Heart of the Storm

by Lindsay McKenna

  Grunting, Chase ran his fingers across the area once more. This time, Dana didn’t flinch. Good, she was beginning to trust him. If only a little. “The muscle is shorter than it should be,” he confirmed, then moved his hand to her other shoulder. “Yeah, much shorter than this one.” Damn.

  “It doesn’t bother me.” Dana was relieved to be discussing such an impersonal topic. A huge part of her was in shock because he wasn’t leering at her, as many men might do.

  “It may bother you as you get into the hard, physical demands of this mission,” Chase growled. Looking down, he saw a scar on the right side of her smooth, golden torso. Dana’s belly was softly rounded, a good sign that she could easily carry a baby. It was one of the most sensual parts of a woman’s body, as far as he was concerned. Chase stopped himself from going too far with that observation.

  “Tell me about this scar.”

  Dana looked where he was pointing, and some of her initial fear abated. Chase was treating her like a horse, checking her out from top to bottom, assessing her potential. “Appendicitis attack when I was fourteen. It was removed.”

  “Problems afterward?”

  Dana shook her head. Her heart began to settle down just a little. But it was impossible to ignore Chase on a sensual level. She’d met few men who had the confidence he displayed. “No, no problems. Not then, not now.”

  Grunting, Chase stepped back and critically examined the rest of her. He crouched down, placing both palms on her knees.

  Dana tried not to react, though the roughened feel of his hands made her mouth go dry. As warm as she was, Dana could swear she felt embers of heat emanating from his touch.

  Chase poked and prodded her knees, front and back. “You’ve got damage to your right knee.”

  Amazed he could know that, she looked down at him. “Yes.”

  “Long ago?”

  “A year.”

  “Another horse accident?”

  “Yes.”

  Chase ran his thumb from her knee down her lower leg, testing one particular ligament. He used enough pressure to make Dana flinch.

  “Ow!”

  Jerking a look up at her, Chase said, “Is that all you can do? Cry over each little hurt?”

  Dana tried to pull her leg free of his grasp, but his fingers tightened just enough to hold her in place. When she stopped trying to get away, they eased their grip.

  “That’s better,” he murmured. At least she had the intelligence to know that if she continued to fight him, he’d outlast her. Carrying on with his inspection, Chase slid both hands down the smooth expanse of her calves. He fought the sensual feeling and kept his body from reacting. This was business, not pleasure.

  Dana’s breathing came in gulps. The rough slide of his fingers moving down her calves sent delicious waves of heat up her body. Dana struggled to remain focused on her anger, not the moistness suddenly collecting between her thighs. How could his exploring touch evoke such an intimate response? Closing her eyes, she prayed this appraisal would end very soon.

  “Lift your right foot.” Chase was pleased when she obeyed quickly. After examining her long, slender foot, he released it and unwound from his crouched position. He walked around to her back. “At least you have good legs.”

  “I suppose that’s a compliment?” Dana retorted, hating that he was looking at her from the rear. Without warning, she felt his fingers slide around her left ankle.

  “Lift this foot.”

  Gritting her teeth, Dana did so. What the hell had he found now?

  Chase studied her left foot and saw a pink scar running the length of her sole, from the heel to her big toe. Frowning, he gently ran his fingers along it. “How old is this?”

  Pain flooded her and she jerked her foot away from him. Chase seemed caught off guard as she whirled around and faced him. Sudden tears jammed into her throat, and for a moment, Dana couldn’t speak.

  Chase slowly eased to his feet, his gaze digging demandingly into hers. Dana opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Her embarrassment over her nakedness receded as a widening pool of anguish filled her.

  “The scar,” Chase demanded, watching tears form in Dana’s eyes.

  “I—” She gulped. Forcing back the tears, she said, “Hal and my mother had just been murdered. It was two days after their funeral. I was at my mother’s home on the res when it happened. I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept in four days. I laid down on my mother’s bed and I dropped off, finally. Something in the middle of the night made a noise. I was disoriented, confused. I remember getting up, and I bumped the bedstand. A water glass fell and shattered. I cut my foot open.”

  Chase stood there, protecting himself against her anguish. “It’s done and in the past.” His voice hardened. “So this scar is two years old?”

  “Y-yes.” No tears. Dana swallowed them even as grief from the murders threatened to overtake her.

  “Any problems with it?”

  “None that I know of. I did go to the hospital on the res and the doctor sewed it up for me. He said I’d been lucky.” Taking a ragged breath, Dana whispered, “I didn’t feel lucky.”

  Chase grunted in understanding. “Any other injuries that I haven’t found?”

  Shaking her head, Dana said in a low tone, “No.”

  He went to shrug on his jeans. “Get dressed. We’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  GLAD THAT THEY WERE both clothed again, Dana watched warily as Chase went to the south wall of the hogan. His hands were beautiful, she realized, even if badly scarred and deeply callused. Those hands had touched her. Trying to ignore her reaction to the evocative experience, she watched as he hefted a black canvas bag and brought it back to where she was standing.

  “First things first—good footwear,” he informed her gruffly. “Grab that wooden chair and sit down.”

  As Dana did so, Chase pulled out a pair of socks, and then some leather boots.

  “Try these on. Grandmother Agnes gave me your shoe size. These are handmade by a friend of mine on the res, out of buffalo leather. They’re supple and they flex easily. That’s what you want, because you’re going to be scaling a three-thousand-foot basalt cliff to reach Rogan’s compound.”

  Dana first took the thick socks from Chase. Their fingers met briefly, and she jerked back. He scowled at her reaction. Too bad. Dana wanted no further connection with him, because it made her feel confused, uncomfortable and yet strangely aroused. As she pulled the socks on, she tried to ignore Chase’s overwhelming presence. Hands on his narrow hips, he stood there, waiting. Feeling his impatience, she tightened her mouth as she tried on the boots.

  “They fit perfectly,” she said, a little awed. They felt like warm butter poured over her feet. Running her fingers across the ankle-high boots, she felt the softness of the leather, the sturdiness of the nylon soles. She almost recoiled in surprise when Chase crouched in front of her and felt each foot, checking how snugly the boots fit.

  Though she wanted to jerk her leg away, Dana resisted. She could see the set of his jaw, the intensity of his golden eyes as he ran his hands knowingly along the leather. Trying not to react, she sucked in a breath and held it momentarily. Why did he have to be so damn tactile? She wanted no part of this kind of intimacy with him. For two years, she’d been without a man, and now Chase had crashed into her life, like an eighteen-wheeler Mack truck. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

  “No pinching?” Chase demanded.

  “No…none.”

  “Well, we’ll find out tomorrow morning,” he growled, checking her left boot just as closely. “Charley Crow Wing is a pretty damn good shoemaker. He usually nails it the first time around, but in your case, we can’t take his word for it. You’ll be climbing tomorrow, so we’ll find out pretty quickly if they are a perfect fit or not.” Rising, Chase said, “Get up.”

  Though she obeyed, Dana didn’t like his terse orders. Biting back a response, she watched Chase pick up another black canvas bag, h
eft it to his shoulder and head for the door.

  “Let’s go. We’ve got work to do.”

  Grabbing the straw hat that her grandmother had given her, Dana settled it on her head. She shoved on a pair of sunglasses, picked up her knapsack and slung it over her shoulder. Then she hurried to catch up with Chase, whose stride was twice as long as hers. They were heading up into the box canyon again. The sun was hot, the breeze still, as if the world were holding its breath.

  As she jogged after Chase, Dana felt slightly winded. She reminded herself that she’d lived near sea level for two years, and her body needed time to adjust to the higher altitude.

  She glanced up at Chase as he climbed the slope ahead of her. No question, he was a mountain of a man. Yet as he wound around the rabbitbrush and prickly pear cactus dotting the landscape, he made no noise.

  When she drew even with him, Chase gave her a sidelong glance. “What do you know of Rogan?”

  “Only what my grandmother told me.”

  “He lives in a compound surrounded by a stockade of pine poles. The fortress sits on a shelf of igneous rock atop that cliff I mentioned. He was smart to put his castle up there,” Chase said, leaping up onto a ledge of smooth, red sandstone, the first of many that rose like a staircase up the wall of the canyon.

  “Okay.”

  “Your job will be to scale that three-thousand-foot basalt cliff. Then you have to enter the compound undetected. Your next task is to locate the Storm Pipe, grab it and get the hell out of there. All without being noticed.”

  “Okay…”

  Chase cut her a glare. He seriously questioned whether or not Dana could do any of that. In his heart, he knew she couldn’t, yet he’d given Grandmother Agnes his word to train her for just such a mission. Something deep and warm moved within his heart. Dammit, the last thing he needed was to care about her. Trying to see her only as a student, with no emotional connection, Chase snapped, “Okay? That’s all you have to say? Do you realize what the hell is being demanded of you? How dangerous this really is?”

  He jabbed his hand at the red sandstone wall that rose above them. “If you don’t kill yourself in the climb, then the possibility of being detected scaling that cliff is very real. Rogan has a team of twelve women, all of whom are metaphysically trained. You don’t think any one of them couldn’t detect your energy signature there? They’re cosmic guard dogs, Dana. And they operate real well in the invisible realms, or Rogan wouldn’t have brought them into his fold to work with the Storm Pipe.”

  Stung, Dana snapped back, “I don’t know that much about Rogan. And if his women are metaphysically trained, well, so am I. I know how to cloak myself so my energy can’t be detected.”

  Snorting, Chase growled, “Yeah, right. Just like you saw me waiting up here behind a juniper tree, ready to jump you.”

  Anger surged through Dana. She was huffing now as Chase effortlessly scaled the sandstone slope. He wasn’t out of breath at all, while she was practically gasping as she clambered to keep up with his long strides. Finally, they reached the back wall of the canyon. Looking up, Dana eyed the red-and-white layers of rock that reminded her of a cake.

  Chase dropped the canvas bag, opened it and pulled out nylon climbing ropes attached with aluminum connectors that he called carabiners. Rapidly, he went through the numerous pieces of gear, checking them over as he told her about them. There were titanium pitons to hammer into the rock, angles, mallard wedge hooks, ibis hooks, cliff hangar and grappling hooks. He showed her a wall hammer, a drill holder and a rockpec, rapidly explaining what each was and its use in a climb. The array of equipment was dizzying to Dana.

  “I’m going to put the climbing harness on you,” Chase told her at the end of his lecture. “And then I’ll get my gear on. Once we’re ready, we’re going to start climbing this wall—hammering pitons into it, for starters.”

  “What?” Dana stared at the black nylon harness he held in his hands. “I don’t know anything about climbing. Can’t you teach me some of the basics before we do this?”

  “No. The Indian way is hands-on, in case you forgot that, too,” he growled, motioning for her to step into the nylon trusses.

  Dana reluctantly got into the harness. Chase brought it up to her waist and with swift efficiency locked her into her climbing gear.

  “Tonight, when we get back to the hogan, you’re going to take this off and put it on until you can do it without looking. You’re going to have to climb that cliff in the dark. There won’t be a flashlight available or anything else that could give away your position. So you have to know your harness and how it works as intimately as you know your own body. Got that?” He drilled her with a sharp look.

  “Yes, I got it.” No wonder they called him Iron Hand. They should have called him Steel! But Dana knew that the Iron Hand family was a very old and prestigious one within the Lakota nation. And steel had not been known about in earlier times. Iron was the metal of that age. If they were all like Chase, Dana thought, his family must be a warrior clan.

  For the next hour, Dana absorbed the basics of climbing. By then, the sun was low on the horizon, the canyon swathed in shadows. Her arms hurt. Her joints ached. Chase had demanded that she learn how to pound a steel piton into the sandstone, and much harder limestone, with the hammer. She’d then had to fumble with the nylon ropes, put a carabiner on the piton and run the lines through it to hold her. By the time they were finished, she was halfway up the wall. Chase came down in a rappelling maneuver, and told her to do the same. Finding that if she mimicked his movements, she would be safe, Dana used her legs like springs and pushed away from the face of the cliff. Coming down was a lot more fun, and faster, than going up, that was for sure.

  She landed with a thud and her knees buckled. If Chase hadn’t grabbed her, Dana would have fallen off the narrow shelf. Gasping, she felt fear shoot through her. His hand was like steel as his fingers dug into her shoulder and he hauled her up like some lightweight doll. In seconds, Dana found herself pressed against his hard, unyielding body.

  “Let me go!” she said, flattening her hands against his chest. His flesh was as hard as the look in his flashing golden eyes.

  “And let you fall?” Chase grinned tightly and held on to her shoulder. There was something surprising and delicious about this unexpected contact, he decided. He secretly relished the crush of her breasts against his chest, the pressure of her hip against his. There was no doubt that he was drawn to her sexually. And that was one place he simply couldn’t go.

  “Grab on to that bush in front of you and I’ll release you.”

  Quickly, Dana reached for a small rabbitbrush that grew from between a layer of red sandstone and one of white dolomite. Gasping for breath, her heart hammering, she stepped back, her grasp on the bush keeping her from tumbling off the shelf. Trembling badly, she gave Chase a glare and faced the cliff. Never had a man made her feel so feminine. Or so threatened.

  Despite everything, she realized she’d like to tame this hardened warrior. Was he tamable? Dana thought not as she quickly readied herself to step down on a small outcropping. Chase was already off the shelf and down below on a wide sandstone skirt, waiting impatiently for her to descend.

  Once she’d joined him, Dana wriggled out of her harness. Chase had already done so and put his equipment back in the canvas bag. She scrambled to catch up, feeling slow and bumbling in comparison. Heat radiated from his powerful body as he stood above her, hands settled imperiously on his narrow hips.

  “You carry the bag down. You need all the workout with weights you can get.”

  Disbelief shot through Dana as she watched Chase leap down the slope and head toward the winter hogan far below them. The bastard! Zipping the bag closed, she fumbled to pick it up. The weight was surprising. What the hell else did Chase have in this bag? she wondered as she struggled to lift it onto her right shoulder. Every joint in her body ached. She’d injured her hands a number of times, trying to hammer in the pitons. With her
knees feeling weak and unsteady, she started down cautiously, making damn sure she didn’t fall. Within minutes, Chase had disappeared beyond the grove of piñon and juniper below. Fine. She wanted to be alone, away from that judgmental, bossy man.

  Lips compressed, Dana ignored the beauty of the shadowed canyon. But the fragrance of pine wafting down from the rim was a sweet reminder that nature never smelled bad the way people did. As Dana struggled down the slope with her unwieldy load, she tried to convince herself that Chase smelled bad, too. But that wasn’t true. No, whether she wanted to admit it or not, his scent was like a sensual perfume to her. And as she continued to descend, Dana wondered about his personal life. Her grandmother had said very little about him.

  Well, Dana was going to find out tonight. They had to live in that hogan—together—and she wasn’t going to be trapped with a total stranger.

  OVER A MEAL OF LAMB STEW that Grandmother Agnes had sent up with them, Dana sat at an old pine table, Chase opposite her. He’d wolfed down two huge bowls of the stew, along with some fresh cornbread, saying nothing. So much for a polished dinner partner. After finishing her own stew, Dana set the bowl aside.

  “I want to know who you are,” she told Chase.

  His chin lifted, his gold eyes resting on her. Instantly, Dana felt his power, his energy, move right through her defenses. Feeling uncomfortable, she added, “Grandmother didn’t say much about you. If I have to spend five weeks with you, I want to know who I’m working with.”

  Pleased at her demand, Chase pushed his empty bowl aside. Taking another square of warm, homemade cornbread from the plate, he slathered it with melted butter. “I’ll tell you what I want you to know,” he agreed.

  Dana wasn’t going to be put off by the warning in his tone. She watched as Chase bit into the cornbread. Seeing how his eyes gleamed, she figured he must really like it. Usually, they were flat and hard.

  Getting to know Chase a bit better would make her feel less intimidated, she figured.