by Mary Brady
She sat for a moment taking in the warmth of his smile. He really didn’t seem to mind the people’s penchant for living in your pocket. Many outsiders found it hard to take. “We’ll need to hike a little way, if that’s all right.”
“I’m getting used to the altitude. I think I can hack it.”
Abby tucked water bottles in the holders of a waist pack that was filled with supplies. Reed took charge of the sandwiches and they started up the trail lined with wildflowers and buzzing bees. The sun shined down from a brilliantly blue sky and small white clouds floated above the mountaintops.
“It smells good,” Reed said quietly from behind her.
“Wildflowers and lack of pollution.”
“Very unlike the streets of Chicago.”
Every step she took up the rocky trail, Abby could feel Reed Maxwell’s presence behind her. Before she could even hear the sound of the waterfall, her body was humming with unwanted energy and she wondered if she should turn back to the car and get them back to town.
At a fork in the trail, Abby stopped abruptly.
Reed put a hand on her shoulder and she inhaled sharply from the startled sensation of wanting to turn around and, enemy or not, step into his arms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“THE SHORTEST WAY IS that way.” Abby pointed up a steep, rocky incline and resisted the urge to put her lips to the fingers resting on her shoulder. “But with your Chicago shoes, we should take the longer way.”
“I can probably make it up that.”
We’ll see, she thought as she started up the incline.
She gave some of her attention to the trail ahead. With her hiking shoes on, it wasn’t a difficult climb, but she had never gone up with a sexy man on her heels—or one in street shoes. She couldn’t afford to slip and fall after giving him a hard time about his footwear.
“Thanks for thinking of me.”
She quickened her pace. “Actually, I was thinking of how much I’m going to enjoy the sandwiches. If you hurt yourself, I might have to go hungry.”
His laughter followed her up and so did he.
As she climbed, Abby realized how much she missed adult fun. Climbing at a thigh screaming pace the air seemed fresher. The wildflowers and pine trees seemed more fragrant when her mind didn’t have to keep the needs of a child constantly in mind. She enjoyed the adults she worked with at the clinic, but that was work. Almost every waking moment outside the clinic involved a five-year-old, sometimes two or three of them. Right now she even enjoyed her lungs’ demand for more air as she pushed up the trail. Hiking these days was usually at a short-legged little boy’s pace.
She heaved her weight up one last large step onto the flat rock that led to the falls overlook. Then she let the breeze cool her off as she sauntered on slightly jittery legs to the edge and looked down into the tumbling water.
The sun streaked through the pine trees and created a rippling rainbow in the mist at the base of the falls.
“It’s beautiful.” Reed spoke from so close behind her, she thought she felt his breath on the shell of her ear. She would need only lean back a little and she’d feel the hardness of his chest against her back. It would feel so good to lean against someone again.
She sidestepped to dodge the emotion and sat down on the rocks overlooking the falls.
“I guess your city shoes didn’t slow you down much.”
“They might have, but my ego is too big to let me get too far behind.”
He stepped over to the edge so he could see the falls looking, she thought, no worse for the wear except for splotches of brown dust on the legs of his black pants. In fact, the dust on his shoes, the pink cast to his cheeks, and what the wind did to his dark hair made him look less the city man. More attractive.
Someone she might want to…
“Sometimes,” she said as she purposefully turned her gaze to the falls and her mind away from what she might want from him, “in the spring, there is so much water going over the falls it almost seems as though you can reach out and touch the rainbows.”
“You more than like it out here, I mean, in Montana.”
She gave a short laugh. The mountains fed her soul. How does one explain that sort of thing to a city person? “I do. It’s not just the beauty and vast amount of peace and quiet. The mountains and the wildflowers, well, they never, um—”
“Judge you?”
Maybe he could understand. “Yes. The smell, the sound, even the textures and colors of the rock, trees, peaks and valleys soothe my brain, help me keep things in perspective.”
The bright sun made her squint, and when he turned toward her the shadows deepened the dark of his eyes until she saw the mystery living there, along with the sexy. She wondered if she’d ever find out what that was all about.
She huffed out a breath of frustration that her mind, so used to being disciplined, now meandered like a lost soul down a path in a foreboding forest.
“I’m starved.” She stuck her hand out for the bag he held. If she couldn’t let herself lust, she could at least eat.
He sat down on the rock a couple feet away from her, and she handed him one of the boxed sandwiches, but when she took out the second sandwich for herself, the bag wasn’t empty. She looked at him and then into the bag and back at him. “Oh, you are bad.”
“Me? Bad? I didn’t think you’d figure it out so soon. What gave me away?”
She pulled her hand from the bag and held up the pair of cookies wrapped in plastic wrap. “Not just cookies—the big ones and the best ones. Oatmeal chocolate chip with walnuts.”
“Ah, good bad.”
She nodded. Adult company. Hiking. Cookies. A warm sunny summer day. A sexy man. Did things get any better than this?
She looked at Reed Maxwell, really looked at him. The wind ruffled his hair and the smile lines around his mouth gave him an air of experience with laughter. When his gaze didn’t waver from hers she realized they were staring. Man and woman sizing each other up. Wondering what men and women wondered when they took the measure of each other.
“I guess eating would be in order,” she said, when she once again took control of her gaze and brought it to bear on the sandwich box in her lap. Hungry. She was hungry. A sudden image of what Reed might look like without the dark blue shirt flitted into her mind.
She snapped open the box and reached in for half the sandwich. By the time she brought it to her mouth she no longer knew what the drool was for, the man or the food. It didn’t matter. The sandwich was all it was going to get.
“Good sandwich,” Reed said after they had sat for several minutes eating in silence.
“We’re spoiled. Alice, actually her name is Sarah, who owns Alice’s Diner took over for her aunt, who wasn’t Alice, either. Apparently Alice died several decades ago, and everybody just calls the owner Alice. Anyway the diner has always had good food. Tourists are often surprised. I think they expect greasy spoon fair or that people in Montana don’t know anything about popular cuisine.”
“Your Alice would do well in Chicago.”
“Well, you can’t have her. She came here to get away from the big city. Phoenix, I think.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You came here to get away from the big city.”
“Something like that. St. Adelbert is a great place to bring up a child, a safe place.”
“How long have your sister and my brother known each other?”
Whoa. Not good. The question sounded innocent enough, but she sneaked a sideways look at him to try to tell if he was trying to accuse her of something. She knew the answer to his question, but having him ask after she had mentioned the “child,” she knew she had made a tactical error. Six or seven years. Evade? Lie? Give it all away?
“Several years. They met after Jesse had been living in Denver for a while. He said he hated Chicago, but the easy escape to the mountains made Denver an okay big city.” All vague. All the truth as
she knew it to be. She took a bite of the second half of her sandwich, more for something to do as her hunger faded rapidly with the first half.
“He hated the family pressure in Chicago. As long as he was living in the area, he was expected to work for the family business. Our father could never stop bringing up how disappointed he was that Jesse wasn’t holding up his end. Eventually, Jesse just stopped coming around to listen and then he moved away without telling us where he was going or even that he was leaving.”
She could feel the pain in his voice, a missing brother, family, childhood memories. She wanted to blurt out everything she knew, well, everything she suspected, but would that help or hurt? All she knew for sure was the child was her sister’s. Abby had held Lena’s hand and empathetically felt every labor and delivery pain when Kyle was born. And she had taken care of Kyle for every day of his life since then, until today. The first day she had relinquished control for longer than the length of a workday. Now if she could just keep from stumbling her way into losing all control. “I don’t think he told Lena about his family, about you, until they had known each other for a while.”
He stared into the water falling over the uneven rocky surface. “Jesse does a good job of living under the radar. We only found out he was in Denver because our father plays golf with a banker who could tell him where Jesse’s money had gone.”
“That doesn’t sound legal.”
After a short bark of laughter he said, “I’m sure the two of them found a way to justify what they were doing.”
“I hope he’s okay.”
“My brother has somehow always managed to be okay, no matter what the world has thrown at him.”
“He can charm the noise off a rattler. That’s what one of the women neighbors says about him.” She thought of Jesse’s goofy grin, his lanky frame, his whatever attitude. “I hope it’s enough.”
Reed moved closer to her and put his arm around her shoulder. She held her breath, not knowing what to do, how to respond to the gesture.
“Thanks for caring about my brother,” he said and gave her shoulder a soft squeeze. “He hasn’t had that many people in his life who did.”
She looked into his eyes and tried to see what was there. If it was up to her, missing brother or not, she’d lean in closer and kiss him on his sexy mouth.
“You’re welcome.” She jumped up and stepped away. “Um, there’s a view you should see since we’re here. It’s only a little farther up the trail, if you’re interested.”
He stood and gathered the leavings of their lunch including the unopened cookies. “Lead on.”
Abby hiked as fast as she dared. What she wanted to do was to hike as fast as she could and keep hiking. While hurrying over the uneven and sometimes steep terrain it was easier not to think of the man behind her, but she couldn’t drag him through the whole mountain range hoping he’d give up and go home to Illinois.
They hiked over the next rise and the next. Eventually they reached a lookout. The land spread out in the deep frothy green of pine trees. On the far side, craggy mountains stood, silhouetted against the stark blue of the Montana sky.
“Pinus ponderosa. That’s what the trees out there are,” she said as Reed came up behind her and stopped on the rock outcropping. “The Montana state tree.”
“Ponderosa pine?”
“One of its many names. The West was practically built on that tree. Railroads, buildings, bridges, just about everything of any size that was built out here was built using this tree.” She could feel the heat radiating off his body so close behind her. Talk trees, mountains, anything to keep your mind occupied, she told herself as she casually took a step away. It might have been a mistake to trust herself to bring him here.
“I guess I never thought much about trees. Cattle, horses, pioneers, covered wagons, but it makes sense. They needed something to use to build things.”
It was all so beautiful out here away from civilization. So private she and Reed could do anything here and the world would never know.
“Abby?”
Abby pretended she didn’t hear him.
“Did you know there are sparks flying between us?”
Know it? She could feel them. The heat was trying to scorch her.
She turned slowly toward him and met his gaze and maybe she leaned forward a little, she wasn’t sure. Reed reached for her and pulled her to him. When he lowered his mouth to hers, the kiss was soft and exploring and she leaned against his hard body and took in all the pleasure he was offering.
He lifted his mouth from hers. She supposed to let her flee if she was thinking of getting away.
“I have wanted to do that since you answered the door and became the most beautiful thing I’d seen in Montana.”
She started to laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Although a part of her most definitely wanted what he said to be true. Beautiful.
He leaned in and kissed her again. This time he deepened the kiss and brought his arms around her as if she wasn’t engulfed enough. She returned his kiss with an eagerness of her own. Kissing him was better than she’d imagined, far better.
She reached around behind him and ran her hands up and down his perfect back. Pleasure rushed wildly inside her until it began to seep into the tiny dark places where she held herself protected. Barriers began to fall. Inhibitions forced on her by her life began to crumble.
She pushed away. “It’s been a long time since I’ve kissed a man and I’m not sure I’ve ever been kissed that well before.”
A delicious smile curved his lips, but he didn’t let her go. “It just seemed like the right thing to do. Emma’s advice, you know.”
“Wrong in so many ways, but thanks. I enjoyed it.” She reached up and pressed her lips briefly to his. “However…”
“However?”
“Yes, however. I do have to get to the Doyle ranch to check on Evvy before they send out a search party.”
“Would they do that?”
“They would. If I went missing, all able bodies in the town of St. Adelbert would come out looking.”
“So you’re that important?”
She knew he was teasing and smiled. “You’ve met many of them by now. What do you think would happen if one of us went missing? They’d be out searching for Jesse if they thought he was missing around here.”
“Off to Evvy’s it is.” He dropped his arms to his side and stepped back so she could lead the way back down.
She started, careful to go fast enough that she had to concentrate on staying upright on the trail and not think too much about the man behind her. Kissing the man behind her. Liking the kiss. Wanting more.
REED GLANCED OVER AT ABBY as she smoothly maneuvered her SUV around another sharp curve. The ride back toward the Doyle ranch was taking place mostly in silence. But there wasn’t much to say that didn’t involve excuses for the kiss, for which there were none.
In the past, when someone said “I don’t know what came over me” Reed knew he would have scoffed at the lack of logic, but now it felt like a stupid mind trick that might have some basis in reality.
Or not.
He did know what had come over him when he kissed Abby. She had. She was kind, generous and real and all those things made her as alluring as any glitzed-up city woman—maybe more. Best of all, he realized with a kind of tantalizing pleasure, she didn’t want anything from him. In fact, she had made it pretty clear she didn’t want big-city life, no matter what frills came with it.
He stared out at the scenery and after a while confessed that he was captivated by the package, the woman and her Western milieu.
It had to be the novelty.
It was easy to see the wealth here lived in the land and, not to be too corny, in the people. There were occasional transplanted Hollywood stars and cowboy wannabe corporate moguls hidden among the peaks, but for the most part, the people here were much closer to the battle for survival, closer to real life. The Harveys’ need for a firebreak. T
he small business owners like John Miller at the hardware store and Taylors’ Drug Store, even grizzly Fred. There was even a local furniture maker who cut down trees to make tables and chairs. There were no corporate layers between these people and life.
He wondered what it would be like to live where the mountains soared and valleys grew deep with Ponderosa pines and were spotted with ranches. He wondered what it would be like to live where you impacted people’s lives and not just their overstuffed bank accounts.
He suddenly felt humble knowing there was a BMW in the garage of his downtown Chicago condo and his boat lay moored in the nearby marina, a rarely used boat that could probably pay for Abby’s house and the taxes on it for the rest of her life.
He wondered if he could some how do that for her.
He quickly saw a few of the ramifications of that particular thought. Probably not a good idea. The best thing he could do for these honest people was to get what information from them he could about his brother and leave. Meddling with other people’s lives was his mother’s obsession, and he was sure the people here wouldn’t like it any more than he did.
He would drive down to Utah and check with the park people to see if his brother had filled out a permit. If Jesse had done that, at least, Reed would know he had truly gone hiking in Escalante and when. If he found Jesse had been there, he could check with people in the nearest towns, if there were any, and see if they could shine some light on Jesse’s whereabouts. If not, his only choice would be to fly back to Chicago and break the news to their mother, break her newly awakened heart most likely.
Abby turned the SUV into the relatively smooth gravel lane of what she had earlier pointed out as the Doyle ranch.
After a short drive, she pulled up in front of the house and stopped.
ABBY ADDRESSED REED, “I’ll be about a half hour. You can stay in the truck, but Evvy Doyle will probably take offense and thus send one of her sons out here to fetch you.” She grinned at him. “They’re usually not armed, but it would be easier if you came in and had a cup of coffee while you waited. I promise it will be much better than the lemonade.”