Alone was damn stupid.
He needed a lover, she thought fiercely, and he needed one badly. Not just any old lover, but a woman who’d knock him three sides of Sunday, who understood the difference between physical and emotional strength, who could give him an unforgettable lesson that expressing need and risking hurt were not an automatic equation. And since a woman who dared try pampering Pax would likely get her head bitten off, she’d better be tough up-front.
Kansas could define this potential lover of Pax’s in painstaking detail.
She just wasn’t sure if she had the guts, arrogance, or terrifying nerve to apply for the job.
“Hey…if you were about to look in my drawers, don’t let me stop you.”
Lord, he’d startled her! With her heart in her throat, Kansas spun around. “I would never do such a thing…” Since her own mother wouldn’t buy such a blatant lie, she quickly amended that. “At least when there was any risk of being caught.”
To her relief, Pax chuckled at her honesty. “Now why am I not convinced that fear of being caught would inhibit you one iota?”
“Hey, I have the usual bucket load of inhibitions. It’s just that curiosity is a terribly powerful motivator.” Maybe it was her put-on prim tone that made him chuckle again, but he really didn’t seem too irritated to find her snooping. Kansas thought she shouldn’t have been surprised. Pax often exhibited endless tolerance with other people’s flaws. It was his own he had no patience with.
Neither seemed inclined to dwell on what she was doing in his bedroom.
She watched him wiping his hands on a towel—he must have come from his surgery, although instead of a lab coat, he was wearing a navy T-shirt tucked into faded jeans. His feet were in sandals, his raven hair yanked back in a leather thong. Although his eyes looked bruised-tired, there was no tiredness in the way he looked her over.
His gaze skimmed the bumps and curves in her short black skimp, skimmed her choice of moon and star earrings and equally whimsical bracelet, but he neither lingered on her attire nor her figure. She felt his eyes on her face like honey clinging to toast—he hadn’t forgotten kissing her. He hadn’t forgotten touching her.
“So…who was the patient you were treating this morning?” It wasn’t news for her, that sling of heat and curling-toes awareness of him. But the raw desire in his eyes was big news. She had the pulse-pounding feeling that she wasn’t the only one considering auditioning a lover in his bed, but that naked emotion in his face disappeared in a blink. Pax suddenly quit wiping his hands on that towel, and his expression switched to neutral faster than a race-car driver could downshift.
“My patient was a German shepherd whose days of seducing the gals in the neighborhood are now over. He’ll be sleeping off the anesthetic for a while—and I don’t know what you wanted to tell me, but I’m pretty desperate for coffee. I’ve been playing in the surgery since sunup.”
Pax had barely turned around to head for the kitchen before the tortoiseshell cat showed up to weave around his ankles; the fight victim from the living room found him right after that. “I hate cats,” he called over his shoulder.
“I can see that.”
“These cats aren’t mine. None of ‘em are mine. And in the six years I’ve lived here, there hasn’t been one good-looking cat who dropped in—it’s always the mangy, ugly, godforsaken-looking ones that no one in their right minds would ever adopt. I fix ‘em. Assuming they aren’t pregnant when they arrive—which most of them are. As far as I can tell, there are no male cats. Only pregnant female ones.”
“What an interesting scientific viewpoint for a vet to have,” Kansas said wryly. “You think they get that way by immaculate conception?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them. God knows they’re contrary in every other way. If I were going to have a pet—which I’m gone way too much to have time for—it’d be a dog. It would never be a cat.”
“Ah.” Once in the kitchen, she watched Mr. Anticat Tough-Guy refill a giant size food dish with cat food—before pouring the coffee for himself that he was so desperate for. Somewhere there had to be a pet door, because the rest of the feline herd showed up in a swarm. Since he was busy, she opened cupboards to find a mug for him. The coffeemaker was already half full—although the brew looked blacker than pitch.
“You take sugar? Cream?”
“No.”
“Of course not,” she murmured. He’d take his coffee as minimalist as his life-style. No sweetness, no softness, no luxuries.
“What does that ‘of course not’ mean?”
“Nothing. Just talking to myself—where do you want this?”
“Out on the patio.”
In the air. With the bugs and heat. She sighed. At least it was only blistering and not die-of-misery hot yet, and the patio was shaded. Carrying his mug, she pushed open the sliding glass doors. Outside, a wrought-iron lounger and chairs clustered around a glass table. She noticed a dozen bird feeders in the yard, all shapes and sizes.
Pax followed her, leaving the door open. A terrorizing way to let tarantulas and scorpions in, she thought, but it was his house. No matter how much she wanted to pry further around his house, his life—and him—Kansas was regretfully aware that she had not been invited. And for a few minutes, she’d almost forgotten the serious reason she’d stopped by.
“Pax,” she said, “I think I know where my brother is.”
Pax heard the excitement in her voice, and felt a prompt heavy thud in his stomach. For two days his life had been calm, normal, peaceful. He’d almost forgotten what she did to him. Likely Kansas would object to being handcuffed to a chair, but so far every time she’d been restless and excited—about anything—she somehow managed to turn his entire reasonable world into a pile of Pick Up Sticks. “Okay, so where do you think Case is?”
“In the Coronado Forest. I brought a map—” She’d barely sat down before she was bouncing up again. She hustled to the wrought-iron patio table to grab her shoulder bag.
“Wait. I already know where the Coronado Forest is. First just tell me why you think he’s there.”
“Because I went to see a woman this morning. I happened to notice the address for this psychic healer in the telephone book—”
“Aw hell, Kansas.” He rolled his eyes.
“Now, don’t get your liver in an uproar. I didn’t look her up to check out her healing talents…although, heavens, I’d have loved to see her ‘laying on some hands.’ But not today. I just went to see her because I hoped her interest in mysticism and psychic phenomenon might give me some kind of lead to my brother. And it did. She started talking about all kinds of sacred Indian grounds in the area. Historical holy places, like where native people traditionally went to meditate or just gather to share their beliefs, and she specifically mentioned this spot called ‘Valle de Oro’ in the Coronado. Wouldn’t that make sense to you? That kids pursuing some kind of ritualistic religion or cult thing would be drawn to a place like that?”
“Yeah, it makes sense. And yeah, that’s not the first time that area crossed my mind as a location for where those kids are setting up camp.”
She sank in a chair and stared at him. “You already knew? And you didn’t tell me?”
Pax washed a hand over his face. There was always a problem with talking to Kansas. It was impossible to maintain a logical thought train when she responded to everything emotionally. She expressed hurt over nothing he could imagine would hurt her; she argued and teased and spilled things about herself as if they’d known each other for years. She talked as if…as if she felt close to him, as if she knew him, and damnation, it was an unfair way to rattle a man. “Kansas, what exactly do you think you can do with that information?”
“Find my brother. Go get him.”
“Honey, there are twelve mountain ranges in the Coronado, covering almost two million acres.”
“I realize it’s a big area, but all those acres aren’t sacred ground—”
“True. But you
’re still talking about finding a needle in a haystack, because places like that aren’t listed on any map. The Native people never advertised the location of those so-called holy places for the obvious reason. They didn’t want outsiders to find them. And there are parts of the Coronado that are wilder than anything you can imagine. Places that never have seen a road. Places you can’t even travel by horseback, and places where you sure as hell can’t take an air-conditioned car—even if you knew exactly where you were going and what you were looking for.”
“I don’t care.”
“No? Are you ready to carry a fifty-pound backpack in the desert? Do you know anything about the terrain? Do you have any idea how to protect yourself against dehydration? What are you gonna do if you run across a rattlesnake?”
“If I come within a mile of a rattlesnake, you can have a written guarantee—I’ll scream bloody murder. But somehow I don’t seem to be making myself clear. I don’t give a holy spit about snakes or dehydration. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I’m going to find my brother, Pax. If you don’t want to help me—”
Damn, but she was bouncing out of that chair faster than a speeding bullet. Dynamite had to be less volatile. “I never said that. Would you just sit down and calm down and let me think for two seconds?” Pax rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You haven’t been to where Case worked yet—there hasn’t been time—and maybe his boss or the other employees know something. More to the point, if you come across some concrete information, the place to go back to is the sheriff.”
“I’m more than willing to check out where Case worked. And even if the sheriff didn’t listen to me the first time, I’ll be glad to try him again. But if I find out where this cult is located, I’m going there. With or without help. No matter what anyone says.”
“Red, you’re assuming trouble that may not exist. Your brother could still show up any day, flat broke and tanned from a helluva wild vacation.”
“Yeah, I keep telling myself that, too.” All the stuffing and starch went out of her shoulders. When she met his gaze, her naked heart was right in her eyes. “But I don’t believe it. I’m scared, Pax. And getting more scared all the time. The longer he’s missing, the more I’m positive that he’s in real trouble. Trouble he can’t get out of on his own.”
Pax thought the same thing. There was too much talk in town about this cult. Talk of witches and drugs and a camping hideout buried deep in the hills. It always sounded too wild to believe, and being a peace lover and a man who never minded other people’s business, he paid no attention.
Before, though, he had no reason to worry or care whether the gossip possibly had a base of truth. “Cuando el rio suena, agua lleva,” he murmured.
“Another one of your Southwestern sayings?”
“Yeah. When the river makes noise, it’s carrying water. Loosely translated, it means that most rumors have some foundation.” Pax lurched to his feet. Maybe Kansas’s restlessness was contagious. He’d never had a problem sitting still before.
He’d never had a problem getting a woman off his mind before, either—not if a woman was as unlike him as night and day. He refused to believe that Kansas was a threat to his heart, but she was sure as hell a threat to his sanity—and damned if he knew what to do about her.
If push came down to shove, he could go off himself to find Case. Where others saw the desert as bleak and hostile, he’d always seen the beauty, always related at some simpatico level with the wild and lonely spirit of the country. Over the years, he’d come to know the desert like the back of his hand. He’d rescued more than one tourist who blithely misunderstood how dangerous this country could be.
But Kansas had to be kept out of any such rescue mission, and so far Pax hadn’t noticed one thing that the lady kept her nose out of. She dove headfirst and think last into everything—but her participation in something like this was out of the question. She had no sense of caution, no tolerance for the desert climate, and once she’d told him about the accident and injuries she’d lived through, he felt even more protective of her. She was exactly what she said: a wimp and a wuss.
A wimp with eyes that could melt stone and a smile that could stir a monk’s hormones. And damn her, what a heart. A crazy, foolhardy, impulsive heart…but bigger than the sky.
Kansas had sidled up to him, but he didn’t realize it until she plucked his sleeve and motioned. “I saw the bird feeders spread across the yard, but I didn’t realize they were for hummingbirds. You see those two?”
Yeah, Pax saw the hummingbird pair who had landed on the red-tagged feeder ten feet away from them—and was grateful they’d temporarily distracted Kansas from the subject of her brother. “The breed is called a frilled conquette. They got the name from the red crest on the their heads…you see how the boy is fluffing up that crest? The idea is to make him look big and ferocious—he’s real hot to impress his girl.”
“Well, he’s doing a great job of impressing this girl.” Kansas cupped her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Lord, their feathers look like diamonds in the sun. Diamonds that somehow change colors.”
“If you could put one of those feathers under a microscope, you’d see it was covered with hundreds of tiny ‘bubbles.’ Those bubbles are of all different sizes, and that’s why they seem to change color, because light bounces off them at different angles.”
“Well, if that isn’t a disgusting explanation. I mean—how scientific. I’d rather think it was magic.” She shot him a fleeting grin, but her attention zipped back to the birds. “They’re so tiny. So beautiful. So fragile.”
“They’re that. They’re also rambunctious, mercurial and full of hell—quarrel over nothing and squabble all day.”
“Those darling little birds fight?”
“They love fighting. They’ll charge each other right in the air, wrestle and tumble for no reason at all. And nobody seems to have told them how small they are, because the damn critters have no fear. They’ll attack an eagle if it goes near the nest and never think twice. They’re nuts.”
“Doesn’t sound nuts to me. Sounds like they’re protecting their young, the ones they love. That’s what love and loyalty is all about, isn’t it? Taking care of our own?”
“I could have guessed you’d see their side.” It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed the kindred spirit relationship. She was just like them. Fearless and foolhardy. Flashy and colorful, but damn fragile. And impossible to understand, because the damn woman never did one thing by the rules he understood—not the rules of safe, rational behavior. Not in life, and not with him. “There isn’t a bird alive who takes more pleasure in risking its neck, and apparently for the sheer joy of doing it.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t know why she was suddenly looking at him instead of those birds, but there was something in those soft blue eyes that made him real, real restless. And then he didn’t have to worry about it, because she abruptly spun around and flew over to the table to grab her purse. “I just realized how long I’ve stayed—I’d better be going. I never meant to interrupt your whole work morning.”
“No sweat. I was more than ready to take a break—but I am stuck here for a few more hours…can’t leave my surgery patients. I’ve got an older man named Hank who helps caretake the critters whenever I’m gone, but he isn’t due here until three. If you’ll wait until then, I could take you over to the store where Case worked.”
“That would really be helpful—if it’s not inconvenient.”
Convenience had nothing to do with it. He trailed her back through the house toward the front door. “Kansas.” He cleared his throat. “Would you do me a favor and not check out any more psychic healers in the phone book? Or at least run an idea by me before you leap in. I haven’t seen any proof yet that Case is involved in a dangerous situation, but it just makes good sense for two heads to tackle a problem. And you can’t know what you could be diving into, if you go it alone.”
She fished her car keys out of her purse and then looked at hi
m. “Honestly, Pax, there’s no reason to worry about me. I can handle myself. But thank you.”
From nowhere, absolutely nowhere, she surged up on tiptoe and kissed him. He hadn’t touched her in days. Even the most innocent and accidental physical contact in Tombstone had underlined that he needed to be careful, meticulously careful, not to stir those unpredictable hormone beasts again.
But it was as if his lips remembered hers. As if her taste and texture and unbearably soft mouth were already burned into his brain. Emotions churned awake. Not just hormones, which he could have logically understood and forgiven himself for, but the emotion of lonesomeness. Of longing and the craving to belong. And those feelings hit him as fierce and hot as a bullet.
Hummingbirds came by their name from the natural humming sound made when their feathers beat rapidly together. The way she was pressed against him, damned if he couldn’t feel her heart beating just like that, so hard that his pulse was suddenly humming.
He could make love with her.
The thought shot to his brain the way ink-stained white linen—he couldn’t wash it away. She would let him. She wanted him. She told him with that audaciously winsome kiss, with the shy-bold touch of her tongue, and more, with her heart beating harder than wings.
He was in control, of course. He’d never take advantage of a vulnerable woman. It was just this trick she pulled. This unreasoning, illogical magic. She could almost make him believe that he really mattered to her, that she knew him, really knew him at some damn fool soul level that no one else had ever touched. She was so sweet. So hopelessly soft. So wildly giving and open with her feelings. He’d never known a woman so crazy, so dangerous. She got him so riled up that he just didn’t know what to do.
Kansas suddenly severed that kiss and lifted her head. Slowly she rocked back down on her heels. Her hair was on fire in the sunlight and a complete witch’s tangle—had he done that? Her lips looked bruised-red and the buttons were undone at the top of her dress—dammit, had he done that?
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