He’d taken charge like a general—Cole, who never talked faster than a slow drawl. He’d been ballast when her whole world was tipping. He’d been reassuring, when there was nothing she needed more than a bullet of common sense. And for a few minutes, they had just been two people with masks off and pretenses stripped away—her, vulnerable, and Cole...
He’d been a lover. That’s all she knew. In his touch had been a lover’s sensitivity, and the way he looked at her was with a lover’s protectiveness and possessiveness. The texture of his hands had made her skin burn until her whole body felt the lick of flame. She’d imagined herself naked with him... naked for him. She’d imagined him taking her. She’d imagined...
Regan squeezed her eyes closed.
Batty. That’s what she was. Certifiably batty and getting mortifyingly worse. Cole would flirt with a nun; it was just his way. He had never once expressed serious interest in her. Obviously she had imagined that powerful draw—just as she was imagining everything else these days—and spilling her woes in his lap reeked of unforgivable selfishness. Her problems were not Cole’s, and her last goal on earth was to have him stuck feeling any direct responsibility for her. She didn’t want anyone worried about her. One reason she’d been so determined to come to the desert was to avoid dragging anyone into her life right now.
Regan forced her mind off Cole and concentrated on the looming landscape below.
Only a few miles away were the tourist wonders that the state was famous for. A spit northwest was Grand Canyon country and the Colorado River. Southwest, it was an easy drive down to Phoenix. Not far east were the Petroglyphs and Petrified Forest lands.
But here, on this stark patch of land near the Navajos’ Painted Desert, there was nothing—no population, no landmarks, no blacktopped roads. The closest town was Red Mesa—far too bitty to make it on a map—and it took twisting miles of rough gravel road to get to the nearest highway. Her grandfather’s desert retreat was isolated, secluded and private. Those who didn’t understand the desert would even call it desolate, but the retreat was exactly what she craved right now.
Rock and sand hills stretched as far as the eye could see, bleak and barren to a stranger. Not to her. Sunsets on the Painted Desert were the most spectacular on earth, and the land was full of life—mule deer and jackrabbits and coyotes. Unforgettable wildflowers blossomed for a brief few weeks in April, and there was no quiet like the desert, no silence or peace as profound anywhere else she knew.
The desert had always been magic for her, and Regan promised herself that she’d be fine here. Everything would be different. She would stop imagining terrible things if she was alone. The quiet would help her sleep; the peace would heal her wounded nerves. She had canceled all work for a month—surely enough time to put herself back together.
The plane wheels touched down, bounced, then skimmed down the airstrip. As the roar of brakes filled her ears, she grabbed her purse and clutched it close, thinking of the black velvet case inside...and her grandfather.
From Jake she had inherited a knowledge and love of gems. Unlike him, though, she could never arouse enthusiasm for the cutthroat business of bartering and trading stones. She’d chosen a different career—as a gem appraiser for private collections, working independently for museums and insurance firms—and her work used to infuriate Gramps. How often they’d battled! He’d thunder that she was wasting her talents. He’d roar that she had the instincts and skills to make a fortune if she’d just join the firm. He’d tried threats, blackmail and bribery...Gramps, in a rage, had never fought fair.
Her heart ached, missing him—even missing those shouting matches. Jake loved her; she never doubted it, and through him she’d learned determination and faith in her own heart. Gramps had been an adventurer, a man who’d made his own rules and never turned down a challenge, and so he’d taught his young granddaughter. To follow your own drummer took strength and courage, he’d told her a hundred times, because it was that much tougher for a dreamer to make it.
Gramps had been a larger-than-life hero to Regan when she was nine. Now, at twenty-seven, she sought a deeper understanding of the older man she’d so loved. The moment she opened the black velvet case and saw its contents, she knew that Jake had left her a private, personal legacy. Jewels were a gem dealer’s business...but not gems like these. Through the old journals her grandfather kept at the desert house, she hoped to learn the stories behind the stones and exactly what they meant to him.
It was her last bond with her grandfather. And through the past horrible weeks she’d held on to that bond like a sky diver’s rip cord on a parachute.
The instant the plane’s engines died, she unsnapped her seat belt. Anticipation surged through her pulse. Every mile away from Chicago had made her feel stronger. Or she would make herself believe that. Strength of will had to affect strength of mind.
Holding her purse, she twisted to her feet...and abruptly discovered that strength of will was occasionally worth diddly-squat. Her head spun—exasperatingly—as if she’d just stepped off a merry-go-round circling double time.
Cole, just climbing out of the pilot’s chair, shot out a hand to steady her.
“I’m fine,” she said with a laugh. “It’s just these sandals. I keep tripping on them.”
“Sure.”
Yet his hand lingered at her waist, warm and solid, the heel of his palm riding the bone of her hip. Stealthy as a shadow, she felt the compelling sexual awareness of Cole that had shaken her before. Shepherd would probably spit if he knew the effect he had on her. The thought made her straighten. He immediately dropped his hands.
“Not much question, princess, that you’re glad to be home,” he said lazily.
“Home is Chicago.”
“Chicago is where you work, where you live. Like for your grandfather. But the two of you generally trampled me to the door once we got here. What’d you tell me once? Scarlett O’Hara had her Tara. You two always came here when the world was giving you hell.”
“At the time you didn’t even know who Scarlett O’Hara was, slugger.” In her head there was a litany: Keep it light. Keep it easy. Don't involve him. You have to convince him you're all right. And conscious of Cole just behind her, she made her way down the aisle, reaching for the seat edges to secure her balance.
On the last stretch of flight, she could have sworn she was okay. Not ready to climb Mount Everest, not anxious to compete in the Olympics, but her instincts and thought trains had seemed true. Not now. Neon green and pink sparks kept lighting in front of her eyes, very pretty and prize-winningly artistic and totally aggravating. She wanted plain old Technicolor. She was heartily weary of seeing everything in twos.
Near the door, she stumbled again. And again she felt Cole’s two big hands clamp on her waist from behind.
“I’m fine,” she instantly assured him.
“Sure you are.”
There was an odd, gritty tone in Cole’s voice. She twisted around. He lowered his sunglasses to the tip of his nose and looked straight into her eyes, hard, for a long count of three.
“What’s wrong?”
For an instant he said nothing, just pushed his sunglasses back up and studied her through the opaque lenses.
“Cole—?”
“You need to move that adorable tush, Ms. Thorne, if we’re gonna get this show on the road.”
Again Regan heard the odd, gritty tone in his voice, but she obediently wedged in the corner by the plane’s minuscule lavatory, giving him space to root out her luggage and open the door. “You’re probably in a hurry to leave—”
“You’ve got that right. That little stop in Kansas put me way off schedule.” The muscles in his forearm flexed when he lifted out her powder blue case. He set it by the door with a forceful little slam. “I’ll see you up to the house and make a phone call, but after that I need to make fast tracks for home.”
“I understand.” Regan understood that the navigation problem had nagged him; he wa
nted to get back to Chicago to pursue it. More than that, though, she suspected he was simply in a hurry to get away from her. Who could blame him? “You can’t leave without something to eat, though,” she said firmly. “Obviously there won’t be fresh food in the house, but there’s a huge storeroom of canned goods. I can at least come up with coffee and a quick meal—”
“No need. I still have food in the cooler on board.”
He levered down the door, letting in a flush of dry desert air and the palette of a gold-dusted sky. It wasn’t sunset yet, but the late-afternoon sun showered a haze of heat and softness on the rocky slopes of rust-red desert. As Regan walked down the steps, her spirits automatically lifted. She could smell it—the total, complete quiet. There was a texture to silence this profound, a peace and beauty unequaled anywhere.
She glanced back at Cole, wondering if he saw the magic. Still standing in the doorway of the plane, he was studying the landscape, too. With his hands on his hips and a deep, dark scowl. “It’s not like I haven’t been here before, but I never thought about how isolated this place is. Dammit. There’s nothing out here.”
Her brows lifted in surprise. Not that Cole hadn’t had an exhausting and stressful day, but the anger in his tone was completely unexpected. She couldn’t fathom where it was coming from. “Well, I admit it’s a little far to the closest KMart—”
His gaze snapped to her face for a long second, and then he reached for her suitcase to tote down. “J.C. Penney?”
“It’s a little far to one of those, too,” she said cautiously, but she could see his mouth start to twist in a grin.
“Well, hell. If you can’t shop, what about neighbors?”
“Heavens, there’re millions of those...mule deer and roadrunners and homed lizards, also a fair number of snake families—”
“Quit giving me grief, Ms. Sass—you knew I meant the kind of neighbors who were good for a chitchat. And get your hands off that suitcase. Don’t let it get out, but I’m going to perform the rare chivalrous act of carrying it for you to the house.”
“In other words, you’re going to get the rover from the shed.” The storage shed by the airstrip held a golf cart Gramps called the ‘rover’. Although it was only a quarter-mile walk to the house, the rover came in handy when they arrived with a lot of baggage or gear for an extended stay.
“Never walk when you can ride. It’s one of the first rules of laziness. Although the last time I was here, the rover was acting up. Do you know if it’s running?”
“No idea,” she admitted.
“Well, if it isn’t, I’ll let you prove your feminine superiority by carrying this bag of bricks.” He called over his shoulder, “Just for the record, where’s the nearest doc?”
“Probably in Gray Mountain. Why, do you need one?” she asked wryly.
“I will if the rover doesn’t start and I have to carry this back-buster.”
Ever Mr. Gallant, Regan thought humorously, but her smile was uneasy. Through the last neck of the flight, Cole had acted as if their stop in Kansas had never existed—which couldn’t have suited her more. Now, though, his conversation seemed strangely forced. He had never asked questions about neighbors and doctors before. He’d never asked questions at all.
She waited in the shade of the plane until the small white cart came zooming out of the shed. Sunlight shot his ruffled dark hair with streaks of red, caught the glint of a St. Christopher medal around his neck. Lord, he looked like trouble, when the most energy she could conceivably fake was a jaunty smile and an upright posture.
There were only two seats in front, and her hip unavoidably grazed Cole’s when she climbed in. Their eyes met. Tension, sharp and sexual, crackled between them, as electric as a hot wire—probably her uncontrollable imagination at work again.
Quite clearly Cole was interested in her body, but not because of hormones. “You know, princess,” he said casually, “a lot of people get into drugs these days.”
She calmly wedged her purse between her ankles, thinking that it was finally adding up—the forced questions, the way he’d studied her eyes. “Hmm?”
“It’s easy to do. You walk into a party, and all too often there’s cocaine lying around. It’s not the same as peer pressure with the kids. It’s adult peer pressure and it’s heavier than hell. So maybe you screw around with it once because you’re nervous, or lonely, or stressed out, or feeling pushed around by a lot of strangers—”
“Shepherd?” Regan delicately cleared her throat. “Are we talking about this subject for any particular reason?”
“Hell, no. Just making conversation.”
“Ah.”
“It’s none of my business, the choices people make about drugs. I’ve done too many things I’m not proud of to lay value judgments of right and wrong on other people.”
“That’s nice.”
“It’s just that I’ve seen enough to know how easy it is to get in over your head. Quick. And if you were stupid enough—” He rapidly corrected himself. “If you were ill-advised enough to try it the first time, anyone, and I don’t care who they are, could get in trouble before she realized what was happening.”
“Slugger?”
“Hmm?”
She said gently, “I think that’s the sweetest lecture anyone ever gave me. But I don’t take drugs, Cole. Never have, never would, never could. A doctor recently suggested a prescription for sleeping pills, but even he didn’t push it. He knows me. I OD on aspirin. It’s kind of you to be concerned, but—”
“I wasn’t concerned. Like I said, I was just making general conversation. It had nothing directly to do with you.” Regan was positive it did, and guilt troubled her—for failing to fool him that she was okay, for so unfairly involving him in her problems. She hesitated, and then forged on. “Look…I want you to forget what I told you earlier. I was hot and sick and tired. Anything I said was...exaggerated. Overemotional.” She hesitated again, and then said to the horizon, “If you want to know the truth, PMS hits me embarrassingly hard. That’s all that was going on, and I’d enormously appreciate it if you’d forget it. There is absolutely no reason for you to worry about me—”
“I wasn't worried about you.”
“Well, good,” Regan murmured, and strapped in. Cole had gunned the rover’s motor the instant he heard ‘PMS’—not an untypical male response—and now he was intent on speed.
When he rounded the curve of the hill, the house came in sight.
Regan forgot about Cole. She forgot about everything. Maybe she didn’t realize how precariously she was holding on to her last claim on physical strength, but one look at the house and she could feel a yielding from deep inside her. If a mountain fell on her now, she’d at least be home.
The ranch adobe wasn’t fancy to look at. Gramps had had it built in a rectangle, with all rooms opening onto the open courtyard in the center. The house had a tile roof and double red-tiled doors at the entry, and because the adobe walls were a foot thick, the place had the look of a mini-fortress.
That was what it had always been for both her and Gramps—a quiet, cool fortress, a hideaway place for rest and renewal. The pantry was always left stocked; the closets already held clothes. She didn’t need anything else. Two days before, she’d called Hannah Rain tree, the Navajo woman who took care of the house. Hopefully Hannah had had the time to give the place a whisk and a dust, but Regan didn’t really care.
In her mind’s eye, she could already see the onyx fireplace and nest of overstuffed red couches in the living room. Gramps had loved the color red. He’d also loved easy-care comforts. Every room had stained oak beam ceilings, earthen walls, Talavera tile and the soft flush of recessed lighting. Navajo rugs in black and white and earth-tone reds hung from the walls and warmed the tile floors. Her bedroom, like her grandfather’s, had a kiva fireplace and a wall of windows overlooking the pool in the courtyard. But her favorite room was the unique blend of library and lab they’d designed together—a gem lover’s dr
eam, a place where they’d shut out the world and worked side by side for endless hours.
Regan could already feel the cool tile on her bare feet, see the sun streaming on her bed in the morning, imagine the lick of flames in the onyx fireplace in the cool evenings. She didn’t have to hang on much longer. Everything would be fine, she just knew it, if she could just get inside—
The rover had already stopped, and suddenly she was aware that Cole had not only climbed out and grabbed her suitcase, but was waiting. Even over the rim of his dark glasses, she could see the groove wedged in his forehead. Somehow she didn’t think that frown was for the weight of books in her leather suitcase.
“I’m totally fine,” she assured him.
“Why don’t you tell me that one more time and see what happens, princess?”
“Pardon?” As she leaped down, her head whipped around; she was uncertain that she’d caught his muttered words.
“Nothing. Do you have your house key handy?”
She did, in the side compartment of her purse. As it happened, she didn’t need it. She was just burrowing through her purse when the front door opened.
The thin woman in the doorway was dressed in traditional Navajo fashion, in a dark blouse and flowing loose skirt that came to the top of her boots. Her long dark hair was neatly twisted in a knot at the back of her head, her skin the color of pure dark honey.
Regan smiled in greeting, and then her smile died. Hannah Raintree was twisting her hands, her smooth face taut with anxiety. “I waited for you,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Regan asked, but she was already surging forward.
“I cleaned the house yesterday. But I came back this afternoon—I thought you said you would be here by then, and I wanted to be sure everything was okay. Only when I walked in...” Hannah couldn’t stop handwringing. “Bad harmony. Very bad trouble. I touched nothing. I had nothing to do with it, Regan. You must believe me—”
“Of course I believe you.” Regan squeezed Hannah’s shoulder as she passed.
As she pushed open the door, the first thing she saw was the waist-high glazed Navajo vase—a precious gift from her grandfather—in a hundred shards on the tile floor.
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