Big Sky, Loyal Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  “What part of it?” Patrick was impressed he could connect the four words into a whole sentence, even if they were all small ones.

  “I’m not supposed to feel so much when kissing a man,” she eased Colette out the far side of the stream just as the others rode into view. A single glance showed that her move hadn’t fooled anyone.

  “Good feelings, I hope?” Patrick whispered to her, then wished he hadn’t. If it was a bad review, he didn’t want to know.

  Again she watched him with that impossibly unreadable face. The others were close now. He could hear their individual hoof falls on the trail winding down to where the stream flowed beneath the trees—the off-beat clip clop of a horse trying to move slowly down the bank that was almost too steep to do so.

  “Yes,” was all she said, then she smiled at him. Actually smiled.

  It was…a shock.

  That was the word.

  He was sure of it.

  It was his moment. The one when a hero was supposed to speak. It definitely was; he’d gotten his cue loud and clear.

  But that smile, no matter how brief, was unanswerable. It lit her eyes until they glowed with life, more vital than…than—some cruddy scriptwriter he’d become—than possible.

  He was glad for Minotaur’s steadiness, because it was the only thing between him and an ice-cold swim.

  “What?” Lauren suddenly felt terribly self-conscious. She wasn’t used to telling her feelings to anyone other than her brother. And him only when he pushed.

  But the connection from last night had been undeniable. She didn’t know what she was afraid of, but she’d woken up filled with it in the middle of the night. Shuffling her bag over until she leaned against Patrick in the night had calmed her down. The simple contact had been as comforting as his previous night’s attentions had been arousing.

  She didn’t like a man having that kind of power over her.

  But as she watched Patrick sit there on his horse Minnie as if petrified into stone, she understood that the power wasn’t one-way—she also had power over him. Was that what a relationship was?

  She didn’t like the idea of being in a relationship, even if she was starting to enjoy it.

  It was all Patrick’s fault. If he wasn’t so…likeable, thoughtful, considerate, and such a great kisser, her life would be much easier.

  He deserved some form of payback for that.

  And the answer was right in front of her.

  Emily and the others had entered the stream, making the small ford quite crowded with all four horses, three of them wanting room for a drink. Minnie wasn’t a horse who liked being crowded.

  That gave her an idea. It was an evil idea. But in her opinion, that meant it had merit.

  Chelsea had been right, Colette was an exceptional horse. Over the last few days Lauren had honed a clear communication with the horse, borne out of the month she’d spent on horseback riding with the Afghan hill tribes. Uneven pressure of the knees, combined with a slight kick and a looser rein.

  Colette spun and headed up the far side of the stream bank—fast.

  Not to be left behind, Minnie followed.

  Patrick might as well have been a puck on an air hockey table. Minnie slipped out from under him as smooth as silk. He went straight over the back of the saddle. Almost saved himself at the saddlebags, but didn’t.

  She caught Minnie’s reins and twisted around to watch the show.

  Patrick plunged down into the water with a huge splash that had the other three horses shying away hard. Emily and Mack kept their seats. Michael didn’t, but landed neatly on his feet still holding his horse’s reins.

  Patrick simply sat there, waist-deep in the foot or so of water, and visibly sighed.

  Mack set in to teasing him right off.

  Michael actually cracked a smile.

  Emily wasn’t looking at Patrick, instead she was looking at Lauren. Waiting for something. Waiting for her to remember…

  The mud puddle.

  Claudia and Emily had said that it all somehow made sense that a skilled horseman had fallen in the mud puddle upon Lauren’s arrival. And now she understood that it did. Somehow he’d been smitten the moment of her arrival. How was that even possible when she was a nightmare who had just played an awful prank on him?

  She glanced down at Patrick.

  He was answering Mack that he felt a need to cool off a bit—despite the chill day. Then he looked up at her and half tipped his hat as if acknowledging the success of her trick before he rose, dripping, to his feet.

  She’d have been livid.

  Patrick was…amused and perhaps chagrined as he joined her on the bank.

  She led Minnie back to him and whispered a soft, “Sorry. I just couldn’t help myself.”

  “It was good,” he grinned. “Got me fair and square. Guessing I shouldn’t try it on you, though.”

  “I had to make up for letting that big bull slip away,” she said it as a tease. Which earned her a few uncertain laughs.

  “Time to take down the king of the herd, huh?” Patrick understood, of course.

  Now the others laughed.

  Patrick shook his head like a wet dog, then pulled his hat back on and winked at her. He turned to his saddlebags to pull out dry clothes as the others nudged their horses away from the stream and continued along the trail. In moments they’d wound their way out of the small stream valley as they climbed back into the woods.

  But he wasn’t wrong. He might not see himself as a leading male, but she’d never met anyone like Patrick. Twice now he’d rushed to her rescue—when she fainted and when she ran into the forest. And she’d paid him back by…

  “I’m not a nice person. How can you be attracted to me?”

  He stopped with his shirt off and looked up at her over Minnie’s withers. “How can I not be? That would be the better question.”

  “But I’m such a mess.”

  “Hello, Mess. Nice to meet you. My name is Disaster. C’mon, Lauren. You aren’t even in the same category. I’m a privileged Long Island film student, playing at being a cowboy so that I can star in the movie running in my head. Yep, that’s a wrap. For sure!” Patrick shook his head sadly as he returned to stripping down out of sight behind Minnie.

  What Lauren had been seeing as amusing, Patrick saw as a fatal flaw. What she saw as a fatal flaw in herself, he saw as…trivial.

  Down between Minnie’s legs, she could see Patrick shucking his soaking jeans and underwear until he was standing barefooted on the grass beside the stream.

  Hardly aware of what she was doing, she swung a leg across Colette’s haunches and slid to the ground. She tapped Minnie lightly on the haunch and he walked forward a few steps to graze on a fresh patch of grass.

  And there Patrick stood. Naked in the cool afternoon except for his cowboy hat. There was so much to appreciate about him physically, but there was also so much to appreciate about the man. His spontaneous kindness—it was just part of who he was. His knee-jerk savior mode—he neither hesitated nor thought, he simply acted. His self-awareness so much stronger than her own.

  His humor.

  She’d had humor once, she was sure of it.

  Patrick stood, looking at her suspiciously, once again frozen in place.

  A quick glance up the trail revealed that the others were already out of sight. Only a few miles to the ranch, they wouldn’t worry if she and Patrick were delayed. She was about to step forward when Minnie swished his tail and slapped it hard against Patrick’s bare skin.

  “Yipes! Get along, you!” His slap sent Minnie ahead a few more steps, with what sounded distinctly like a horse laugh.

  A horse laugh that Lauren found it almost possible to join in on.

  “You okay, Lauren?”

  She nodded. Did a near laugh look so painful on her face? But she nodded again. “Better than I’ve been in a long time, I think.”

  “Uh, good.” Patrick still stood there, his wet clothes at his feet and hi
s dry ones still dangling out of Minnie’s saddlebag. He looked right and left, then of all silly things, the naked cowboy tipped his hat. “Wa’ll… Howdy, ma’am,” his John Wayne was back.

  It was too much. His humor, kindness, and amazing body drew her across the last two steps. Rather than being cool, the skin of his chest was warm against her fingertips. She kept a hand there lightly as she leaned in for the kiss.

  He stood there naked, but didn’t grab or even drive into the kiss. Instead he gave her the gentleness one would expect from a long-time lover—not that she’d ever really had one to measure such things by.

  When his hands moved tentatively to her light jacket, she again rested her hands on the backs of his to guide them along. She closed her eyes and reveled in his gentleness.

  For a brief moment, Patrick was gone and the cool air that she’d become unaware of wrapped around her.

  He crossed to where their two horses grazed, then he was back with his bedroll and spread it on the grass. It was in a patch of afternoon brightness too weak to call sunlight due to the clouds, but warmer than beneath the trees. He took her hand and pulled her down to join him.

  Patrick couldn’t believe the vision of Lauren naked in the woods. A wood nymph grown into a mature and powerful woman. A beauty like he’d never known.

  And her smile…

  He’d throw himself in a thousand streams if he could see that smile each time. It sparkled as bright as the morning dew on the prairie despite the cool day.

  She was all goose bumps by the time she lay beside him, and he pulled the unzipped sleeping bag over them.

  “Are you sure, Lauren?” He didn’t know why he was asking. Because he was an idiot? She’d helped him unclothe her, for crying out loud. No hero in his right mind would ask the question, but still he did.

  For a long moment she curled silently in his arms, then she nodded, her hair brushed over his face like a balm for where Minotaur’s tail slap still stung.

  “Yes,” Lauren whispered. “Now.”

  “As the lady commands.”

  She actually laughed again. Short, breathy with need, but a laugh.

  Patrick knew that he had been acting irrationally—"love at first sight” was for the movies and he was so very done with that.

  And it wasn’t love. At least not yet.

  However, something had told him she was the one. Even casting aside all the movie clichés didn’t make it any less true.

  What really swept his feet out from under him was the combination of the stainless steel soldier and the vulnerable woman. Every fiber of his being wanted to protect her…and she probably needed less protection than any woman he’d ever met. But she showed him who she was. What she really felt. And that was a miracle.

  But before even the first kiss, she started crying. Soon she was weeping uncontrollably, holding herself stiff-armed above him.

  He aimed a gentle nudge at the insides of her elbows. She collapsed against him and he wound his arms around her to hold her as she sobbed. Not knowing what else to do, he kissed her hair and held her tight.

  Lauren slowly shifted from weeping to merely shaky breathing, and at long last to quiet.

  He stroked his hands up and down her back. Somehow cowboy-rough palms didn’t seem to be an offense to such wonderful skin when he felt the line of her deeper scars. For it wasn’t the ones on her skin that mattered.

  “I’m so sorry,” she sniffled softly in his ear.

  “Nothing to be sorry for.”

  “But—”

  “I know. You’re such a mess.”

  He could feel her nod.

  “Would it be too weird if I told you that I enjoyed it?”

  “No. What? Yes, it would be way too weird.” She tried to push away but he held her in place and she didn’t complain, soon settling back against him.

  “I can’t help but enjoy the vulnerability you just shared with me. That you’d trust me enough, feel safe enough in my arms to let down your shields. I can’t help but feel horribly male and smug about that.”

  Lauren lay against Patrick’s deliciously male and extremely comfortable body and wondered if she should be somehow offended or worried.

  She wasn’t even sure why she’d been crying.

  When she’d wept over Jupiter’s grave, those had merely been tears of sorrow.

  This had been… She wasn’t sure what.

  “It’s hard to find words when you aren’t used to thinking about something.”

  “My problem is how to stop thinking,” Patrick smoothed her hair into place and continued to hold her as if she wasn’t some psychotic train wreck.

  “I wasn’t ready for how it feels to be in your arms. But…” Lauren wondered if there was a thesaurus anywhere handy. Didn’t matter as she had no idea where to start. She felt a last few tears trickle down her cheek.

  “But…” And this time she could feel that Patrick was beginning to worry.

  This time she sat up enough to let a little daylight into their sanctuary beneath the sleeping bag so that she could see his face. It was such a good face.

  “What are you doing to me, Patrick?”

  “At the moment, nothing. But give me a few minutes and I’m glad to rectify that situation.”

  But he was doing something. If she left after today…she’d miss him. She’d miss his face. And his kindness. And his kisses. There was connection here at a level she’d never felt with a man before.

  And the safety that, if she was being honest, she had felt in his arms. Felt for the first time since she didn’t know when. She’d never thought about it. Maybe she’d never actually felt it.

  But she certainly had now. In the thin light she could see the patches of moisture her tears had left on his chest and shoulder.

  “I still think you’re doing something to me.”

  “And I think you’re avoiding whatever it is you’re thinking about, Lauren Foster.”

  “It’s not nice to point out the flaws in a woman’s defenses.”

  “Okay. Let’s just write this off as something an anomaly.”

  “Right. No more weeping allowed.”

  “You can weep on me any time you want, Lauren.”

  She was leaning back down to shut out the light and kiss him again.

  But a sharp whinny sounded from one of the horses.

  Loud. Close.

  Then another. Alarm turning to terror.

  In moments there was a crashing sound and thunder of departing hooves. For a moment she cringed beneath the blanket, wondering if she was about to be stampeded to death. But the two horses passed to either side and raced away.

  She threw aside the sleeping bag and looked up in time to see Minnie’s and Colette’s hindquarters disappearing into the trees.

  Another crash and she turned in slow motion in the other direction.

  This time there was a deep roar, so loud that it could have shattered some of the trees. A grizzly bear stood not thirty feet away. It’s head twisted sideways as it unleashed another unholy roar.

  Patrick’s attention went from Lauren’s curves, truly revealed in full daylight, to a riled-up grizzly bear with a bloody eye. It looked as if he’d surprised the horses and earned a hard kick to the face for his mistake.

  Now the horses were gone, leaving him and Lauren in the bear’s sights.

  And he was ready to kill.

  Patrick’s can of bear repellant pepper spray was still on Minotaur’s saddle, though he’d bet that it wouldn’t work in this case. This bear was far too angry to be stopped by something as simple as intense pain and temporary blindness that bear repellant caused.

  Patrick had set his rifle close beside the blanket when he’d rolled it out—an unconscious habit from a hundred nights of camping out.

  His hand was less than halfway to his weapon when two things happened simultaneously.

  The bear put its head down to charge. Thirty feet was about three bounds for a big grizzly.

  The other thin
g that happened was Lauren dove aside.

  Patrick had the briefest flash of the old joke: the best way to survive a bear attack was to be a faster runner than anyone else with you. He was flat on his back, his muscles were Jell-O despite the adrenaline surging into them, and he had no leverage in this position. By the time he sat up, he’d be dead.

  In the middle of her dive and roll, Lauren grabbed his rifle.

  It seemed grossly unfair. Not only wouldn’t he be able to defend himself in time, but he wouldn’t even have a weapon to do it with.

  Lauren’s roll brought her to her knees with the rifle raised and pulled tight against her bare shoulder.

  Oh, she was defending them.

  “The nose!” Patrick shouted. “Aim for his nose.”

  One shot!

  Two!

  Three!

  The hard cracks were lost in the beast’s roar.

  It put its head down ready for the final charge. And its head—with bared fangs that looked as big as Patrick’s arm—kept going down.

  Down until it plowed into the ground.

  It seemed to stumble over itself. Patrick managed to roll aside—and back into the freezing stream—just as the grizzly performed a somersault and slammed back-first on top of the blankets and sleeping bag with a ground-shuddering slam. The sharp points of one gigantic claw, definitely bigger than Patrick’s head, splashed into the water mere inches from his gut.

  All he could focus on was the straight line of toes less than a foot away. Definitely a grizzly.

  The small patch of woods was suddenly dead silent except for the rippling stream and the bear’s slow, final exhale.

  “Oh. Holy. Wow.” No movie could capture such a terrifying, jumbled-up moment. This was definitely real life.

  He looked over the bear at Lauren.

  She now stood, Wonder Woman incarnate—naked without even the alluring uniform. She still held the rifle braced against her shoulder, aiming down at the bear’s head. But he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “You’re magnificent!”

  Lauren looked up at him, then burst out laughing.

  He’d thought her smile was amazing, but her laugh was right out of this world.

  “You’re wet again.”