by Nora Roberts
Bryan nodded but kept her face buried against her knees. “I guess he wasn’t that big, but they look different out of the zoo. I just need a minute to pull myself together.”
“Take your time.”
He found he didn’t mind offering comfort, though it was something he hadn’t done in a long time. The air was cool, the night still. He could hear the sound of the water rushing by in the creek. For a moment he had a quick flash of the Browns’ porch, of the easy family portrait on the swing. He felt a touch of the same contentment here, with his arm around Bryan and night closing in.
Overhead a hawk screeched, out for its first flight of the night. Bryan jolted.
“Easy,” Shade murmured. He didn’t laugh at her reaction, or even smile. He soothed.
“I guess I’m a little jumpy.” With a nervous laugh, she lifted her hand to push at her hair again. It wasn’t until then that Shade realized she was naked beneath the open, billowing shirt.
The sight of her slim, supple body beneath the thin, fluttering material sent the contentment he’d felt sky-rocketing into need. A need, he discovered only in that instant, that was somehow exclusively for her—not just for a woman with a lovely face, a desirable body, but for Bryan.
“Maybe we should get back and…” She turned her head and found her eyes only inches from his. In his, she saw everything he felt. When she started to speak again, he shook his head.
No words. No words now. Only needs, only feelings. He wanted that with her. As his mouth closed over hers, he gave her no choice but to want it as well.
Sweetness? Where had it come from and how could she possibly turn away from it? They’d been together nearly a month, but she’d never suspected he had sweetness in him. Nor had she known just how badly she’d needed to find it there.
His mouth demanded, but so slowly, so subtly, that she was giving before she was aware of it. Once she’d given, she couldn’t take away again. She felt his hand, warm and firm on her bare skin, but she sighed in pleasure, not in protest. She’d wanted him to touch her, had waited for it, had denied her waiting. Now she leaned closer. There’d be no denying.
He’d known she’d feel like this—slim, strong, smooth. A hundred times, he’d imagined it. He hadn’t forgotten that she’d taste like this—warm, tempting, generous. A hundred times, he’d tried not to remember.
This time she smelled of the creek, fresh and cool. He could bury his face in her throat and smell the summer night on her. He kissed her slowly, leaving her lips for her throat, her throat for her shoulder. As he lingered there, he gave himself the pleasure of discovering her body with his fingertips.
It was torture. Exquisite. Agonizing. Irresistible. Bryan wanted it to go on, and on and on. She drew him closer, loving the hard, lean feel of his body against hers, the brush of his clothes against her skin, the whisper of his breath across it. And through it all, the quick, steady beat of his heart near hers.
She could smell the work of the day on him, the faint tang of healthy sweat, the traces of dust he hadn’t yet washed off. It excited her with memories of the way his muscles had bunched beneath his shirt when he’d climbed onto a fence for a better angle. She could remember exactly how he’d looked then, though she’d pretended to herself that she hadn’t seen, hadn’t needed to.
She wanted his strength. Not the muscles, but the inner strength she’d sensed in him from the start. The strength that had carried him through what he’d seen, what he’d lived with.
Yet wasn’t it that strength that helped to harden him, to separate him emotionally from the people around him? With her mind whirling, her body pulsing, she struggled to find the answer she needed.
Wants weren’t enough. Hadn’t she told him so herself? God, she wanted him. Her bones were melting from the desire for him. But it wasn’t enough. She only wished she knew what was.
“Shade…” Even when she tried to speak, he cut her off with another long, draining kiss.
She wanted him to drain her. Mind, body, soul. If he did, there’d be no question and no need for answers. But the questions were there. Even as she held him to her, they were there.
“Shade,” she began again.
“I want to make love with you.” He lifted his head, and his eyes were so dark, so intense, it was almost impossible to believe his hands were so gentle. “I want to feel your skin under my hand, feel your heart race, watch your eyes.”
The words were quiet, incredibly calm when his eyes were so passionate. More than the passion and demand in his eyes, the words frightened her.
“I’m not ready for this.” She barely managed the words as she drew away from him.
He felt the needs rise and the anger begin. It took all his skill to control both. “Are you saying you don’t want me?”
“No.” She shook her head as she drew her shirt together. When had it become so cold? she wondered. “No, lying’s foolish.”
“So’s backing away from something we both want to happen.”
“I’m not sure I do. I can’t be logical about this, Shade.” She gathered her clothes quickly and hugged them against her as she stood. “I can’t think something like this through step-by-step the way you do. If I could, it’d be different, but I can only go with my feelings, my instincts.”
There was a deadly calm around him when he rose. The control he’d nearly forfeited to her was back in place. Once more he accepted the prison he’d built for himself. “And?”
She shivered without knowing if it was from the cold without or the cold within. “And my feelings tell me I need more time.” When she looked up at him again, her face was honest, her eyes were eloquent. “Maybe I do want this to happen. Maybe I’m just a little afraid of how much I want you.”
He didn’t like her use of the word afraid. She made him feel responsible, obliged. Defensive. “I’ve no intention of hurting you.”
She gave herself a moment. Her breathing was easier, even if her pulse was still unsteady. Whether he knew it or not, Shade had already given her the distance she needed to resist him. Now she could look at him, calmer. Now she could think more clearly.
“No, I don’t think you do, but you could, and I have a basic fear of bruises. Maybe I’m an emotional coward. It’s not a pretty thought, but it might be true.” With a sigh, she lifted both hands to her hair and pushed it back. “Shade, we’ve a bit more than two months left on the road. I can’t afford to spend it being torn up inside because of you. My instincts tell me you could very easily do that to me, whether you planned on it or not.”
She knew how to back a man into a corner, he thought in frustration. He could press, relieve the knot she’d tightened in his stomach. And by doing so, he’d run the risk of having her words echo back at him for a long time to come. It’d only taken a few words from her to remind him what it felt like to be responsible for someone else.
“Go back to the van,” he told her, turning away to strip off his shirt. “I have to clean up.”
She started to speak, then realized there was nothing more she could say. Instead, she left him to follow the thin, moonlit trail back to the van.
Chapter 7
Wheat fields. Bryan’s preconception wasn’t slashed as they drove through the Midwest, but reinforced. Kansas was wheat fields.
Whatever else Bryan saw as they crossed the state, it was the endless, rippling gold grass that captivated her, first and last. Color, texture, shape, form. Emotion. There were towns, of course, cities with modern buildings and plush homes, but in seeing basic Americana, grain against sky, Bryan saw it all.
Some might have found the continuous spread of sun-ripened grain waving, acre after acre, monotonous. Not Bryan. This was a new experience for a woman of the city. There were no jutting mountains, no glossy towering buildings, no looping freeways, to break the lines. Here was space, just as awesome as the terrain of Arizona, but lusher, and somehow calmer. She could look at it and wonder.
In the fields of wheat and acres of corn, Bryan s
aw the heart and the sweat of the country. It wasn’t always an idyllic scene. There were insects, dirt, grimy machinery. People worked here with their hands, with their backs.
In the cities, she saw the pace and energy. On the farms, she saw a schedule that would have made a corporate executive wilt. Year after year, the farmer gave himself to the land and waited for the land to give back.
With the right angle, the proper light, she could photograph a wheat field and make it seem endless, powerful. With evening shadows, she could give a sense of serenity and continuity. It was only grass, after all, only stalks growing to be cut down, processed, used. But the grain had a life and a beauty of its own. She wanted to show it as she saw it.
Shade saw the tenuous, inescapable dependence of man on nature. The planter, keeper and harvester of the wheat, was irrevocably tied to the land. It was both his freedom and his prison. The man riding the tractor in the Kansas sunlight, damp with healthy sweat, lean from years of labor, was as dependent on the land as the land was on him. Without man, the wheat might grow wild, it might flourish, but then it would wither and die. It was the tie Shade sensed, and the tie he meant to record.
Still, perhaps for the first time since they’d left L.A., he and Bryan weren’t shooting as separate entities. They might not have realized it yet, but their feelings, perceptions and needs were drawing them closer to the same mark.
They made each other think. How did she see this scene? How did he feel about this setting? Where before each of them had considered their photographs separately, now subtly, unconsciously, they began to do two things that would improve the final result: compete and consult.
They’d spent a day and a night in Dodge City for the Fourth of July celebrations in what had once been a Wild West town. Bryan thought of Wyatt Earp, of Doc Holliday and the desperadoes who had once ridden through town, but she’d been drawn to the street parade that might’ve been in Anytown, U.S.A.
It was here, caught up in the pageantry and the flavor, that she’d asked Shade his opinion of the right angle for shooting a horse and rider, and he in turn had taken her advice on capturing a tiny, bespangled majorette.
The step they’d taken had been lost in the moment to both of them. But they’d stood side by side on the curb as the parade had passed, music blaring, batons flying. Their pictures had been different—Shade had looked for the overview of holiday parades while Bryan had wanted individual reactions. But they’d stood side by side.
Bryan’s feelings for Shade had become more complex, more personal. When the change had begun or how, she couldn’t say. But because her work was most often a direct result of her emotions, the pictures she took began to reflect both the complexity and the intimacy. Their view of the same wheat field might be radically different, but Bryan was determined that when their prints were set side by side, hers would have equal impact.
She’d never been an aggressive person. It just wasn’t her style. But Shade had tapped a need in her to compete—as a photographer, and as a woman. If she had to travel in close quarters for weeks with a man who ruffled her professional feathers and stirred her feminine needs, she had to deal with him directly—on both counts. Directly, she decided, but in her own fashion and her own time. As the days went on, Bryan wondered if it would be possible to have both success and Shade without losing something vital.
* * *
She was so damn calm! It drove him crazy. Every day, every hour, they spent together pushed Shade closer to the edge. He wasn’t used to wanting anyone so badly. He didn’t enjoy finding out he could, and that there was nothing he could do about it. Bryan put him in the position of needing, then having to deny himself. There were times he nearly believed she did so purposely. But he’d never known anyone less likely to scheme than Bryan. She wouldn’t think of it—and if she did, she’d consider it too much bother.
Even now, as they drove through the Kansas twilight, she was stretched out in the seat beside him, sound asleep. It was one of the rare times she’d left her hair loose. Full, wavy and lush, it was muted to a dull gold in the lowering light. The sun had given her skin all the color it needed. Her body was relaxed, loose like her hair. Shade wondered if he’d ever had the capability to let his mind and body go so enviably limp. Was it that that tempted him, that drove at him? Was he simply pushed to find that spark of energy she could turn on and off at will? He wanted to set it to life. For himself.
Temptation. The longer he held himself back, the more intense it became. To have her. To explore her. To absorb her. When he did—he no longer used the word if—what cost would there be? Nothing was free.
Once, he thought as she sighed in sleep. Just once. His way. Perhaps the cost would be high, but he wouldn’t be the one to pay it. His emotions were trained and disciplined. They wouldn’t be touched. There wasn’t a woman alive who could make him hurt.
His body and his mind tensed as Bryan slowly woke. Groggy and content to be so, she yawned. The scent of smoke and tobacco stung the air. On the radio was low, mellow jazz. The windows were half open, so that when she shifted, the slap of wind woke her more quickly than she’d have liked.
It was fully dark now. Surprised, Bryan stretched and stared out the window at a moon half covered by clouds. “It’s late,” she said on another yawn. The first thing she remembered as her mind cleared of sleep was that they hadn’t eaten. She pressed a hand to her stomach. “Dinner?”
He glanced at her just long enough to see her shake back her hair. It rippled off her shoulders and down her back. As he watched, he had to fight back the urge to touch it. “I want to get over the border tonight.”
She heard it in his voice—the tension, the annoyance. Bryan didn’t know what had prompted it, nor at the moment did she want to. Instead, she lifted a brow. If he was in a hurry to get to Oklahoma and was willing to drive into the night to get there, it was his business. She’d stocked a cabinet in the back of the van with a few essentials just for moments like this. Bryan started to haul herself out of her seat when she heard the long blare of a horn and the rev of an engine.
The scarred old Pontiac had a hole in the muffler you could’ve tossed a baseball through. The sound of the engine clattered like a badly tuned plane. It swerved around the van at a dangerous speed, fishtailed, then bolted ahead, radio blaring. As Shade swore, Bryan got a glimpse that revealed the dilapidated car was packed with kids.
“Saturday night in July,” she commented.
“Idiots,” he said between his teeth as he watched the taillights weave.
“Yeah.” She frowned as she watched the car barrel ahead, smoke streaming. “They were just kids, I hope they don’t…”
Even as she thought it, it happened. The driver decided to press his luck by passing another car over the double yellow lines. The truck coming toward him laid on the horn and swerved. Bryan felt her blood freeze.
Shade was already hitting the brakes as the Pontiac screeched back into its own lane. But it was out of control. Skidding sideways, the Pontiac kissed the fender of the car it had tried to pass, then flipped into a telephone pole.
The sound of screaming tires, breaking glass and smashing metal whirled in her head. Bryan was up and out of the van before Shade had brought it to a complete stop. She could hear a girl screaming, others weeping. Even as the sounds shuddered through her, she told herself it meant they were alive.
The door on the passenger’s side was crushed against the telephone pole. Bryan rushed to the driver’s side and wrenched at the handle. She smelled the blood before she saw it. “Good God,” she whispered as she managed to yank the door open on the second try. Then Shade was beside her, shoving her aside.
“Get some blankets out of the van,” he ordered without looking at her. It had only taken him one glance at the driver to tell him it wasn’t going to be pretty. He shifted enough to block Bryan’s view, then reached in to check the pulse in the driver’s throat as he heard her run back to the van. Alive, he thought, then blocked out everythin
g but what had to be done. He worked quickly.
The driver was unconscious. The gash on his head was serious, but it didn’t worry Shade as much as the probability of internal injuries. And nothing worried him as much as the smell of gas that was beginning to sweeten the air. Under other circumstances, Shade would’ve been reluctant to move the boy. Now there was no choice. Locking his arms under the boy’s arms, Shade hauled him out. Even as Shade began to drag him, the driver of the truck ran over and took the boy’s legs.
“Got a CB in the truck,” he told Shade breathlessly. “Called for an ambulance.”
With a nod, Shade laid the boy down. Bryan was already there with the first blanket.
“Stay here. The car’s going to go up.” He said it calmly. Without a backward glance, he went back to the crippled Pontiac.
Terror jolted through her. Within seconds, Bryan was at the car beside him, helping to pull the others out of the wreck.
“Get back to the van!” Shade shouted at her as Bryan half carried a sobbing girl. “Stay there!”
Bryan spoke soothingly, covered the girl with a blanket, then rushed back to the car. The last passenger was also unconscious. A boy, Bryan saw, of no more than sixteen. She had to half crawl into the car to reach him. By the time she’d dragged him to the open door, she was drenched and exhausted. Both Shade and the truck driver carried the other injured passengers. Shade had just set a young girl on the grass when he turned and saw Bryan struggling with the last victim.
Fear was instant and staggering. Even as he started to run, his imagination worked on him. In his mind, Shade could see the flash of the explosion, hear the sound of bursting metal and shattering, flying glass. He knew exactly what it would smell like the moment the gas ignited. When he reached Bryan, Shade scooped up the unconscious boy as though he were weightless.