HIS TENDER TOUCH

by Sharon Mignerey

"Strange how?" Gray asked, trying to recall anything he had ever heard Richard or Hawk say about the owner of Puma's Lair. Lambert hadn't come to the ranch often, but when he did, he loved to hunt.

  "Puma's Lair was always his baby. I always reviewed the financials as part of the total package, but he didn't want any advice, didn't want any input, didn't want me to visit the place. Nothing. Until now."

  "What did you think?"

  She shrugged. "Howard is eccentric sometimes, and this isn't the first time he's pulled me off one project to do something else." She gave Gray a faint smile. "I can't even believe I'm standing here talking about this. He's been a mentor, a friend. When my mother died, he was a rock."

  Gray touched Audrey's hand. "But I hear an unspoken question in that."

  "It's completely the kind of thing he does, and he knows just how to make you feel great. But he expects—almost demands—that same kind of loyalty in return."

  "And asking him about the sale wasn't loyal?"

  "It is if it was a legitimate error." Audrey's glance fell to her feet. "He sees himself as the last of the great individualists—the kind of men who settled the West. You never met him, did you?"

  Gray shook his head.

  "If you had, you'd understand what I mean. He dresses Western—blatantly so. Imagine a Buffalo Bill Cody fringed leather coat and a waxed mustache. He loves to hunt, and once he bragged to me there wasn't an animal he couldn't track."

  An instant of silence followed, then she giggled, the sound verging on hysterical.

  "Remember when I said the bad guys were always expert trackers?" Her eyes again locked with his. "Gray, if half of his bragging was true, he's an expert tracker."

  "I see," was all Gray allowed, thinking that an old detective's adage had once again proved true—follow the money and you'll find the perp.

  "How could he?" she whispered. She met Gray's glance. "He's ready to kill me, isn't he?"

  Gray stared down at her, wanting to reassure her, unwilling to lie to her, hating the realization that clouded her beautiful eyes. Much as he wanted to promise her that he'd keep her safe, he couldn't even offer that. Bitter experience had taught him that would be a lie.

  "Ready to go?" He rested one knee against a stone near the bottom of the gully.

  She glanced from him to the bottom of the muddy gulch. "Why don't we just walk up there?" She nodded toward the flatter, drier terrain above them.

  Gray lifted his head enough to see the Jeep continuing with a methodical search.

  "We do, and it's only a matter of time before he spots us. Climb up."

  "I should walk."

  "We've had this conversation." Gray didn't add that the pallor of her skin worried him, that she needed to conserve her energy in case they needed to make another run for cover, that as soon as the adrenaline wore off she would crash.

  She stood watching him, and Gray knew in that moment he admired her more than he had ever admired anyone else. She was obviously shocked about her boss, but she hadn't whined. Not about that, or a single other damned thing. Splotches of mud and a sheen of dust covered her jeans. Her hair was a mess, and her face was dirty. She looked beautiful to him anyway.

  "I don't know how I was lucky enough to run across someone like you," she said. She suddenly brushed her lips against his cheek. "But I'm glad."

  The statement surprised him, but not half as much as her soft kiss.

  "Climb up," he ordered, his voice gruff. She couldn't know how alluring her trust was, couldn't know how much he wished he was worthy of it.

  She settled her weight on his back, and he stood up, threading her legs between his arms and his sides. Desire, urgent and unexpected, lanced through him. Hell of a time to get turned on, he thought. He might want her, but she'd be crazy to want him back. He was filthy, and they would both be a lot dirtier before they got out of the ravine. That and the knowledge Lambert could return any time made him focus beyond the clamoring of his body to the problem at hand—finding someplace dry and safe to spend the night.

  To keep her from thinking about her boss, Gray asked her about her life in Denver, her hobbies, her job. Her willingness to share surprised him; he hated talking about his past. The picture she painted was of a woman who worked too hard, took too little time for herself and who was good at her profession. In fact, he discovered they both used work as an escape from their personal lives. Unlike him, she admitted the cause—not wanting to come home to an empty apartment where she was reminded of her mother's death.

  He liked listening to her, and he liked the moments of silence that fell between them, each comfortable, each giving him tantalizing glimpses of his life merging with hers when they got out of this mess. But that, he reminded himself, was impossible. He tried to imagine hitting her, tried to imagine being as mean and as mad as he'd seen his father and his brothers be with the women in their lives. The image simply wouldn't jell. Lifting a hand against Audrey? He couldn't imagine it. Even so, he didn't trust the feeling. Too many times he had watched his father apologize and beg for another chance with promises that were always broken.

  Gray didn't know where they were headed, except into the foothills, but he was real sure of one thing. There was no place else he would rather be than with Audrey. His grip around her legs tightened marginally.

  He wished they had a couple of the horses from Hawk's herd. Hell, one horse would be fine. Even riding double, they could make it back to the ranch or the pueblo long before it got dark. Of course, they wouldn't be able to hide as easily, and they sure wouldn't be able to outrun the Jeep.

  Gradually the light began to fade, and the walls of the gully cast dark shadows across the bottom. Around another bend, they came to a sandstone wall, worn smooth by the water, that had enough handholds and footholds to climb out of the ravine without getting any muddier. Gray gave Audrey a boost, then climbed up after her.

  He noticed she didn't have to be encouraged to lie flat when she came over the edge of the ravine. He followed, scanning the surrounding landscape. He was pleased with the progress they had made, and the line of cottonwoods were less than a half mile away. Taking the binoculars out of the case around his neck, Gray did a 360-degree search.

  The heavy overcast of much of the past couple of days had lightened some. Behind the mountains to the west, there were a couple of patches of blue sky.

  Gray didn't see any sign of Lambert. That was good. Or bad? The cottonwoods stood in water that hadn't been visible before.

  "Well, so much for that," Gray said, adding that their destination was flooded. He scanned the terrain, then pointed. "See that steep ridge? It will be a hard climb, but once we're on the top, we can find cover in one of the mountain canyons." He glanced down at her, thinking of all that she had been through today. "Are you up to a climb?"

  She grinned. "It beats some of the alternatives I've thought of in the last hour."

  He pulled her to her feet, took the pack off her shoulders. Unzipping the top, he rummaged around inside and brought out a pair of socks. When he extended his arm, she smiled, delight lighting her face.

  "Socks! You don't know how much—" She took them from him, and sat down. In the midst of brushing off her feet, her glance fell to his muddy boots. She stared a moment, then extended the socks back toward him. "I think you need these more than I do."

  Hers was as unselfish an offer as he had been made in a long time. Gray sat down next to her and showed her the other pair of socks he had pulled from the pack. "I don't know why I had two pairs in here. Luckily, I also have another pair of shoes."

  "Amazing," Audrey said, peering into the shadowed opening of the pack. "And there's still room for dinner in there, too?"

  "I work on the theory that if you wait long enough to eat, you'll be hungry enough not to notice the food is terrible." He pulled off one of the boots and the muddy sock underneath.

  Audrey pulled one of the tube socks over her foot. "In that case, I'm sure you're a gourmet cook because I'm starved."<
br />
  "The one thing we need is water." He brushed off his other foot before putting on the clean sock and dry shoe.

  "There's plenty in the bottom of the gully." She put on the other sock, then her shoes, which she pulled from the safety of his pocket.

  "To drink." Gray put on the dry socks and a pair of walking shoes. "That's why we were heading for the cottonwoods—there are a couple of good fishing holes in the creek there." Tying the shoelaces of his boots together, he fastened them to one of the grommets at the bottom of his backpack and stood up.

  She extended one of her feet and wiggled her toes, then looked up at him with a smile. "My feet are warm at last. I could just kiss you—"

  He pulled her into his arms, and captured her mouth hungrily. A muffled whimper of surprise filled her throat, but she kissed him back, her mouth opening in invitation.

  This wasn't the right time, this wasn't the right place and he sure as hell wasn't the right man. None of that kept him from accepting what she offered. Lifting her arms around his neck, he wrapped his around her back and edged his knee between her thighs.

  Without warning, her arms slipped from his neck, and she shoved against him—hard

  His arms tightened around her as his emotions fought against the end of this one perfect moment. She tore her mouth from his, and shoved again, this time successful in breaking away from his embrace.

  Gray opened his eyes. She wasn't looking at him, but at the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. Her breathing was as ragged as it had been when they sprinted away from her burning car. Realization cold as rain, washed through him, reminding him no matter how much he wanted her, he was the wrong man.

  With gentleness he had never once demonstrated to another adult, he lifted her chin with the merest touch of a finger. She met his gaze, her eyes wide. He expected to see fear. Instead, confusion puckered her brow.

  "I'd forgotten about the gun," she confessed "I felt it digging into my side, and all of a sudden I remembered Howard."

  Gray smoothed away the knot between her brows with his thumb.

  "And it scared me."

  "I can understand that."

  "You didn't pull the gun when we were hiding under the overhang." She looked up at him, her brows once again knit together.

  He sensed the question within her statement, but didn't answer. He had killed a man—a hazard that came with being a police officer. Or so the police Psychologist had encouraged him to believe. A righteous shoot. Gray knew better. And he knew he had lost the objectivity that had once made him a good cop.

  Gray touched Audrey's cheek with a callused finger, his mother's warning echoing through his head. A man who lives by the gun dies by the gun. And God help me, son, I don't want that for you.

  A promise. But, damn, he didn't see any other choice.

  "I'll do everything I can to keep you safe," he promised. Audrey raised her eyes to his, a sad smile curving her lips. "I know."

  Picking up the pack, he slung it over his back and held a hand out to her. "Let's go."

  Gray didn't point out to her how exposed they were in the half mile to the edge of the ridge, but knew she sensed it because she pushed herself to walk fast. Her panting worried him, but he figured there would be time to rest later, and he lengthened his own strides to keep up with her near trot.

  Gray scanned the terrain in front of them, looking for cover, looking for an easy ascent up the first ridge. At the top, junipers and piñons grew, looking black against the fading light. The air had turned crisp, and Gray noted the clouds had pushed farther to the east, leaving an expanse of clear sky above them. This time of year, frost was a distinct possibility, which meant it could be a long, cold night.

  Gray found another game trail that led toward the mesa. Determined to make the most out of the remaining light, Gray grasped Audrey's hand and led her on a zigzagging course up the side of the hill. Behind them, they left a clear trail, and he almost wished it would cloud over and rain again.

  The sun set about the time they reached the top of the mesa, painting the clouds in brilliant shades of crimson. Ponderosa pines towered above them, the air pungent with their scent. Above the pines, another ridge loomed above them. Gray came to a stop in front of one of the piñon trees, where Audrey sank to the ground, her chest heaving.

  "He could have been watching from somewhere," she said. "And even if he wasn't, even I could follow the trail we just left."

  Gray gave her high marks for realizing exactly how exposed they had been on the slope, and he knew exactly who she meant by he. "Yeah."

  Gray scanned the sky. "We're fast running out of light."

  Audrey stood and brushed off the back of her jeans. Holding out her hand to him, she said, "Then we'd better get going if we're going to find a place to spend the night."

  He took it, walking silently beside her as they headed away from the edge of the mesa. Gradually, the trees around them became thicker. Twice Gray saw deer gliding through the trees silent as shadows. He chose the hardest-packed ground to walk on, noticing that Audrey walked in his footsteps. If he stepped on a rock, so did she. The lady learned fast.

  Suddenly, Gray didn't feel Audrey's presence behind him. He stopped walking and turned around. She was poised at the edge of a sandstone face they had just crossed fifteen or twenty feet behind him. Her attention was focused up a narrow canyon, its opening no more than fifteen feet wide.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  She gave him a faint smile and nodded toward the canyon. "Normally, I'm the last person to follow a hunch."

  "But?"

  "What about up one of these small canyons?"

  Gray looked toward the narrow opening. "Most of these are going to be box canyons. We could be trapped."

  "But we don't know until we look, right?"

  Maybe Audrey was on to something, he thought. Maybe this was the hiding place they had been looking for. "Right."

  He led her through the notch, taking extra care to leave no tracks. Audrey followed suit. They came upon clear water running down a stream at the canyon mouth that was too narrow, too insignificant to be called a creek.

  "It's safe to drink, isn't it?" she asked.

  "As safe as we're going to find without boiling it first," he answered.

  She knelt and scooped the water into her hand, drinking thirstily. "I never knew water could taste so good."

  Gray drank also. Fifty yards in from the canyon opening, it widened slightly. Huge boulders were spread over the bottom, a remnant from some ancient landslide. A single scraggly tree grew between a pair of the enormous rocks. Beyond, a faint path led up the windswept sandstone walls. Gray looked at the rocky bottom of the canyon and the high-water marks twenty feet above their heads.

  "We can't stay down here," he said. "Do you want to go back out there onto the mesa, or follow that path?"

  Twisting the silver bracelets as he noticed she did when she was thinking, she gazed at the faint trail that twisted up the canyon wall. "I think we should follow the path."

  He glanced at the sky, and decided to play out her hunch, though the canyon was potentially a trap. "We'll give it fifteen minutes. If it turns out to be nothing, that still gives us time to get back here and get through the notch before it's too dark to see where we're going."

  Gray led the way up the path, which became even more narrow as they climbed. They came to a sharp bend, and ahead of them the trail forked. One trail continued upward, where the light was steadily fading. Below the shelf, the narrow canyon was in deep shadow. Ponderosa pines grew at the base of the cliff, and the faintest hint of sulfur hung in the air.

  "Wait here," Gray told her. Swiftly, he climbed the ascending path. At the crest, he stopped. To the northwest, the peaks of the San Juans rose, their summits covered with new snow. To the east, he could see the fold of land that nestled Puma's Lair and La Huerta. Closer, he could see the barn and fields where Hawk kept his horses. Miles beyond was the shadowed canyon where the Rio Grande f
lowed.

  His attention returned to the field where the horses were, including his own. Sketches of a plan came together, a plan that just might work if they could get to the horses without being seen. He thought about leading Audrey off the ridge.

  The trail was no more than a faint impression as it went down the crest before it was lost within the tumbled chaos of a talus slope that would be impassable in the dark. But tomorrow— It was a way to safety. He turned away from the crest. Hopefully, Lambert would look for them on the mesa, if he was still looking. The canyon below them was one of a dozen they had passed, which left Lambert with a lot of ground to cover if he began searching each one. The shelf below them was high enough to keep a campfire from being detected, and protected enough so it shouldn't be as cold as the valley.

  So far, Audrey's hunch had been on target. Gray sniffed the air, again catching the faint scent of sulfur, and the corner of his mouth lifted. The lady had found herself a hot springs. He would bet money on it.

  Gray returned to Audrey and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "There's a good lookout from up there. Let's see if we can find some shelter now."

  Audrey let him hold her hand as they walked toward the plateau, hoping they would stop soon. Her occasional walk around the park at home and her couple nights a week on an exercise bike in front of the TV hadn't left her fit enough to meet the demands she had made on her body today.

  Exhaustion crept over her, demanding she stop. An hour ago, she had been starved. At the moment, she was sure she wouldn't have energy enough to eat.

  Beyond the trees, Audrey could see a cliff that rose a couple of hundred feet above them. Wind and water had hollowed out the stone at the base of the cliff, reminding her of the overhangs where the Anasazi had built their cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde. This one was much smaller, but it would provide them shelter for the night. Noticing the blackened stone at the back of the shallow cavity, she realized this had been a shelter for people before them. A shiver of awareness chased down her spine.

  Gray whistled in surprise. "Yes," he said, as though answering an unspoken question.