Heartfire

by Karen Rose Smith

  She could see he wasn't just saying the words, he was sorry. And there was a deeper understanding in his expression that made her wonder about his background. "Thank you. The reason I'm telling you this is—before mom died, she took my hand and she made me promise that I would take care of Paige and if I ever had children that I would take them to church. She thought everyone needed to believe in something outside of themselves, just like she did and just like Paige and I did."

  "Do you take Becky to church?"

  "I do most weeks. She attends Sunday School while I go to the service. So what I'm trying to say is that I believe in something outside of myself." She looked toward the ocean and waved her hand. "I believe in the power behind this."

  Facing him again, she requested, "So tell me more about Gillian."

  "The way I understand it, when she was ten she was hit by lightning. It was after that the sensations started to come to her. She's a caring person. She loves her husband and son, and Nathan's daughters accept her as a second mom."

  "And she teamed up with a former cop."

  "Jake had heard about her, looked into her success rate and then recommended her to Nathan. After she found Nathan's daughters, Jake was a believer."

  "Are you sure there's no fee, Linc? I can make a donation, but I don't know how much."

  "They don't charge."

  "But you've donated to this foundation," she guessed.

  "I have. I believe in the work they do."

  Emma stared at the sun beginning to set, the sky shot through with pink and orange. She thought about Paige and the empty car and dark nights when she couldn't sleep wondering where her sister was, crying because she was afraid Paige had been hurt, crying because she was afraid she was dead.

  "Let's walk back," she said, needing to think about all of this.

  Linc didn't initiate conversation as they walked, as gulls screeched, as waves pounded the shore. The tide was coming in, creating puddles in the sand that she was barely aware of as she sloshed through them. Linc stayed by her side, walked where she walked, a force to be reckoned with himself.

  She would have kept walking, but Linc tapped her shoulder and pointed to his house across the expanse of loose sand and grass. When they reached the steps, she wiped the sand from her feet and slipped them into her shoes. He let her precede him.

  Once they were standing on the deck, she made a decision. The ocean wasn't as loud up here but it still carried a resonant voice, a pounding that was a backdrop.

  When she turned to face Linc, for a few moments the sound of the ocean faded away. The brush of the breeze on her face hardly registered because she got lost in his green eyes. But then she remembered why she was here, at his house on the beach.

  Her voice was loud and clear above the sound of the surf. "I'd like to meet Gillian."

  BUY: http://www.amazon.com/Always-Devoted-Search-Love-ebook/dp/B005KKEILC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314917615&sr=1-1

  Excerpt from ALWAYS HER COWBOY:

  Chapter One

  When Lucy McIntyre heard the roar of a motorcycle breaking the solitude of the Rising Star Ranch, she went to the kitchen window and pushed back the lace curtain with its ivy pattern. The man on the Harley brought the machine to a halt at the path to the house. She watched him climb off, hang his helmet on the handlebar, and stand with his hands jammed into the back pockets of his jeans as he studied the barn, corrals, indoor arena, and outbuildings. Then his attention turned toward the porch that wound around the house. Although she'd expected someone by the name of Zackary Burke to apply for the job of temporary hand, she'd never expected him to look like this!

  He wore boots and jeans, typical attire for men living in and around Long Brush, Wyoming. But the black leather jacket and the motorcycle told her he was from another place. His midnight hair—thick, wavy and unruly—needed a trim. He stood over six feet. She could tell even from here. With his broad shoulders and slim hips, all he needed was a Stetson and a horse to make him look as if he belonged.

  Lucy didn't think she moved, but the man's eyes met hers through the window. Caught, embarrassed and mesmerized by something in the man's demeanor and gaze, every question she'd prepared for their interview vanished from her head.

  Without any warning, he winked, gave her half a smile and started up the walk.

  Flustered and determined not to be, Lucy crossed the kitchen, willing the heat in her cheeks to subside. But when she opened the door, the man was even taller and more powerfully masculine than he'd looked twenty feet away! The curiosity and male appraisal as his blue eyes drifted from her long brown hair to her boots brought even more heat to her cheeks and a dryness to her throat.

  The man extended his hand. "Zack Burke. I saw the job notice at the feed store in Long Brush and talked with Tom McIntyre about it at the day before yesterday."

  Lucy shook his hand, surprised by the heat of his skin, its rough texture and the sparks that zipped up her arm. "Tom McIntyre is my father." A McIntyre by name rather than birth, it had never seemed to matter because she'd never doubted that her adoptive parents loved her or that her older brothers accepted her. Always grateful for that love and acceptance, she knew without it, her life might have been much different.

  "Is your father around?" Zack Burke asked with a lift of a black brow.

  "Dad and my brother are mending fence. I'm going to talk with you a little more to see if we should hire you. This is a family-run ranch so family is involved in everything." She motioned toward the kitchen table.

  Unzipping his jacket, Zack waited for Lucy to sit before he pulled out a chair at the large pine table. His knee brushed hers and he nonchalantly shifted in the high-backed chair with that half-smile back on his lips. "Your father told me how much the job pays, including room and board. He said it's temporary—until your brother gets back on his feet. But if he's out mending fence..."

  "That's my older brother, Rick. You'd be standing in for my other brother, Marty. He...hasn't been himself lately. Too unreliable to depend on. With winter setting in soon, we need a reliable, all-around hand. We tend some cattle, but our main focus is our Quarter Horses. Dad's family has raised them for generations."

  "If you check the references I gave your dad, you'll see I know how to ride, can cut calves, and I'm handy with a hammer."

  Along with her father's estimation of the man after his phone conversation with him and inquiring about him at the boarding house in Long Brush where he'd been staying, her dad had given her Zackary Burke's references and she'd called all three of them. Zack's last temporary job had been on a ranch in southern Wyoming and the two before that on spreads in Colorado. His former employers had answered all her questions and agreed he was hard-working and dependable. But Lucy wanted to interview him herself, to rely on her own instincts for one very important reason.

  "Why do you want this job, Mr. Burke?"

  "Zack," he suggested with a full smile that was meant to disarm her completely. It almost did.

  But she had learned her lesson about charm and appearances, and a man's definition of a woman. If this man didn't want her to stand on formality, she wouldn't, but she would get the answers she needed. "All right...Zack. Why do you want to work on the Rising Star?"

  Giving a casual shrug, his gaze met hers. "When I like a place, I stop and work. Wyoming has enough wide spaces that a man can breathe, move around and not feel trapped."

  Lucy felt a sudden fascination to know more about Zackary Burke and why he felt trapped. The light in his intense blue eyes had changed. The devil-may-care sparkle had disappeared and was replaced by shadows.

  Knowing she was maybe probing where she shouldn't, she asked, "Why don't you stay anywhere more than a few months?"

  His strongly chiseled jaw tightened. "I suspect you know how life on a ranch changes with the seasons. When the work's finished, I move on."

  "But..."

  "Miss McIntyre," he drawled. Again he gave her that nonchalant smile that showed her how mobi
le his lips could be and made her wonder how he kissed. The thought shocked her! Well, not the thought, but her having it.

  "I like to travel," he continued. "Working like this, I've seen more of the United States than most people can only dream of seeing. And I like ranches—the miles of fence, the pine and larch, the bunkhouses where no one cares where you came from or where you're going."

  If that was a subtle hint for her to back off with the questions, she wasn't going to take it. "Then you might not want this job, Mr. Burke."

  "Zack," he reminded her.

  "Zack. We don't have a bunkhouse. My older brother lives in the house up the lane, and Marty lives here. You'd have a room in this house with the family."

  He pushed back his chair as if to push away from her and the whole idea. "You're kidding!"

  Lucy shook her head. "No, I'm not. You'd have a room on this floor down the hall and you'd take your meals with us."

  Before the man across from her could respond, the telephone rang. With an "Excuse me, I'll be right back," Lucy stood, went into the living room and picked up the phone.

  After another glance at Zack, she answered, "Hello, McIntyres."

  "Lucy, is that you? It's John Buckley."

  "Mr. Buckley! How are you?"

  "I'm fine. Do you have a minute?"

  John Buckley was the family lawyer. What could he possibly want with her? "What is it?"

  "I'd like you to stop in at my office. I have something I want you to see."

  "I don't understand."

  "The lawyer who handled your adoption died. Records were sent on to me. There's not much, but there is a picture you should look at."

  "What kind of picture?"

  "I think you should see it before we decide what, if anything, we want to do about it. I'd email it to you but I'd like you to see the original. When are you coming into town?"

  Long Brush with its quaint shops, professional offices and small hospital was a fifteen-mile trip, and she usually combined shopping and errands when she made it. She could make time on Monday...

  She hadn't thought about her origins and her adoption in a long time. All she knew about her birth-mother was that the woman had been too poor to keep her and take care of her so she'd given Lucy up for adoption as soon as she was born. That's it. Nothing about her father. No memorabilia. Nothing else. Lucy had been perfectly happy all her life in the McIntyres embrace. Did she want to tamper with that now?

  But curiosity was a potent force. "I can be at your office on Monday around one. Will that suit you?"

  "I'll be in my office all day. One will be fine. I look forward to seeing you."

  After Lucy said good-bye and hung up, she wondered if she should tell her parents about the call. But why upset them? It might be nothing. She'd wait until after her meeting with Mr. Buckley to decide. Right now, she had another decision to make—whether or not she should hire Zackary Burke.

  #

  Glad for a chance to regroup, Zack watched Lucy McIntyre walk into the living room and answer the phone. Her warm brown eyes slid over him once more before she looked away and concentrated on her call. Disconcerted by his body's reaction not only to her gaze but to her mere nearness, he tried to dismiss it as a fluke. For a very long time he'd felt no desire for a woman, the same as he'd felt no inclination to go back to practicing medicine. He knew they were connected. He knew he rode across the western states to escape his thoughts as well as the past. Whenever he stayed in one place too long, all of it came rushing back.

  But from the moment he'd taken Lucy McIntyre's hand, smelled lilacs—a scent he associated with long-ago and far-away dreams and white picket fences, and seen the light dusting of freckles across her nose, he'd felt the very real response of a man to a pretty woman. How could he stay when he was attracted to her? How could he stay when he knew any attraction would have no place to go? Not after Kay and what had happened to her and their baby...

  Lucy came back to the kitchen, her expression pensive.

  "Bad news?" he asked, then wondered why he had. For the past fifteen months he'd tried to stay uninvolved in other people's lives.

  "Oh, I wasn't thinking about the call." She smiled. "Actually, I was thinking about you and whether I should hire you."

  As she drew closer, the lilacs wound about him again, tempting him with more than a job on a ranch. The freshness of her smile packed the same mighty punch. So he asked gruffly, "Why would you want hired help to stay in your house?"

  "That's the kind of people my parents are. But that's also why we checked your references carefully."

  "How do you know I'm not an escaped convict?"

  "Are you?" she asked with a challenging tilt of her head.

  He felt an unexpected laugh rumble from his chest. It had been a long time since he'd really laughed. "Do you honestly think I'd tell you?"

  Planting her hands on her hips, she gave him another good once-over with her warm brown eyes. "Yes."

  Her certainty drew him out of his seat as much as the scent of her perfume, and he approached her slowly. "Either you're very naive or a very good judge of character."

  "Neither, Mr. Burke...Zack," she amended. "I've learned to trust my instincts, and they're telling me my family has nothing to fear from you."

  Lucy was slender and tall, but he still towered over her a good five inches. Yet he could tell she wasn't intimidated. "You're right. Your family has nothing to fear from me...if I take the job."

  "Do you want it?" Her hands dropped to her sides and he realized he'd like to feel the touch of her skin against his once again.

  Impressed with Lucy and her directness, he took a deep breath, knowing he should jump on his Harley and head for far away places right now. But he wanted the work. He needed the satisfaction of physical labor so he could sleep at the end of the day. A ranch would provide plenty of that. "I want the job."

  Their gazes held. The awareness between them almost hummed in the kitchen as the full realization that they'd be sleeping under the same roof hit him. Maybe she was thinking about it, too.

  Lucy broke eye contact first and took a step back. "Well, good. I'll give you a brief tour, then show you where to put your things. By then—"

  The kitchen door opened and a little boy—about five—came running in. When he saw Zack and Lucy, he stopped. "Are you the man who's gonna help Dad and Gramps and Lucy till Uncle Marty's okay again?"

  Zack watched Lucy's chagrin and he guessed this child heard a lot more than the adults wanted him to hear. Zack wondered what the story was with "Marty." Not that it was any of his business.

  Lucy said, "This is my nephew, Josh. My oldest brother's son. Josh, this is Mr. Burke and he is going to be working here for a while."

  Josh stood in front of Zack and stared up at him. "Is that your bike out there?"

  The boy's brown eyes twinkled with curiosity. His reddish hair spiked in more than one direction, while his sweatshirt proclaimed he was a COWBOYS fan. Zack's heart ached for the son he'd lost, the child who'd lost his life before he'd had the chance to begin it. He hadn't been around children since Kay and their baby died. He'd avoided contact just as he'd avoided the feelings that hurt too much to name.

  But he guessed he wasn't going to be able to avoid Josh. "Yep. That's my bike."

  "Can I have a ride on it?"

  "Josh..." Lucy scolded.

  Zack grinned. "I bet we'll have to ask a few grown-ups before I can give you an answer on that."

  Turning to Lucy, Josh pleaded, "If you ask Dad, I'll ask Mom. Please?"

  Zack could tell Lucy was putty in her nephew's hands. He was sure of it when she gave the boy a hug and said, "I'll see what I can do."

  "Josh, I told you not to run ahead of me like that." A pleasantly rounded woman, wearing a down coat smiled at Zack from the doorway. As she stepped into the kitchen, Zack realized she belonged here as much as the hand-woven multi-colored place mats on the table, the green vines sitting in planters on the window ledge, and the h
omey aroma of something braising in the oven.

  Coming right up to Zack, she extended her hand. "I'm Esther McIntyre."

  The manners he'd thought he'd left back in California but that had emerged with Lucy and now with her mother, urged him to say, "It's good to meet you, Mrs. McIntyre. I've accepted the job on the ranch. That is unless you'd like to interview me, too."

  Esther smiled at him, squeezed his hand and looked him straight in the eye. "I trust my husband's judgment and Lucy's, too." Unzipping her coat, she said, "Now, I've got to get supper ready. Lucy, you show Mr. Burke around. And Josh—"

  "I wanna go with them."

  It didn't look as if Zack had to worry about anything happening even if he was attracted to Lucy. There were lots of chaperones. Maybe this stay at the Rising Star was exactly the distraction he needed. And if it wasn't?

  He'd leave. He'd gotten very good at that.

  #

  With Josh along on the tour chattering and pointing to his house that was as close to the all-purpose barn as the home where Lucy had grown up, she felt comfortable walking beside Zack. At least that's what she told herself as he responded to Josh's questions and comments with patience and interest.

  When the five-year-old ran ahead, she couldn't help but say, "You're good with Josh. Have you spent much time around children?"

  Zack stopped for a moment, keeping his gaze trained on the little boy. "Not nearly enough," he answered softly.

  Lucy thought she heard longing in his voice and analyzed what it meant. Like most men, he wanted children. Like Pete Cantrell. And when she'd told Pete she couldn't give him a child... He'd practically left a cloud of dust behind him as he'd rushed to escape their relationship. Since Pete, she'd concentrated on her family, the ranch, business management courses, and thought about adopting a child herself someday. She knew better than to repeat past mistakes. She knew better than to expect a man to give up the idea of blood heirs to take care of someone else's children.

  She had no reason to believe Zackary Burke was any different. As she gazed at his profile, the defined bone structure, the angular line of a strong jaw, the thick vitality of his black hair, her heart sped up. Yes, she was attracted to him. But attraction was as insubstantial as smoke. There was no point exploring her attraction to him...no future in letting sparks catch fire. Because after the fire, she had nothing to offer.