A Man Without a Haven

by Beverly Bird

  She had immediately dumped her backpack and stripped off her clothes, wading in. Everything else could wait, and Mac was safely off working.

  Still, she did have a purpose for this excursion, she thought now. No matter how delightful the water was, she really ought to go see what he was doing. Who knew how many pieces he could slide to the side while she was here soaking up pleasure like a satisfied cat?

  She groaned reluctantly and finally stepped out of the cascade. She gathered up her hair, wringing it out, then she saw him.

  Her heart slammed up into her throat. Never, ever, had a man looked at her like that, with such heat and raw hunger, with such wanting. She was so stunned she couldn’t even react. She simply stood there, her arms over her head, her hands frozen in her hair and her eyes huge.

  He turned abruptly and left the switchback.

  Shadow’s heart plummeted back where it belonged, so hard and fast it made her feel dizzy. She lowered her arms slowly, her hands trembling, and hugged herself. What had that been about? Why had he come in here?

  More importantly, why had he left that way, without a word?

  She could no longer tell herself that it was because he didn’t want her. She wasn’t blind and she wasn’t stupid. She knew what she had seen in his eyes in that moment before he had turned away, and even now it made her knees feel weak. She couldn’t shake the memory of it, of all the unbearable emotion that had stormed there—wanting all tangled up with torment and denial.

  That torment and denial changed everything. Somewhere inside he was broken.

  Every protective, nurturing instinct she possessed swept through her suddenly, making her ache for him. Crazy. The last thing in the world a man like him would want was her care and concern. Slowly, frowning, she left the stream, moving to warm herself in a patch of sunlight.

  She should go home, she thought suddenly, should just forget about whatever he was doing over there in the refuse midden. Instead, she found herself hunkering down to pull her pack free from its aluminum frame.

  She found a clean pair of shorts and some underwear, and finally slid a comfortable tank top over her head. Her hands continued to shake as she combed out her hair and fastened it, still wet, into a ponytail. Finally she looked down again at the backpack frame. She was procrastinating and knew she really had to. She had to gain some control over herself before she went to find him.

  She took a few minutes to unfold the frame, opening it up into tent poles. She emptied the pack. The durable nylon weave spread out into a cover. When it was finished, it formed a small, lightweight tent, just big enough for one person.

  She put her gear neatly inside, then she straightened and took a deep breath. There was nothing else to do here. She grabbed the notebook and a pen and left the switchback.

  He was working.

  His broad back was to her, his skin golden-red in the sun. The heat in the canyon seemed to make his image shimmer. Shadow approached silently, slipping around him to sit on a nearby boulder.

  She flipped through the pages for a blank one before he finally looked up. She met his gaze, swallowing carefully, but his eyes were neutral, closed as only they could be. He looked down at his work again without speaking to her.

  There was nothing new on the pallet except a swatch of what looked to have once been leather. She jotted it down, with meticulous detail as to its size and shape. That finally got a reaction out of him.

  “Get out of here,” he snarled, his eyes fast on a piece of bone.

  Shadow’s chin came up. “Not a chance.”

  He finally looked at her again. “What the hell do you think you’re trying to accomplish here?”

  She opened her jaw and shut it again. She was no longer entirely sure.

  “If I show you my papers, will you go?”

  She thought about it. “No. I already checked your credentials on the museum computer.”

  His eyes narrowed at that, then he looked incredulous. “So what are you doing here, if you know I’m legitimate?”

  “Instincts,” she said again, softly. “Just...instincts.” And a small, inexplicable piece of pottery that she had found lying on the trail.

  “So take your instincts and go home.”

  He went back to his work, pulling a shard out too roughly. He paused, flexing his hands with deliberate patience, then he reached behind him for a small chisel to work some more dirt away from the piece. It was lodged between crumbled rock and stone and what appeared to be a piece of skull. Shadow didn’t want to look at the human remains, but Mac’s hands gave her no choice. She watched them, rapt.

  His strong fingers worked with exquisite care, gentle but firm. He touched the piece as if it were a woman he was trying to coax a response from, working it this way, then that, pulling when it gave, smoothing more dirt away when it resisted. Her heart started to pound.

  He finally got it free and stood to brush it off. He put it on the pallet and her gaze followed him.

  “I don’t get it,” she said hoarsely.

  He answered with hard reluctance. “What?”

  “How can you be so incredibly sensitive with things that are dead, while your eyes shut out life?”

  He turned around very slowly. She saw that a muscle moved at his jaw. Then he bent again to work the piece of skull free of the sand. He straightened and brought it to her.

  Shadow recoiled.

  “Go ahead,” he said too quietly. “Touch it.”

  “I...can’t.”

  “If you’re going to play around graveyards, then be a big girl and do it. Stop hiding in safe, distant shadows.”

  She did because it was a dare. Because something within her wouldn’t let him back her down.

  She ran her fingertips over the closest curve of it, shuddering and closing her eyes. It was smooth and eerily warm from the sun, as though life still pulsed within it. She fought the urge to snatch back her hand. Beneath her fingertips, she felt cracks and fissures left by immeasurable years, the grit of the dirt that still clung to it.

  “Okay,” she said finally, pulling her hand away, looking at him. “There. Satisfied?”

  “What did you feel?”

  He didn’t mean the question literally. She looked into his storm-colored eyes.

  “Time,” she answered simply.

  He nodded almost imperceptibly. “That’s why.”

  Finally he moved away from her. He laid the skull piece carefully on the pallet as well.

  “I date this site to sometime around the mid to late 1200’s,” he went on shortly. “Bones, pottery, history—they endure. Life doesn’t, and people sure as hell don’t.”

  “So you shut people out?” she asked breathlessly.

  “You said that. I didn’t.” He began collecting his tools and the pieces that he had already excavated. Only then did she realize that a rare cloud had moved over the sun. It was probably going to rain. The heat had acquired an oppressive, damp feeling.

  “You work alone,” she persisted. “Most archaeologists work in teams.”

  “I’ve earned the right. I produce results. I do it best when I’m not stepping over people, trying to cooperate with their half-baked methods when mine are better.”

  She slid off the boulder as he started back toward his campsite. He had clearly ended the conversation. She followed him slowly, thoughtfully, then went on to her own tent. After the rain passed, she would go back to see if he had resumed digging.

  Everything he had told her about his work and his methods seemed perfectly reasonable. Maybe she should just give it another day and go home.

  That would probably be safest—but for which of them, she was no longer sure.

  * * *

  The wind started tunneling into the canyon like an angry spirit. Mac struggled against it, securing his tent firmly. He finished just as the downpour began—big, heavy drops that seemed to mock him, as though telling him that more were coming and there was absolutely nothing a mere mortal could do about it.
/>   He had no doubt that Shadow would try anyway.

  Damn her.

  He paused, scrubbing his unshaven jaw, looking down the canyon. She had lived her whole life in this land. She had to know what mountain squalls could be like, how fierce they could be when a man—or woman—found himself trapped right in the middle of the cloud that was crashing in torment. She’d be fine.

  He went inside and lit the lantern, settling down with his notes of the dig. There was precious little to report regarding this morning’s work. He wrote what he could, then his mind wandered to the naked woman in the waterfall. He cursed her again, aloud this time, and threw the notebook aside.

  Did she actually think he would try to sell anything he found here? If she had read his dossier, then she should know better. He was too acclaimed in his field—there was no way in hell he could keep such a transaction anonymous. Not when he was considered something of an oddity to begin with, a loner and wanderer to whom money meant very little. He had no mortgage. He camped out at his digs more often than not, and his biggest monthly expense was his truck payment—a whopper, but one he fully considered worth it. The vehicle was a big, comfortable Explorer, and he had slept in it more times than he cared to remember.

  Sergeant Shadow just had a bee in her bonnet, he thought, and she wasn’t going to be satisfied until she satisfied herself. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do about it but hope that she reached some kind of conclusion soon.

  Then the canyon would be empty again. Silent, except for the moaning wind, the way he preferred it. He wondered why that thought suddenly made him feel itchy.

  It was the storm, of course, getting under his skin. The gales buffeted his tent, gusting stronger, and rain drummed against the taut canvas. He wondered again if she was okay down there. What was she using for shelter?

  “Oh, hell. No way.” He thought about it, then he closed his eyes in disbelief and resignation.

  That backpack had to be one of those contraptions that opened up into a tent. A very small tent, very lightweight, great for flat, dry desert surfaces. He didn’t care how strong or pragmatic she was, she wouldn’t be able to carry anything up this mountain that was heavy enough to survive a canyon storm at five thousand feet. So she was moderately fallible after all.

  He swore again, getting up to duck out into the storm. He fought the wind even as thunder began to roll. There was a faint sulfer scent to the air through the rain. Lightning had found one of the trees up on the slopes.

  He turned into the switchback. If she had ever had a tent, it was gone now. The wind had taken it off to parts unknown. She sat huddled, her sleeping bag pulled over her head for cover. Her belongings were scattered all over the cranny, strewn by the fury of the storm.

  He reached her and caught her arm, hauling her to her feet.

  “Only a woman would be stupid enough not to ask for help when she needs it,” he snapped. “Let’s go, Sergeant. You’re coming with me.”

  She didn’t argue exactly, although he half expected it. “Wait!” she cried. Then she turned back and he saw that she had been sitting on her notebook, trying to keep it dry. She snatched it up and let him drag her back into the main canyon, but when they were halfway to his tent, she shook his grip off.

  “I’m not going to blow away,” she snapped.

  They reached the tent and he let her duck in first. He came in after her, pulling the rubber band out of his hair, combing his fingers through it so it could dry. Shadow turned to face him and her breath stalled.

  The tent was certainly bigger than hers had been, but he filled it so...so inexorably. Suddenly all her senses felt filled with him. He was too close—and too far away. His broad shoulders were inches from her nose. She caught the damp male scent of him, unique to him and as rugged as everything else about him. The look he had given her at the waterfall flashed through her mind again and she felt weak, too warm.

  She wanted to back up and protect herself against the feeling, but there was nowhere to go. She wanted to lean forward and touch her tongue to the raindrops beaded on his chest, and the thought flabbergasted her. She wondered where her mind had gone these past several days.

  She clenched her jaw and got a grip on herself. She might have seen desire in his eyes, but he obviously had no respect for her as an individual. And she wasn’t desperate enough to settle for that any more than she would have settled for Diamond Eddie. Neither man could fill the hole in her life.

  She swallowed carefully. “You don’t have a very high opinion of women.”

  “They’re not in my rules.”

  She blinked at him. “Never?”

  He let out a rough burst of laughter. “I’m not gay. I just know how to pick and choose.”

  And she, he thought, would be a very, very bad choice.

  He supposed he had known that from the start. It hadn’t been just the fact that she would be staying in the canyon that first night that had had him roaming for a place to sleep, like a wild animal. She just wasn’t the sort of woman he tangled with. Oh, he sensed a simmering, bottled heat behind her cool, practical exterior, and that appealed to him readily enough. But there was also an inherent fear beneath her stubborn courage, a certain sensitivity that had allowed her to feel time in a bone, her simple joy at splashing naked in a waterfall. And those were the sorts of things he had learned to distrust most of all.

  “What rules?” she asked. Her voice had a vaguely husky quality and they both noticed it. She thought she saw something flash in his eyes, but then they narrowed and it was gone.

  “My turn to ask questions,” he said shortly. “What’s so all-fired important about that notebook that it was the single thing you saved from the storm? What have you written down in there?”

  Shadow stiffened. Had he set some piece aside that he thought she had noticed?

  “It’s not what I’ve written,” she answered levelly. “It’s what my boss has written. There are notes on museum pieces in here that I haven’t put in the computer yet.”

  “Yeah? Let’s see.”

  It was another dare of sorts. Her chin came up and she handed over the notebook.

  He rifled through its pages, then looked up at her, his blue gray eyes incredulous. “You weren’t kidding.”

  “Of course not.”

  “The storm blew your tent away—probably with you sitting right beneath it—and you maintained the presence of mind to grab this?”

  She shrugged. “You’ve got to know Diamond Eddie. I don’t dare give him anything to hold over me.”

  He thought about it. His eyes were watchful. “Bet you hate that.”

  “Bet you’re right.”

  “So quit.”

  “I can’t. I want his job. When and if he finally goes, I’m the logical choice to replace him.”

  He finally settled down on the sleeping bag, his back against a duffel bag, stretching out his long legs. She felt her heartbeat hitch. Why was she so aware of him? He was just a man, and not even a very pleasant one...although he did possess a rough, reluctant edge of chivalry that hinted of something warm and generous inside.

  She wrenched her eyes away from his legs only to fall into his own eyes again. They were steady now but they still looked like storm clouds and there was a certain wary curiosity there, too. For some reason, that shook her even more.

  She looked around awkwardly for a place to sit.

  “Over there.” He pointed to a small chest.

  She settled upon it carefully, drawing her feet up to brace her heels on its edge and hug her knees to her chest.

  “So tell me, Sergeant. What else do you want?”

  Her heart moved hard and uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”

  “Out of life. You want this Diamond Eddie’s job and what else? Come on. We’ve got time to kill. Let’s hear it.”

  “Okay.” Shadow ran her tongue nervously over her lower lip and thought about it. Two days ago she had been sure that she had it all figured out.
/>   “My own life,” she said finally, putting it into words.

  “What’s holding you back?”

  “The land I love, the people I love...and...and me.” She was shocked as she heard herself say it, but as soon as she did she knew it was true, knew it deep inside herself in that spot where no lies could live.

  He was both startled and unnerved by her honesty. Apparently it extended to her own self-evaluations, as well.

  “How so?” he asked after a moment.

  “I don’t like saying no.” She reached up and wrenched her own hair free, fanning it out so it could dry. “People ask me for help, ask me to do this or that, and I’m always jumping to it as though no one else could handle the favor just as well. Then someone else gets all the happiness and the satisfaction. I get...nothing. They’re gone, Mac. All those years are gone. The other day something happened to snap me awake and I realized I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing for myself. I’m living the same exact way I did seven years ago. Not one single detail of my world has changed.”

  So that was why she was here, he realized. He had suspected from the first that his pots were just an excuse. In some measure she was hiding from herself—or maybe she was trying to reclaim some small piece of her.

  He watched her jump up to pace, even though the tent would scarcely allow it. Energy seemed to crackle around her, frustrated, hungry for something more. It tightened something inside him again. That, and all that hair, sleek and damp, flowing around her shoulders, bouncing each time she made a sharp turn. He had another flash of how it had looked all slicked back beneath the waterfall.

  “Sit down,” he said too sharply.

  She stopped to look at him warily.

  “In another minute you’re going to have this tent loose and flying down the mountain.”

  “Oh.” She sat again stiffly.

  “I guess you don’t think of everything, huh?”

  Her gaze turned defiant. She wasn’t sure if he was talking about the tent or her life. “I never said I did.”