A Man of His Word

by Merline Lovelace

  “With the help of a fifteen-million-dollar crane.”

  Gulping, she sank back on the helo’s side seat. Her all-too-vivid imagination kicked into high gear. She could see the dam crumbling, hear the tearing groan of concrete giving way. After her own experience in the canyon, she had no difficulty imagining the terror of the residents of the town when the floodwaters came roaring down on them.

  She didn’t take a whole breath until the chopper swooped around a bend of the canyon and the Chalo River Dam rose ahead of them. Proud, curved, glistening in the rain, it had caught the floodwaters and thrown them back.

  Muddy water churned angrily, slapped up the dam’s spine, tearing down what remained of the scaffolding. Only the arm of a massive crane poked out of the swirling mass.

  Fascinated, horrified, wishing with all her heart she had a camera to record this awesome spectacle, Sydney jumped out of the helo right behind Reece when they touched down in the parking lot. They joined the cluster of men at the canyon’s edge, watching, waiting.

  Finally the water found its level. The churning subsided. A profound stillness descended.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, Reece broke the silence. “All right. The river’s settling. We’ll take the spillgates to quarter-open and release the floodwaters at forty cubic feet per second. That should mitigate the impact downriver.”

  Forty cubic feet sounded like a whole lot to Sydney, but from the grunts of agreement that rose all around her, she suspected it would do the trick. The fierce expression in Reece’s eyes when he turned to her confirmed her suspicions.

  “We did it! We beat the river.”

  Smiling, she shook her head. “You did it.”

  “Stay here, okay? Don’t go near the ramparts until we bring the floodwaters down and I give the all clear.” A glint of laughter lightened the intensity of his blue eyes. “I don’t think my heart could take having to haul you out of any more trees or floods.”

  “I don’t think mine could, either!”

  He kissed her, hard and fast and very thoroughly, then strode off to join his men.

  Sighing, Sydney watched him disappear into the administration building. She would have preferred to go with him, to get a glimpse of what came next. She needed the visual to flesh out the idea for the documentary that had taken shape in her head.

  She’d use stock footage from the thirties and forties. Show the construction of the early dams like Hoover and Hungry Horse up in Montana. Document their repairs over the years. Highlight the efforts of today’s engineers to adapt yesterday’s structures to new technology, new environmental standards. The theme would be man working with nature, struggling to find that perfect balance between…

  The sight of Jamie Chavez standing alone beside his chopper shut down her rush of creative enthusiasm like a fist falling on steel. As she watched, he turned to climb back into the helo.

  He was going to look for his father. She saw it in his bleak face and stiff, jerky movements.

  Despite the terror Sebastian had put her through, she understood his son’s pain. She’d gone through the same, searing loss herself just a few months ago. She didn’t move, didn’t try to stop him. There’d be time enough later to tell him what happened down at the ruins, tell him as well about his mother.

  That time came late that evening.

  Haggard and slump-shouldered, Jamie walked into the Lone Eagle Café. Arlene was at his side. She spotted Sydney and Reece first.

  Across tables littered with the remains of the steak and beans Reece’s ravenous crew had wolfed down, the two women stared at each other. Without saying a word, Arlene left her husband’s side and crossed the room.

  Reece rose at her approach. He kept silent, recognizing that this was between the two of them.

  “I’m sorry,” Arlene said hoarsely. “About your videotapes. About—” she lifted a hand so thin the veins stood out, let it drop “—about everything.”

  Sydney nodded.

  “The search-and-rescue crew found Sebastian’s body.”

  “We heard.”

  Arlene swallowed painfully. “Jamie’s devastated, but he has to— He wants to—”

  “I have to know,” her husband finished, coming to stand behind his wife.

  Once more Sydney nodded. “We can go to Reece’s room and talk there.”

  “This is fine,” Jamie said with a twist of his lips. “There are no secrets in a small town. You know that.”

  “Maybe not,” Lula put in, huffing out from behind the counter, “but some matters are best left between friends and family.”

  Plunking mugs of coffee down on the table for Arlene and Jamie, she proceeded to clear the café of everyone but the four people at the table. The door slammed behind her.

  With a gesture of weary courtesy, Jamie pulled a chair out for his wife. He sank down in the one next to her.

  Sydney had spent most of the afternoon trying to decide how to tell him about his father’s desperation. Whether to tell him. Sebastian was dead. Would it help his son to know that the father he loved had killed his mother?

  Sydney had spent her adult years recording the truth as seen through a camera. As a documentarian, she knew that truth was never what it seemed. But this story wasn’t hers to edit or shape. She knew she had to tell Jamie those harsh, bare facts and let him shape his own truth.

  Swallowing, she related the story of the Weeping Woman of Chalo Canyon.

  Three days later, Joe Martinez and two other deputies, assisted by a forensics specialist and an archeologist from the University of Arizona uncovered a set of bones buried beneath the rubble in the square tower. The archeologist confirmed that skeletal remains belonged to a female. The forensics specialist identified what looked like a bullet hole in her skull.

  Epilogue

  S ydney sat bathed in moonlight on a limestone outcropping, her arms wrapped around her knees, her gaze on the ruins across the canyon. A camera mounted on a tripod whirred beside her.

  After four long months, the reservoir was slowly rising. After the damage caused by the flood and the extra reinforcement Reece had insisted on, repairs to the dam had taken longer than originally planned. Now they were done, and the water was once again rising up the canyon walls. She couldn’t see its movement, couldn’t measure its exact progress, but the dark waves lapped at the floor of the cave.

  Soon the magical, mystical village she’d first seen as a child would sink into another long sleep. The ruins wouldn’t see sunlight for ten years…more than ten years, if Reece’s modified repairs proved as cost effective as he predicted.

  His job here was done. Hers, too, once the village slipped beneath the waters and disappeared.

  Sydney had spent the past three months editing her work, adding structure and definition to the raw footage, inserting titles and graphics, recording narration and music…in effect, sculpting her story. The rough cut had thrilled her. The fine cut would come as soon as she added the ending.

  This ending.

  Shivering with mingled regret and anticipation, Sydney leaned back against the solid chest behind her. Reece’s arms came around her.

  “Cold?”

  “No. Just…sad that it’s almost over. And eager to get on to the next project.”

  “The next project being our wedding, or your new documentary?”

  Laughing, she twisted in his arms. “Our wedding. Definitely our wedding. Your brothers have threatened me with all kinds of dire retribution if I don’t make an honest man out of you.”

  A grin tugged at Reece’s lips. “You sure you want to get married on the ranch? We could sneak off for a Vegas quickie.”

  “No way!”

  Sydney had already visited the sprawling spread Reece still thought of as home. It had been a flying trip, one day up and one day back, since she was still rushing to make her deadline. In her nervousness at meeting his mother, four brothers and two sisters-in-law, Sydney hadn’t taken a camera with her. She’d regretted the omissio
n as soon as she saw the Bar-H and the men it had bred.

  She couldn’t wait to go back and capture the grandeur of the San Franciscos against the blue sky…not to mention the grandeur of the Henderson Hunks, as the latest addition to the family had privately dubbed them.

  Molly Duncan Henderson, recently married to Reece’s youngest brother, Sam, had confided to Sydney that the Henderson brothers still overwhelmed her. Individually they could charm the fillings out of a girl’s teeth. Collectively, they made for a powerful family. One that had welcomed Sydney with laughter and a readiness to love.

  The aching sense of loss she felt at her father’s death had eased up there, surrounded by Reece’s family. She wanted them all at her wedding. Every one of them.

  “You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for,” her soon-to-be groom warned when she told him so.

  “Funny, that’s what every one of your brothers said. Marsh, in particular, had some interesting stories to tell about you.”

  “Ha!” Reece unfolded his long length and rose, then lifted Sydney off the slab of limestone. “Marsh is a cynical cop who thinks every male is a potential criminal. Don’t listen to him.”

  “What does he think about every female?”

  The teasing light in Reece’s eyes dimmed. “He got hurt a while back. He’s still hurting.”

  Sydney started to ask him how, but it occurred to her that maybe Reece really didn’t want to get married at the Bar-H. Maybe he, too, still carried painful memories.

  After one long, particularly satisfying bout of love-making, they’d lain in each other’s arms, talking about where they’d live between their respective travels, about dams and documentaries, about her father…and his.

  The story had come out slowly, bit by agonizing bit. In a tight voice, Reece had shared with her what he’d never shared with his brothers. She’d held her breath while he described that awful night he’d listened to his mother sob, walked her up and down the living room, felt his faith in his father crumble into dust.

  Maybe…maybe he didn’t want to go back to the Bar-H and celebrate their marriage in the shadow of his mother’s unhappiness. Rising up on tiptoe, Sydney cupped his face with both hands.

  “What about you, Reece? Are you still hurting? Will it pain you to share our vows in the place where your parents’ marriage fell apart?”

  “No,” he said simply. “It’s home. It always will be home.” A glint of laughter crept into his eyes. “Especially if I end up having to pay for the damage to that crane. We won’t be able to afford anything else.”

  Sydney huffed with indignation, as he’d known she would. She’d been bristling ever since he explained that a report of survey, to document the damage to the crane, had to be processed before he was cleared of all liability.

  “No one in any bureaucracy in any country in the world would charge you for that. You saved a whole town, for Pete’s sake!”

  He tried to look humble, but laughter kept tickling the back of his throat. She looked so fierce, so ready to take on all comers.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I would!” She flung her arms around his neck. “You saved me, too, Reece.”

  “Several times,” he agreed dryly.

  He still shuddered every time she drove off in a car, her mind going a thousand miles a minute, her thoughts on the great visuals out the window instead of the road.

  “You’re still saving me,” she murmured, dragging his mouth down to hers. “You save me every time you do this. And this. And—”

  “Sydney…”

  Groaning, he sank to his knees.

  She came down with him, love splintering through her at the magical touch of his hands, his mouth. Whatever came, wherever his work and her films took them, they would always, always have this.

  Behind them, the camera whirred. Across the canyon, the ruins sank slowly under the water and settled into sleep once more. A light breeze played across the surface of the water, carrying with it a sound that could have been a soft, gentle, smiling sigh.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6824-5

  A MAN OF HIS WORD

  Copyright © 1999 by Merline Lovelace

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Epilogue