by Jean Barrett
The fish was charred and flavored with smoke, but no meal had ever tasted better to her. And no dinner setting had ever been more—well, with the moonlight on the ruins above them, she supposed romantic would be the appropriate word, though mysterious might be more accurate, even ghostly. Contributing to this mood was the soft rattle of dry aspen leaves that had drifted to the ground where a faint breeze scattered them. That, and a sudden, sharp yelping off in the canyon. Startled, Samantha huddled closer to Roark on the horse blanket they shared.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s just a coyote.”
“I know.”
But it was a nervous sound, reminding her of the danger they had faced today and of an enemy that could still be lurking out there in the darkness, even concealed in the ruins. Not that this was likely. Whoever it was would have returned long ago to the outfit in order to preserve his mask of innocence.
“The others must be worried about us,” she said.
“There’s nothing we can do about that until tomorrow.”
Roark had tried again just after their arrival in the canyon to raise Shep on his cell phone, but his effort had been as unsuccessful as his first attempt.
The fish eaten and the fire replenished, they sat there without talking, listening to the popping of the blazing wood, Irma and the horses stirring nearby, and the babble of the stream. She watched Roark as he stared into the flames. He was working the fingers of that hand again, a restless action that told her he was troubled.
“You’re thinking about the decision you have to make, aren’t you?” she guessed.
He turned his head to look at her. “As a matter of fact, that’s just what I was doing.”
It was uncanny the way she could read him, and even more unsettling that he had the ability to read her as well. Just as though they had been together for years, instead of a few days. “What’s so difficult about it? You obviously prefer ranching to investigative work.”
“It’s not that simple. There’s—” He hesitated, and for a moment Samantha thought he wasn’t going to tell her. But then, apparently deciding he wanted her to know, he finished what he’d started to say. “—an issue involved.”
“Oh?”
Her response didn’t sound very concerned, she realized. But she sensed he wasn’t ready for either encouragement or sympathy, that he had yet to determine whether he wanted her to hear the rest. So she waited quietly, prepared to listen to him if he chose to continue.
Was it the mood of this place? Samantha wondered. Did it have a kind of magic at work, inviting confidences that otherwise wouldn’t get expressed? Or was it simply the intimacy of their situation which, in the end, had Roark sharing his secret with her? Not that it made any difference either way. His explanation was all that mattered.
“It’s not that I dislike being a private investigator,” he said. “Or that ranching is more important to me. It’s that I don’t trust myself in the role anymore. There’s a reason for that. A damn painful one.”
This is difficult for him, she thought, understanding his struggle even before she knew the cause of it. And why not, when she was no stranger to personal despair and the scars that resulted from it.
“What happened?” she urged him gently.
“A case that went wrong. Very wrong.” He went on exercising his fingers, this time with an unconscious rapidity. Evidence of his inner agitation. “I’ve always considered myself a good judge of my clients. Able to read their characters. Whether they’re telling me the truth or withholding information. That’s vital in PI work. But with this guy I missed. Never saw what was coming until it was too late.”
“He hired you for…?”
“To find his wife. That kind of thing makes up a big chunk of PI cases. There are so many missing persons reported each year the police can’t handle the loads. That’s when desperate friends or family turn to private investigators.”
“Like this man who came to you.”
“A few months ago, yeah. He seemed to be all he claimed. A sad little guy who was deeply worried about his wife. Couldn’t understand why she’d walked out on him when they had a happy marriage. He’d tried to trace her, but she had simply disappeared. It’s a familiar story.”
“And that’s where you came in.”
“I made the mistake of accepting his case after cautioning him his wife might not want to be found. He didn’t argue with that. If she didn’t want to see him, he’d live with it. But he had to know if she was all right.”
“Roark—”
“Don’t say it. I know what you’re thinking, but a good PI is always careful about that kind of thing. I did my homework and checked into the records. There was no history there of spousal abuse. Absolutely none.”
“So you went ahead and found her?”
“A week later. Client was so anxious I made the further mistake of telling him I’d located his wife, but he couldn’t have the address until I’d talked to her and gotten her okay. He agreed to that. Only the little bastard was not only crafty but a whiz when it came to computers. He broke into my office that night and managed to get her address from my records.” Roark’s fingers went still, his hand slowly closing into a tight, angry fist. “He killed her, Samantha. Pulled a gun and shot her when she opened her door.”
“Dear God.”
“Yeah, she never had a chance, and all because I was careless. Because I failed to examine his motive and made it possible for him to get to her.” Roark frowned, his gaze straying in the direction of the broken walls of the cliff dwellings. For a moment he looked at them in silence, as though he’d forgotten her presence.
He’s been holding it all inside, Samantha thought. Living with this awful thing for weeks now. How hard that must have been for a strong, self-contained man like Roark Hawke. And how difficult it must have been for him to tell her, to admit his vulnerability.
She suddenly understood there was no magic at work here. Not anything external, anyway. He’d shared his anguish with her simply because he had trusted her, cared enough about her to want her to know. The realization of this warmed her, made her long to comfort him, even though she recognized the peril in the fierce compassion she was feeling.
“So now you can’t forgive yourself,” she said, reaching out to him. “But that’s all wrong. You weren’t in any way to blame for this woman’s death. There’s only one man to blame, and that’s the husband who killed her.”
There was a crooked, humorless smile on his mouth when he looked at her again. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself. Funny thing is, it doesn’t seem to be working. I’m still carrying around this baggage of guilt, still thinking that if a PI screws up as big time as I did, then maybe it’s time he gets out of the business.”
“Because you feel you can no longer be effective? How can you possibly think that when, all through this case of mine, you’ve been demonstrating just how responsible a PI you are? People make errors in every business, Roark, even the best of them. Come on, you know that.”
“My error involved the loss of a life. But thank you for your vote of confidence.”
She hadn’t helped him, Samantha thought sadly. He was still suffering from a crisis of faith in himself. She could only hope that, whatever decision he ultimately made, it would be for the right reasons.
Roark got up from the blanket to feed more wood to the fire. Not that they needed its heat. The night was thankfully a mild one. But it was pleasant to sit here, hands clasped around her knees, looking into the flames.
“It’s ironic, you know,” she said in a dreamy voice.
“What is?” Dropping back down onto the blanket, he stretched out beside her.
“That you should want to turn to ranching because of a tragedy in your world while I turned away from it because of a tragedy in mine.”
She was in such a mellow state in that moment it didn’t really register with her what she’d just said. Not until he lifted his head and stared at her intently did she realize,
startled, that she had just opened an old wound.
“Are you going to tell me about it?” he said quietly.
She’d not only opened it, Samantha thought, but now he was asking her to shine a light on it so that he could examine it. “You knew, didn’t you?” she said softly.
“That you’ve been holding back on me? Yeah, I figured there was more to your hatred of your grandfather’s world than what you were sharing with me.”
She had kept that particular heartache private for so long she didn’t know if she could bear now to discuss it. Or if she even wanted him to know. But, then, why shouldn’t she be willing to trust him with it when he had trusted her with his own grief?
Taking a long, slow breath, as if preparing herself for a difficult dive into deep waters, Samantha took him back to her last year on the Walking W. That bittersweet time when, as a young woman just emerging from her teens, she had so unexpectedly found love and then just as suddenly lost it.
“He was one of my grandfather’s hands on the ranch, not a whole lot older than me. We were probably all wrong for each other, too young for one thing, and our backgrounds were so different. He came from a family where education wasn’t important. He’d dropped out of school and was, well, a bit rough around the edges.”
“Everything that’s supposed to matter,” Roark said perceptively, “and none of which means a damn when two people want each other.”
“Exactly. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did happen.”
“And Joe?”
“I didn’t think he’d mind about us. I thought he’d be pleased. I mean, here was his granddaughter who disliked horses and cattle falling for a guy who loved everything he valued himself. What match could be more perfect?”
“And you were wrong.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, unable to help the bitterness that crept into her voice. “But I was so starry-eyed I forgot just how cunning my grandfather could be when he wanted something his own way and realized that his usual fireworks wouldn’t get it for him. He knew he couldn’t put an end to our relationship by ordering me not to see Hank or firing him, that I would just—”
“Hank?”
“That was his name, yes. Hank Barrie. Didn’t I say?”
“No,” Roark said, and she wondered if the taut look on his face meant something or whether it was only an illusion, a shadow cast by the flickering of the firelight.
“Anything wrong?”
He shook his head. “I just may have heard the name before.”
“You probably did. He was on the rodeo circuit. That’s what my grandfather used to separate us. Hank may have known very little about the things that come between the covers of books, but he was a walking wonder when it came to horses and cattle.”
“And Joe took advantage of that to destroy a love affair he didn’t approve of.”
“Hank wasn’t good enough for a Walker, so my grandfather went to work on him, flattered him, told him he was too talented not to be a success on the rodeo scene, even offered to back him financially. Oh, I knew just what that sly old devil was up to, and I tried to make Hank see that, begged him not to go. ‘He’s trying to part us,’ I said. ‘And if he succeeds, it will change everything between us.’ Hank wouldn’t listen. ‘Honey,’ he kept saying, ‘there’s big prizes to be won from those competitions, and if I can make us some real money, we can start a spread of our own.’”
“So your Hank Barrie left you and the ranch behind.”
“I never saw him again,” Samantha said, her voice dull, lifeless. “He was killed three months later. Thrown from a bull in a rodeo contest in Wyoming.”
Roark sat up and looked down sharply at the fingers of the hand he had been exercising earlier. “No wonder you went wild that night I told you I’d injured this hand when I was tossed from a rodeo bronc.”
Samantha shuddered over the memory. “Now you know.”
“Yeah,” he said slowly, “now I know. You blamed your grandfather for Hank’s death. Still do, I suppose. That, along with everything else, is why you wanted no part of either him or his world ever again.”
“I left the Walking W the day after I heard about Hank, and except for that one visit to settle my mother’s affairs and collect some of her personal things, I never went back.”
She gazed at Roark, wanting his understanding. Hoping for it.
“You’ve had your own load to bear, haven’t you?” he said. “A heavier one than mine, too.”
His words of compassion released her anxiety. She felt it drain out of her. She was glad she had told him everything. That’s what people did when they cared about someone, and why she had confided in Roark. Because he mattered to her, mattered so greatly that she was shaken by the full realization of it.
She looked at him, saw the stubble on his jaw. It gave him a slightly dangerous look, like a desperado. But it was an exciting look as well, one that made her tremble in anticipation when he moved closer to her on the blanket.
“You need holding,” he said, his voice a deep rumble as he reached for her. “Hell, we both need to be held.”
He was right, which was why she didn’t resist him. Why she welcomed his arms when they slid around her waist, hauling her snugly against him. And why her own arms wrapped around him in return.
They clung to each other, and it felt right being nestled against his chest. Not just comforting but familiar, too, as if she belonged there. The rightness of it made her forget all her earlier resolves not to involve herself intimately with this man. They had no meaning in this time and place. She wanted him, and that was all that mattered.
Samantha assumed Roark wanted her as well, that his strong hands stroking her back so sensuously, along with his warm breath at her ear, signaled his desire for her. Why, then, was this not more than just an embrace? What made him hesitate to fasten his mouth on her own?
Drawing her head back, she searched his face in the firelight. She read uncertainty in his eyes. “What?” she whispered, puzzled by his reluctance.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” he said, his voice low and raspy, fighting for self-control.
That should have halted her right there, stopped her cold. But she could see him swallowing with difficulty, as if trying to relieve a tightness deep inside him. And when he did that, when she watched his Adam’s apple bob slowly in his throat, she found the action so incredibly sexy it robbed her of all reason. She was lost.
“Oh, but I think we should,” she informed him softly.
Surprising herself with her boldness, and probably Roark as well, Samantha lifted her hands and placed them on either side of his head, framing his face.
“Hold steady now,” she instructed him, “and this shouldn’t hurt.”
Leaning into him, she placed her lips against his mouth. He stiffened, as if jolted by a charge, but was otherwise unresponsive. Not permitting herself to be discouraged, she applied an insistent pressure. Nothing, though she may have detected an anguished groan.
She had better results when she used her tongue, seducing his mouth from side to side with a series of slow, swirling caresses. He withstood her assault for less than thirty seconds, and then all restraint was shattered. With a primal growl, and a fiercely possessive tightening of his arms around her, he began to kiss her.
It was an eager, hungry business, as if his mouth was desperate, needing to recover what it had wasted. Her own responses to his marauding tongue were just as wild, just as deep and demanding.
“Clothes,” he muttered between their kisses, his voice husky and impatient. “What are we doing with our clothes on? They’re in the way.”
She couldn’t argue with that. They were in the way. They took care of that, shedding each article in a feverish, almost comically awkward haste. There was nothing amusing about the hard body that emerged in front of her on the blanket when he had stripped away his last garment.
Roark Hawke, fully exposed, was a superb specimen of manhood, all powerful muscle and ruddy flesh in t
he glow of the fire. Samantha was entranced. Not just by his awesome arousal but by the heat of his gaze riveted on her own body.
“Sweetheart,” he said, his voice gruff with his need, “you are one hell of a woman.”
To be regarded as desirable by him was pleasure in itself. To be made love to by him was absolute rapture. He demonstrated just how intense a rapture when he folded her in his arms again, his mouth covering hers with searing kisses that stole the air from her lungs.
There was no relief either when that relentless, wicked mouth of his traveled down the length of her, tugging in turn at the nipples of her breasts, branding her stomach, scalding her parted thighs before settling at last at the core of her womanhood where his clever tongue proceeded to destroy her.
“This,” she whispered, barely able to get the words out, “is what heaven must be like. Or hell.”
“If I’m a devil,” he rasped, lifting himself above her, “then I’m a devil in far more torment than the little witch I’ve captured.”
“Let me go then.”
“Do you really want that?” he challenged her.
“No, I guess I don’t.”
And she didn’t. She wanted more of him. All of him. He complied, his body joining with hers there on the scratchy blanket that smelled faintly of horse. Between his swollen kisses, his hands filling themselves with her breasts, he crooned words of endearment while the light from the twisting flames licked at them. And overhead, in concert with their raw, primitive rhythms, the moon wheeled out of control.
In the end, blaze and moon merged, flared and were consumed in a blinding, white-hot radiance.
Limp from her release, Samantha felt herself sinking back to earth, aware of the popping of the fire that was just a campfire, after all. But what she and Roark had shared was not ordinary. It had been so sublime she couldn’t find words to express it.
“Are you all right?” he asked, elevating himself to gaze down at her in concern.
“Yes.”
Dipping his head, he kissed her. Slowly this time, very tenderly. Then, rolling to her side, he reached for the other blanket and drew it over them. Snuggled against her protectively, he drifted off.