by Jenna Kernan
Dylan hadn’t thought of that. Her family would be worried sick.
His gut told him no, but how could he deny her?
“Too dangerous,” he lied. In fact, it would be safe to approach by helicopter from the east, skirting the plume of smoke. Dylan looked away.
She returned to washing his shirt.
“To land here or to trust my dad?”
He didn’t answer.
She added the soap and started the machine.
“My father did not send me up here to get caught in that wildfire. So you are going to need another theory.”
He said nothing.
“We were closest to the explosion. You filmed it and I was up there, or nearly.” He would have been if she had not delayed him. Had she done that on purpose, knowing what would come?
He rubbed his neck and tried to decide what to believe.
“The police will want to speak to us,” he said, and waited for her reaction.
She closed the washer door. “Fine. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Truth or lie? he wondered.
His friend Jack had suspicions that Kenshaw was using Tribal Thunder for his own purposes. He told Dylan he believed Kenshaw had sent Carter down there to rescue his niece because he had foreknowledge of the Lilac shooting. Then their shaman had arranged for Ray to protect Morgan before the FBI even knew that BEAR was targeting her for fear Morgan knew who had hired her dad. Dylan had been there with Morgan and Ray when two masked members of BEAR had shown up and told Morgan that they had determined she knew nothing. Now here he was with Meadow the day the ridge house exploded.
“I don’t mind police. But the tabloids. Oh, man. Get ready, because you are about to get famous.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. He was not shy but would describe himself as a private person.
“My savior.” She started the machine. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell them about our communal shower if you don’t. Or that we slept together.”
“We haven’t...”
She smiled. “Day’s not over yet.”
He’d never met a woman so blasé about filling her sexual needs. Did she want him or would anyone do?
She glanced out the window. “Let that run while we get something to eat.” She headed down the hall, releasing her towel and fixing it again under her armpits.
He stepped into the bedroom and retrieved his phone. He flicked it on and called Jack.
“You okay?” asked Jack.
“So far.”
“Where are you?”
Dylan told him.
“Good spot. Listen. I spoke with Forrest. That video feed has gone viral. Ms. Wrangler caught the exact moment the hillside blew. Plus, because of your radio distress call, they know you both survived. Local law enforcement is calling the fire suspicious.”
“That was quick. They haven’t investigated.”
“Dylan, the news is reporting that sources say you are wanted in connection. Both of you. So you’re a suspect. One news program is speculating that you are one of those guys who starts a fire and then puts it out.”
“Hero complex,” said Dylan. He sure had the right background for that.
“Luke says it stinks. He wants you out of there before the locals take you.”
“How do we do that?”
“That’s the problem. All access is blocked by the fire. He’s trying to get a helicopter. Agent Forrest told me he’s got his doubts that if you are arrested, that you two will make it to a station. He’s afraid the plan was to pin the whole thing on you two all along.”
“Whose plan?” he asked.
“Forrest thinks it’s BEAR because they have the explosives.”
“If they match,” said Dylan.
“Takes time to determine that. Time we don’t have.”
“Could it be her father?”
“Forrest mentioned that. He’s the logical suspect. Already linked to the Lilac mine shooting. You think Meadow is involved?”
“I’m not sure. My impression is that her being here is her father’s doing. She thinks she’s working on a documentary film about the house that broke the ridgeline.”
“What do you think?”
“I think her dad sent her here to die. Make her a martyr for BEAR’s causes.”
“You don’t have to convince me or Forrest. You have to convince the police if they get to you first.”
“They won’t. What about Kurt and the air ambulance?” asked Dylan. Jack’s little brother was a paramedic out of Darabee.
“They’re evacuating the firefighters on the line. Heat illness. It was a hundred and three out there. You got water?”
“Yes. How’s the fire?”
“Twenty percent contained.” Jack gave him the details. “No one is getting in to you. Road is closed. Your crew is out there.”
Without him. That was the first time he hadn’t been with them. Twelve men working the line.
“Is Ray there?”
“Yes, he’s the one who told me you should stay put.”
That gave Dylan some ease, but the guilt was still there. The silence stretched. Dylan pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Listen. You can’t be there, so forget it.”
Jack was right.
“Did you find a phone charger?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay. Concentrate on what you can do.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t get caught. Tomorrow, maybe you can try to jump the fire line and rejoin your crew.”
“What about Meadow?”
“You need to get as far away from that one as possible.”
Chapter Eight
Jack thought Meadow was involved. Even if she wasn’t, Dylan’s friend believed that her father was responsible for the fire. He said his instinct told him that the blast was caused by explosives stolen from the Lilac Copper Mine.
Meadow didn’t seem like an eco-extremist to Dylan but, really, they were strangers. His mind replayed their encounter in the shower and he groaned. He switched the phone off to preserve the battery that was now in the red. If he could find a charger he’d be all set.
He searched the bedroom and came up empty. He found Meadow in the kitchen and searched again for a charger but with no luck.
“I found a pantry.” She showed him the locked door she had shimmied open.
Dylan was going to tell her that was stealing, but emergencies required allowances. The food was cans and boxes, but the pork and beans and peas tasted better than anything in his memory. He tried to tell himself it was his hunger, but he knew it was Meadow. Truth be told, he enjoyed her company. She told him about being sent off to boarding school at ten. Even though she kept the stories limited to the predicaments she had found herself in and even though he laughed, because she was such an expert at telling a story, he kept wondering why she had been sent away.
Finally the meal was done, and still they sat across from each other, wrapped in clean towels and sharing stories. He told her about Iraq and how he’d lost one of his best friends to insurgents. How his friend had been tortured and finally killed. It was a story he didn’t share. He also told her about his dad, who had left his family when Dylan was seven. Dylan had not been the oldest but he had taken charge. His brother Danny had taken off at seventeen for the rodeo circuit. He told her how his younger brother, Donny, now danced professionally at powwows for prize money. “Even danced in DC at the American Indian museum they got there,” he added.
“They both left you holding the bag.”
“I was in the service for four years. But, yeah, when I got home, Donny left, too. He comes home from time to time. Mom and Gramps make his regalia. Sometimes he brings money.” Most times Donny ne
eded it, Dylan thought.
“That’s why you were so good. Your mom needed you,” she said. Then she sniffed. “Mine never did.”
“Did your brothers and sisters all go to boarding school, too?”
Her smile dropped. He had a moment to see behind the fun-loving facade to the pain she hid beneath.
“Only me.”
“Because you were so much younger?” Perhaps they just had not wanted to deal with a teen when all her siblings were grown.
“My mother’s idea. She said I lacked discipline. The girls’ version of military school.”
“Had you been in trouble?”
She glanced away. “Not yet. That came after they sent me off. Back then I was Daddy’s little girl. My mom said I was too needy and, well, nothing I did really pleased her.”
How terrible, he thought.
“So why did you get into so much trouble at school?”
She looked at him as if he were dim. Then she forced a smile. “Just growing up, you know, testing the limits.”
Then it struck him and he understood. “When you tested the limits, they sent you home.”
She met his gaze and he knew he was right.
“For a while,” she said.
“You ever get in trouble at home?”
She shook her head. “Am I that easy to read?”
“No, but it’s funny. I’ve always been a source of pride for my family—but not because I always wanted to do what was right. I’m not a Boy Scout, despite what you think. I just never wanted to see the disappointment on my mother’s face. Maybe that doesn’t make me brave. There were times I wanted to do what I liked, take what I wanted.”
She gave him a look charged with desire, and he felt his longing build.
“Take what exactly?” she whispered.
His breathing quickened, but he did not say that what he wanted right now was her.
“You can take me, Dylan. No one needs to know that the Eagle Scout stumbled. I’ll never tell.”
He believed her and he stood to go to her. He knelt beside her and stroked the petal-soft skin of her cheek all the way down her throat to the top of her chest, feeling the swell of her breast above the rolled top of the bath towel.
“I wish I could,” he said.
She pressed her forehead to his and closed her eyes. “You can.”
He drew back. “I don’t just want sex, Meadow. I want a woman who will stand by me. One who understands me and who loves me. You and I, we’ll be going in different directions soon.”
She took his hand and laced her fingers to his. “I could stick around.”
Now he smiled at the ridiculousness of that image. “You gonna move onto the rez? Raise cattle? Maybe you could work in the cultural center or up at the ruins touring visitors. No, you aren’t sticking around, Meadow. You aren’t the type. You know it and I know it.”
“No one ever asked me to stick around.” Something in her tone made it seem to Dylan as if she really wanted him to ask. But he couldn’t. He barely knew her and it wouldn’t work. They were too different.
“You need to get back to your world,” he said, and stood.
She lifted her chin and smiled. The mask returned to its place. The fun-loving party girl was back.
“Whatever you say. So who gets the bed?”
* * *
MEN DID NOT turn her down, Meadow thought. That made Dylan a challenge. She hated being rejected. But, if she were honest with herself, and she very rarely was, this man was different. He had a purpose and a depth of character that she admired. She even admired that he wouldn’t sleep with her.
Refreshing. But his reticence had backfired and now she wanted more than sex. He intrigued her. With Dylan she glimpsed a different way, and somehow she wanted to earn his respect. Trouble was, she had no idea how to begin. He didn’t respect her and why would he?
Meadow checked the washer and loaded the clean, wet clothing into the dryer. When she returned to the kitchen, she found that Dylan had cleared her place and was washing dishes. She found a towel and dried. The dryer buzzer sounded and she traded her towel for her under things and Dylan’s clean fire-resistant shirt, while Dylan drew on his jeans and shrugged into his T-shirt. In the caretaker’s closet he found her a pair of gym shorts, but she rejected them. His shirt was covering enough, and if she couldn’t get close to him, she could be close to his things. She lifted the collar to her nose and inhaled the smell of soap, but not the man whom the garment belonged.
“It’s clean,” he said.
“Too bad,” she replied.
He cast her that look, the one that mingled caution with intrigue.
They sat for a time in the kitchen and he shared with her tales of firefighting and soldiering and what it was like to be a boy who rode his horse to school.
When she suppressed a yawn, he called a halt and took her off to bed.
“You’re sleeping here, too,” she insisted.
“That’s a bad idea.”
“It’s the only bed,” she said. “And if you’re such a paragon of virtue, you should be able to ignore little old me for a few hours.”
“I have a feeling no one ignores you, Meadow.” He gave her a smile.
“My mother does.” She had meant it to be a flippant remark, but the truth of her words stuck in her throat and her next breath was a strangled thing.
His smile drooped and he stroked her cheek. Mothers were supposed to love their children unconditionally, weren’t they?
The tears came next and Dylan gathered her up, tucking her head under his chin.
“She avoids me unless I’m in trouble.”
“So, you’re in trouble a lot.”
“Yup. Then my dad swoops in and fixes things and I get to see him and everything is good, you know, although he’s disappointed. Then my mom gets a hold of me.” Meadow shook her head. “It’s like she can’t wait to see me leave. I’ve tried everything. She just hates me.”
He stroked her back. “I’m sure that’s not so. Maybe she is just worried about you.”
“And disappointed. But when I do well, she’s just as dissatisfied. Worse, actually.”
“How do you mean?”
“I got all good grades at my first prep school, hoping I could come home if I did well. She said that my dad was a generous donor, so the teachers wouldn’t dare fail me. Dylan, I earned those grades, but she just...” Meadow inhaled and then blew away the breath. “Once my dad had me working as an assistant on his documentary on the reintroduction of wolves in Wyoming. He said my filming was really good and so he was taking me on location with him. She threw a fit about how he handed me everything and I needed to make my own way. So he didn’t take me.”
“You need to do what is right for yourself, Meadow. Not for your mother or your father.”
“Really? You don’t know my family. My oldest sister, Connie, is an aid worker in Uganda. You know my oldest brother, Phillip, is CEO of PAN, Protecting All Nature. Next brother, Miguel, he’s a pediatrician with Doctors Without Borders. My sister Rosalie oversees PAN’s projects, all of them, including reintroducing wolves into their natural habitat. My other sister, Katrina, does pro bono work for convicts and helps with marketing campaigns for my father’s documentaries. We’ve got a CEO, two doctors, two attorneys and then there is me.”
“You could be any of those things.”
“It won’t make any difference. If you’re right, they sent me out here like Gretel to get lost in the forest and be eaten by the witch.”
That he could not deny, because he believed it.
He continued to rub her back. “On Turquoise Canyon we have strong traditions and a rich heritage. We also have poverty, substance abuse and one of the shortest life expectancies in the nation. Forty-eight. Th
at’s the average for a man who stays there. It’s why my brothers left and why I left.”
“You don’t have sisters?”
“I do. Two of them. Both older. Rita and Gianna married young. They have kids. They never left the rez. But I joined the Marines. I learned things, saw things, and I am a different man than the one I might have been—but I am still Apache. So I returned to my people and joined a medicine society. I swore to protect my tribe and keep my body strong.”
“Eagle Scout.”
“Bobcat, remember?”
She smiled and pressed her face against the warmth of his muscular chest. If only she could just stay here in his arms.
“You make your parents proud.”
He didn’t answer.
“Dylan?”
“My mom is proud. Dad took off when I was a kid, right after Donny was born. You want to make your dad proud while I want to be nothing like mine. I want to be there for my children and teach them what it is to walk in beauty.”
“Walk in beauty?”
“It is a way to live that is in balance with the natural world.”
“My father would approve of that.”
The conversation lulled, but still she felt at ease. It didn’t seem necessary to fill the silences.
“Do you think you could just hold me awhile tonight?”
His silence stretched, and she felt needy and weak.
“Sure. Yes, I can do that.”
Likely he could. She couldn’t think of a single man she had ever known who would have said yes to that and then not used it as a way to get into her panties. But Dylan meant he could do it and he would. She didn’t know if that should make her happy or bereft. A little of both, she supposed.
“Thank you.”
He tucked her in and lay on top of the coverlet, one big strong arm wrapped around her shoulders. She laid a hand on his ribbed stomach and felt his muscles twitch through the thin cotton. Meadow smiled and released a sigh. The skin of his bare arms turned to gooseflesh. The temptation to stroke him was strong but she resisted. Gradually he relaxed and she did, as well. When was the last time she had lain beside a man like this?