Rocky Mountain Lawman

by Rachel Lee

  Dusty tossed his head as she patted him, but didn’t move away. She definitely got the sense that he liked it. A smile blossomed on her face and she patted him a few more times before he nudged Craig on the shoulder. From Craig he accepted a scratch right between his eyes, then he trotted back over to the feed bin and water.

  “You’ve made a friend,” Craig said. “Although I wouldn’t try to touch his face until he’s come to you a few more times. It’s not like he’s used to hanging out with loads of people.”

  She watched the horse for a few more minutes, although the chill was beginning to penetrate her clothing. Even the new jacket wasn’t quite enough this morning. “How did it get so cold?”

  “It happens at this altitude in the mountains. Come on, let’s get inside where it’s warm.”

  The cabin seemed especially toasty after the chill outside. Sky dumped her jacket over one of the two benches and stood near the stove, warming her hands. Gloves. She had never once thought of needing gloves. At home she might wish for them only a handful of times each winter, if that. Up here, she’d already wished for them repeatedly because as the afternoons cooled down, her fingers started to get awkward. Even if the diminishing twilight hadn’t put an end to her work, the chill would have.

  She sat on one of the benches with a cup of coffee. Craig stood at the front window for a few minutes.

  “Pining to be out there?” she asked him. She hoped she sounded casual.

  “Oddly, no.”

  “Oddly?”

  He glanced over his shoulder with a half smile. “I usually love every minute of being outdoors in the summers here. I don’t even mind being out in the winter, but when it comes to summer I hate to waste a minute of it. But I’m not feeling that way today. So yes, it’s odd. I’m rather happy to be taking a day off, tucked inside with a lovely woman.”

  Lovely woman? Easy to say, she thought, looking away. She knew she was ordinarily attractive. It just hadn’t worked out so well.

  But one thing she certainly agreed with: it was nice to be facing a day here with him, without anything else that needed doing. “It’s like a real vacation.”

  He abandoned the window and came to sit across from her at the table. “Being out here painting hasn’t been one?”

  “Certainly not since Buddy turned up. I guess I’ve been tense and on guard. That’s not exactly relaxing.”

  “No, it isn’t.” He shook his head a little. “Part of me is impatient to get over there and find out what’s going on. The rest of me is quite content to let it all go hang today.”

  A small laugh escaped her. “I can identify. You know, it’s so different here from where I live in Florida. I honestly never thought about how early the sun would go down in the mountains like this. Or how fast it would get cold when it did.”

  “Three o’clock and the day’s already dimming even though official sunset won’t be until after eight. It’s a long twilight.”

  “It has a fascinating effect on the light. It’s not dark, but everything gets so flat even though the sky is still so bright. Then, almost as soon as the sun goes behind the peaks, the breeze picks up and the temperature starts to fall. It’s very different from what I’m used to.”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “I like it.”

  “Despite the light?”

  “There’s still usually enough time to paint. And I suppose if I wanted more morning light, I wouldn’t have to go very far east to get it. Just out of the mountains.”

  “Not far at all,” he agreed. He took another look toward the window. “I don’t mind days like this. We’re usually sunny and dry here, so it’s great when it clouds up and moisture starts dripping from the pines. Even better when it rains.”

  Then he cocked his head at her. “What’s the thing about painters and morning light? I’ve heard it before.”

  “The air is usually clearer in the morning so the light is purer. As the day goes on the light shifts to more golds and reds. It’s not actually a necessity, but a preference, depending on what you want to accomplish. I know artists who paint by artificial light in their studios. It works. And honestly,” she said with a wry smile, “not many people are ever going to see the painting in fresh morning light.”

  He laughed at that.

  “If you want realism in a painting, those things can become really important. I’m more impressionistic, and don’t worry about it as much. But there comes a point when I feel like I don’t have enough contrast and perspective, and that’s when I stop. Like right now outside. I could paint it, even though it’s flat and gray out there. I’m sure I’d come up with a good enough impression of what I can see, but it wouldn’t speak to me.”

  “Speak to you?”

  “That’s hard. Um...” She thought about it. “Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Flat light doesn’t give me the sense of energy I want. For others it might work fine.”

  “So it’s something you feel as well as what you see?”

  “Definitely.”

  He nodded slowly, clearly thinking it over. “I guess that’s what makes an artist.”

  She had no idea how to answer that. If she came right down to it, she found it difficult to express what drove her, what satisfied her, what had always driven her to paint in a certain way.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t have many light problems where you come from.”

  “That depends. For a lot of the summer the light is harsh and glaring. It softens in the fall, though. The Tampa area, where I live, feels really tropical. Looks tropical. The Gulf Coast is mostly a serene sort of place in terms of weather, water, beaches, palm trees. Then you go over to the east coast and the Atlantic, and it’s very different, especially in the northern part of the state. A whole lot more energetic, in terms of the water and weather.”

  “I guess it’s like the difference between the mountains and the prairie out here.”

  “Maybe. I haven’t been around enough to know.”

  “So,” he said, resting his elbows on the table and fixing her with his incredible gray eyes, eyes that now looked dark and mysterious in the dim light, “what brought you this way for your vacation? We’re out of the way for most people.”

  “I was looking for out of the way. And I wanted mountains. Really big, huge mountains. Someone suggested western Montana, but then I found this forest online and it looked perfect.”

  “I need to show you around some,” he said decisively. “There’s a whole lot to see in these mountains. Great places to paint or take photos that I think you’d like.”

  Neither of them mentioned Buddy or that problem. She realized they were chatting as if this really were a vacation for both of them. But at the back of her mind hovered the awareness that he intended to do a recon over at Buddy’s, probably tonight. That would be no vacation.

  She definitely wasn’t going to let him go alone, although if he rode out of here on Dusty, she had no idea how she could catch up. Didn’t matter, she’d find a way. He absolutely shouldn’t go alone.

  Rain came sweeping through, a deafening drumbeat on the roof, heavy enough that the world beyond the window nearly disappeared. Craig made another pot of coffee for them and brought out a small stack of boxes that contained puzzles.

  “You have your choice. There’s one of those 3-D puzzles that I can guarantee we won’t finish today. In fact,” he added, looking at the boxes, “I can virtually guarantee we won’t finish any of them in a day. Will that bother you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “Because some people don’t like to do things they know they can’t finish.”

  “I’m not one of them. But why so many puzzles?”

  He set the boxes on the table and started spreading them out so she could see the collection. “Some researchers can stay here for weeks at a time. It gives them something to do on long evenings or when the weather’s too bad. These have accumulated over a few years, from the look of it.”

  She se
lected the three-dimensional puzzle that looked like a castle on the Rhine. “I always wanted to do one of these but I never have.”

  The rain let up while they spread the pieces out. There was just barely enough room on the table for all of them and still have a little space to get started on the assembly.

  Conversation turned desultory as rain swept through in bands and they worked to put the first pieces of the puzzle together. Sky enjoyed it. She seemed to have a knack for matching the colors, equaled by Craig’s knack for matching the shapes. Surprise struck her when she realized the entire morning had passed so swiftly and that she was growing hungry.

  “I need to eat,” she announced. “Let’s see what we have.”

  Cold cuts in one of the coolers and a loaf of bread provided the answer. She’d need to go into town tomorrow, though, Sky decided. They were getting low and the remaining ice would probably only make it one more day.

  Of course, with only the one table they had to clear some of the puzzle pieces. It wasn’t as if this place ran to conveniences like a counter. Well, why would it? It had a chemical outhouse and a gravity shower, and a woodstove. Not exactly the height of conveniences.

  The rain became a steady downpour while they washed up afterward. Despite the oil lamps, the cabin seemed to grow even darker, almost nightlike. Craig slipped out to check on Dusty again, but this time Sky remained inside.

  A long, lazy day, she thought. Enjoyable in its own right, but her awareness of Craig was growing steadily. Awareness of his masculinity, his wide shoulders, narrow hips. She had even grown fascinated by the strength of his large hands as he handled the puzzle pieces and wished they were handling her instead.

  She sank onto the armchair and tried to reason herself back to reality and sanity. He had said she was tempting, then had turned to working a puzzle with her. Slow and gentlemanly were fine, but what if it wasn’t that at all? That was a nice excuse she had manufactured for him, but it didn’t help her one whit. Not really.

  And it might not even be true. But then why had he kissed her, especially that kiss on her neck this morning? That had promised something he now seemed to have turned away from. It had been deliberate and deliberately sexual.

  So what was wrong with her? But again she shied away from the question because she didn’t want to know. The possible answer terrified her.

  Chicken. Yes, all right, she was chicken. Hector had left huge scars. Only a fool would ask for another wounding.

  Resting her elbow on the arm of the chair, she put her forehead in her hand, and picked absently at nonexistent lint on her new jeans. No oil paint there. Yet.

  She needed to stop this. In a few weeks she was going home, back to her life and her job. This was a momentary escape, and she shouldn’t be complicating it with needs and wants that could only bring pain. Sooner or later they would, too. Because even if Craig didn’t decide she was a lousy lover, she would be leaving anyway. Then what?

  She should focus on her reasons for coming here, to heal from Hector and refresh herself for her clients at the center. Taking her life back, not giving it away in some mad fling.

  She was far too old now to be thinking like a sixteen-year-old girl with a crush. Much as she had been trying to ignore these feelings since she had met Craig, they seemed to be growing increasingly insistent. Maybe, for her own sake, she ought to just pack and go find some other place to paint.

  Maybe for Craig’s sake, too. When she thought it over, she decided he wasn’t feeling much more comfortable with any of this than she was. In fact, if it weren’t pouring today, he’d probably mount Dusty and take off to his solitary woods, woods that seemed to give him so much peace.

  He’d said he didn’t usually mind being out in this weather. She stiffened a little as she wondered if he thought she needed a babysitter after yesterday. Well, it would hardly be surprising. He struck her as taking the “protection” part of his job very seriously.

  How humiliating! She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She didn’t need him to hang around. Unlike a lot of people, she was well-trained in self-defense, and it would take more than a couple of men to get the best of her.

  She heard the door open and looked up as he stepped in. As soon as he closed the door and started doffing his wet jacket and hat, she said, “I don’t need a babysitter, you know. You can go do whatever it is you ordinarily would be doing.”

  He froze, his eyes widening a hair. Then he dropped his hat on the cabin’s one shelf and faced her straight on. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You said yourself you don’t mind being out in this weather. You must have things to do. You don’t have to hang around here to keep me safe. I can do that myself.”

  His lips parted a little, then closed. He glanced down a moment, then returned his gaze to her.

  “I know you can take care of yourself.” He said it flatly. There was even an edge in the words, just a small one. “Are you trying to tell me to get lost?”

  The question startled her, causing her to scramble around in her own thoughts. Was that what she was trying to do? Really? Or was it everything else she’d been mulling over?

  “Sky?”

  She didn’t answer as she began to feel embarrassed by her own illogical thinking. She was trying to read tea leaves, ping-ponging from one idea to another feeling, ascribing motivations to him when she didn’t know what they were, all the while dealing with the mess Hector had left in her heart and mind. Fear and yearning had mixed her up and now she was accusing him of things based on her own unsettling mental conversations—conversations that mostly made no real sense.

  “Sky?” he repeated.

  Her voiced was muffled when she answered. “Sorry. I don’t usually make accusations based on one side of a private mental conversation. Certainly not one as mixed-up as I’ve been having.”

  She stared at her knees, hoping he didn’t probe.

  She heard him move, heard his boots on the wood floor, but she was still surprised when he knelt before her and seized her hands. He held them snugly until finally she lifted her gaze to look at him.

  “I think,” he said quietly, “that we need to talk.”

  “Go ahead.” She certainly didn’t want to do any talking herself. Everything she might say would only make her sound juvenile or crazy.

  “Okay,” he said after a few beats. “Me first. I am not babysitting you. I actually enjoy being with you. I like your company. I like your spirit. I was honestly glad to wake up this morning and realize I had a good excuse to stay here today. And there’s nothing I’m supposed to be doing, because I’m seriously overdue for a day off. If anyone needs me for something important, I have a radio. Has anyone bugged me?”

  “No,” she said quietly, even as her heart lifted a bit. So he had really wanted to spend the day with her? That felt so good.

  “However,” he continued, “I’m aware that you’re coming off a bad relationship. You told me just a little. So I’m tiptoeing because I understand that you’re on the rebound, you’re sore and hurt and I suspect you’re seeing a lot through the lens of what happened with your ex. That’s normal. We all do it. But I am not your ex.”

  “I didn’t think you were!”

  “Really? I get the feeling that sometimes you do. You may not realize it, but you’ve got yourself staked out with off-limits signs. Not every single moment, but they pop up. So I’m trying not to cross boundaries you don’t want crossed. Besides, you’re planning to return home. So why the hell would I want to get either of us into a mess that might hurt one or both of us?”

  God, his thoughts had paralleled at least part of hers. But at least he didn’t say anything about her dissociation a few days ago. That would have wounded her.

  “So you’re fragile because someone just hurt you. I know that and respect that. Unfortunately, I can’t help noticing how sexy and tempting you are. So I crossed the line a couple of times. I felt it.”

  He felt it? Oh, God! />
  “I wish we could have a lot more days right here doing exactly what we’ve been doing today. I’m relaxing with you and enjoying it, and I’d like to do it again tomorrow, but I don’t think the weather will cooperate. So the sun will come out, my sense of duty will rear up and I’ll get back to work.”

  She managed a nod as it began to penetrate that he’d said she was sexy and tempting. A warm glow started in her heart and between her legs, and it frightened her even as it gladdened her.

  He tightened his grip on her hands. “Believe me, Sky, I’m not doing anything out of a sense of duty. Not today. I’m here because I want to be.”

  His hands holding hers felt so good. His skin was warm and dry, and slightly roughened from work. Not like Hector’s soft hands. It gave her something to cling to. “Thank you,” she offered tentatively.

  “I don’t know what that guy did to you, but it must have been some number. I see this wonderfully independent, outspoken, determined woman, and then I see something crumple inside you. Just every now and then. I don’t even know who he is, but it makes me want to shake him.”

  “Hector,” she managed. “His name is Hector. And you’re right, he did a number.”

  “That’s plain to see. I don’t want to add to what he did, but I can honestly tell you that I want nothing more than to carry you to those sleeping bags and make love to you. I’d even,” he added a little wryly, “like to think I could make you forget he ever existed.”

  What a beautiful thought that was. She ached for him to do exactly that. But she was frightened, too, and suddenly she loathed that fear. With all she had been through, how was it that a man had succeeded in making her afraid of life? Nothing else had.

  “You’re crumpling again,” Craig remarked. He released her hands, brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek, then rose. “I’ll get us some coffee. We’re not done talking.”

  They weren’t? But he had pegged her exactly, she realized. He had read her like an open book. She wouldn’t have believed that anyone could see through her like that. She didn’t know whether she felt uncomfortable or relieved that she didn’t have to explain every little thing.