A Wolf in the Desert (18 page)

“In a perfect world, perhaps not.” With their joined hands he lifted her face to his. “In a perfect world we would have met, but not like this.”

Patience was spared the need of dragging an answer from a mind in turmoil by Hoke's demanding call for Indian.

“My canteen.” Indian didn't release her. “Have you seen it?”

“I filled it and put it in the lean-to out of the sun.” She could have fetched it for him and had it waiting at the first sound of his engine, but then she wouldn't have the diversion she needed.

Squeezing her fingers, he stepped away. “I won't be a minute.”

Patience folded the hand he'd held over her breast as she waited for her chance. He moved with the unhurried, ground-eating step, the quiet step that never seemed to change. The supple vest swung with a barely detectable motion around his slim waist, leather trousers clung to his hips and thighs. A bare arm bunched as he grasped the support of the shelter and ducked inside. The moment for which she waited.

Throwing off her distraction, she rushed to his bike. There was a pouch for the canteen attached closely to the base of the handlebars, she slid the note to the bottom of it. He would find it there when he drank the water she'd taken from the swiftest part of the stream that flowed by the camp.

She was still at the bike when he stepped from the lean-to. A brow tilted in question and his lips curled in a half smile. “Hurrying me along?”

Patience shook her head, and when he came near, took the canteen from him. “Warm,” she said as heat from it filled her palm. Carefully, she slipped it into the pouch, shielding the note from his sight, insuring it wouldn't be found too soon.

“Warm, but not boiling as it would be from full sun.” Indian wondered why they were speaking of canteens and water at all. He wondered at her strange mood. “What is it, O'Hara?”

The tenderness in him nearly destroyed her resolve. It would be so natural to go into his arms, to comfort and be comforted. But if she allowed that moment of weakness, could she do what she'd planned? Even if it were best for him, could she go if they shared a single kiss? Her mind knew it was senseless superstition, but her heart insisted that the hidden canyon was an enchanted place, where everything had been beautiful, and nothing binding. But here, beyond the enchantment, if her control slipped, could she ever leave him?

“O'Hara?”

Rousing from her concern, she found he'd mounted his bike and watched her curiously. “It's nothing. It's Callie.” Both thoughts spilled from her in haste. Raking back the bangs that tumbled over her forehead, she shook her head. “I'm sorry, I'm babbling.”

“Four words could hardly be called babbling.” He took her hands in both of his, sensing her turmoil. “Which is it? Nothing, or Callie?”

“Both. Neither.” She was nearly frantic for him to leave.

“Double talk? To hide what you're feeling?”

She looked into his face, his beloved face. “Double talk,” she admitted honestly. “Because I don't know what I feel.”

He accepted her excuse, recognizing it as partial truth. “Magda and Lou are staying behind. You'll be all right?”

She knew both women only by sight, but enough to recognize that one was lazy, the other stupid. A providential choice of jailers. Perfect for her plan. “I'll be fine.”

“You will, won't you,” he said thoughtfully.

“Indian.” She was reaching for him, her hands nearly touching him, fulfilling one last need, when she realized what she was doing. With an exaggerated flutter of her fingers, dismissing the gesture, she tucked them firmly into the back pockets of her jeans.

Something about the urgency in her voice, and in the bittersweet gesture disturbed him, but he didn't ask again. Only a frown and a slight narrowing of his eyes expressed his concern.

“I'm just being temperamental and anxious,” Patience insisted.

“Are you?” he asked, for he couldn't remember her ever being temperamental. “Anxious about what?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Again the brow arched, he wasn't making this any easier.

Her shoulders lifted inarticulately, her nails scored the insides of her pockets. “You'll be careful?”

“Always.” He flashed his smile, accepting the abrupt change of subjects, filing away his questions for another time. “This is a short trip, I'll be back before you know it.”

As the increasing tumult of roaring engines signaled their time was done, he smiled again and waved. He was lost in a rising swirl of suffocating dust before Patience turned away to begin preparations for her own venture.

* * *

The ground shifted beneath her feet, the small slide threatened to become an avalanche as Patience fought to keep her balance. With a tumbling lunge she caught the twisted branch of a stunted juniper and slowed her descent. Wiping sweat and dirt from her eyes, she peered up at the wall of red rock. On closer inspection it was steeper and more treacherous than it appeared when she'd begun her climb. Now it was clear she couldn't climb it in boots and bare-handed.

“Where are you when I need you, Kieran, you and your bag of tools and sure solutions?” Wearily admitting defeat, and regretting the time lost to poor judgment, she let go of the limb. In a race with falling shale, she leapt and slid down the steep incline. Once on firmer ground, she beat dust from her clothing, and weighed her options.

“You go around, Patience, me girl. There are no other options.” Going around the massive mesa, searching for a better way to the top would add hours to her trip. She would fall far short of her goal for the day, but there was no remedy for it. And agonizing over lost time was only more lost time.

Hitching the chafing strap of her pack to another position, she tucked her head down to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun and took the route she should have in the beginning. Though the path was demanding, and her progress slow, there was still time to think. To keep her thoughts from turning to Matthew, she concentrated on Magda and Lou. Had either roused from her lazy stupor to investigate Indian's too-quiet camp? Or realized that the form lying in full sun as shade shifted beneath the tree with the aging day, was only shirt and jeans filled with brush? Patience regretted the hat she'd left tilted over the scarecrow figure as she felt the tight pull of the sun burning her forehead.

If time and distance weren't critical, she would have followed the path of wisdom and rested in the heat of the afternoon, traveling in early twilight and into the first of night. But time was a luxury, and every step would bring her closer to help. As she moved away from water, she drank sparingly from her canteen, and scanned the surrounding terrain for signs of more. A natural tank, a cloistered stream, a
teneja.

Though the sky was clear, and summer rains rare, she stayed clear of gravely dry washes. A sudden gathering of thunderheads, a cloudburst, and a wall of water would roar down the chasm, filling it, taking with it anything and anyone in its path.

The land she crossed was wider, less confined, with rocks and boulders scattered among the eroded rubble of millenia. Shrunken cacti in need of water marked her path, and a Gila woodpecker eyed her suspiciously from a hole carved in the highest saguaro. Overhead a scavenging, wide-winged vulture waited for something to die. If not the peculiar biped so rare in his territory, there would be other prey. There always was.

As the day wore on, the trail grew rougher and began to climb, while her feathered companion kept his vigil. He shouldn't have disturbed her, but he did. She caught herself glancing up when she should be watching the trail. After she'd stumbled for the second time, and her canteen tumbled down the precarious slope she'd just climbed, her temper flared. Snatching up a handful of loose stone and shrugging from her pack, she lurched to her feet.

“Go away!” A stone sailed into the sky, then plummeted harmlessly to the ground. The vulture swooped and circled, arrogantly unconcerned.

“Shoo!” Another stone flew. “Scat!” An angry huff sent her sweat-soaked bangs from her forehead. “One last chance.” The largest stone was drawn back, threatening, desperate. “Do you hear me, bird?”

An arm hooked through hers, the stone was taken from her hand. “I don't think he does.”

“Matthew?” She blinked, wondering if the sun had baked her brains and the wilderness stolen her sanity. Then as her vision cleared, she whispered, “Why are you here? I thought...”

“You thought I would be miles away by now, foolishly believing you would be in camp when I returned.” He tossed the stone away and pulled her roughly to him. “But that's the extent of your thinking, wasn't it? You didn't think once that you might die out here, lost and alone, did you?”

“I didn't plan to be lost or to die.”

“Your feathered friend doesn't agree.”

“My feathered friend is in for a long wait.” She pulled away, only then questioning how he'd come here.

“You could have fallen, or been caught in a slide.” He was angry and fierce, and implacable.

“Don't forget raging coyotes and hairy tarantulas, or an attack from a mad saguaro.” Frustrations forgotten, with her feet planted firmly now, her chin rose to a fighting angle. In the unforgiving light, with red dust caked to her shirt and leather jeans, and her face flushed from heat and exhaustion, she was magnificently furious. “Why did you come here?”

“Why?” Matthew's face was ashen beneath its normal coppery hue. His gaze heated and his mouth stark. “You wander into the hills alone, and you ask why I came after you?”

“I didn't wander anywhere,” Patience snapped. Something in his stance warned her that he was at the end of his control, but she goaded him anyway. “I made it clear in my note that I wanted nothing so much as to get away from you, so why
are
you here?”

“I haven't read any damnable note,” he said in a voice so quiet it sent shivers through her. Before she could dodge away, he locked his fingers at the back of her neck, letting her feel the pressure of each pad as he pulled her back to him. “Perhaps this will explain why I'm here.”

His mouth covered hers, ravaged hers. She stood woodenly beneath the assault, but as the passion beneath the anger touched her, a shiver of response fluttered up her spine and the flush of desire swept her own anger away. She'd feared one kiss beyond the canyon and she would be lost. One kiss, and she was.

Abruptly, without warning, he lifted his head to stare down at her. “What the hell do you mean, why? You know why. You know it was this.”

When his lips reclaimed hers, it was more than a kiss; he staked a claim, branded, persuaded, possessed. The ground was unsteady, the world tilted on its axis. When his tongue traced the softness of her mouth, she lost her hold on reality and tumbled into a vortex of sensations. She was hot, and tired, and dirty. He was overbearing and a little cruel in his anger, but none of it mattered as he plundered and caressed with a savage pleasure.

When she pushed away, to breathe, to think, he smiled down at her and her world tilted again.

“That's why I came.” With no further word, he bent to pick up her pack. Hefting it in his palm, his smile turned grave. “Traveling light?”

“Light enough.” The rush of her heart was just returning to normal and her breath still came in gasps. When he turned down the trail, back the way she'd come, she blurted, “I'm not going back. Nothing you can do or say will make me.”

Swinging around, he caught her face in his palm, his thumb brushed over her lips in a familiar gesture. “Nothing?”

Patience shook free of his touch and stepped beyond his reach. “Nothing, not even that.”

“That?” His voice was low, calm.

“The kiss.” Slipping her thumbs in the belt loops of her trousers, she tried to match calm for calm. “That's what it was about, wasn't it? To persuade me to go back.”

“No, it wasn't. In fact it was never my intention that either of us would go back.” Leaving her gaping, he retraced his path to the floor of the canyon. His own pack was there, where he'd thrown it when he saw Patience fall. As the canteen slipped over the edge, and in the moment he thought she would fall with it, he'd lost all reason. As Matthew Winter Sky, the impassive Apache, had never done before.

He'd charged up the rocky track, losing sight of her through its twists and turns, cursing and praying, and damning himself with every step. When he found her flinging rocks and shooing away a vulture as if it were a troublesome barnyard fowl, he wanted to throttle her for frightening him, and kiss her for being the irrepressible O'Hara she'd always been. In the end, he'd channeled every conflicting emotion into his kiss.

Slipping his own pack over his shoulder, he realized he'd punished both Patience and himself with the kiss. Why? he wondered. Did he need to push her away even as he pulled her close? Was it guilt? Or simply that she made him feel things he'd never expected, or wanted?

Wheeling around, he stared at the hillock where Patience waited. “Do I want this now? Is there room in my life for a woman?”

He had no answers. All that was clear was that he had to take Patience out of the desert before the Wolves found her again.

He covered the distance between them at a slower pace this time, making a detour down the slope to rescue her canteen. It would be needed before they reached a safe house and civilization. At the top of the rise, he found her resting under the broad-leafed shade of an ancient Arizona oak. Pulling free the hat he'd clipped to his pack, he set it rakishly on her head. “I thought you might need this more than the lady you left behind.”

“She was a good likeness, wouldn't you say?” Patience adjusted the hat, and was grateful for the protection she'd missed.

“A few inches bigger than you, but a number of pounds lighter.” He matched his tone to hers as, by intuitive consensus, they skirted the real issue between them.