The ranch appeared on the horizon, and Matt pressed the accelerator. He wanted to get there. He wanted to see—
“The tree.”
Not Gina. Any chance he might have had for a relationship with her was as dead as he was gonna be if Jase McCord got him cornered in the equivalent of a Colorado dark alley.
As Matt drove into the yard, Gina led Spike and Lady Belle from the barn. The horses were saddled and packed. Where was she going?
He got out of the car. “I thought you were taking me—”
“I am,” she interrupted. “Let’s go.”
Gina tossed him Spike’s reins. Matt was so surprised they hit him in the face and slithered to the ground. Spike tossed his head, stomped, and gave Matt a look that plainly said, Nice one.
“Sorry,” Matt muttered, picking them up. “Where’s the fire?”
Gina had already mounted Lady Belle. “Under your ass if the As see you.”
“They’re here?”
“Where else would they be?”
“The French Riviera if we had any sort of luck at all,” he muttered.
“We don’t. So let’s make some time.”
She urged Lady Belle down the road, and after a quick glance toward the house, where he could see several people milling beyond the sun-sparkled windows, Matt mounted Spike and followed.
* * *
Two hours later, Gina and Lady Belle stood on the bank of a raging creek.
“Huh,” Gina murmured.
She wasn’t sure how, but she’d spaced off the day in the deluge with the As, the Gordons, and the Hurlaheys. In her defense, she’d had a lot on her mind during the hours in between. And at the time she’d been intent on urging everyone back to the house, not concerned about what the downpour would mean to the creek on the opposite end of the ranch.
She hadn’t considered it today, either. Because if she’d been paying attention and not doing her best to avoid a conversation with Teo, while at the same time playing the truly obnoxious game of what if in her mind—What if she and Teo had met somewhere else? What if she’d gone to college and he’d been her professor? What if he hadn’t been obsessed with his mother’s work to the exclusion of all else? What if he hadn’t lied? What if he hadn’t bought her ranch?—she might have considered that the creek would be flooded and taken a different route.
Gina dismounted and kicked a large rock into the water. “What if you’d been watching where you were going, and then you wouldn’t have wasted hours riding to an area you can’t get across?”
The thud of hooves and the snort of Spike announced Teo’s arrival. To his credit, when he’d discovered that she wasn’t in the mood to be sociable he’d stopped trying to keep up and let Gina ride ahead.
He stopped next to her. “Huh.” He peered right, then left. “Anywhere not so frothy?”
“Frothy?”
He made a motion with his hands to indicate the swirling, grinding, frothy water.
“No.”
“There has to be.”
“Really, there doesn’t. The rain makes this thing impassable. Until it runs off, there’s no getting across.”
“Can we go around?”
“We’re gonna have to.”
The sun had begun to fall by the time they reached a locale where the creek narrowed and died. The horses picked their way across the rocks that had tumbled downstream, driven by the force of the water.
“How far?” Teo asked. He was like a little kid on a road trip: Are we there yet?
Gina hoped they never got there. Although …
She lifted her gaze to the sky. She’d prefer not to get there in the middle of the night.
“We need to make camp.”
“But you said tonight.”
She indicated the still-raging water to their right.
“Oh.” Disappointment washed over his face. “Yeah.”
They were going to have to travel farther still to reach a decent place to camp. Here was too rocky, too damp.
Gina let her gaze trail over the horizon. She pointed to a grove of trees that populated a hill. “We’ll head for that.”
Teo looked at the sun. “It’ll be dark before we reach it.”
Gina urged Lady Belle forward. “I know.”
Night fell. Clouds shrouded the moon and the stars. Gina hoped the horses could see, because she couldn’t.
This had been such a bad idea. And she had no one to blame but herself. She’d never let her mind wander to the extent she’d let it wander today. Had her subconscious highjacked her brain, assuring that they wouldn’t reach the grave site as planned, gifting her with one more day of peace?
Giiiii-naaaa!
She started, her hands jerking the reins, causing Lady Belle to throw up her head and nicker.
“Something wrong?” Teo asked.
“You hear anything?”
Giiii-naaaa!
“The wind?”
Wasn’t it always the wind that called her name? Whenever it wasn’t the wolves that weren’t there.
The night had gone cool, brushing her face, stirring her hair, making her remember—
God, she so didn’t want to be here.
As if in answer to that thought, Lady Belle stopped dead, the movement so sudden Gina slid sideways and grabbed at the pommel to right herself.
Spike, who’d been a few steps ahead, stopped, too. Then he snorted, pawed … and reared.
She gave Teo credit; he held his seat. At least until the horse’s hooves returned to the ground and Spike began to buck. Teo flew sideways. Gina had an instant to register that he hadn’t caught a foot in the stirrup—if he had, he’d have been dragged across the plain, head bouncing against the rock-strewn ground as Spike bolted—before Lady Belle began to buck, too.
Gina held on longer than Teo, but in the end she landed on the ground a few feet away. If a horse wanted you off, off you would eventually be.
Gina lay there, listening to the thunder of Spike’s and Lady Belle’s hooves as they raced back in the direction they’d come. She took stock of her body. Everything moved. Nothing was broken.
“You alive?” she asked.
“No,” Teo groaned. But he sat up. “What the hell was that?”
Gina didn’t want to move. Because once she did, she knew what she’d see. In her experience, horses at Nahua Springs Ranch reacted in that way to just one thing.
She turned her head as the clouds parted and the moon shone down. “Remember when I said we wouldn’t get where we were going until tomorrow?”
“Yeah?” Teo rubbed the back of his head, then squinted at his hand, letting out a sigh of relief to find no blood.
Gina rose, then lifted her chin, indicating the horizon behind him, out of which an old, craggy, half-dead tree appeared to grow.
“I was wrong.”
CHAPTER 12
Matt glanced over his shoulder. He could just make out the spiky branches of a tree reaching for the ebony night. Beneath the moon they shone silver instead of red, but—
“That’s it,” he said.
Gina got to her feet, emitting a surprised grunt, even as she tightened her lips against sudden pain.
“You okay?” Matt stood as well, reaching for her.
She pulled back. “Fine.”
Matt let his hand drop to his side. Would she ever let him touch her again?
Doubtful.
“I think they stopped.”
Matt followed her gaze, catching just a hint of equine shadows several hundred yards in the opposite direction. “I’ll get them.”
“They aren’t going to come,” she said. “Horses have never liked it here.”
Matt, who’d already started toward them, turned back. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Any horse that’s ever come within a hundred yards of this place bolts.”
Though he felt like a two-year-old who’d just discovered his favorite question, nevertheless, Matt was forced to ask again: “Why?”
“None of them have ever said.”
“Har-har.” Matt considered the distant silhouettes of Spike and Lady Belle. “What are we going to do?”
“Sleep over there.” Gina brushed her palms against her pants and began to walk.
* * *
Gina couldn’t believe they’d been this close to the site and she hadn’t been aware. Sure, it was dark, but shouldn’t she have been able to feel a change? The horses had.
Yes, she’d heard the wind calling her name, but she heard that all over the damn place.
Gina increased her pace. She didn’t like the horses being so far away. Not that a wolf was going to get them. But there was the odd bear or pack of raging coyotes. Not to mention that Spike might just take it into his head to run home.
Teo’s scurrying footsteps scattered rocks and dirt every which way as he hurried to catch up. “Animals sense what we don’t,” he said. “If there’s a tomb below, that’s gotta feel … I don’t know … hollow to them.”
Gina didn’t bother to point out that when the horses had actually lost it the area had still been a good hundred yards away.
Because they had sensed something. She just didn’t think it was that hole beneath the earth.
Gina approached Spike and Lady Belle, murmuring reassurances. The mare lifted her head and nickered a welcome, as if nothing had happened at all.
Spike snorted and stomped and shook his mane, but he didn’t bolt, and if he was still bothered by … whatever, he would have. Unfortunately, the bolting he’d done thus far had been enough.
“My tent’s missing,” Gina said, then cursed. “My camera bag, too.”
Why she’d brought the thing along she wasn’t sure. She certainly didn’t want to take any more pictures of this place. The first one had caused trouble enough.
Teo stared back the way they’d come. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds again. They could barely see three feet in any direction; they certainly weren’t going to be able to find anything now.
“You can have mine.” Gina felt rather than saw him glance at her. “I’ll sleep outside.”
“I promise I won’t jump you if you don’t jump me.” Gina’d meant the words to be flippant; instead they came out kind of bitchy. And really, she was okay with that.
“I … uh … well, certainly,” Teo managed. “I would never force my attentions on a lady.”
Gina’s lips curved as she turned away. Since he’d started to talk like an eighty-year-old man with a stick up his butt, she’d made him uncomfortable.
Join the club.
The idea of sharing a small, enclosed space with Teo made her as twitchy as a horse in a barn full of flies.
“It’s going to rain.” She heaved the tent in his direction. He caught it with a muffled oof. “You can’t sleep outside.”
An hour later the horses were taken care of. Gina had made a fire; Teo had pitched the tent. They’d eaten, and now they lay inside the shelter, staring at the canvas ceiling as distant thunder loomed.
Or at least Gina stared; she wasn’t sure what Teo was doing except tossing and turning, every shift of his body reminding her of that body shifting against hers on his bed in the hotel. The constant movement also squirted the maddening scent of oranges and sunshine across the far too short distance that separated them.
He was driving her batty!
“Okay.” She sat up. “Let’s play cards.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You aren’t, but you should be.”
“What?”
“You should be sorry for coming here, for lying, for trying to seduce me, for stealing my ranch. But you aren’t. Because you got what you wanted. Or you soon will.”
He moved again, making more noise than Spike on a rampage. An instant later, the portable tent light—a combination of lantern and flashlight—flared to life, illuminating Teo sitting cross-legged on his bedroll, hair mussed as if she’d just run her fingers through it over and over and over.
Gina clenched her hands until the knuckles crackled in the sudden stillness. She could still feel that hair against her palms and that mouth against hers.
Hell.
“I am sorry.” He lifted his gaze, which, unfettered by his glasses, had softened to the shade of the sage in Fanny’s spice garden. “But not for everything.”
Gina wasn’t sorry about everything, either. She might be mad about some of it, but she wasn’t sorry.
“Cards,” she blurted. “What can you play?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t know how to play cards?”
“Oh, I know how. What do you think we did on digs when the torrential rains came?”
As if in answer to his question, raindrops began to patter against the canvas and the wind shook the tent just a little. But worse was coming. Gina could smell it.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Read a book?”
“That was my mother. I played cards with the workers.” He cracked his knuckles. “I’m really good at poker.”
Gina’s lips curved. “Not as good as me.”
“I’d love to prove you wrong, but I don’t have any cards.”
Crap. Neither did she. And she had no one to blame but herself, since she’d done the packing. Which just proved how out of it she’d been. Cards were usually one of the first things she tucked into the pack.
“Great.” Gina fell back onto her bedroll. Another sleepless night with nothing to do but think. Just what she needed.
A rustle drew her attention to Teo. He’d put on his glasses and now peered at a notebook he held in his hands.
“What’s that?”
“My mother’s translations.” He shrugged, appearing sheepish and very young. “Do you want to see?”
At her nod, Teo scooted over on the bedroll, making room for Gina to sit at his side. Which was probably a really bad idea.
“I promised not to jump you,” he said, surprising a laugh from her.
What was it about this man that made her want to like him, to trust him even though he’d proved he was both unlikable and untrustworthy?
Though it was probably a bad idea, nevertheless, Gina leaned forward, placing her palms on the ground; then she crossed, on her hands and knees, the few feet that separated them.
She hadn’t realized how suggestive the pose was until his breath caught, then his eyes flared, gaze lowering and fixing on something just below her neck. She glanced down and discovered that her shirt gaped, revealing the easy sway of her breasts beneath.
When she lifted her head, the expression on his face, the stark wanting, made her chest ache. No man had ever looked at her like that before.
Gina sat back on her heels and considered returning to her side of the tent.
“Sorry,” Teo murmured. “You’re just so lovely I can’t help myself.”
Her cheeks heated. Lovely. Such an old-man word, though the look in Teo’s eyes had been anything but old. Or maybe it had been ancient—the same look men had been giving women since the beginning of time. And since she now knew exactly what it felt like when he touched her, all he had to do was glance at her and she remembered his hands, his mouth, that taste.
She remembered, and she yearned.
“Stare all you want, but keep your hands off,” Gina muttered, even though that wasn’t what she wanted. Not really.
How pathetic. Lie, cheat, steal, attempt seduction under both a false name and false pretenses, yet still she wanted him.
“No touching,” Teo agreed. “Swear to God.”
“Which god?” Gina asked.
“Any god. All the gods. Whatever you want.”
She lifted a brow, but she scooted the few feet left to his bedroll in an odd, crab-like movement that kept her from flashing him again.
Gina crossed her legs, stilling when her knee brushed his. Teo shifted, as if he just needed to change positions, but she knew better. The electricity that had jumped between them at that simple touch was disturbing. Would he
r body ever stop calling out for his?
He pointed to the notebook. “These are the glyphs that led me here.”
Gina leaned closer, careful to avoid brushing any more body parts. “Reminds me of kindergarten stick figures.”
“Not everyone was van Gogh.”
“More like Picasso.”
“Yes!” he agreed, both surprised and pleased. “The colors, the glyphs that appear to be half person, half something else. Excellent comparison.”
Gina felt again the warm rush in her chest and stomach that his praise brought to her. Why she craved it, craved him, she had no idea. But she couldn’t seem to stop.
“This is the section about the superwarrior.” Teo pointed to another picture. “The Aztecs marched to—” He slid his index finger, dark against the creamy sheet, to another glyph. “A land north,” he tapped what appeared to be a yellow and black knife, “of the big river.”
Gina leaned closer, barely registering the graze of her shoulder against his in her eagerness to see what he meant. The drawing of the river next to his nail was definitely bigger than the other drawings of rivers elsewhere on the page.
“There isn’t another big river in Mexico?” she asked.
“Not like the Rio Grande. Hence the moniker Grande.”
“Good point,” Gina said, and he turned his head to smile. Because she was leaning against his shoulder their faces were far too close. His nose nearly brushed hers as his breath breezed across her cheek.
She straightened, cleared her throat, and made herself glance away. “How do you get north out of this?” She indicated the bumblebee-shaded knife.
“The Aztecs believed each direction was the realm of a particular god. Tezcatlipoca governed the north; he was the god of night and destiny, of war. His glyph was a tecpatl—the weapon used for sacrificing victims.”
“Weren’t all Aztecs—from the farmer in the fields to the warrior on parade—ruled by sacrifice?”
“Yes.”
“So why did this guy have the sacrificial knife as his symbol? Was he more vicious and violent than the rest?”
Teo’s eyes seemed to lose focus. He’d gone away for a minute in his mind. Gina was starting to understand that sometimes he had to.
“No,” he said at last. “North was also associated with the xerophyte tree, which grew at the northern reaches of the empire in a place called the land of death.”
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