“I’ve never been angry with you.”
“I didn’t stick up for you out loud yesterday.”
His face tightened slightly. “No. But you’re whole and safe, and that’s the only thing I care about. Cloth-headed detectives be damned.”
“David, I’m sorry. I was wrong. The police were wrong. What you did was the bravest thing anyone’s ever done for me. I just . . .”
He turned Gomer directly across Tully’s path and halted. Tully snorted and reversed a step. “Just what?”
“It’s stupid.”
“I don’t care.”
She hesitated another moment and sighed. “I was angry—at me for dragging you into the ugly world I grew up in, and at you for stupidly putting yourself in danger because of me. I wanted the police to be right so I’d have a reason to stay angry and selfish and hold on to my fear and embarrassment. I didn’t like that you’d seen the real me. I know it doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t. You think I haven’t seen the real you? The Rio who stood up to Hector is the Rio I’ve come to admire—tough, unafraid, spit-in-your-eye.”
“That’s lovely. A fantastic image.”
“You are fantastic. A woman of a thousand talents and I’m quite sure you don’t know it.”
“I could say the same about you.” They rode silently. A crazy stray tear she couldn’t explain threatened to expose her relief, her fear, her sadness. She wiped it surreptitiously with the back of a hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You were right yesterday. Hector might have dragged me with him. Thank you. The police should have heard me say that.”
He smiled softly. “Thanks.”
“Where are we going?”
“An hour further.”
“To do what?”
“To survive.”
He refused to give any other details. They stopped once to dismount and stretch and let the horses snuffle in the sparse grass beneath the trees of an ever-thickening woods. If someone had told Rio, the lifelong city girl, that her Minnesota had a place so devoid of civilization this close to a town she’d have written him off as crazy, but the place David had brought her barely had paths through the trees, much less a discernable destination.
Three and a half hours into the ride he stopped, looked around their tangled surroundings, and nodded. “This’ll do.”
“That’s it. No more games. Do for what?”
“Our restaurant, hotel, and entertainment rolled into one.”
A jolt of excitement rippled down her spine, followed by a shot of terror. “Hotel?”
“Told you this required a little trust.”
“How about a little blanket?” The slightest sarcasm crept into her words as reality sank in. “Or water? You know, the stuff you can’t live without?”
“You just have to be a little tougher and meaner than the woods. Or wherever you’re lost. I can be tough and mean, that’s the point of this.”
“What if I just say I believe tough, mean you can get us through this and we simply go home?”
“I’d say, you’re welcome to mount up and head back. I’ve stayed alone in the woods. But I’d miss you.”
“And you know I won’t because I’d be lost within twenty feet.”
Once again he simply smiled.
They spent the first hour getting the horses tethered to trees and scouting an area about a hundred feet around them for types of plants, trees, and ground smoothness. He explained why he’d chosen this spot—for its handful of full-canopied trees that would offer some shelter if it rained, combined with taller pines that left a carpet of soft needles on open ground smooth enough to sleep on.
“What about animals and cold?”
“Fire, sweatshirts, and, if necessary, body heat.”
“There’s the first line that might be worthy of a travel poster.”
Following his instructions, she cleared the ground and made a bare circle for a fire. She gathered tinder and kindling and delighted in the fragile little white flower blossoms she uncovered. The last of the summer anemones, he told her.
“Do you honestly not know where we are?”
“We’re in a privately owned, two-hundred-and-sixty-acre woods between a wetlands preserve and the state park. I know the owner.”
“So you aren’t lost, but I am.”
“Pretty much. Come on, let’s take the horses for a drink. There’s a stream nearby as I recall.”
The stream tumbled clear and pristine through the shade, the same one that wound through the Glen Butte State Park and eventually created the actual Kennison Falls. Rio hadn’t thought once about thirst until she watched Tully and Gomer swallowing their huge draughts of the cool water.
“Can’t we just dunk our noses in and drink, too?”
“No. It’s fairly clean, but there’s still bacteria that make it unsafe.”
“It doesn’t hurt the horses?”
“Different makeup in their guts.”
“So what do we do, tap trees?” She scowled.
“Under dire circumstances. Or we wait for morning and find dew-covered leaves to suck on.”
“Very funny.”
“All right, you can also cheat again and bring along a little device like this.”
From his belt, he unhooked a mesh bag Rio hadn’t noticed and took out an eight-inch-tall cylinder with a clear tube attached. He filled the cylinder with creek water and a few minutes later handed her a little nylon cup full of cold, crisp, filtered water.
“Wow!”
“Nice gadget, ’eh?”
“Who knew water could be so delicious? Can it squeeze out a nice, juicy burger?”
He laughed. “Sorry. But if you want to eat, we can go hunting.”
“Hunting? For what?”
“Squirrel or rabbit maybe. Gophers aren’t really worth it.”
“Kill bunnies? No way!” Her stomach twisted at the thought. To her chagrin, he laughed again.
“You didn’t complain about the steaks we’ve eaten or the roast you cut up to put in the stew.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t have to kill it.”
“That’s hypocritical.”
“I don’t think so. I can’t build roads, but I drive on them. I have someone else make my clothing—I don’t go naked. So what if I prefer someone else to catch and kill the meat?”
“Fair enough. But would you starve to death rather than do the hunting?”
“I won’t starve in twelve hours.”
“It’s the principle.”
“Fine.” She frowned. “How are you going to hunt this rabbit and/or squirrel? Do you have a gun tucked somewhere, too?”
“Just a MacGyver bit of string and my pocketknife.”
“No fair. How come I didn’t get tools?”
“Because your job this trip is to learn how to use them.”
She should have been thoroughly put off by his attitude. Instead the tug of attraction hit harder than ever.
Once they returned to their camp spot, David knelt, and for the third time in her life, Rio watched him build a perfect fire. He left her alone for almost an hour afterward with instructions on how to keep the fire going but not let it get too big. She stuck to her task diligently and found the solitude with only the flames’ crackle to keep her company to be a deep joy she’d never imagined. It only confirmed the thought that she was meant to be a pioneer woman somewhere with no city craziness encroaching on her. Her old vision of a small solitary ranch somewhere in Wyoming surfaced for the first time in weeks. If only she could drag David with her . . .
Whoa.
She shook the thought away and tried to ignore the heavy desire settling into her body like a sudden flu. Whether it came from thinking about leaving him or just plain thinking about him she couldn’t tell . . .
“You ready for dinner?”
She turned as he came through the trees like Daniel Boone with a rabbit hanging upside down in his hands.
“Oh gosh.” She covered her mouth in su
rprise and stared despite herself.
“C’mon,” he said. “You faced down a gang member with a knife. This is just an old rabbit.”
“How do you know he’s old?”
“Because he’s big, a little gray in the paws, and slow enough that he fell for my snare. Want to help me skin him?”
“No!”
“I think this is the first time I’ve seen you remotely squeamish.”
“I think this is the first time I’ve seen you remotely . . .”
“A killer?”
“No. A caveman.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. If you don’t want to dress the rabbit, you can go scout us up two long, sturdy sticks that we can sharpen for roasting the meat. I’ll take care of this.”
In the end, pride and a little shame at her weakness made her stay and watch the cleaning process. After David made the first slits Rio’s squeamishness dissipated, and she marveled at the way he shucked off the fur and skin with neat, efficient strokes of his knife point and then cut the meat into long strips.
Twenty minutes later Rio held her first strip of roasted rabbit tentatively in front of her mouth. For the first time since she’d seen the dead animal in David’s hand, she quailed just a little. She felt like she should say a prayer of thanks to the animal’s spirit like the American Indians did.
“Thank you, rabbit,” she said out loud, expecting David to laugh again.
“Amen,” he said.
He took a bite of his and closed his eyes. His lips, full and sensual, pursed with pleasure. Rio licked her own lips in preparation and took a generous bite. The meat was a little stringy and slightly gamey but still moist and sweet. David searched her face expectantly.
“It’s not bad,” she admitted.
“A little different from hamburger.”
“A lot different, you mean.”
They finished their first pieces. David took her stick and skewered another raw strip. It sizzled immediately when she held it over the coals.
“Did you have to kill things and eat them in Iraq?” she asked absently, turning her stick.
When he didn’t answer, she looked up from her stick and found him staring into the flames, every feature tightening as if he was attempting to shutter out the question and any that might follow.
She studied him silently. Here he was in self-described tough and mean mode, yet the vulnerability wrapped around him nearly cried out to be acknowledged. As often as she’d been annoyed at his indulgence toward his family, she’d never seen him fragile. She’d made him tell her about Iraq the other night, and ever since then . . .
She laid her stick and its partially cooked meat aside. Scootching across the pine needle floor, she grasped his arm.
“This trip tonight,” she said slowly. “This sudden need to prove you’re tough. It’s about Iraq, but it’s not about the discharge. It’s the part of the story you didn’t tell me in the cabin, isn’t it?”
He relaxed as if he’d come unstuck. His sad smile held multiple other emotions: gratitude, ruefulness, but mostly resignation.
“I guess it is at that. I don’t tell the story anymore.”
“Well, buster, you do tonight.”
Amusement tinged the light in his eyes. “That was rather unequivocal.”
“Just gotta be tougher and meaner than the survivalist.” She laughed at his scowl. “Come on, get on with dinner and start talkin’.”
He picked up his roasting stick, nodded for her to do the same, and when the meat sizzled again, he took a deep starting breath.
“You know ninety percent of the story. I did disobey orders, and I did get dishonorably discharged.”
“But what really happened?”
“I was a quiet kid, sensitive my mum said, and observant, but it drove my father crazy that his son didn’t have the killer instincts he thought it took to get ahead in life. So, when I was a teen, for a while I tried to cultivate Da’s no-bullshit personality. And, maybe for a while, he thought I might make it.”
He stopped and checked the rabbit. Satisfied, he set his aside to cool. Rio did the same.
“When it came to the army, I got lots of advice about how to advance. How to be tough at the right times, how to be invaluable. But after being in the thick of things, I didn’t want any of that.”
“You just wanted to get out alive,” Rio said.
“That’s right. Get home. The only goal. I did my job. In fact, I did whatever was asked. Until that night.”
“Then it had to have been something you felt awfully strongly about not doing.”
“To put it mildly. When it came time to find a place to bivouac, the lieutenant ordered us to go west, since the insurgents had been spotted days before to the east. There were caves, as well. Protection, he said. But I’d been studying the Iraqis’ movements over months. I knew in my gut they’d gone for the caves, too. I not only disagreed with the decision, I argued. Vehemently. I’d decided to adopt my father’s take-no-prisoners attitude, and I ended up calling the lieutenant arrogant, shortsighted, and unfit for leadership.”
“You did?”
“Oh, I certainly did.” His grimace conveyed the pain of memory. “I went well beyond what my father might have done. Even had I capitulated as I ought to have, there still would have been charges of insubordination. But I was so utterly convinced I was right.”
“What happened?”
“Three men followed me.” He paused and rubbed his mouth. “Three went with the CO. That night, all four of them were stabbed in their sleep.”`
The stark words might have been stabbings to her own heart. An intense wash of dizziness threatened to send her head down toward her knees. “Oh God, no,” she whispered.
“We found them the next afternoon.”
“I don’t . . . oh God, you found them?”
“I admit, that was hellish.”
“I don’t even know what to say . . . Sorry isn’t nearly a good enough word.”
“It was inadequate then, as well.”
“And now you live with it? You bury it and deal with it when it pops up like this?”
“I’ve dealt with it. It’s in the past.”
“I don’t know. It’s pretty much in the here and now, wouldn’t you say?”
“I made my peace with what the army did. You can’t have soldiers disobeying orders on a hunch every five minutes, can you?”
“But your commanding officer was wrong. The ultimate kind of wrong. He brought you along to do exactly what you did.”
“But the decision was ultimately his.”
“Okay, even if I accept that, why wasn’t your family, Kate especially, weak with relief that you didn’t die? That you were smart enough to stay alive?”
“She and my father thought I came back changed.”
“No. Really?” Rio’s eyes shot angry sapphire sparks. “How unforgiveable.”
He pulled his stick out of the fire and leaned it against a tree root so the meat could cool. “I learned a lesson in Iraq. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t argue. If I’d have kept my cool, I could have talked the CO into coming with me. He dug in because I dug in.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I know it. I’ve learned it after the fact. I learn it every day. Nod and smile. Works like a charm. As for Kate, she wanted someone with a sterling record and a forceful nature who could become as successful as my father had. My record was no longer sterling. I was all but unemployable in the U.K., what with the dodgy discharge papers. Kate hated that blot on my character.
“After she left me, I tried again with my father. I made one trip following him on a U.S. tour of guest clinics and lessons. When he came to Minnesota I happened to see this place for sale. I made a decision in less than a flash and never looked back.”
“You gave up your citizenship to stay here?”
“My act of anger and defiance against the British military, my father, and no doubt Kate. And I’ve never for a moment regret
ted it. I love it here.”
“But none of this is wimpy. Why do you let them, us, think of you as mild-mannered and easygoing?”
“Because I am. I’m not my father. Maybe I’m wimpy with my family, but I told you, it’s easier to nod and smile and let them go home believing they’re still influencing my life. I don’t care what they think. They live a long way away.”
“And you don’t think your father is proud of you.”
“I don’t know what my father is.” For the first time, his voice gained an edge, dull but definite, and Rio heard all the longing of a son looking for his father’s approval. She wasn’t sure David even knew it was there.
“Why did you react so strongly that night in Iraq, do you think?”
“Because I was scared shitless?”
“Yes. So forgive yourself.”
“Done a long time ago.”
“You know what? I don’t think that’s true.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
* * *
“YOU’RE A LITTLE heavy into the pop psychology tonight.” David looked more amused than upset, and Rio rubbed his shoulder, kissing his bicep with a smile.
“Because I feel responsible for dredging this up. I’m sorry I made you talk about it the other night.”
“You don’t need to be. I really don’t talk about it. But it wasn’t so hard. With you.”
“What can I do to make it better?”
His eyes shone as if he were preparing to make a joke. Then they softened to a moment of seriousness. “Understand that I need to deal with my parents the way I do. Ignore the blot on my copybook—as my gran used to say.”
“There’s no blot to ignore. This is how I know you haven’t forgiven yourself. And you can’t forgive yourself until you forgive your father. So deal with them however you want. But promise to be nice to yourself, too. You can’t be down on people I like.”
The flash of humor returned. “So you like me again?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I guess. Can we kiss and make up now?”
A grin lifted the corners of his mouth, and a familiar fire lit his eyes for the first time since their awkward night at the little cabin. An unexpected but welcome flash of pure desire blazed through her stomach and landed, pulsing, deep in some untouchable spot. He took her roasting stick from her hands without speaking.
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