WARRIOR

by Elizabeth Lowell

  In the distance an isolated group of mountains rose against the darkening sky. Clouds gathered and slowly seethed around the peaks. Other clouds stretched in a wind-smoothed front across the icy arch of the sky. Eden glanced overhead, saw the weather front that was supposed to bring snow, and debated whether or not to take on the rough road between West Fork and the government cabin that would be her home until June.

  "You'll be safe enough at the motel," Nevada said, following Eden's glance at the weather front. "No one will bother you now."

  The subtle rasp in Nevada's deep voice intrigued Eden. But then, everything about him intrigued her, and had from the first instant she had seen him.

  "Thank you," she said quietly. "If I had known what West Fork was like, I would have bought my supplies in Cortez."

  Nevada shrugged. "Most of the time West Fork is real quiet. You just came on the one Saturday a year when the local half-wits get together and howl. Two hours earlier and no one would have been drunk enough to run off at the mouth. Two hours later and they would have been too drunk to care who came through the door."

  "I doubt that you ever get that drunk," Eden said matter-of-factly. She braced a sack of supplies on her hip as she unlocked the truck's door. "You're too disciplined."

  Nevada gave Eden a sharp look, but before he could ask her how she had known that about him, he saw a huge, dark shadow moving inside the cab of the weather-beaten truck.

  "Good God – is that a wolf?" Nevada demanded.

  Eden smiled. "You're mostly right. The rest is husky." The truck's door grated as it opened. "Hello, Baby. You ready to stretch your legs a bit?"

  A black tail waved and sounds of greeting that were a cross between a growl and a muffled yip came from the wolf's thickly furred throat. The instant Nevada moved toward the truck, the sounds became a definite growl and the tail ceased waving.

  "It's all right, Baby. Nevada is a friend."

  The growls ended. Yellow eyes looked at Nevada for a comprehensive instant. Then, accepting the stranger, Baby leaped to the ground.

  "Baby?" Nevada asked dryly. "He's got to go at least a hundred and twenty pounds."

  "One hundred and thirty-three. But he started small. I found him in a hunter's trap when he was half-grown. The leg healed almost as good as new, but not quite. In the wild, the difference would have slowly killed him."

  "So you kept him."

  Eden made a murmurous sound of agreement as she leaned into the passenger side of the truck to deposit supplies.

  "Do you make a habit of collecting and taming wild animals?"

  "No." Eden stacked two sacks where a passenger's feet would have gone. "I'm a wildlife biologist, not a zookeeper. If I find wild animals that are hurt, I heal them and turn them loose again. If I kept them, there's nothing I could give them that would compensate for the loss of their freedom."

  Silently Nevada handed over the sacks he was carrying. As he did, Eden noticed that he had cut his left hand in the fight. She dumped the sacks in the truck and took Nevada's hand between her own.

  "You're hurt!"

  Nevada looked down into Eden's eyes. In the fading light of day her eyes were almost green, almost gold, almost amber, almost blue gray, a shimmer of colors watching him, as though every season, every time, lived behind her eyes. Her hands on his skin had the healing warmth of summer, the softness of spring sunshine. He wanted nothing more than to bend down and take her mouth, her body, sinking into her until he couldn't remember what it was like to be cold.

  But that would only make the inevitable return of ice all the more painful.

  "I'm fine," he said, removing his hand. Eden took Nevada's hand again. The renewed touch of her skin sent hunger searching through every bit of his big body, making his muscles clench with need.

  "Nevada," she said, remembering what the bartender had called him. "That's your name, isn't it?"

  Nevada nodded curtly, trying to ignore the exquisite heat of Eden's breath as she examined his hand again.

  "You're bleeding, Nevada. Come with me to the motel room. I'll clean the cut and—"

  "No."

  His rough refusal surprised her. She looked up into eyes as cold and bleak as a winter moon.

  "It's the least I can do to thank you for being a gentleman," Eden said softly.

  "Take me to your motel room?" Nevada asked, his tone sardonic.

  "You know that isn't what I meant."

  "Yes. But I mean it." Nevada freed his left hand, hesitated, then let out his breath with a whispered curse. His fingertip skimmed the curve of Eden's lower lip with aching slowness. "Stay away from me, Eden. I'm a warrior, not a knight in shining armor, and I want you more than all the men in that bar put together."

  Abruptly Nevada turned and walked away, leaving Eden standing motionless in the icy twilight, watching him with a mixture of shock and deeply sensual speculation in her eyes.

  ~ 2 ~

  The big Appaloosa threw up its head and snorted.

  "Take it easy, you knothead," Nevada said soothingly. Then, without turning around, he added, "Morning, Ten. Hear anything from Mariah and Cash?"

  Tennessee Blackthorn was accustomed to his brother's uncanny ability to tell when he was being approached from behind, and by whom. Even so, Ten had hoped that after almost two years on the Rocking M, Nevada would lose some of the habits of a guerrilla warrior. But he hadn't. He had the same fighting edge to his reflexes and senses that he had had in the mountains of Afghanistan, where he had taught warriors with flintlocks how to defeat soldiers with tanks. Nevada had the same intense discipline and concerted lack of emotion that he had learned in Afghanistan. Even the Rocking M's cowhands had given up betting on when – or under what circumstances – Nevada Blackthorn would truly smile.

  "Cash called late yesterday," Ten said. "Mariah's doctor said she was fine. Apparently she missed the flu that was going around here."

  "Good."

  "Speaking of being sick, are you sure you should be on your feet? That was a fair fever you were running yesterday."

  "I'm glad Mariah isn't sick," Nevada said, settling the saddle gently over the skittish Appaloosa. "She and Cash should have fine, strapping children. I'm looking forward to hearing another healthy baby around here hollering for mama to bring his next meal. Carla's new baby is really something." Nevada cinched up the saddle girth with a swift, smooth motion, moving so quickly that the horse had no time to object. "Like your Carolina. That's one fine set of lungs the little lady has. She and Logan make a real pair."

  Ten smiled dryly and accepted that Nevada wasn't going to talk about flu, rest, and a cold ride into the mountains. "Glad you like having babies around. Mariah will give us two more little screamers sometime in May or June."

  Nevada looked over his shoulder. "Twins?"

  "Yeah. Cash was so excited he could hardly talk. He and Mariah had been hoping, but they hadn't said anything until they were sure everything was fine."

  "Tell her to be extra careful. Twins tend to be born small, and small babies have a harder time."

  "Tell her yourself. She'll be here tomorrow."

  "I won't." Nevada gestured with his head toward MacKenzie Ridge. "I'm going to spend a few days tracking cats. Supposed to be fresh snow by afternoon up toward Wildfire Canyon. It may be the last tracking snow of the winter."

  And maybe, just maybe, when I'm chasing cats rather than fighting fever dreams, I'll be able to see something other than extraordinary hazel eyes and a warm mouth that trembles at the lightest touch of a man's finger.

  The back door of the ranch house slammed as someone left the dining room. The Appaloosa shied wildly. Nevada cursed in the silence of his mind and brought his attention back to the horse.

  "I can see why Luke gelded that one," Ten muttered. "Target has more brains in his spotted butt than between his ears."

  Nevada shrugged. "As long as you pay attention, he's the best winter horse on the Rocking M." With the unconscious ease of a man performing a fam
iliar task, Nevada gathered the roping rein, stepped into the stirrup and mounted in a single easy motion. "Especially in fresh snow. Target's big enough not to get bogged down in the drifts."

  "Wouldn't life be simpler if you just shot the cougars with a tranquilizer dart, put a radio collar on them and tracked them from the air?"

  "Simpler? Maybe. A hell of a lot more expensive for sure. And a hell of a lot less fun for the cats – and me."

  Ten laughed softly. "That's what Luke said. I didn't argue." Ten started to turn away, then remembered something else. "You know that old cabin just beyond Wildfire Canyon?"

  "The one at the end of that abandoned logging road?"

  Ten nodded. "A guy from the government called yesterday to tell us that some cougar specialist will be using the cabin as a base camp for the next month or two, depending on the cats. So if you find signs of someone moving around in the high country, don't worry. Luke and I agreed to give free access to Rocking M land as long as we got a copy of whatever report is filed about the cougars."

  At the word cabin, Nevada went very still. A conversation that was three days old echoed in his mind. There's no other store between here and the government cabin.

  "Did anyone mention the name of the cat expert?" Nevada asked.

  "I don't think so. Why?"

  For a moment Nevada said nothing, remembering Eden's gentle voice and surprisingly strong hands, and the utter lack of fear in her eyes when she had seen the elemental violence in his.

  Do you make a habit of collecting and taming wild animals?

  No. I'm a wildlife biologist, not a zookeeper.

  Eden's voice, her scent, the tactile memory of her alluring warmth … they had haunted Nevada's waking hours. They might have haunted his sleep as well, but he would never know. It was a pact he had made with himself years ago. He never remembered dreams.

  "There was a young woman in West Fork last Saturday," Nevada said evenly. "She said something about being a wildlife expert."

  "Last Saturday?" Ten said, his gray eyes narrowing.

  Though Nevada had said nothing, word of the fight had gone through the Four Corners area of Colorado like forked lightning.

  Nevada nodded.

  "A woman, huh?"

  Nevada nodded again.

  "Pretty?" Ten asked, his handsome face expressionless.

  "Why? You getting tired of Diana?"

  The idea was so ridiculous that Ten laughed aloud. Then his smile vanished and he looked every bit as hard as his younger brother.

  "The next time you go one on five," Ten said, "I'd take it as a personal favor if you'd let me guard your back. Luke made the same offer. So did Cash."

  The left corner of Nevada's mouth turned up very slightly, as close as he ever came to a smile. "Cash, too, huh? Does that mean he's finally forgiven me for noticing that Mariah was pregnant before he did?"

  "When a man is unsure of a woman, he's apt to be a bit blind," Ten said in a bland voice.

  "He's apt to be a horse's buff."

  "Your turn will come."

  "Yours sure did," Nevada retorted, remembering the tense months before Ten had finally admitted that he was irrevocably bound to Diana. "I'll tell you, Tennessee, if I never tangle with you again, it will be too soon."

  "Yeah, well, the hands are taking bets on that one too, especially since word got out that Utah's coming back as soon as he gets out of the hospital. Guess he's finally gotten his fill of jungle fighting."

  "At least they don't need to worry about Utah getting in a brawl over a woman. Not since Sybil." Nevada leaned forward in the saddle. A flick of his hand freed the packhorse's lead rope from the corral railing. "The real shame about Sybil is that she wasn't a man," Nevada continued, reining Target toward the mountains. "If she were a man, I'd have killed her."

  Before Ten could speak, Nevada kicked the big Appaloosa. "Shake a leg, Target. We've got a long ride ahead."

  Even with the eager, powerful Appaloosa beneath him, it was afternoon before Nevada rode into Wildfire Canyon's wide mouth. In all but the worst winter storms, the canyon's alignment with the prevailing winds kept the flat floor swept relatively free of snow. Patches of evergreens clothed the sloping sides of the canyon, tall trees whose ages were almost all the same. The fire that had given the canyon its name had swept through eighty years before, burning the living forest to ash, leaving behind a ghost forest of heat-hardened skeletons. A few of those skeletons still stood upright amid the new forest, their weather-smoothed shapes silver and black in the full sun or moonlight.

  The on-again, off-again warmth of March had melted the snow in places, revealing dark ground. Snowdrifts remained in narrow gullies and ravines, and beneath the most dense forest cover. Yet even in the higher altitudes, winter was slowly losing its white grip on the land. Water sparkled and glittered everywhere, testimony to melting snow. Drops gathered into tiny rivulets, joined in thin streams, merged into small, rushing creeks. Today the drops would freeze again, but only for a short time. Soon they would be free to run down to the distant sea once more.

  Soon, but not yet. The storm that had threatened three days before hadn't materialized. It was coming now, though. As Target followed the zigzagging trail that led out of the northern end of Wildfire Canyon, Nevada could smell the storm on the wind, feel it in the icy fingers ruffling his beard and making his eyes sting. Even the rocks around him weren't impervious. They had known the grip of countless winters, water silently freezing, expanding, splitting stones apart. Evidence of the silent, inexorable power of ice lay everywhere in the high reaches of the canyon, where slopes too steep to grow trees were covered with angular stones that had been chiseled from boulders and bedrock by countless picks of ice.

  At the top of the steep trail, Nevada reined in and let Target rest for a few minutes. Between gusts of wind, the silence was complete. The tiniest sound came clearly through the air – a pebble rolling from beneath steel-shod hooves, a raven calling across the canyon. Target's ears flicked and twitched nervously as he tried to hear every sound. When a pebble dislodged by water clattered down the slope, the horse's nostrils flared, the skin on his shoulder flinched and he shied.

  "Take it easy, boy," Nevada said in a soothing voice as he gathered in the roping rein more tightly.

  Even as Nevada's left hand managed the reins, his right hand checked that the rifle was still in its saddle holster. The gesture was so automatic that he was unaware of it, legacy of commando training and years spent in places where to be unarmed was to die. The rifle's cold, smooth stock came easily into his hand, then settled back into the sheath.

  Target snorted and bunched his haunches, wanting to be free of the pressure of the bit. Nevada glanced at the packhorse. Daisy was ignoring Target's nervousness.

  "Settle down, knothead," Nevada said calmly. "If there was anything around but wind and shadows, Daisy would know it. She has a nose like a hound."

  Target chewed resentfully on the bit as the wind gusted suddenly, raking the landscape with fingernails of ice. Nevada tugged his hat down more firmly and guided the horse out onto the exposed slope. For the first hundred yards, a faint, ragged line across the wind-scoured scree was the only sign of a trail. The line had been left by generations of deer, cougars, and occasional Indians. In modern times, deer and cougars still used the game trail, as did Rocking M cowhands who were working both Wildfire Canyon and the leased grazing lands beyond. Target was in the center of the scree when the black flash of a raven skimming over the land spooked him. Between one heartbeat and the next, Target tried to leap over his own shadow.

  There was no time for Nevada to think, to plan, to escape. Reflex took over. Even as Target lost his footing on the loose stone, Nevada was kicking free of the stirrups, grabbing the rifle, and throwing himself toward the uphill side of the trail. Inches away from his rider's body, Target's powerful hooves flailed as the horse lost its balance and began rolling down the slope in a clattering shower of loose stone. Nevada fell too, turnin
g and rolling rapidly, surrounded by loose rocks, no way to stop himself, nothing solid to hang on to.

  At the bottom of the slope, a massive boulder stopped Nevada's body. Before the last stone in the small landslide had stopped rolling, Target staggered to his feet, shook himself thoroughly, and looked around. When nothing happened, the horse walked calmly to the edge of the recent slide and looked for something edible. A few minutes later the packhorse joined Target, having found a less dangerous way to the bottom of the slope.

  Before long the gray sky lowered and dissolved into the pale dance of countless snowflakes. The horses turned their tails to the wind and drifted before the storm.

  Nevada lay unmoving, rifle in hand.

  *

  Baby's ululating howl brought Eden to her feet in a rush of adrenaline. The wolf had been running free all day, for Eden hadn't yet needed Baby's keen nose. She would put him to work after the storm had passed, leaving a fragile shawl of white over the land. Then she would roam widely, noting and recording the cat tracks that would show clearly in the fresh snow. Once the snow melted away, Baby's nose would make certain that Eden could follow the cats even across solid rock.

  A steaming cup of coffee in her hand, Eden went to the cabin door, opened it and listened. The slow glide of snowflakes to the ground and muffled sounds limited visibility to a hundred feet.

  Baby howled again, calling out in the eerie harmonics of his wolf father.

  Eden listened closely and muttered, "Not his hunting song. Not his lonely song. Not his great-to-be-alive song."

  The haunting cry rose again, closer now, piercing the snow's silence.

  "I hear you, Baby. You're coming back to me." A black shape materialized at the edge of the snowfall. With the ghostly silence of smoke, Baby came across the meadow clearing to the cabin. There was a brief hesitation in his gait, a slight asymmetry in his stride, which was the legacy of the steel trap that had maimed him years before.

  Instead of greeting Eden and going about his business, Baby caught her hand delicately in his mouth and looked at her with intent yellow eyes. Curiosity leaped in Eden. Baby rarely insisted on having her attention. When he did, it was to warn her that they weren't alone any longer – men were somewhere near.