Maverick (Star Valley Book 3) (19 page)

Spending a whole day without her was unacceptable.

He tossed his plate into the sink and followed Dakota out the side door, catching up with her halfway across the driveway. “Turn Colter out with the mares today,” he said.

She looked up at him, surprised. “You’re not going up to the Folly?”

“I am. But I’m taking the truck.” He hustled back inside and found Leah at the sink, rinsing off her plate. Only Sofia was in the kitchen, sweeping the floor, so he put his arms around his woman and pulled her back against him.

She gasped.

“Thought maybe you’d like to go for a ride,” he said, nipping her neck.

She giggled and tilted her head to give him better access. “Oh, I’m sure I would.”

Austin chuckled. “Before you get too excited, I’m talking about a different kind of ride.”

As expected, Leah’s mouth dropped open and her eyes darted to Sofia who was waving her hand at them and shaking her head. The older woman was smiling, though. Austin turned back to Leah and her still parted lips. He stifled a groan as he imagined all the things he’d like to do with her mouth, which was as-yet unexplored.

“Oh, you!” she cried and slapped at his arm.

“Come on,” he said, pulling her away from her chores and to the side door. In the driveway, he opened the passenger door of his truck and held it for her. “Hop in.”

“Where are we going?” she asked as she climbed up to the cab.

“I thought you might like to see where I work, what I do all day.” That was true, she might like it. The real surprise, though, was how they’d get there. He slid behind the wheel and headed down the long driveway to the highway beyond. In just a few minutes, they were on the county road that led to the mine. Austin let off the gas, downshifted, and pulled the truck over to the shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” asked Leah looking around. “Are we…out of gas or something?”

“Nope, not out of gas.” He set the parking brake and opened the door, setting his boots down on the scorching pavement, then patted the seat. “Slide over,” he ordered.

Leah gaped at him. “What?”

“You heard me. Stop acting like you didn’t. Move your sweet ass over here and put your feet on the pedals so I can adjust the seat for you.”

“A…Austin I can’t drive. I don’t know how to drive a stick shift. I don’t…I can’t—”

“Well now, maybe you don’t but that doesn’t mean you can’t. I don’t want to hear
can’t
. I want hear
I will
. It’s not hard. Hell, if my idiot brother Sawyer could learn, I
know
you can. You’re already smarter than him on his best day. Now come on. The Folly’s over five miles down this highway and we’re burning daylight, rabbit. Get us there so I can get to work.”

She hesitated and he waited for her to make up her mind. Then she finally slid across the seat and settled into the driver’s side. Austin reached down and pulled the lever, adjusting until she could reach all three pedals with ease. He jumped into the cab on the passenger side and put her hand on the gear shift. “Push in the clutch,” he told her.

“We’re going to die,” she half-joked.

He shook his head. “There’s no one here, no one around for miles and miles. Just let your foot off the clutch, real easy, while giving it gas. You can’t ask for a better straightaway than here. This is where my dad taught all of us. There won’t be any other cars. It’s just us.”

Leah surprised him, once again, by gripping the steering wheel, moving up to the edge of the seat and slowly inching the vehicle forward. The look of sheer determination on her face was awe-inspiring. She stripped a few gears and stalled it twice but all in all it was a valiant first effort, he thought. She managed to get them onto the service road and into camp before stomping nervously on the brake and bringing the rig shuddering to a stop.

“I did it!” she said in disbelief.

“Damn right you did.”

Off to the side, Austin saw Gabe, the foreman, headed toward the driver’s side window from the rear. “Hey, why’d you bring the truck? Are you—Oh. Oh, hi,” he said when he saw a woman in the front seat.

“Gabe, this is Leah,” said Austin while climbing down from the other side of the cab.

“Well, hey there, darlin’,” said the foreman, tugging at the brim of his hat. “Nice to put a face to the name.”

Leah hopped down from the cab as Gabe held the door for her. “Nice to meet you, too.” She smiled up at him politely but looked a little unsure of her surroundings. Austin suspected this might be as far from civilization as she’d ever been. “Just sit tight here at camp,” he told her. “I need to get some work done, then I’ll show you around the place, okay?”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” he assured her.

“No, but I want to. I want to help. Surely there’s something…” she said looking around frowning. Gabe kept a neat camp and there was never much in the way of clean up or organization to be done.

“Well,” he said, glancing at the pen. “If you wanted to, you could feed the horses.”

“Sure, no problem.” She started to turn then paused. “What do they eat?”

Behind them Gabe laughed and Austin grinned from ear to ear. “You see the net hanging from the tree there?” Austin asked pointing. “Just take it down and sling it over the rope into the pen. They’ll take care of the rest.”

Leah put out hay for the horses while Austin and Gabe attached a solar powered pump to the watering trough.

“Must be serious,” said Gabe as he passed Austin a socket wrench.

“She’s carrying my baby, Gabe. Of course it’s serious.”

Gabe snorted. “Oh, anyone can have your kid. But you let her drive your truck and you brought her up here, to the Folly. Mmmmm. That’s love, man. That’s
forever
.”

Austin didn’t answer but smiled anyway. He waved to Leah who left the makeshift horse pen and headed over to them. After plucking his radio off his belt, he checked the batteries, and waved it at Gabe. “I’m taking Leah with me to the ridge.”

The foreman nodded. “All right, hermano.”

Leah’s brow furrowed as she looked back at the truck then to Austin. “
Where
are we going?”

“I’ve got more solar panels up here,” he said.

“More? Really?”

“Yep. It’s part of my plan for sustainable farming. Come on. I’ll give you a tour.”

They walked along the well-worn path away from camp and toward higher ground. “I’ve got panels to power the irrigators on the east side of the plateau and I’m going to put in some more for each watering station for the herd. It’ll take a while, several years, but eventually the Folly will be 100% self-sustaining. Rain, wind, and solar energy all harnessed to keep the land as fertile as possible and support almost twice the number of head.”

He gestured to the high ridge which was practically glowing orange in the sun’s rays. “The panels are up there, impossible to get to on foot but it’s the best placement for maximum efficiency. The path, though, winds all the way up over there,” he said, pointing beyond to another large outcropping of rock. Millennia of wind and rain had weathered the base so that it appeared to be teetering on the brink of collapse, the top portion far out-sizing its foundation. It would stand for another thousand years, though, like everything out here, durable and steadfast. Gabe and the camp were now a few hundred feet below them, their location growing more and more remote with each step.

“God,” said Leah, shielding her eyes for a better view. “It might as well be the top of the world out here.”

He grinned. “It’s the top of
my
world. And I’d like to share it with you.”

She paused and glanced at him. “Oh, wait. I don’t know if—”

Austin cut her off before she could talk herself out of any more adventures today. “I’m a risk-taker, Leah. I always have been, but the thing is, I’ve always thought it would work out, that everything would be okay. It never occurred to me to think otherwise. I’ve never had to be afraid.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. He tried to smooth it as he opened it up. “We can check this one off now,” he told her, index finger resting underneath the hastily scrawled
Learn to drive stick shift.
Then he lifted his hand and pointed again to the high plateau rising above them, a point he’d trekked to many times in his exploration of the Folly, as his brothers called it. It had the most beautiful views of the Tetons that could be had on Barlow lands.

“So, how about it, Leah?” he asked, gazing at her sunlit face. “You drove a stick shift. Ready to climb a mountain?”

‡

L
eah looked down
at the list in his hands, lips parted in surprise. “I can’t believe you kept that!”

“It felt important,” he told her, holding onto it carefully. “So are you ready?”

She had to drag her gaze away from his hands and back up to the steep hill, looming before them. It wasn’t a real mountain, obviously. There was no snow-capped peak. But for her it might as well have been Denali. She’d never so much as gone hiking before. She chewed her lower lip and squinted against the bright blue sky.

“You can do this, Leah,” he said, apparently mistaking her aversion for indecision. “It’s not actually a bad climb. But it’s worth it. I promise. Once we get to the top, you’ll see. I’ve been up there before. There’s nothing like it on the whole ranch.”

As she looked into his eyes, she couldn’t help but think about Austin being ‘worth it.’ His lips, his hands, the way he made her wild with desire, it was all definitely worth it. Her legs were wobbly from the long walk just to get here, but Austin seemed determined to go, and Leah wanted to be anywhere he was, anywhere at all.

“Okay,” she said, absentmindedly reaching for her water. “I’ll do it.”

He smiled, making her knees weaker, and grabbed her hand.

Steep was an understatement and there was no path. Halfway up Leah was out of breath and Austin put his hands on her hips, pushing her over the harder spots, places where rocks, probably thousands of years old, jutted out from the earth like broken bones. She had to stop, a lot, probably too often. She hadn’t even been on so much as a long walk in years. Too much of her life was spent being shuttled back and forth between home and the treatment center. Simply staying upright was as much of a challenge as she’d faced up to this point.

Austin was patient with her, though, helping her every step of the way. He kept her from stumbling and encouraged her when her strength flagged. The last twenty or thirty feet were brutal with her legs and lungs on fire. She staggered to the top, the flattest part of the plateau, probably not as gracefully as she would’ve liked, especially in Austin’s presence, but she had little time to feel badly about it because he gripped her shoulders, turned her, and the entire world, it seemed, opened up before her very eyes.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed. It was more than she could have imagined. “Austin, it really is the top of the
world
!” The view was a riot of color. The blue sky, the white clouds, the green trees that felt miles and miles below them. In the distance, large fields of wildflowers swayed in the breeze like waves of a colored sea.

“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful,” she murmured.

“I have.”

She tore her gaze from the landscape and turned to him. The black cowboy hat he wore shaded his face, making his eyes look even darker. He cupped her face in his hands and leaned in. She held her breath, as if any tiny movement might break the spell she was under. Austin held his lips just inches from hers. “Last night wasn’t a fluke, Leah, and it wasn’t a mistake. I told myself I’d stay away, give you space, but I can’t.
I want you.
I won’t hurt you,” he whispered over and over as his hands gripped her hips and he held her against him. “I swear I won’t hurt you.”

Leah didn’t know why he was saying it, but for some reason she believed him. She lifted herself up to her toes and pressed her lips to his. It seemed to be exactly what he was waiting for because he picked her up, forcing her to wrap her arms around him, and ran his tongue along her lower lip.

She knew now what it meant when he did that, how it was Austin’s way of asking permission rather than charging at her like a bull. Leah opened her mouth to him, and, she supposed, her heart. It was a beautiful kiss, full of promise, and so far Austin had kept all his promises.

*