Chesapeake took a step backward just the way a helicopter would until she eased off the reins again.
“That’s collective down and cyclic back. More pressure equals a bigger response, so letting loose the reins and kick hard equals go fast.”
If only she could explain what she was feeling so clearly, but she couldn’t put words to it.
“Horses are emotional. Command with confidence—which should be no trouble for you—and the horse will behave.”
Emily nodded once to Doug in thanks, a second time to herself to anchor the lesson, then she eased off the reins and experimentally thumped her boot heels into Chesapeake’s ribs. The horse shifted up through a walk to a trot. She eased back on the reins just a little, and the horse settled into the trot without going up to one of its faster speeds.
Together, she and Chesapeake trotted out of the shadowed barn and into the bright morning light. The day was warm and the sun felt good, as if it was somehow scorching away little flakes of her strange mood. More would be better.
“C’mon, Mark,” Emily called back as they trotted past the corrals, discovering that twisting in her saddle could turn the horse as well. “What’s holding you up?”
Mark’s muttered curse did her heart some good. That she was out past the ranch buildings and nearly over the first rise before he caught up with her, made her feel even cheerier.
“Is there anything you aren’t amazing at, woman?” Mark trotted up beside her.
“Had a good teacher.”
“I thought you’d never ridden.”
“Let’s find out,” Emily eased the reins, but wasn’t comfortable kicking her horse. It seemed like a nasty trick to pull on a perfectly nice horse. Instead she leaned forward and whispered, “Let’s go, girl.”
In moments the horse’s rhythm change from jouncy to fast and smooth, like riding the natural glide slope of an auto-rotate descent. The wind snatched her hair back from her face and the prairie grass began rushing by. She risked reaching up to check her hat, but it was a snug fit and wasn’t going anywhere. She leaned into the wind and in the process eased the reins some more.
Chesapeake lowered her head and they flew across the ground.
She heard a soft, “Shit!” from somewhere far behind her.
She’d always wondered what it felt like to fly outside of the helicopter and, for the first time, she received a taste of it. No wonder cowboys always whooped when galloping in the movies. She let one fly as they crested the soft roll of the grassy ridge.
Emily had visited the ranch a few times on leave, but this was her first time when there wasn’t snow on the ground. And she’d certainly never seen it from horseback.
The view was breathtaking—that and the roaring wind of the gallop which ripped away her gasp of amazement. She sat up slowly and eased back on the reins. Just as Doug had promised, down on the collective, ease back on the cyclic and Chesapeake eased from race to trot and finally mosey. She finally understood what the word truly meant—a lazy side-to-side roll as the horse eased to a walk and huffed out a happy breath. Emily thumped her alongside her neck in what she hoped was a sisterly pat.
“We’ll have to do more of that later, won’t we?” She’d take the horse twitching her ears back to listen in her direction as agreement.
At a mosey she could appreciate the landscape that had opened out in front of her when she’d crested the ridge. The sharp mountains of the Montana Front Range broke skyward with a visceral power she could feel in her gut. The lower foothills harbored clumps of dark conifers as well as maple and birch just starting into their fall plumage. The prairie was carpeted with yellow coneflower, sprinkled with multi-colored anemones, and accented by nodding columbine. She loved columbine.
“That’s my wedding bouquet!” Emily waved a hand at the wild colors of the prairie as Mark finally caught up with her. She wished she could capture the dark mountains and the blue sky that went on forever as well. She tipped way back in the saddle to look straight up from beneath her hat. “No wonder they call it the Big Sky.”
“Kind of amazing, isn’t it?”
“How did we not ride out here before?”
“Six months in Afghanistan. Or did you already forget?”
Emily could only smile at Mark. For a moment, she had. The lush Montana landscape had painted over the ochre Afghan desert imprinted inside her.
They rode down the far side of the ridge in a comfortable silence. Crested another ridge. Descended through a thick copse of trees, and out the far side they rode up to a stream. Once again the land was carpeted in flowers.
“Must have rained in the last week or so to make this,” Mark eased to a stop along the stream. It was twenty-feet wide and looked to be a couple feet deep. A darker patch lay along one side.
“This your fishing hole?”
“One of them,” Mark sounded like a man in paradise.
Emily let herself look at him—look at Major Mark Henderson and think the word husband. It was a good thought. He was the best man she knew and, much to her surprise, she loved him.
She dismounted and went to stand close by the burbling water.
Chapter 4
Mark tried to figure out what he’d done right in this life, or any other life for that matter, that Emily stood waiting for him. For him.
He slid to the ground and came up behind her, folding her into his arms.
“What’s bugging you, babe? I know something—”
She turned in his arms and put a finger on his lips.
“Not here. Not now. It’s too perfect.” Then without shifting her gaze from his, she eased down to the grass, tugging him down after her. There was no need to tell him twice.
They’d made love in a hospital bed and in the back of a Black Hawk. A Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan hadn’t afforded much more than stolen moments in dark corners. Last night after the big cookout, everyone had stayed up late telling campfire stories. Tim had sweet-talked one of the flight attendants to keep him company. Not to be outdone, Big John had sidled up to a particularly curvy New York stockbroker who’d come to the ranch with three girlfriends to get over a recent breakup. By the time Emily led Mark to bed, Afghanistan jet lag had overtaken their plans and crashed them into sleep.
Now there was just the horses, the wide prairie, and the most amazing woman he’d ever met.
He tugged off his hat.
“Uh-uh, cowboy. Keep the hat.”
“Wa’ll,” if she wanted a cowboy to make love to her, he could arrange that. “Ah guess that ah’ll jes—”
“Lose the accent and the shirt.”
He was too wise a man to argue. Mark did raise her up to slip his shirt beneath her. Next time he’d remember a blanket. As she lay back, she tugged off her blouse as well. She was an impossible combination of womanly curves and a sleek strength that only a career soldier could ever possess. The two together stole his words and he did his best to show just how much he appreciated that she’d said yes all those months ago.
Emily rose for him, just as she had that very first time, as if every moment was a new discovery of wonder. He’d never tire of evoking that deep response from her. He loved that he could drive her out of that perfect control she showed even in the fiercest firefight.
As he eased off her boots and jeans he imagined how the other guys must picture Emily making love. The cool, almost emotionless blonde—always in perfect control. Wouldn’t they be surprised to know that she groaned at his lightest touch. And when he did something just right, she even begged.
The cool blonde was for others. The best lover of his entire life was for him alone.
Now both naked except for their cowboy hats (and his jeans trapped down on his cowboy boots), he worked his way up her glorious body, wondering if the team would care if the bride and groom didn’t show up for the wedding. They’d stay here. He held himself over her for a moment and looked down to admire them coming together. It was the most amazing thing to see their two bodie
s join so completely. He didn’t want this to be just one moment. Maybe later he’d sneak back to the ranch for a blanket and some food, and they’d stay here making love until—
Emily flailed an arm upward catching him across the chin, snapping his jaw shut—hard.
“Yow! My tong-ah!”
“Cut it out, Chesapeake!” Emily flailed one of those long perfect arms over her head while she lay in the grass, but managed to miss his face this time. “I said shoo! Don’t eat my hat, you dumb horse.”
Mark looked up, ready to slap the horse’s nose. Hell of a moment to interrupt. He supported himself with one hand so that he could strike with the other.
It wasn’t Chesapeake. It wasn’t even Wind Runner, his own mount.
For a moment he couldn’t make sense of what he saw.
Then it clicked into focus.
With a cry, he attempted to rear back. He made it to his feet, but with his ankles trapped in his bunched jeans, he had no control. He kept going and flailed over backward to splash down into the deep stream.
It was cold enough to shrivel him for life!
Chapter 5
One moment Emily was ready to die of contentment. Mark was an incredible lover. And watching his body poised over hers against the sun-brilliant blue of the Montana sky only made him look all the more perfect. Each time he filled her, it was a completion that she never imagined possible. Their bodies had been designed for this perfect moment of coming together—the opening and welcoming, the taking in, the completion.
Mark had so stoked her need for him, that the tug on her hat had barely distracted her. The events building toward the wedding had only compounded that ten times more. She was so desperate for him that it had been an automatic gesture to brush Chesapeake aside—no more.
Mark’s cry of alarm at the horse trying to eat her hat would have shocked her if she hadn’t been so anticipating the next moment.
Then he rose up like…she didn’t know what. Did grizzly bears look like that? Tall, magnificent against the blue sky, muscular, and gloriously aroused.
No. But maybe a panicked Homo sapiens did. Except for the gloriously aroused part.
He disappeared out of sight. There was a huge splash, and cold water sprinkled over her body, like fresh rain on a hot afternoon.
Enough of her brain returned from anticipating Mark inside her for her to wonder what had alarmed him so.
She slowly tipped her head back, until she was looking at just who was tugging on her hat. It wasn’t Chesapeake. It wasn’t Wind Runner.
For one thing, it had a broad, black face that even upside down was the wrong shape. It also had curving horns that stuck out of either side of its head by several feet—ending in wicked-looking points.
It stared at her for a moment with one liquid-brown eye, blinked with incredibly long lashes, and then inspected her with the other.
Then it turned away to graze on the flowers.
“That’s my wedding bouquet you’re eating, you know.”
“Lucy!” a woman’s voice called. “There you are.”
Emily sat up enough to see what was really going on. A woman with shiny-blonde hair rode out of the red-tinged trees. Her horse was a patchwork like spilled black paint spilled on a white canvas.
“Sorry to disturb your sunbathing. Lucy’s a bit of an escape artist.”
“Sunbathing?” No, she’d been on the verge of— Emily spotted Mark. He was still in the stream. He was halfway out of the water, but a bush blocked the woman’s view of him. He eased back down into the water. Well, she wasn’t going to be so frail. “It is a nice day for it.”
She reached for her shirt, then thought better of it. It was snarled beneath her along with Mark’s and if she straightened out one, she’d reveal the other.
The woman, just a few years Emily’s junior, rode up to the monstrous cow, and slapped it on the butt with a coiled rope. “Home, Lucy.” The cow looked at her balefully for a moment, then began ambling down along the stream. “Sorry for the trouble. This is Clarence,” she introduced her horse first which was maybe what all true cowgirls did. “I’m Julie from the ranch next door.”
“Emily, from this ranch, I guess. That’s Chesapeake,” she waved a negligent hand as if she was sitting in her armor in a Night Stalkers’ briefing room, not naked among the columbines.
“Emily. The one marrying the son of the ranch?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Always good to get in some sunbathing and relaxing before something like that.”
“It is,” Emily agreed wondering just how surreal this conversation was going to get. It was now far too late to grab for her shirt without looking like a complete fool.
“Suppose I ought to warn you, that stream water is glacier fed. Just wouldn’t want you to jump in not knowing that.” Julie nodded over toward where Wind Runner had grazed around out of Emily’s immediate sight. Her wry smile indicated that she hadn’t missed a single thing of what was going on.
Emily fished out her shirt and tugged it on, tossing Mark’s a little closer to the water. Actually, too close. It cleared the bank and plopped into the stream. He snagged it as it floated by, then sent her a fulminating look.
“Thanks for the warning,” Emily expected she could get to like Clarence and Julie-from-the-ranch-next-door. That gave her some hope. She didn’t have a maid of honor, but sitting here, still mostly naked on the very prickly grass, and asking a total stranger cowgirl to step in didn’t seem the right answer either.
“You have a good time, y’hear?” Julie turned her horse with thoughtless ease.
“I always try,” Emily called after her.
“She gone?” Mark whispered through chattering teeth.
Emily thought about the story she’d be telling around the campfire tonight, her pre-wedding night, and couldn’t help herself. For perhaps the first time in her life she actually giggled. Maybe she’d take Julie’s advice and enjoy herself a bit.
“Not yet,” Julie and Lucy the cow were nowhere to be seen. Emily dressed and began picking her wedding bouquet. She had it mostly assembled before she called the all clear.
Chapter 6
“So there we were. Mark fishing, me reading my book, because, I mean, ick!”
Mark wondered what had come over Emily. She was never a storyteller, but tonight she was ruling the campfire. But of all stories to tell… At least she was changing it for the better.
With the sun set and darkness down, the fire lit her face with a warm glow. Everyone crowded in close, rapt with attention.
“Then the biggest cow I’ve ever seen—huge horns, I mean out like this,” she spread her arms to their limits, sticking out her index fingers like the points he’d thought were going to gore him, “—came up from behind and took a taste of my hat.”
“What did you do?” Of course Tim was the perfect audience, being an accomplished storyteller himself.
Mark was just glad that the ranch guests were off at some other event tonight, so it was just the 5D’s crews around the fire. It hadn’t been his finest moment.
“I might have yelped and I definitely lost my place in my book. But it’s what Mark did that makes it all so perfect.” Emily held onto his arm as if he was the conquering hero.
“Faced down a longhorn for you?” Tim guessed.
“Wrangled him to the ground,” Big John tried to one-up him.
“Fileted the beast with a fishing knife.”
John slapped his palms together, “Longhorn steaks for the wedding feast tomorrow. Yes!”
“My man…” Emily drew it out. “My man squealed like a little girl and fell head over heels into the glacier stream!”
“No! Wait!” Mark’s protest was too little too late.
Everyone was laughing and he couldn’t seem to shout the truth down—even if it was the only bit of truth in the whole tale.
He had intended to race to her rescue, but he’d resurfaced just in time to see the perfectly cool, and brilliantl
y naked, Emily shoo the monster cow off as if it was just an overgrown kitten. By the time Julie from across the road was gone, he’d been far too cold to resume any amorous intent. Pulling up those icy jeans had been one of the hardest things he’d done in a long time. They should add that to the Night Stalkers Green Platoon testing.
Mark tried to think of some way this could be more embarrassing when a big hand landed on his shoulder.
He turned to see the firelight illuminating Frank Adams’ face. The head of the President’s Protection Detail clamped down on him hard.
“Thought you promised to take care of this lady, Major Henderson?” The threat of retribution was clear in his tone and his crushing hold.
“Hi, Frank,” Emily jumped to her feet and gave Frank a solid hug, which thankfully forced Frank to release his viselike grip on Mark’s shoulder.
What in the world had gotten into her tonight?
“Where’s your boss?”
“That’s the greeting I get?” Frank grumbled. “Everyone cares about the Main Man, not about me.” But he held Emily close and gently for a long moment which made Mark forgive him most anything.
Mark rose and traded a firm handshake with him. There was some test of strength there, but nothing he couldn’t handle. No real point in trying, when Emily had taken both of them down more than once on her own. They might be the best at what they did, but Emily was in a whole other category.
“The advance team has already been through the place. But your parents are hitching a ride on Air Force One, so the President figured arriving tomorrow for the wedding was better than today.”
“He actually got something right,” Emily agreed. “Nice change.”
Frank looked pained at the insult to the Commander-in-Chief, but knew better than to contradict Emily.
Mark found him a beer and they all sat back down around the fire. They tapped their bottles together in a silent toast to an amazing woman—at least that’s what he was toasting.
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