Blue Dalton

by Tara Janzen

  He was ready to break; she could feel it. His attempts at conversation had become rarer, his smiles even more so. Two days of her company had stretched his patience thinner than thin. She could have told him she was no peach to live with when he’d come up with his stupid plan, and saved them both a lot of trouble. She’d heard the opinion expressed too many times in Galveston not to have believed it to be the truth.

  Men, who could understand them? She let out a soft sound of disgust. One lousy kiss, you’d think she could forget one lousy kiss. One kiss she found playing over and over in her mind. She’d awakened about three o’clock this morning with an incredible set of images crowding her subconscious. They had made facing him this morning more embarrassing than usual. She’d kept wondering if the muscles in his chest and arms really bunched and moved under his skin as gracefully as she’d dreamed, or if his skin really tasted musky-sweet, or if it was truly possible for him to move over and cover her body in such a way that she melted inside.

  She’d had a terrible time getting back to sleep, and only a couple of hard trail hours had been able to banish the last shreds of her oversensitive awareness of him. In truth, she realized the grueling pace they were keeping during the days was probably the only thing keeping her on an even keel at night.

  But the pace was taking its toll in other areas.

  She slipped lower on her pack, arranging her bottom in the bed of pine needles below the tree, grateful for the moment of rest.

  Walker had reached the end of his rope, and finding her all stretched out and comfortable didn’t improve his mood. He swept his hat off his head and used his forearm to wipe away the sweat, and he kept staring at Blue. He was beginning to smell a rat, and the rat looked as though she didn’t have a care in the world, let alone a treasure to find. All the time he’d been pushing his nobler instincts to the limit, she’d been lying to him. None of his directions made a damn bit of sense on the trail they were following. Landmarks weren’t where they were supposed to be. Paces dead-ended into granite walls. Hell, they’d even gotten rimrocked the first day out. At the time, he’d given old Abel more credit than he deserved for being one tough bastard to follow. Days later he knew Abel’s daughter had lied to him about the starting mark.

  Damn! He hadn’t so much as accidentally touched her since their first night together; he’d been careful not to. He’d figured they had a deal, and he hadn’t wanted to complicate it with anything else. She’d obviously decided to complicate things plenty by lying. He’d put up with her moody silences, her reclusive manner, and the way she disappeared into her room every time he got within arm’s length of her. And what had it gotten him? Nothing. Not one unguarded word, not one kind glance, not one single smile. He didn’t even want to think about all the other things it hadn’t gotten him—such as closer to her.

  Well, the lady was about to learn a few things about him. One, he wasn’t going to let her get away with her scheming tricks; and two, with a minimum of effort, he could be damn hard, if not impossible, to ignore. He rested his shoulder against a pine, his mouth a grim line. He’d been handling her with kid gloves, but she didn’t need to be handled with kid gloves; she needed an iron hand. Rules didn’t matter; she didn’t recognize any rules. She’d dragged him around the mountain for the last time.

  Pushing off the tree, he slapped his hat on his thigh, raising some dust, and began walking toward her.

  Despite his quiet tread, Blue heard him coming. She cocked her hat on the back of her head and glanced up. “Did you find it?”

  “No.”

  The tiredness she heard in his voice made hiding her smug smile a prudent move. The way he sat down next to her, facing her and so close their hips touched, wiped any thoughts of smiling right out of her mind.

  “Orange?” she asked after clearing a nervous tremor from her throat.

  “Thanks.” He dropped his hat on the ground and shrugged out of his pack, and Blue found herself momentarily mesmerized by the sight of muscle moving beneath cloth, supple and hard, stretching his shirt sleeves when he flexed. Her gaze slid down the length of his arm, following the movement to his hands. They were workingman’s hands, weathered by the sun and the cold, chiseled to a rough perfection by the elements and the strength with which they were used. He took the orange and tore the remaining segments in half, giving her a share.

  “You know, Blue, I’m beginning to think we’re going about this all wrong.” He bit down on the whole half of the orange, exposing straight, white teeth. With the back of his hand he wiped the juice off his mouth. Sunlight added golden highlights to the tawny mane of his hair, reminding her for a moment of how the silky strands had felt running through her fingers.

  “Wrong?” she asked, her mouth suddenly dry.

  “Yeah. We’re losing too much time running back and forth between my place and the North Star. I think it’s time we got serious. Tomorrow when we come, we’re coming to stay. I’ve got a two-man tent, so you don’t have to worry about living out of a lean-to. We’ll set up camp”—he looked around the area and shrugged—“here, I guess. We can’t be that far from Lacey’s Lode. There’s only one direction after Bear Rock, which I’ll be damned if I can find.” He took another big bite out of the orange, ignoring the neat segments Mother Nature had put there for easy consumption.

  Of course he couldn’t find it, she thought. It didn’t exist. But that was the least of her problems. Two-man tent? Not even a four-man tent would be big enough to hold the two of them, not to her satisfaction.

  “I don’t think . . . uh . . . why don’t I try to find it,” she finished after a false start, pushing herself to her feet. There had to be a rock out there somewhere that she could convince him looked like a bear. Then he’d give her the last direction. Two-man tent? Not if she could help it.

  “Sure, Blue,” he drawled, taking her place by the tree. “Give it your best shot.” He lifted his hat off the ground and settled it over his face as he made himself comfortable. “Let me know if you find anything.”

  Blue brushed the pine needles off her backside, watching him settle in. She’d find a bear-shaped rock if she had to chisel one out herself.

  Walker heard her stride off into the forest, and beneath his hat he grinned.

  * * *

  Blue pounded another tent stake into the ground, swearing with each clink of the flat end of the ax on metal. “Bear Rock,” she muttered to Trapper under her breath. There was no Bear Rock. Didn’t the man know when to give up? He should have just given her the last direction last night as she’d suggested, supposedly so they could double-check everything they’d done up to this point and find out where they were going and where they’d gone wrong. Or rather, where he’d gone wrong. She had her ducks in a row, she thought in irritation, conveniently forgetting she was the one who had set him up to fail.

  “Looks good, Blue, and in record time,” he said, coming up behind her with another load of firewood. “I could use you on my hunting trips. Most of the men I guide can’t tell a tent pole from their rifles. If this doesn’t pan out and you need a job, I’ll hire you next fall.”

  Blue gave the stake another good whack, and, maintaining her silence, shook the rain fly out over the tent. Trapper shied away at the flapping material and wandered a little way off. Traitor, she thought.

  “Last year was the wildest ever,” he continued, dropping the wood next to the fire ring and lifting his hat to push back his hair. “There was a man over by Grand Lake. He shot a mule, thinking it was a bear, and all he had was a deer license.” His low chuckle rolled over her as he settled his hat back on his head.

  Blue knelt and began tying down the fly. “Everybody knows you should mark your domestic animals during hunting season,” she said, jerking the rope.

  Walker knelt beside her, tying the next string on the fly. “The mule was marked all right. Had a couple of fluorescent streamers hanging from his halter.”

  Blue shot him a disbelieving glance, for once unaware of h
is closeness. “The man shot an animal in halter?”

  “Three times. Split his ear open, got him across the withers, and finally felled him by hitting him in the knee.”

  “My God!” she whispered, her eyes widening. “Don’t tell me he stopped there!”

  “Apparently he was pretty shook up, what with almost getting attacked by a bear”—his tone added a wry twist to the word—“but someone else had the sense to put the animal out of its misery.”

  “Someone should have put the hunter out of his misery. Good Lord! The people they let loose with guns in these hills.” She finished her first knot, shaking her head, and moved to work on the third.

  Walker skirted by her and started on the fourth, a broad grin curving his mouth. “Yeah. I’ve run into some pretty unpredictable ones myself lately.”

  “Really?” she asked, then saw his smile. Recovering quickly, she slipknotted the fly string onto the guideline and said, “I’ve run into a couple lately myself.”

  Walker laughed. “I guess between the two of us we ought to be able to handle whatever comes along from here on out.”

  The barest smile teased her mouth. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess so.”

  Her smile warmed him in that strange way of hers—from the inside out—and for a long moment he wished she was there beside him by choice, setting up camp in the early-morning light.

  * * *

  “Can you smell it?” Walker asked hours later, stopping in a glade of budding aspens. A graying sky cast shadows through the slender white tree trunks, dappling the spring grass into muted verdant hues. They were about three fourths of the way through a half-mile semicircle he’d mapped out for their meaningless search for Bear Rock.

  “Rain,” she answered, weariness evident in the softness of her voice and her bent-over stance in the meadow. Her hands rested on her thighs as she looked upward through the trees.

  “Or snow.” He glanced up at the sky and the low bank of clouds rolling in over the mountains. He’d been keeping a relentless pace, hoping she’d give up and confess, or slip up and reveal her lie. He’d have tried intimidation if he’d thought it would work, but every time he’d pushed her, she’d pushed harder, and he’d ended up watching his back. He’d kept her rifle, but she had her dog, and though he and the animal had reached a compromise of sorts, he didn’t doubt whose side Trapper would be on if voices were raised in anger.

  “Or snow,” she agreed, feeling the bite in the air. “Maybe we should break camp and head home.” With effort she managed to keep her voice steady and her legs from trembling. They’d left the cabin at the crack of dawn and hadn’t stopped since. For the first time she realized she’d been lucky to have kept ahead of him for even one day when he’d been tracking her across North Park. The man had been named perfectly—Walker. Nonstop Walker. Pick-’em-up-and-put-’em-down Walker. Wear-her-into-the-ground Walker. The previous day’s tiredness was a burst of energy compared to this day’s bone-aching exhaustion.

  “You afraid of the snows, Blue?” he asked, giving her a quizzical look.

  “Of course not.” She drew on her reserves for an unladylike snort and hefted the day pack higher on her shoulders. She didn’t care if he walked to hell and back; she’d be right there behind him. And when he finally gave up, she’d go find what was hers. She was so close, one map mark away.

  “Then we’ll keep going. When we finish this area, we’ll start again to the northwest. By nightfall we’ll be sitting on Bear Rock.”

  * * *

  By nightfall Blue doubted if she could sit on her own behind and stay upright. They dragged into camp, a camp covered with three inches of snow. The whole scene was too much to bear with her usual fortitude. She took one look at the cold snow falling through the trees, the cold fire ring, the cold tent, and decided her best bet was the latter. Deep inside her down sleeping bag was her only chance for what she needed most—to drop like a stone and not get up again until morning, if then.

  Walker shrugged out of his pack and deposited it in the clear spot beneath the tent fly, all the while watching her carefully for signs of collapse. He’d pushed her too hard, up one hill and down the next, trying to prove—what? He didn’t know anymore. He gave his head a quick shake of disgust. Her gloves were brown cotton working gloves; the fingers were cut off halfway down, and she kept curling her hands into fists to keep them warm. Her baggy jeans were staying on her hips by the grace of a miracle. Her Stetson was pulled so low on her head, he couldn’t even begin to see her eyes. The dropping temperature reddened her thin, tanned cheeks and the tip of her nose to the color of the bandana tied around her neck.

  He felt like the world’s biggest bastard standing there, watching her fight the exhaustion bowing her head. He wanted to gather her up and share the warmth and energy he still had in abundance. Instead, he walked quietly behind her and slipped the pack from her shoulders, making sure he had one hand ready in case she crumpled.

  She groaned softly, and he caught her around the waist and held her until she could find her new center of balance.

  Blue rested against him, letting her eyes drift closed and wishing she never had to move again. Every part of her hurt. The strength of his hard body supported her in a way she found difficult to resist. To lean back against him and fall asleep on her feet seemed an even better option than crawling into the cold tent alone; he, at least, was warm.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself, drawing her strength up from way down deep inside and pushing away from him.

  “Thanks,” she murmured, feeling foolish for needing him for even a moment.

  “Anytime,” he said, with a strange edge of harshness in his voice. “Why don’t you get inside and get comfortable. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  He’d have to, she thought. If dinner had been up to her, they both would have gone hungry. She dropped to her knees on her pack and unzipped the tent, then rolled over and sat down inside, making sure her boots didn’t dirty the interior. When they were unlaced, she took them off and hit them together to knock away the snow.

  Walker didn’t miss a single, agonizingly slow movement she made. He heard her whisper a stream of soft curses as she eased down on the sleeping bags, leaving only her two white-socked feet hanging outside. After a second she pulled them inside, groaning under her breath.

  “I think she’ll live, boy,” he said to the dog, reaching down and scratching the animal behind the ears.

  Blue lay quietly, listening to him rustle around the camp starting a fire and making dinner. She couldn’t take much more. She’d finally met her match. This morning when she’d unrolled their sleeping bags, her biggest problem had been sharing the tent with him. In truth, before lunch she’d spent more time fretting about the close quarters awaiting her than she had worrying over Lacey’s Lode. By late afternoon her priorities had begun to shift to the muscles in her legs and the ache in her back. About five o’clock she’d realized she’d never outlast him. The man wasn’t going to give up, not in her lifetime. Her choices had dwindled to telling him the truth or walking away with nothing. The second choice was ruinous. The first was downright dangerous.

  She didn’t think he’d physically hurt her. If nothing else, she did know that about him. But, oh, brother, would he be mad, really mad.

  Wincing, she rolled onto her side and wrapped her arms around her waist, trying to still her shivering and conserve her body warmth. They’d argued plenty, but she’d only seen him angry once, the night she’d called him pretty boy, the night he’d stopped her heart with a single furious glare. She preferred not to dwell upon the night he’d stopped her heart with a single incredible kiss.

  No, she thought, stifling a yawn. She didn’t want to think about kissing, not when she was cold and hungry and so tired, even breathing took effort—and certainly not when she was curled up inside half of a two-man tent, of which the other half belonged to him.

  But as happened every evening when sleep pulled at the fabric of her def
enses and her mind drifted off toward never-never land, his kiss was the image she held on to—his mouth, hard and soft at the same time, opening over her, teasing her, her own response welling up inside.

  Walker knelt between the tent flaps, watching her sigh softly in her sleep, her mouth parting in unintentional invitation, and he wished he’d taken her home, where he wouldn’t be subjected to her special brand of torture. Lantern light caught the flaxen strands of hair feathering over her ear. The soft glow turned her skin into golden cream and her mouth into pure temptation.

  Innocence incarnate, he thought, knowing she’d done nothing to instigate the sharp ache he suddenly felt. She’d done nothing but react to the pressure he’d put on her since he’d tracked her down and carried her home. She’d done nothing but be the woman she was, not physically strong enough to tangle with him by his very physical rules, and not helpless enough to give up.

  “Blue,” he said softly, setting aside the thermos and the pan of stew. “Wake up.” He reached out and laid his hand on her arm, resisting the urge to stroke her cheek and tuck her hair behind her ear, resisting the desire to caress her face, to feel her satin skin beneath his rough fingers.

  “No,” she murmured, more a sigh than a word.

  The uncharacteristic petulance in the sound brought a grin to his face. No. It was the most vulnerable thing she’d ever said to him. The first chink she’d revealed in her armor of self-sufficiency.

  “Come on, Blue.” His hand slid down to her hip, shaking her a little. “You can’t sleep until you’ve eaten.”

  “I’m already asleep,” she told him on a whisper, dreamily aware of the weight and warmth of his large hand touching her.

  Walker moved farther into the tent and stretched out beside her, leaning on his elbow and resting his head in his hand. For a long time he lay there next to her, watching her chest rise and fall with her soft breaths, following the play of shadows across her face. He would have continued the pleasurable if dangerous pastime if she hadn’t shivered, reminding him of what he’d come for. “Come on, Blue. You’re not asleep yet, and you’re not going to want to miss what I’ve cooked up.”