Hawk's Way: Callen & Zach

by Joan Johnston

  Zach watched from the barn, where he was saddling his horse, as Rebecca headed for one of the two bunkhouses—one for boys and one for girls—that had been built to accommodate the twelve pint-size campers. Rowley was working on a corral that would be used as a riding ring for beginners.

  Zach pulled the cinch tight and lowered the stirrup but didn’t mount immediately. He leaned his arms on the saddle and watched Rebecca talk animatedly with the broken-winged cowboy.

  His marriage wasn’t turning out at all the way he had expected. In the first place, he hadn’t anticipated being so fascinated by his wife. Most of the time, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her when they were in the same room together. Only last night, a tiny mole beneath her left ear had drawn his eye and his hand and finally his mouth. At breakfast, he had found himself imagining the feel of the delicate curls at her nape, the curve of her brow. Even this far away, he wasn’t immune to her charm. He felt his stomach sift sideways as she gave the new cowhand a sassy smile.

  If it had simply been a matter of physical attraction, he might have sated himself with her body long before now. But he had been surprised to discover that he liked Rebecca most when she was discussing her plans for the children who would attend Camp LittleHawk, or the people she encountered who only needed a little helping hand—which she was glad to offer—to get on their feet again. Her eyes laid bare a warmth and enthusiasm for life that drew him like a hot fire on a cold Texas night.

  He worried that he might be letting his admiration for her get in the way of his better judgment. This wasn’t a real marriage. She wasn’t a real wife. Their relationship was supposed to be strictly a business arrangement.

  Zach snorted. It never had been that, and he doubted it ever would be.

  He felt an urgent need, however, to protect himself from the pain of another failed relationship. He had never seen Rebecca look sideways at another man, so perhaps she would never be guilty of infidelity. But he couldn’t help the nagging feeling that he was just one more cripple—one with an emotional handicap, rather than a physical one—that she had chosen to rescue, and that, like the others, once he was on his feet again, she would move on to someone else.

  Loving her would leave him vulnerable because she might never learn to love him back. Oh, he would be treated with courtesy and care, thoughtfulness and cheer, but that wasn’t the same as being loved—body and heart and soul—was it?

  The only way he knew to fight his growing attraction was to keep his distance from her. But every time he drew a figurative line in the sand, she adroitly, even nonchalantly, stepped over it. She was constantly coming to him to ask his advice. Did he think blue or green was a better color for the walls in the boys’ bunkhouse? Should she start with ten campers or twelve? What kind of crafts did boys like to do? Did he think the private suite for the counselor in each of the bunkhouses was large enough?

  Was it any wonder he felt a little anxious?

  To make matters worse, while he wanted a child as much as he ever had, the little boy he imagined now had features and a smile that matched those on Rebecca’s face. He hadn’t expected it to matter which woman was the mother of his child. Suddenly, it did. He had no idea what he was going to do if Rebecca didn’t get pregnant before the year was up.

  He heard Rebecca laugh, and the husky, full-throated sound caused the hair on his arms to stand up. His eyes narrowed on Rowley, who stood with his hip angled in a cock-strutting pose and a winning smile plastered on his lips. He watched Rebecca lay a hand on Rowley’s shoulder and saw Rowley bend his chestnut-haired head to listen intently to what she had to say. Then Rowley offered his hand to help Rebecca sit on a rail of the corral. Only his hand didn’t come away once she was up there. It stayed, resting on her thigh.

  Zach felt his stomach cramp. The streak of possessiveness he felt took him by surprise. This wasn’t jealousy, it was something much more primeval, the response of a male animal whose claim on its mate is threatened by another male animal. He knew from bitter experience that an unwary man could have his woman stolen away from him.

  Adrenaline flowed. Muscles flexed in readiness to fight.

  Zach stalked toward the corral, his eyes never leaving the sight of the masculine hand on his wife. He wasn’t seeing Rebecca, he was seeing Cynthia in those last moments before he had thrown her out, her body slick with sweat, the sheets tousled around her and musky with the smell of another man. He didn’t give Rowley any warning, just grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him around and hit him in the jaw.

  “Zach! Are you crazy? What are you doing?” Rebecca scrambled down from the corral and dropped to her knees beside the fallen man. “Are you all right, Rowley?”

  Rowley had his good hand to his jaw and was gingerly working it. “I think so.” He looked up at Zach. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Keep your hands off my wife.”

  Rebecca rose and stood toe to toe with Zach. “What’s wrong with you? Rowley didn’t do anything.”

  “He was holding hands with you.”

  “That was perfectly innocent!”

  “Yeah. Right,” Zach said, his voice harsh with sarcasm.

  “I think I’ll leave you two alone to work this out,” Rowley said, struggling to his feet.

  “Don’t leave, Rowley,” Rebecca said. “Zach owes you an apology.”

  “Like hell I do.”

  “Apologize, Zach.”

  “I’ll do better than that.” Zach turned to Rowley and said, “You’re fired. Pick up your things and be out of here before the end of the day.”

  Rebecca was furious. “Don’t you move an inch, Rowley.” She rounded on Zach. “This is my camp, and you have no right to fire my employees.”

  “This is my ranch, and if I say a man goes, he goes!”

  Rebecca shoved a frustrated hand through her hair. “I need him, Zach. I can’t manage twelve kids by myself.”

  “You’ve got me.” It was only then he realized he had been hurt when she replaced him with Rowley. Rationally, he knew she had seen somebody in trouble and been unable to pass him by without offering a helping hand. But it was hard playing second fiddle to another man.

  “I know you’re there for me, Zach. Lord, I could never face the thought of doing all this without you. But I thought I had put you on the spot asking you to help. We can really use another set of hands.”

  “He’s only got one that works,” Zach snarled.

  “Nevertheless,” Rebecca said, obviously exercising a great deal of restraint, “please tell Rowley you want him to stay.”

  Zach inspected the cowboy through narrowed eyes. Rowley met his gaze steadily, neither apologetic nor confrontational. It wasn’t the look of a guilty man.

  So maybe he had gone off half-cocked. Maybe he had acted a little crazy. But Rowley had gotten the point. Hands off my wife. As long as that was understood, he was willing to make peace with the other man.

  “I’m sorry I hit you,” Zach said gruffly.

  Rowley took the hand Zach offered. “Forget it, Boss.”

  “You’re welcome to stay.”

  “Thanks.”

  “See, now. Was that so hard?” Rebecca said as she slipped her hand through Zach’s arm and snuggled close. “I just know you two are going to be great friends.”

  Zach and Rowley exchanged chagrined expressions. Knowing Rebecca, they probably would.

  ZACH EYED THE EIGHT-YEAR-OLD BOY who stared right back at him with unblinking eyes. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He set the boy on top of the small pony and shoved the kid’s tennis shoes into the shortened stirrups. He had already given instructions on how to rein the horse. He gave the brim of the boy’s baseball cap a tug to make sure it was settled on his head. All the kids wore caps, he had noticed, because not many of them had hair. Chemotherapy had left them in various stages of baldness.

  He met the boy’s solemn, gray-eyed gaze and said, “Nothing to it, kid. Let you
r body move with the horse. If you run into trouble, grab hold of the horn.”

  “My name is Pete.”

  “All right, Pete.”

  Zach mounted his horse and looked back at the line of eight- to twelve-year-old boys mounted on ponies behind him. Rebecca had the six girls mounted in front of them.

  “Everybody ready?” He met Rebecca’s gaze, and she grinned and nodded.

  He heard a chorus of “uh-huhs” and “yeahs” in reply. He noticed Pete, the last in line, was already gripping the horn.

  “Let’s ride.” There were several excited giggles and one “Yippee!”

  Zach waited for Rebecca to lead out the girls, then let the boys pass by him before he brought up the rear. He felt a swell of unwelcome emotion at the sight of the kids’ faces as they rambled by him. Amazing how a simple thing like a ride on horseback made them so happy.

  All except Pete. Pete wasn’t smiling, and he had a death grip on the saddle horn.

  Zach nudged his horse up beside the boy, who appeared smaller than his age. “You don’t have to do this now, if you’re not enjoying yourself.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I might not get another chance.” He turned and looked Zach in the eye. “You see, I’m going to die.”

  Zach wasn’t sure what to say. He knew Rebecca had medical histories for all the kids, but he wasn’t sure whether they included a prognosis for recovery, and even if they had, he hadn’t bothered looking at them. He had no idea whether Pete was speaking from knowledge or supposition when he said he was going to die.

  “Hell, I mean, heck, we all die someday.” Zach glanced guiltily around to see if Rebecca was close enough to hear the profanity he had uttered. He had promised her—crossed his heart—that he wouldn’t swear around the kids. It was a hard habit to break. Where Pete was concerned, a little profanity didn’t seem out of order.

  Zach had never seen such a world-weary, cynical look on the face of a child. The eyes that met his were eight going on eighty.

  “I’ll be dead before Christmas,” Pete said.

  “Gosh, I hope not,” Zach said.

  “Yeah, well, hoping doesn’t always help,” Pete said.

  Zach wasn’t sure how much encouragement he should offer. Maybe Pete was right about his fate. But there were always miracles. He noticed the boy had relaxed in the saddle. “You’re doing fine,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Pete conceded. “This isn’t as hard as I thought it would be.” He shot Zach a self-deprecating smile. “I was afraid I’d get hurt. I sure don’t want to end up dying any sooner than I have to.”

  “I see what you mean,” Zach said. “We’re falling a little behind. Think you can manage a trot?”

  “Sure.” Pete grabbed the horn and kicked his mount and quickly caught up to the rest of the kids.

  Zach settled back into his position at the tail end of the line. He wished Rowley was doing this job, but the cowboy had stayed at the bunkhouse to organize some crafts for later in the afternoon. Kids like these needed to see a smiling face, and Zach was having a hard time keeping the frown off his.

  “I’m taking the canyon trail,” Rebecca called back to him.

  “All right,” Zach said. “Careful you don’t end up taking the steep route.”

  The trail into the canyon forked soon after the descent. One trail was wide and easy to navigate, perfect for the campers. The other was narrow and took a lot of twists and turns. It was easy to miss the turnoff for the first trail and end up on the second.

  “Did real Indians draw those pictures?” Pete asked when they passed some etchings on the face of the canyon wall.

  “I haven’t had an archaeologist out here, but I’d guess so. Some of the artists might even have been my ancestors.”

  “Or Mrs. Whitelaw’s ancestors,” Pete chimed in.

  Zach raised a brow. “How did you know Mrs. Whitelaw’s part Indian?”

  “Oh, she told me so when I met her at the hospital.”

  It had not occurred to Zach that Rebecca might have previously met these children. If he had thought about it at all, he supposed she had passed the word about Camp LittleHawk through doctors who treated children with cancer. But of course she would know any kids who had been patients at Children’s Hospital during the past two years.

  “How long were you in the hospital?”

  “I’ve been in and out for the past three years.”

  “You’re in remission now, though, right?” It was a condition of attending the camp.

  “Yeah. But it’s not going to last.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  Zach didn’t argue. The kid probably knew what he was talking about.

  He made an effort to treat the children—many on their first trail ride—as individuals, but he kept seeing them as a group. Without their hair, their faces were hard to distinguish. They all had the same haunted look in their eyes. Some were smiling, some were not. Only their noses were different, pug or pointed or tip-tilted, freckled or tanned.

  He wanted to be anywhere other than where he was. It was painful to spend time with these children, to see them experience all this just like healthy children. Because they weren’t healthy, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He felt tremendous respect for Rebecca and anyone else who was courageous enough to face sick children every day and pretend that everything was normal. That included his brother Falcon, who had married a woman whose child was deathly ill from leukemia. At least Falcon’s stepdaughter was well on the road to recovery.

  When they arrived back at the ranch after the ride was over, he made of point of seeking out Pete’s records. He had no idea what he would find. What he saw made no sense to him. Acute myelocytic leukemia. So, was the kid going to die, or not?

  That night, even with his wife safely spooned against his groin and his arm securely around her, he found himself unable to sleep.

  “Kid?”

  “Umm.”

  “How could you stand to do it?”

  “Do what?” she murmured, already half asleep.

  “How did you nurse kids like…those kids.”

  She turned in his arms so she was facing him. He could see the paleness of her skin in the light from the moon that filtered through the open blinds on the sliding glass door, but otherwise her elfin features were masked in shadows. She snuggled her head into the crook between his shoulder and chin.

  “You mean, kids with cancer?”

  She didn’t say “kids who might die” but he knew she understood what he meant. “Yeah.”

  He felt her shrug.

  “You just treat them like kids, Zach.”

  “But…”

  She leaned back, and he could feel her eyes on him in the darkness. “Is it Pete?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I saw you talking to him.”

  “I looked up his records. He has acute myelocytic leukemia. Is that bad?”

  She sighed. “Kids with that kind of leukemia have a very low percentage of survival.”

  “How long has he been sick?”

  “I first met him two years ago. His situation was more promising then. He had acute lymphocytic leukemia, and the disease went into remission. When he relapsed six months ago, he was diagnosed with the more serious cancer.”

  “He knows he’s going to die.”

  “Most of them have faced that possibility.”

  “How can they smile? How can they laugh?”

  “You mean, how can they keep on living, when life is so uncertain? They don’t focus on the past or the future. They live one day at a time.”

  Just like me, Rebecca wanted to say.

  “You knew it would be like this,” Zach said. It was almost an accusation.

  “I knew.”

  “I didn’t believe you, you know.”

  “Didn’t believe what?”

  “That you wanted to marry me because of the camp.
I thought you made all that stuff up on the spur of the moment.”

  Rebecca was grateful for the darkness that hid her surprise at his intuitiveness. “Why did you think I wanted to marry you?”

  Zach chuckled. “You’re going to think I’m an idiot. I believed you were still in love with me.”

  Rebecca held her breath. Oh, God. Then why had he married her, if he didn’t want a wife who loved him?

  “Now I see it really was the camp you wanted. And I can understand why. It’s a good thing you’re doing, kid.”

  “Zach, are you sorry that…I don’t love you?”

  He was silent for a long time. “I think maybe it’s better this way. I don’t have to feel so guilty, like I’m cheating you, not loving you back. What we have isn’t such a bad bargain for either one of us.

  “I respect you, and as you pointed out,” he said with a grin that showed in the moonlight, “I like you. I can see you’ll make a terrific mother. I don’t think I could have made a better choice.”

  She might have confessed the truth, if she had thought it would make a difference. But Zach hadn’t said anything about loving her back. She felt like crying and swallowed over the painful lump in her throat.

  Zach sought out her mouth in the darkness. She felt his desperation and wondered at its source. She offered him the only comfort she could. Her body melted against his. But there was no lovemaking tonight, not when there was no fertile ground in which to plant his seed.

  He pulled her close and held her tight. Gradually his hold on her eased, and his breathing steadied, until finally she could tell he had fallen asleep.

  Rebecca was wide awake.

  She eased herself out from under Zach’s arm and the leg he had thrown over her hip. She silently let herself out through the sliding glass door and wandered barefoot in the grass to the wooden swing, where she settled herself. It creaked slightly as she set it in motion with her foot.

  Zach had given her a great deal of food for thought.

  He had thought she loved him. And married her anyway.

  Rebecca wished she knew more about Zach’s relationship with Cynthia. The picture that had been in his bedroom the day she moved in still sat on his dresser. It hadn’t moved a millimeter in three months. She was as determined now as ever that Zach had to be the one to put it away. But for the first time in months she held out some hope that he would.