2000 Kisses (16 page)

“Now, how would you know about that?” TJ. asked. “You can't see anything now.”

“I see what I see, Sheriff.” Then he waved one hand sharply. “Take your woman and go before the hard rains come. It will be safer for her.”

“Safer?”

“Go, Sheriff McCall.” This time there was a flat tone of command to the words.

But TJ. didn't take orders easily and never had. “Just for the record, she isn't my woman,” he said firmly.

The old shaman spoke in whispery tones. “She might be if you let her. This woman could be many things to you, I think.” A faint smile brushed his lips. “Sometimes a path must lead far away before it brings one home. Now go.”

T J. was about to ask another question, when a sheet of rain swept down out of the west, carried by a slashing wind. The last thing he wanted was to get caught by flooding. “I'll remember that, Miguel'

“So you will.”

Tess twisted against him, muttering. All T.J.'s uneasiness returned as he saw the whiteness of her face. “Tess, can you hear me?”

She murmured, her hands locked at her chest, still caught in whatever odd dream world possessed her.

TJ. sprinted along the porch toward his Jeep, guiding Tess beside him. Only at the far corner did he look back.

The old man was still standing, one hand locked on his heavy belt buckle. Now the silver seemed to glow, crackling with cold light.

He stood in the rain and wind, watching the two lonely figures run through the night. Just as they had run before, the old man thought. Once again past and present twisted close, though they had yet to remember.

But the woman had felt the brush of the lightning. Her dreams were stirring even now as she fought to hold the two times apart.

Miguel frowned over the words she had muttered. They were sounds he had not heard in decades, words that had long ceased to be spoken here.

They were the words of those who had walked the high canyons ten centuries ago, living in the cliff houses that had now crumbled away to ruin.

So she had begun to remember after all, he thought.

A pity. It would make her danger even greater.

L
ightning burned across her eyelids.

She smelted the smoke of pinon and juniper logs, fragrant in the night. Across the valley came the low throb of drums, offered as a prayer to the storm gods who walked the clouds.

The power of the night caught her, overwhelmed her. At the same time she sensed that everything about this night was distant and unreal. Yet which world was the dream and which world was true?

“Tess, can you hear me?”

Hard hands.

A voice she knew should be familiar. She opened her eyes to a stranger's face marked with lines carved by both laughter and sorrow. She ought to know that face, but the image fled, like a cunning mirage.

“How do you feel?”

She raised her hand and touched his brow. Again the memories, teasing and swift. “Feel?”

“Did the noise bother you?” He frowned. “It was the very devil when that bolt of lightning struck the courthouse.”

“No,” she whispered.

“No, the noise didn't bother you, or no, you didn't see?”

“I didn't—see.”
Or hear or feel.

Driven by some deep urgency, she touched his hair. Once, it had been longer. She saw it clearly, pulled back with a leather thong. Once, there had been pieces of silver at his ears and eagle feathers in his hair.

“You're shivering.”

Was she?

“Dammit, you're freezing.”

Dimly she felt strong fingers pull something around her cold shoulders. “It doesn't matter.” Each word came stiffly, as if she struggled with a foreign tongue.

“Miguel said that a storm like this can steal your soul—not that I believe in his magic.”

“Miguel?”

“The old man in the black clothes,” T.J. explained slowly. “We met him outside the old jail. Don't you remember?”

“No.” Tess closed her eyes. “I don't seem to remember anything.”

“Not even me?”

His voice echoed hollowly, superimposed upon another's, low and husky and infinitely tender. Tess forced her mind away from its seduction. Something whispered that madness waited down that twisting path. “I remember enough.”

Too much, she thought. She thought of a man who could track the smallest creature by scent alone. A man who walked in thunder, pounding on the sand to call down the great booming echoes from the sky. She thought of a man she had known once, centuries before.

Lifetimes before.

But that was impossible.

As his hand brushed her cheek, she shivered uncontrollably.

What was wrong with her?

“No,” she panted. He couldn't touch her. She was forbidden to him by her tribe. If they knew, they would hunt him down and spill his bright blood over the sand as punishment. “Don't touch me,” she whispered. But even as she spoke, she was gripped by a fierce longing. “They'll find out. They watch me always now.”

“Find out? Who?”

Rain slammed against the roof. Tess barely noticed, caught in a flood of images like running water over sand. He had come from the north when snow blocked the high passes. He was not of her tribe, not of her people, who laughed at the soft skins he wore. A sky stone blazed at his neck, only a shade lighter than his piercing eyes, and his prayer stick held strange figures of animals she had never seen.

But his power was great. He had trusted in that power when he should have felt fear.

Tess locked her hands to her chest as her trembling grew. She closed her eyes, fighting the pain, only to see the images burn behind her eyelids.

The sweet brush of hands.

The dance of skin, frenzied in the darkness while drums beat out a fierce warning.

She said a word, low and hoarse. It was his name— the name he had once held, centuries before, when the mountains were young.

She was sitting out of the rain.

A car, she realized. Something brushed her shoulders. A blanket, but it was like no cloth she had ever seen. She stared at the liters, marveling at their bright colors and precise stitches. How different the cloth looked. How different everything was in this place.

Strong fingers dug into her shoulders. “You haven't
said a rational word since we left the jail. I need to know what's going on here.”

Dear God, so did she.

“Dammit, Tess, talk to me.”

“There's—nothing to say. I'm fine.” She pulled away from his hands, fighting to clear her mind of the shadow images. “The storm must have made me dizzy, disoriented.” She took a hard breath. “Can we just go?”

“You said things were different.”

“I was confused.”

“But—”

“Can we just
goT'
She felt her control breaking under his scrutiny and his questions. She needed to be calm, to be alone so she could sort out the feelings still churning through her. “I'm tired.”

“So the hell am I,” he muttered. “That doesn't make me forget how to speak English and worry that I'm being watched.”

“It was just a mistake, all a mistake. Now can we go?”

“I'm going to have some answers, I warn you.” Muttering, he started the Jeep and rammed the gearshift forward.

Tess watched the rain while the night blurred outside her window.

A few minutes later, T.J. said, “You're going to have to talk sometime.”

She sighed, watching rain hiss at the windshield.

“Don't you want to know where you're going?”

“You already told me. It's a place you called Rancho Encantador.”

“That's the one.”

“Does it have a hot tub?” Right now that's what Tess wanted more than anything—something warm and
soothing. Something so completely modern that she could not possibly forget where she was or
when
she was.

“Hand-assembled with saltillo tile. A waterfall runs through a little rock garden, right under the stars.”

“It sounds like heaven.” She sighed, hugging her body with her arms, fighting a wave of exhaustion. “I really appreciate your dropping me off on your way home.”

T.J. fought back a grin. “No trouble at all, Ma'am.”

There were many things that Tess had expected to see on the drive out of Almost. Ramshackle cabins with uneven roofs and no electricity. Grimy adobe homes slanting crazily against the hillside. But all she saw were saguaro cactuses that loomed up out of the darkness and cottonwood trees whispering in the wind.

Tess frowned. She didn't consider herself a snob. There was a great deal to admire about T. J. McCall and this town of his. He was a man of bravery and honesty, but they were from entirely different worlds. The gulf between them was beyond crossing.

“How long before we reach the resort?”

“No more than five minutes.” TJ. pointed north to the foothills, where lightning raked the caps of rugged peaks.

She frowned. “It looks very isolated up there.”

“The owner likes the isolation,” TJ. said. “Now put on your seat belt. The drive can be a little rough.”

Five minutes later, Tess decided bumpy wasn't the word for it. She'd been tossed up, down, and sideways as they hammered over a washboard dirt road until her bones screamed for mercy. Now she could see little in the darkness beyond scattered boulders.

She clutched at the window frame, trying to keep from pitching up and down. “Are we nearly there?”

“It's just beyond those mesquite trees.”

As they rounded a bend, her breath fled.

The main building rose in curving lines and walls of windows. Lights bobbed from stenciled tin lanterns framing an oak door set into sinuous adobe walls.

“I don't understand.” Tess pressed closer to the window. “There aren't any cars. No one else appears to be around.”

T.J. pulled to a halt, got out of the Jeep, and swept open her door. He caught her arm as she stumbled, her vision focused on the undulating walls covered by lush crimson bougainvillea.

“Welcome to Rancho Encantador.”

Thunder rumbled, closer than before. In the wavering flash of light, Tess made out the beamed roof and a row of mesquite trees that ran along the rounded adobe fence.

A house
, she thought. An amazing house of adobe and wood with a whole wall of windows.

Not
a resort at all.

“I'd offer you the hot tub, but with that lightning it wouldn't be safe. Instead, I'll show you to your room, so you can rest.”

“You lied.”

T.J. took her suitcase from the backseat. “Yeah, I did. Now, are you coming in or not? I'm soaked enough already.”

“But—”

He was already gone, sprinting toward the open doors, where a woman in a bright red apron stood waiting, her hands on her hips.

Rain hissed across Tess's cheeks as she took another stumbling step, peering at the vision of light and wood
and adobe before her. T.J. was waiting at the carved door, which was painted sky-blue.

“Tess O'Mara, meet Maria Lopez. Maria runs my house and everything inside it, me included. Don't be late for meals or criticize her cooking and you'll do just fine here.”

“But—”

T.J. moved to the side and held open the heavy door. “Welcome to my ranch, Duchess.”

Tess followed, aware of the housekeeper's narrowed gaze. She had every reason to be suspicious, given Tess's bedraggled appearance.

Tess brushed the beautifully carved antique door, then stared at the man beside her. “This is all
yours?
”

His housekeeper answered first, her shoulders stiff. “Of course it is. Senor McCall works hard to see that every beam and tile is perfect.” She sniffed at the sight of T.J.'s shirt dangling over Tess's shoulders. “Now you both will go inside. A fire is made and you will have dinner, which I have been keeping for you.”

Tess moved past, still in a daze. “It's all yours?”

“All four thousand square feet of it. A mite big, but I figure I'll grow into it.” He led the way through a courtyard filled with blooming plants. Tess heard the sound of water running over large stones.

“I didn't expect anything like this.”

At the front of the house, he pushed open a massive wooden door with a high lintel. She could feel that great care and attention had been lavished on the house— something she'd never expected of the rangy sheriff.