Return to the Black Hills

by Debra Salonen

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but Cade and his crew have been busy. It’ll be okay, Rem. I’m sure of it.”

  Shiloh dashed up, a pair of earbuds hanging around her neck and a barrel-shaped backpack slung over one arm. “The gate called, Remy. Kat should be here any second.” She turned to Jessie. “I wish Dad would let me stay, Jessie. I’d kick some stalker butt.”

  Jessie laughed and looked at her sister. “Who does that attitude remind you of?”

  “You.” Remy grinned.

  She might have said more, but a large SUV pulled into the driveway and honked. Remy picked up her bag. “Be safe, Jess. And call me when you catch the bad guy.”

  “Yeah,” Shiloh called, hurrying toward her aunt and uncle, who had gotten out of the car and were talking to Cade. “Me, too. And take a video if you get the chance. I wanna post it on the Net.”

  A video? That reminded her, she’d never looked at the clip from her tower demonstration. Maybe she would.

  She waved from the doorway but didn’t go out to join the others. Her ankle was better, but walking any distance took a toll. In his very first email to her about renting the house, Cade had mentioned an empty barn suitable for her training. She’d never even checked it out, since her accident had precluded any sort of physical training to date. But part of Cade’s plan included setting up a workout area in the barn and having Jessie walk there several times a day.

  “Routine,” he’d told her. “That’s what will bring him in.”

  She wasn’t sure she believed that, but she’d do her part—including packing a bag to take to Cade’s. She went to her bedroom and pulled the duffel she always used from the closet. It felt heavy and she wondered what she’d forgotten to unpack.

  “My camera,” she exclaimed, pulling out the small black object.

  She turned around and sat on the bed, pulling a pillow from under the covers to rest against the head-board. She checked the battery—still charged. Then she leaned back and pushed the replay button. To her surprise, the footage didn’t start with the day of the climbing tower exhibition.

  “Oh, my God,” she exclaimed softly. “I forgot I recorded this.” Her face-to-face with Dar. J.T. had accused Jessie of not giving Dar a chance to defend herself, but he’d been wrong. Or lied to.

  “Dar, what happened? Tell me you didn’t steal this money. My accountant says you filed a tax return that doesn’t make sense. I know we took in more money than you’re showing because I personally handed you checks worth twice this much.”

  “Your accountant is an idiot,” Dar said, pacing the small confines of their Girlz on Fire office. The building had been a warehouse and still resembled one, except for the half-dozen interior walls that housed their offices, a storage room and the bathrooms. “You know me, Jessie. I’d never do such a thing.”

  Jessie wanted to believe her, but the truth was right there in black-and-white. “If you’d married J.T., we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Dar alleged. “He loves you. He’s always loved you. Even when you broke his heart. And if you had married him, you would have been family. Family sticks together. Through good times and bad. And these are bad times, Jessie. You should know that.”

  “He doesn’t love me, Dar. We’re friends.”

  Dar turned on her. “He still would have married you if I asked him to. He’d do anything for his mother. Just like you’d do anything for yours. Just like you threw that Kamikaze game.”

  “I didn’t.” Jessie heard the shock and mortification in her voice. This woman had been a second mother to her and yet was accusing her of cheating.

  “I bet it all on you winning, Jessie. And when you lost, everything we built here together went down the drain, too. So don’t you point the finger at me, little girl. You’re the reason Girlz is done. You and you alone. You picked your worthless whore of a mother over me.”

  Jessie braced herself for the sound of the door slamming. She wished now that she’d slapped Dar as hard as she could. That’s what she’d wanted to do, but she didn’t because in the back of her mind she knew her mother would have been shocked and mortified by her lack of manners.

  “Manners,” she said softly, snickering. “Oh, Mama, where did good manners ever get us?”

  But deep down Jessie knew. Slapping Dar probably would have landed her in jail. “Thank you, Mama,” she mumbled, fast-forwarding the tape to where the conversation had continued when Dar came back into the office.

  Jessie hit Play and Dar was talking. “…borrowed a little bit from Girlz On Fire. Not a lot. Just enough to keep my head above water. I planned to pay it back after I sold my house, but you know what happened to the market. This wasn’t my fault, Jessie. I’m a victim here. Me. And you’re trying to hurt me. After all I’ve done for you. How could you?”

  Jessie had been more wounded by Dar’s defection than she could put into words. All those years of friendship, mentoring and mutual sacrifice trashed in an instant.

  And though it made no sense, she’d felt vindicated in a way. She was glad she tried to help her mother, even if what she did came too late and was of no real help at all. They’d probably never know if the blood tests or the worry were to blame for Jessie messing up in the competition, but she no longer felt bad about not making enough money to give Dar.

  The greedy witch.

  According to Remy, Jessie was still mourning. And making poor choices based on her unresolved issues.

  Was that true? Jessie didn’t think so, but nothing was quite as clear at the moment as it had been before Zane decided to turn into some kind of deranged stalker.

  “Jessie,” a voice called from the other room. “You ready?”

  She sat up, letting her feet fall to the carpeted floor. “In here. I’m packing. What exactly does one take to a trap?”

  “Workout clothes, of course.”

  “Workout clothes?”

  He held out his hand. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  She handed him her camera instead. “I forgot I had this. Do you want to see what Remy filmed?”

  He gave her a hard look. “Do you?”

  She liked that he put her state of mind ahead of what was happening—or not happening—with Zane. No evidence that he was anywhere around the area. No phone calls. No threats. Jessie might have thought she’d imagined the whole thing if not for a call from the sheriff telling her the tire stems had been injected with acid. They’d eroded through the many layers of rubber to cause both tires to burst at nearly the same time. Another accident that was no accident.

  “I think we should see what it looks like. I was in no position to take in what was happening around me. Maybe she filmed something that could help us catch Zane.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Let’s sit and watch it together.”

  She hit the play button, glad she’d watched her argument with Dar alone. But it bothered her that she’d forgotten filming the encounter.

  “Something wrong?”

  She pushed aside the question for examination later. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s deal with this first. Here we go…”

  The setting was the first thing that hit her. She’d forgotten how small the tower looked from a distance—bright and garish. A child’s toy, really. And she’d wound up injured from it. Talk about humiliating. Is that what Zane was going for? She wished she knew.

  “There you are,” Cade said. “Getting ready to begin.”

  She recognized her hesitation when J.T. joined them. He’d been a surprise addition that made no sense. A distraction. She hit Pause and went back a few seconds. “Look. In the crowd. We were all focused on J.T., but there’s Zane.”

  Cade leaned closer, squinting. “You’re right. I recognize him from his website photos.”

  Remy was doing a good job of following the action, but once Jessie knew to look for Zane, he was easy to spot. Right up to the moment when she started her climb.

  “He’s leaving now. There,” Cade said, pointing towa
rd the far side of the screen.

  “He didn’t wait around to see if I fell because he knew I would.”

  Cade took the camera from her hands and turned off the power, then he pulled her into his arms for a hug. “That was brave. And now we can place Zane at the scene. I don’t know if that will mean anything to a jury once we catch this bastard, but we have it.”

  She accepted the comfort he offered without comment. She didn’t feel brave. She felt incredibly stupid. How could she have trusted Zane blindly? What did she really know about him? Apparently, nothing. She was a fool.

  Cade kissed the top of her head then got up. “Come on. Remy said you need to be exercised.”

  Jessie pulled back. “I’m sorry, what? I’m not a horse, you know.”

  He grinned. “Oh, did I say that wrong? Maybe she said, ‘Jessie needs to exercise.’”

  Jessie rolled her eyes. “Where are we going to do this exercise?”

  “Follow me, my lady. Be prepared to be impressed.”

  They left her duffel by the back door, where Sugar promptly tried to climb inside it. Cade shook his head but didn’t scold her or try to shoo her away. He simply took Jessie’s hand and started toward the far side of the house, beyond their stargazing knoll.

  The path had been trimmed, she noticed. And the area around the barn looked tidied. She’d admired the huge, rustic building from afar. “Dad retired this barn when he built the new, modern one. And, frankly, that was the right thing to do. This place is still used for storage, and I think Buck used to host parties in here because I found a pile of beer cans tossed in the corners. We hauled off a few old engines and some worthless tools, and now it’s all yours.”

  He opened the walk-in door and turned on the lights then stepped out of the way, allowing her to enter first. She stepped inside and looked around. “Wow. It’s big.”

  And surprisingly clean. It still smelled like a barn—dusty, machine parts and animal smells she couldn’t quite place. Not unpleasantly so, thankfully.

  “You brought my mats in,” she exclaimed.

  Stretched side by side on top of a large, slightly faded Oriental wool rug were her purple and teal yoga mats. “Mac grabbed them for me from Yota and gave them to Kat. I wanted to surprise you.”

  She was touched. “Thank you. I’d been thinking it was time to start stretching out, but it’s not the same without your regular equipment, you know?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked to a chrome table that looked like something a butcher might use. A very modern MP3 player was plugged in. “Is that my iPod, too?”

  He nodded. “Remy gave it to me. She said you have special music you like to listen to when you’re exercising.”

  She kicked off her running shoes and stepped onto the space he’d created for her. “This is really amazing, Cade. I feel as if I should be teaching a class to pay my way.”

  He held up one hand. “Me. I’ll be your student.”

  The sexual undertones in his voice made her swallow. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I don’t date my students.” Mainly because the people she’d taught were bitter teenage girls who started out thinking yoga was a boring waste of time…until their second or third lesson.

  “Who said anything about a date?” he joked, sitting on the mat to pull off his boots.

  She’d never seen anyone do yoga in jeans, but she was so happy to see her mats and music, she didn’t care if he was in a full set of armor.

  She turned on the player and found the file she wanted. Peaceful but not boring, she liked to think. When she turned around, her mouth fell open. “Oh.”

  Cade had removed his jeans and was wearing skintight yoga shorts, black and sleek. He’d lost his Western-style shirt, too, in favor of a clingy dark blue T-shirt. “I had no idea you were such a chameleon.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “All part of my disguise,” he said, glancing around as if someone were watching him. “I figure Insane Zane is perched in a tree somewhere beyond our fence with a high-power spotting scope. He’s going to watch you trek back and forth a couple of times a day. Your limp is so much better he’s going to know his earlier attempt to hurt you failed. Which, of course, means he’ll finally snap and fall straight into our trap.”

  “You do know he could be halfway to Aruba by now, right?” She chose a mat of her own and sat, legs crossed.

  “He’s not.”

  He copied her pose across from her.

  “Let’s start with a complete breath.”

  She described the method of breathing she’d learned so many years before—in the hospital. An enlightened, progressive nurse had helped Jessie deal with the pain using her mind and focused breathing instead of drugs—some of the time. “Draw a full breath from deep in the diaphragm. Fill your lungs from the bottom up. Let your belly relax and expand like a balloon. Hold the air in, shifting the muscles in your abdomen like a belly dancer. Up and down, then exhale, forcing the air out completely.”

  She wasn’t a formally trained yoga instructor, but she’d been studying the practice for many years. Some classes she’d attended were highly structured. Her approach was not. She liked to move from pose to pose as her subconscious suggested, spending as much time as necessary on whatever muscle group needed attention.

  This time, she consciously selected poses she thought her student—and her damaged ankle—could handle, changing positions with a slow and deliberate pace.

  “Wow. This is harder than it looks,” Cade said, struggling to keep his balance in the extended leg-stretch pose.

  Jessie got up and walked to his mat to help position his body to take advantage of his center of gravity. “Sink back on your haunches, keeping your upper body as straight as possible. Use your core muscles to maintain your balance.”

  He wobbled a bit, but she lined him up by bracing her hands on his shoulders. His muscles were thickly roped from his very physical job. She could picture him shirtless, fixing a fence in the hot sun. Sweaty. Tanned. Gorgeous.

  She swallowed hard. “Focus,” she said, her voice huskier than she would have liked.

  She returned to her mat, but the image of Cade’s chiseled derriere in yoga pants would not leave her brain. How was she supposed to lead a yoga class when her mind was stuck in Hot-for-Cade overdrive?

  Bad Jessie. Lust was not one of the principals of yoga.

  “Let’s come into standing,” she said, out of habit shifting to her left leg to allow her right foot to swing out and down. Her full weight was only on her left foot for a few seconds, but that was long enough to send a nasty reminder through her body. Damn. Her ankle was better and getting stronger every day. She needed to keep her mind on her goal and not get distracted by hunky cowboys.

  “Lower yourself to the mat, bottom first.”

  Normally, she’d move through the squat gracefully. Not this time. She plopped backward, landing hard. There was no disguising her muffled, “Uff.”

  “Are you okay?” Cade asked.

  “Fine. Obviously out of shape, but I’m getting there. I’m actually surprised by you. Most men aren’t this limber.”

  “I have a good teacher.” The look he gave her was complimentary, but there was a hint of teasing, too. And sexy. She was reminded that although they had something serious going on, the fact remained that they were alone for the weekend. If no stalker showed up, they could spend the entire time in bed.

  A good idea, except for one thing. She wanted it a hair too much. Nothing had been resolved between them, formalized, recognizing for sure that Cade accepted the inevitable. Her life was not in the Black Hills—not long-term. “Since prana—another word for breath—is key to life and yoga, let’s work on fire breath and fire wash. These are both good for stress,” she said pointedly.

  She heard Cade give a soft chuckle but she didn’t acknowledge him.

  “Place your hands on your knees and lean forward. Now, we’re going turn our belly into a billows. Breathe in and out through your nose in sh
ort, staccato breaths. Like this.”

  She demonstrated, exaggerating her form so her student could get the idea. Cade watched but obviously wasn’t trying to copy her. She realized he was looking at her much the same way she’d been looking at him a few minutes earlier.

  She felt flustered and overly warm and completely out of sync—not at all the way she normally felt when she was doing yoga. Damn. The man was quite possibly even more dangerous than Zane. Her former friend might have managed to turn Jessie’s life upside down, but Cade somehow turned her emotions inside out.

  Cade watched his teacher reach skyward and take a deep breath. He knew he was supposed to be concentrating on learning her calm, elegant technique, but the truth was, he simply liked looking at her.

  And he was pretty sure the end goal of yoga did not include being turned on. Unfortunately, he was also pretty sure that baking cookies in church would probably be a turn-on for him if Jessie was leading the demonstration.

  He liked her. He was totally, utterly infatuated. Did guys get infatuated? He didn’t know. What he did know was he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  He copied her inhalation and let out his deep gulp of air with a huge sigh. She told him he was supposed to keep his mind empty—turn away any and all outside thoughts. An impossible task, he decided. Images kept popping into his mind. Shiloh waving as his sister and her family pulled out of the driveway. Jessie looking grim and perplexed as she watched the video her sister had shot. Her surprise and pleasure at seeing his father’s old barn converted to a yoga studio of sorts.

  People didn’t do enough for her, he decided. She was the doer. The one who took care of others. This was his chance to show her that it was okay to let down her guard. Hand that task to someone who cared, who wouldn’t let her down.

  “Ohm,” she hummed on her final exhale.

  Cade couldn’t bring himself to try that. He was too self-conscious. Tugging on a pair of his brother-in-law’s workout shorts was strange enough. Chanting was definitely out.

  She turned to look at him. “Not bad for a first time.”