by Arlene James
“Be still, honey, or it’s all over!” he gasped, holding himself rigid.
She blew out her breath and lay her head back, eyes closed. Tears leaked out the corners.
“Aw, Kara. Don’t, honey. It’s not too late!”
She laughed, arching her back and sliding her luscious body against his in unmistakable demand. “It better be!”
“Hell!” He lifted above her, pulled back, and slammed into her with all the urgency and demand of his own desire. She wrapped her legs around him, rising up to meet every thrust, and in the end he had to cover her mouth with his hand, letting his own tears drip joyfully onto her breasts. By morning, heaven was still within reach.
Chapter Ten
Hell came in the form of a saddle and regret.
Actually, Kara had less trouble physically than Rye did. She hoped that the others did not notice how gingerly he sat in the saddle and how often he found it necessary to stand in his stirrups. Much more painful to her than the physical ramifications of sexual overindulgence was the way Rye began withdrawing into himself from the moment he left her bed near daylight. The attentive, inventive, amazingly generous lover reverted back to the slightly prickly, emotionally cautious and distant business partner of her experience. It was obvious to her that he regretted, at least to some extent, the breathtaking intimacies of the night before.
He hadn’t fully met her gaze since checking on his sleeping son that morning before leaving the privacy of the motor home. Throughout the morning he spoke little and astutely avoided her touch. It was in some ways no more than she had expected. After all, he had offered her no promises beyond the moment. No mention of love or the future had been made. And yet she felt so profoundly changed by what they had shared that she could not believe he remained unaffected. Surely there should have been a fleeting, secretive look, a small, bemused smile, a sly, suggestive whisper, some acknowledgment of past wonders, something. Instead, she seemed to have ceased to exist for him.
She tried not to be hurt. She did try. But when Rye picked up his lunch, had a quick word with Bord, then rode right past her without so much as a lifted finger in greeting, her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. It didn’t help that Bord had bad news.
“We got four sick horses, Ms. Detmeyer, and something tells me it won’t stop there. Never seen anything like it. Spreading like wildfire.”
“Did you tell Rye?”
“Yes, ma’am. He said to run it by you.”
“Where is the remuda?”
“Campsite. Want me to turn your horse in with the herd so you can ride ahead with me in the truck?”
Kara sighed. “Guess so.” She dismounted, saying, “I’ll just grab a sandwich while you get the saddle off.”
“No problem.”
She joined her mother at the other truck. “You get a look at those horses?”
Dayna nodded. “They’re sick all right, but it’s nothing I’ve ever seen. Dean was getting on the computer when we left, said he’d find the nearest vet.”
Kara nodded. “Sounds like a good idea.” She lifted her hat and wiped her forehead with her shirtsleeve. “Man, I hope it doesn’t stall us. No rancher anywhere in the world would want us crossing his property with sick animals.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Rye will keep ’em headed to camp for now. Dean’s got a cell phone. Maybe you’d better keep this one.” She unzipped her fanny pack and extracted the small flip phone, handing it to her mother. “Tell Rye to wait until he hears from me before bringing them all the way in. If this is something that will affect the cattle, I don’t want them anywhere near those horses.”
Despite a look of surprise, Dayna nodded and slipped the phone into her shirt pocket, where it made a strange lump atop one breast. “You haven’t already discussed this with Rye?”
“Rye has other things on his mind just now,” Kara told her dismissively, taking a sandwich from the cold box and a prepackaged cup of soup from the other. For some reason, Kara felt compelled to kiss her mother’s cheek before striding off toward the other truck, not knowing how much she’d given away.
“Poison!” Rye exclaimed. “You’re telling me someone’s poisoned our horse feed?”
Kara pressed her fingertips to her pounding temples. “Dr. Weitz didn’t actually use that term, and he’s not one hundred percent positive yet, but that’s what he expects the tests to show.”
“Dear God!” Rye shook his head, bringing his hands to his hips. “What treatment does he recommend?”
“Fluids, diuretics, emetics, depends on what was used. He doesn’t think it’s anything fatal, but we need to flush it out of the animals’ systems.”
“Damn!”
Kara felt close to tears, but she wasn’t about to give in to them now, not in front of him, never again in front of him. Pity was not something she could take from him again. She was pretty sure, now that she’d had some time to think, that pity was behind the events of the previous evening. He’d felt sorry for her. Poor, inexperienced, unloved Kara. The least he could do was see to it that she didn’t go to her grave a virgin without ever knowing what she was missing. If he’d been unusually caring and thorough, well, she supposed that was just Rye. Whatever he did, he gave it his all. As a work ethic, it was a commendable trait from which she willingly benefited. It would be boorish of her to be ungrateful now. Still, she couldn’t help wishing that he’d been slightly less meticulous. She feared that Ryeland Wagner had taken her to heights that she would never again scale, no matter how many attempts she might be foolish enough to make. She tried to bend her mind around this latest catastrophe.
“Weitz says this could cost a thousand bucks before it’s over,” she said with a sigh, “but that’s not the worst of it. Those horses are going to need time to recover, more than we can give them, I’m afraid.”
Rye made an inarticulate sound. “That means abusing the few healthy mounts we’ve got left or staying put, which is exactly what the son of a bitch who did this wants!
Kara pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Soon as I have one, I’ll let you know.”
Kara nodded as he turned and walked away. Her stomach roiled. Her head felt as though it might split in two. Fatigued and emotionally drained, she wanted nothing so much as she wanted a long, hot bath in a tub full of bubbles. Now if only one would magically appear. Yeah right. She’d be lucky if she could soak both feet at the same time. Not that it made any difference. Heartaches were damnably difficult to treat.
Rye fought the urge to slam a fist into the first thing he saw. Better to save it for the spineless scum who was doing this to Kara. Then, in all fairness, he’d have to stand back and let the wretch take a swing at him; God knew he’d already done more to hurt her than anyone else. He’d known he was going to the moment he’d found her sitting on that rock last night, but he couldn’t have stopped if his life had depended on it. The only thing he could say in his favor was that he’d known he would be hurting himself as much as her. He just hadn’t understood the nature of the pain. The term regret took on a whole new meaning when the regretted action tended to color the rest of your life. Looks like he’d have learned that, but nothing could have prepared him for how it felt to make love to Kara.
He kept wondering if it had really been so much better than anything else he’d ever known, or if it had just been so long that he’d forgotten. Unfortunately, he remembered only too well his disappointment with Di‘wana. His only other experience had been with the “buckle bunnies,” the trophy hunters among the groupies who flocked around rodeo athletes much like those who followed rock musicians. He’d known women who loudly bragged about all the champion cowboys with whom they’d slept, women who publicly discussed the superior techniques of the bronc and bull riders, saddle versus bareback, ropers as opposed to steer wrestlers. The open indulgence in such raucous sex had been heady indeed—for a while. But even in the midst of it, h
e’d realized that something was missing. He’d expected to find that intangible something with the woman he loved, with Di’wana. Yet, it had been many months before their sex life had developed into something approaching satisfying, and it had never, ever been anything approaching what he’d experienced last night.
Kara had blown away every concept he’d ever had about satisfaction in one evening. And he didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t have a clue. One part of him was convinced that trying to repeat the phenomenon would be like trying to hit the lottery twice in a row. Another part wanted nothing more than to drag her into the woods, rip her clothes off and go at it like two animals in heat. But the consequences of that were utterly terrifying. If Kara were pregnant, he’d have to marry her. He couldn’t do anything else. And just the idea of falling into that trap again made him sick to his stomach. He was a failure at marriage. He’d suspected it even at the time. He’d known that he wasn’t making Di’wana happy, but he hadn’t seemed able to do anything about it. That hadn’t changed. He knew, deep down, that he hadn’t changed. He didn’t even know how to go about it.
He and Kara would both be much better off if he just stayed away from her, but that was harder to do than he’d expected, especially when she stood there patiently enduring such obvious pain and worry. He’d had to walk away to keep from taking her in his arms, but if he was going to maintain the distance he’d so carefully constructed during the day, he’d have to find some way to help her. He sat on the bumper of his truck and tried to think what to do. That’s where Champ found him.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“Hey, sport, what’s up?”
Champ shrugged. “Dunno. The horses got sick, though.”
Rye nodded. “Come here and sit with me. Tell me about your day.”
Champ climbed up onto the bumper and parked himself. “I made cookies with Miss Dayna.”
“Oh, yeah? Think I might get some?”
“Ever’body gets some,” Champ said, as if anything else would be unthinkable.
“Great. What else did you do?”
“I played a game with Dean on the computer.”
“You’re getting to be a real computer whiz, aren’t you?”
Champ nodded emphatically. “And I helped Bord clean the curry brushes.”
“Yuck,” Rye said dramatically. “I always hated doing that myself.”
“It’s easy!” Champ exclaimed. “You just rub ‘em and rub ’em together in a bucket of soapy water, and then you rinse ‘em, and you shake ’em out real good.” He demonstrated how he’d shaken and shaken the brushes. “Then you just let ’em dry.”
“Well, you must be a lot better curry-brush cleaner than I arm.”
Champ nodded matter-of-factly. “Yeah, prob’ly.”
Rye laughed and ruffled the boy’s thick black hair. He’d been a lousy husband, but he loved being a father. “Listen, pard, I’m sorry I haven’t had much time to spend with you lately. I miss hanging out with you.”
Champ screwed up his face. “Well, you know, Dad, it won’t last forever, this trail drive thing. Bord says that afore long we two will be at Grandpa’s and Uncle Jesse’s, and we’ll have all kinds of stories to tell ’em about this—” he squinted, trying to remember the exact words, finally coming up with “—historial ebent.”
Rye clamped down on another laugh. “Historical event, I think is probably what he said.”
Champ nodded. “Yeah. That’s it That’s what Bord said.” Rye paused a moment and casually asked, “Champ, do you like Bord?”
Champ shrugged. “Sure, I like him. Uncle Jesse and Grandpa and Shoes are still my second favorite to you, though.”
“Of course. They’re family.”
“And Dean and George and ‘specially Pogo are prob’ly third, but I liked Mr. Detmeyer real good, too.”
“So did I. He was a fine man.”
Champ looked down at his hands. “And Dayna’s not too bad. She’s about as good as Miss Meryl, but she’s prettier.”
Rye smiled. “Yes, she is prettier.” He wondered if Champ would say anything about Kara, but the boy changed the subject.
“Uncle Jesse’s got a bunch of horses, don’t he, Dad?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he does.”
“That’s what I told Miss Dayna when she was worrying about ours. I told her, prob’ly we’d just borrow some of Jesse’s.”
Suddenly Rye grabbed his son and kissed him in the middle of the forehead. “Champ, you’re a genius!”
“I am?”
“You sure are! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself!”
Rye hurried back to camp and practically snatched the telephone from Dean’s shirt pocket, quickly punching in the numbers while his son announced to everybody in camp that he was a genius. Minutes later Rye gave a curious Dean a thumbs-up sign. He’d solved the immediate problem.
“I really appreciate this, Jess,” he said into the phone. “She’s fighting for something we can both identify with. It’s our way of life as much as hers. And you can be sure I’ll take your advice about locking up the feed and keeping the key. The other will have to be Kara’s decision, but I’ll run it by her and give you a call back.”
A few seconds later he broke the connection, handed the phone over to Dean and went in search of the one person from whom he most needed to keep his distance. She had showered and changed and was drying her hair with a towel. Rye grinned. “I thought of something. Actually, it was Champ.”
Kara stared at him a long moment, the towel still next to her head. “I overheard something about him being a genius, not that he’d tell me, mind you.”
She seemed so sad about it that Rye had to clench his hands into fists to keep from reaching out to her. “He just might have saved our bacon. See, he remembered that his uncle Jess has a neat little sideline business going. He trains horses. He’s going to meet us outside Dove Creek tomorrow with half a dozen of his strongest mounts, and he’s taking our sick ones back with him.”
Kara gasped, dropped the towel onto her shoulder and closed her eyes. Swallowing, she said, “I’ll pay him somehow, I swear it. Whatever it takes, I’ll see that he’s compensated.”
“You just try it,” Rye told her, “and Jess’ll pin your ears back for you.”
“I can’t let him do it for nothing, Rye. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Listen, I’m an easygoing fellow—”
“Yeah. right.”
“Compared to my big brother.”
She actually smiled. “Hard to think of you having a big brother.”
He cocked his head. “Oh, no. Jess is half of everything I am, all the good. He’s the best of big brothers, truly.”
She looked away. “You’re lucky,” she said. “I would have liked to have a big brother, well, a sibling of any sort, actually. But Mom couldn’t have any more after me.” She suddenly turned back to him. “Payne’s the closest thing I have to a big brother. That’s why I can’t believe he has anything to do with what’s happening.”
Rye bit his tongue. When the urge passed to point out that Payne had the best motive, Rye said, “There’s more.”
“More?”
“You won’t like this, but we’re doing it, anyway.”
Some of the fire leaped back into those blue eyes. “Don’t try to tell me—”
“Just shut up and listen a minute,” he said flatly. To his surprise, she did. It made him uneasy. He wasn’t used to quick capitulation from her. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “You can pay for this if it’ll make you feel better, but later when you can afford it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Jess is bringing us some feed, too, in bulk, ’cause that’s how he buys it.”
“Where are we going to keep it?”
He chuckled because she always asked the most salient questions. “He’s bringing it in a container with a lock and a key.”
Kara blinked and slid to the edge of her chair, pointing
a finger at him. “I want you to keep that key on your person at all times. No one goes into that container but you. Period.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
She smiled lopsidedly. “That happens to us a lot. Have you noticed? We seem to think alike, strange as that sounds.”
He suddenly felt the ground shifting beneath his feet and scrambled for firmer footing. “One m-more thing.”
Kara sighed, then tossed back her hair, the damp tendrils curling fetchingly about her face into a pale golden halo. “All right.”
He couldn’t look at her anymore. “Jess wants to bring a newspaper reporter with him, someone he knows.”
“Whatever for?”
He hurried to explain Jesse’s thinking. “He figures there ought to be a public record of what’s been going on, if for no other reason than to build a case against the saboteur once we catch him. There’s a chance, too, that the publicity might scare him off, make him think twice about pulling another one of these stunts.”
Kara shrugged. “Can’t hurt, I suppose.”
“That’s what I th—uh, I mean, I told Jess you’d have to give the word on this one.”
Kara nodded. After a moment she picked up her towel and began drying her hair with it again. He sat there like a lump, watching her, wishing... He couldn’t even bear that. Wishes were just regrets dressed up in longing, his father always said. Rye mumbled that he’d promised Jess he’d call back after talking it over with her. She neither spoke nor looked at him before he hurried away.
They took it real slow and easy on their last day in Utah, which kept Kara from falling out of her saddle in a pathetic heap. She was exhausted from losing two nights of sleep in a row, and from the sharpness of Rye’s temper, he wasn’t in much better shape. The horses had been fed on grass and hay, not the highenergy oat and protein blend to which they were accustomed, and were tired from the hard day before. So it made sense to go slowly, even if it did make for a terribly long day.
Knowing that dinner would be later than usual, Dayna provided a particularly hearty lunch, but Kara still felt as though her stomach was digesting itself by the time they dragged into camp. Thank God that they had real holding pens just outside the small town of Dove Creek, Colorado. They also had ample electricity, which meant real hot water showers in the dinky bath in the motor home. Kara made darn sure that she was at the head of that line, putting off dinner until afterward despite the gnawing in the pit of her belly. Rye’s brother, Jesse, was standing in the chow line next to his nephew when she picked up her plate and fell in behind. He immediately stepped aside, sweeping out his arm.