops at bay for at least another day.
His consolation was that they would undoubtedly be easier to deal with than a lithe, capable female with a great backside and hot black eyes.
* * *
Shadow headed east on Navajo Route 504 as fast as she dared with the mare trailing behind her. She reached Shiprock by lunchtime and slowed to a crawl where the narrow road intersected with the four-lane stretch of U.S. Route 666 that would take her home again. Then she made a decision and stomped on the accelerator. There was no sense in going home for a sweatbath, then driving all the way back up here to town. She’d hit the subagency and the museum first—the subagency being her top priority.