by Tina Leonard
“You were supposed to,” Jace said sourly. “It was your shift. Now Xav Phillips says he’ll come back and take over, which isn’t a good idea.” Jace glanced at Ash, who was talking on a cell phone to River, complaining that Tighe was a stubborn ass. “We don’t need Xav in the canyons, dude, as you well know, because Ash will find a thousand reasons and ways to get down there to haunt her favorite cowboy.”
“Who’s got a favorite cowboy?” Ash asked, returning. “Apparently, not River right now. She’s annoyed with you, Tighe.” Ash grinned. “She says you have to go to Sloan’s, because she can’t leave the twins to visit you in the bunkhouse.”
Even better. He didn’t want River around while he healed. A lightning flash of intuition told him he’d be better off returning when he was all better, a hero again—not the poor sap everyone was annoyed with. “Really, I’m such a pain in the ass, the only place I can be is the canyons.”
“I agree completely. Still, a bad idea,” Jace said.
“But—” Ash began, and Tighe waved her to silence.
“I’ve made up my mind.” What use was he as a man if he was on par with the twins? “I got myself into this mess and I’ll get myself out. As a matter of fact, just take me to the stone and fire ring. All I need is a bottle of whiskey and some girlie mags. I’ll be fine.”
Ash and Jace stared at him, their expressions dismayed.
“Okay, no girlie mags,” Tighe said, loving messing with his siblings. They thought he wasn’t big and bad right now. Well, he was; he was a monster pain in the butt, and that was just the way a man should be.
“You’ll be unprotected,” Ash said. “Much as you’re the only one among us with such disregard for yourself, you still do not want to put yourself out there with a bull’s-eye on you for Wolf and his gang. Listen to me,” she pleaded. “I’ll worry myself sick.”
“Sick about what?” River asked.
The three Callahans stared at the tall woman who’d just walked up, catching the last words of their conversation. Just the sight of that gorgeous creature made his blood pound. River gave him the wild, mad dreams of a man who’d tasted heaven once and was determined to do it again. Once he was healed, he was coming back for her.
“Nobody’s worried about a thing,” Tighe said.
“I’m worried.” Ash looked at River for help. “My jackass of a brother wants to camp out in the open instead of stay in the house with you and the twins. In the open,” she emphasized.
River didn’t miss Ash’s message. She met his gaze, didn’t look away. Peered deep inside him, until he felt her reaching into his soul.
The woman practically stole his very breath.
“I’ll drive you out there,” River said.
Chapter Three
After he’d packed up some gear and run the gauntlet of a protesting aunt Fiona and family, River hustled Tighe into the military jeep and steered it toward the canyons. He glanced over at the goddess next to him, trying to decipher the change in her mood. She certainly wasn’t the cooing, sexy tigress he’d had in his arms last night.
He’d have to call River’s mood elusive, which didn’t sit well with him at all. It almost felt as if she was abandoning him without a thought.
“Thanks for the ride. My siblings weren’t going to bring me.”
Glossy dark strands of hair blew around her face as she drove, rather speedily, he thought, given the uneven terrain. She could at least quit mashing the pedal.
“It’s not my worry if you’ve got a death wish. I have no desire to keep you from your fondest desires, Tighe.”
That didn’t sound right. She was his fondest desire. “I don’t have a death wish.”
“Don’t you?” She leveled him with brown eyes that held not a care in them. “First Firefreak. Now sleeping in the open, when you know that the ranch has been under siege for forever. For longer than either you or I have even been here.”
Aw, she was fretting about him, the cute little thing. He reached over and gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze.
She batted away his hand. His brows rose. “Regretting last night?”
She turned to him, her forehead pinched in a frown. “Regretting what?”
He hardly knew what to say, since this darling angel seemed to have suddenly sprouted a ten-inch layer of cactus needles around herself. “You and me.”
“Hardly,” she shot back. “It didn’t mean a thing, cowboy.”
He tried not to let his jaw fall open. “Nothing?”
“Should it have?”
It certainly had to him. Hell, he’d gotten on Firefreak for her! Making love to her, plus facing his greatest challenge since coming to Diablo—well, it was the greatest cocktail of adrenaline and gut-punching life he’d ever experienced. “You know me. It’s just all about getting naked,” he bragged, trying to sound like his old self, the self he’d been before they’d made love. His whole world had changed—shouldn’t hers have, too?
“Where am I dropping you off?”
She sounded completely unworried. Tighe comforted himself that that was because everyone knew he could take care of himself. “At the stone ring, please.”
At that news, she did look a little alarmed. “You’ll be out in the open. I think your family assumes you’re at least taking shelter in one of the caves or overhangs.”
“Wouldn’t do any good. Wolf will find me if he wants to, and frankly, I don’t care if he does.”
“You’re injured, Tighe. I know you don’t like to admit to mortality, but you do recall that seven goons tied up your sister and Xav Phillips just last month?”
Tighe had no intention of hanging out in a cave like a cowering dog, away from the stars he loved and the fresh breezes that stirred his soul. “It’s just a little groin pull, darling. No worries. However,” he said, perking up, “maybe you’d like to hang around and nurse my groi—”
“And a hairline fracture,” River interrupted.
“I mend best in the open. I lived in the tribe. Was deployed to some hellish places. Don’t you worry about me, beautiful.”
“I’m not,” she snapped. “I think you’re an idiot.”
Well, that wasn’t how a man wanted the angel of his dreams to view him. “Harsh.”
“Honest.”
She pulled up to the stone ring. Large rocks, one set for each of the seven Chacon Callahans, encircled a small glowing fire. His grandfather, Chief Running Bear, tended the blaze. The chief said this place was their home now, while they protected Callahan land, and the mystical black Diablos, the spirit horses that lived in the canyons. They were the true wealth of Rancho Diablo.
“Home sweet home,” Tighe said.
“Then get out,” River said, “if this is where you want to be.”
He turned to look at her. “Gorgeous, I’m pretty sure I showed you a good time in bed. Is there a reason you’re all prickly suddenly?”
She met his gaze. “I told you. I’m pretty sure you’re the loose cannon I always believed you were.”
He winced internally. This was true. But it wasn’t necessary to rub in the fact that he’d clearly failed to change her mind. “All right, sweet face. Try not to miss me too much,” he said, getting out of the jeep and managing his crutches a bit more slowly and painfully than his jaunty tone implied.
“I won’t miss you at all.” She wheeled the jeep around and drove away, apparently not even curious as to where he planned to lay his bedroll.
“Guess that means we won’t be sharing the old pillow tonight. It’s a shame, because I’m pretty sure you’re kidding yourself, my hottie bodyguard.” He hobbled around, trying to find a place to settle, not altogether surprised when his grandfather appeared.
“Howdy, Chief.” Tighe tossed his bedroll down. “Haven’t seen you since Dante’s wedding.”
“I’ve seen you.” Running Bear picked up the bedroll. “Come.”
Tighe followed as fast as his crutches would allow. “Where are we headed?”
&n
bsp; The chief disappeared behind some thick cacti. A threadlike stream encircled a wide stone dugout tucked back and hidden so well that Tighe would never have seen it even if he’d been looking for it. He had a feeling his brothers and Ash had no idea about Running Bear’s lair. Well, Ashlyn might; she seemed to know more than most. But he thought Galen, Jace, Falcon, his pinheaded twin, Dante, and Sloan were just as in the dark as he was. “Nice digs, Grandfather.”
Running Bear grunted. Tighe felt honored that his grandfather had brought him to his private sanctuary. They sat near the opening, staring out over the curling canyons below. “Wow, this is quite a view.”
“Yes.” Running Bear didn’t look at him as Tighe gingerly settled himself against the rock ledge so his leg could jut forward for support. “We need to discuss your time at Rancho Diablo.”
“My time?”
His grandfather gazed out into the distance. Sudden fear clenched Tighe’s gut. The old chief had warned the seven Chacon Callahans that one of them was the hunted one, the one who would bring harm to the family. Was it him? Was that why Running Bear had brought him here? Somehow Tighe had known this was where he belonged, almost from the moment he’d realized River had gone chilly on him.
“Tell me what I should do, Grandfather,” he said, and the old man closed his eyes, though Tighe knew he wasn’t dozing.
“Meditate on who you are,” Running Bear said. “You are not yet who you will be.”
Tighe didn’t know how to be anything other than what he was. Some—like River—claimed he was a bit wild. Maybe he was. Certainly he liked to live on the edge, but wasn’t that part of enjoying life to the max? His family teased him, calling him more taciturn than his talkative twin, but that had been when they were kids. The military had thought he was fairly accurate and single-minded when it came to sniper skills. Tighe had earned the moniker Takedown. He’d liked living almost alone at times, when he was on an assignment. Other times he’d appreciated the camaraderie and brotherhood of his platoon. It had been a close bond, reminiscent of his tribe. “Chief, I don’t know how to be anything different than what I am.”
His grandfather looked at him. “You will learn.”
Then he left the stone crevasse, disappearing without a sound. Tighe leaned back against the rough wall with a sigh. He looked out over the canyons from his grandfather’s aerie, and wondered if he would ever get River to kiss him again. She seemed to think he needed to change somehow, too.
He was pretty resistant to that. “Twenty-seven years of being the opposite of Dante wasn’t so bad,” he muttered. “I’d rather be me than him.”
He liked being wild and free. What exactly was wrong with that?
Even River wouldn’t want him to change that much. She had to have liked him the way he was or she wouldn’t have allowed him to make love to her.
Then again, he could consider changing just a little if she’d open her arms to him again. Problem was, he didn’t know what he was supposed to change. Tighe closed his eyes, willed himself to meditate.
“Every journey changes your soul. Each journey is a path to self-knowledge,” Running Bear said. “There is no life without this.”
“I know, Grandfather, I know. I remember your teachings.” Tighe opened his eyes, glanced around. Running Bear was nowhere to be seen. But his words remained in Tighe’s mind, delicate as air.
Closing his eyes again, he allowed the mysticism he knew so well to envelop him, something he hadn’t done in a long, long time.
* * *
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Ash asked River, who was looking out a window in the main house, toward the barn. River had specifically chosen this room for her project.
“I’m spying on your brothers. And Sawyer. There’s something strange about her. I don’t believe for a second that she’s had real training as a bodyguard. Not like Ana and I had.”
“The little twins seem to like her.”
“Isaiah and Carlos like her because they’re Callahan males. They’re predisposed to like pretty girls from the moment they’re conceived. That doesn’t make her a bodyguard. It makes her a decent nanny. Maybe.”
Ash flopped into a chair. “When I asked Kendall why she’d hired Storm Cash’s niece, she said Sawyer had the right training, and that she’d spent time in the desert honing her skills. Kendall said she checked her background, and Sawyer and Storm hadn’t been close during Sawyer’s childhood. So in Kendall’s maternal opinion, there was no reason to eliminate a perfectly good bodyguard just because of some stinky family relations. And Kendall said sometimes it was best to keep your enemies tucked tight to one’s bosom.”
“I like my bosom enemy-free. I’m not leaving until I know the twins are in capable hands,” River stated.
Ash watched Sawyer below, chatting up Jace, as little Isaiah and Carlos happily sat in their double stroller. “I didn’t know you were planning on leaving. And yet, I guess I did know. I was just hoping my hunch was wrong.” Ash sighed. “You’re going to find Tighe, aren’t you?”
“It’s time someone does.” It had been three weeks since she’d driven Tighe to the stone fire ring. She had no idea what he was eating or drinking, or if he was miserable from his leg injury. None of the Callahans, including the protective aunt Fiona, seemed all that worried. When River had mentioned to Fiona that maybe her husband, Burke, might need to go check on Tighe, she had shaken her head and said she didn’t have time for such monkeyshines.
“Oh, Tighe’s fine. Don’t worry about him. When he was a boy—”
River glanced at Ash, who seemed to suddenly have swallowed her words. “When he was a boy, what?”
“I was just going to say that once when we were young, Tighe went off for a while. I was six,” Ash said, “so I remember it well.” She smiled at River. “It’s all right. We’re used to him being independent.”
“If you were six, Tighe was eight when he went on this adventure. How long was he gone?” River was curious as to how he had fared in his childhood. “Five, six hours?”
“Two months,” Ash said softly. “He was gone two months, in the coldest part of the year. Most of us wanted to stay close to the fire at night. Tighe wanted to find out if he could build his own fire and survive on what he found and caught.”
River sucked in her breath. “No parent would allow that.”
“Oh.” Ash shook her head, got up. “No worries about that. Tighe was never really alone, though he doesn’t know that, so don’t tell him. It would totally crush him and blow his wild man conception of himself. But there were always scouts watching him. Not that the scouts would have interfered, unless there’d been severe danger. A test is a test, and Tighe wanted the chance to test himself.” Ash fluffed her silvery-blond, shoulder-length hair, not concerned in the least. “Grandfather said Tighe had the soul of a tiger, and that he would make many kills when he left the tribe. And he did. He was a pretty good sniper. Don’t worry about my pinheaded brother,” she said. “He’s more wolf than man. Tighe’s problem is that is he’s scared, maybe for the first time in his life.”
“Scared of what? Not rattlesnakes, or becoming a dried-out skeleton, with no food or water in the canyons.”
“My guess is,” Ash said, “he’s been a little scared ever since you came here.”
“Me?”
“Maybe. Tighe’s always seen himself as the uncatchable male. Also, I think it’s come to his mind that he might be the hunted one.”
“You know,” River said, looking back out the window, “it could be you, Ash.”
She shook her head. “Not me. But if it is, I hope someone shoots me and puts me out of my misery.”
“Shoots you?” River was horrified. “Who would do that?”
“I’m hoping you,” Ash said softly, looking at her. “You’ve always got your Beretta strapped to your thigh, don’t you?”
“I would never shoot you,” River snapped. “And how do you know about my gun?”
“I know everything,” Ash said, wa
ndering out the door.
“I see,” River muttered, watching Sawyer stretch up to kiss Jace on the cheek on the ground below her second-story window. “Really nice to know I’ve fallen for some kind of hard-core survivalist wolf-man. And that woman is working an angle,” she said of Sawyer, watching her slink off, leaving a seemingly stunned Jace behind. “Don’t fall for it, handsome.”
Jace would probably fall like a ton of bricks. She watched Jace almost strut, all peacocklike, his gaze fastened on Sawyer’s backside. River sighed and got up from her perch. Ash’s wealth of information had unsettled her to some degree. Tighe wasn’t afraid of her—not in the least. That could be ruled out. He was stubborn and opinionated, but not afraid of a woman.
Now the other business...was he the hunted one? Ash was crazy if she thought River was going to shoot her, if it turned out to be her. “The only shooting I’m doing is at bad guys, and there may not be any of those,” River said, watching Jace rub his cheek where Sawyer had pecked him. “Just gullible ones.”
She went to hunt up Tighe, the resident wolf on the loose.
* * *
THE STONE CIRCLE showed few signs of anyone living there, though a small fire flickered, the embers glowing. There were no signs of foul play, but River felt uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. A man with a sore groin and a fractured leg should be right here where she’d left him.
“Hello, beautiful,” she heard someone say, and River turned.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Why are you standing up?”
Tighe smiled, feeling very much in control of the situation, obviously, by the devilish light in his eyes. “You were worried about me.”
“No, I wasn’t.” Why add to his already overburdened ego?
“You were.” He stumped forward, resting his weight on a crutch crudely fashioned from the forked limb of a tree. “I’m glad you were worried about me, but I could have told you there was no need.”
“Then I’ll be going.” She didn’t feel like putting up with his macho attitude when he’d worried her half to death for days. “I’ll let your family know you’re fine.”