Desert Heart Read online

  Dress code for dinner?

  He sat perched up there like a lonely hawk and studied the view. Wiped the sweat off his brow and thought. Now, shoot. He still hadn’t made his mind up where to take her. But then a fresh breeze wafted out of the north, and he knew. He texted back.

  Best riding boots, worst jeans.

  That was three hours ago; he’d had just enough time to set things up. He cooked the dinner he’d feed her afterward, cleaned himself up, and headed down to the barn.

  “Easy, Blue,” he murmured to Henry’s aging horse. The horse was brown, but old Henry had named all his horses Blue after a roan he’d owned way back when. Henry named all his horses Blue and all his dogs Tex. The color of the horses varied, but the dogs were always look-alike versions of the same spotted mutt.

  Poor old Blue hadn’t been ridden in years, and even though he was a little stiff in the knees, he was keen as anything to get out in the desert again. A little like Rick. Blue pranced in place, excited and nervous as a colt, as if this was his big chance.

  Again, a little like Rick.

  “Easy,” he murmured, easing the saddle over the horse’s back.

  Blue nickered and butted Rick’s leg in anticipation. Let’s go.

  He laughed, and that felt good. Good to have someone on this ranch to laugh with, even if it was just a horse.

  “Hang on, now. Gotta get your date ready, too. Ready, Star?”

  Star was Lucy’s latest ride, a palomino that was still young and sprightly enough to make a guy think twice about handing her reins over to just anyone, especially since she hadn’t been ridden in years. But he wasn’t handing the reins over to just anyone. Tina could ride the wildest, craziest thing on four feet.

  He chuckled at himself. If it were just anyone, he wouldn’t be heading out on a sunset ride. Not for a ride, not for the dinner he had planned for after, not for any of the rest. He’d spent an hour brushing those horses, getting their coats to shine like they were show ponies and not a couple of working-class quarter horses.

  But it worked. They looked…nice. He ran a hand down his shirt, wishing he’d had someone to double check him the same way. His twenty days were counting down, and he had to make this date count.

  He was readjusting the corner of Star’s saddle blanket for the fifth or sixth time when Tina pulled up in that silver Corolla of hers and stepped out. Best riding boots. Worst jeans. She’d look like a million bucks no matter what she wore.

  He ran a nervous hand over his shirt and strode over, trying not to run. Forcing himself to keep his hands at his sides and not sweep her into his arms and kiss her senseless like every muscle in his body wanted to do.

  “Hello, Tina.”

  He did kiss her, though, because there was no holding that back. Smack on the mouth with his hands cupping her face and his feet planted firmly so there’d be no dumb ideas about letting his body drift closer, closer…

  He yanked himself back just as her knees started to buckle. Much as he’d like to carry her up to the apartment and start last night all over again, he did have the horses saddled. That, and he really didn’t want to take Tina up to his bed.

  At least not yet.

  He wanted a magical evening, for her and for him. He wanted to listen to her laugh, to see her smile. To watch the stars come out, one by one, and let the feeling of home seep back into his bones.

  “Let me guess,” Tina said when he finally waved toward their mounts. “That one is Blue.”

  The laugh that escaped his lips carried his worries away. A laugh of relief because he’d never have to explain that joke to Tina. He’d never have to explain what the grandfather clock meant to this place, or why old Lucy’s garden deserved to be revived. Tina just knew. She knew the ranch. She knew him. The real him.

  He handed her the reins but kept his fingers over hers. “This one’s Star.”

  She nodded. “Lucy’s horse.”

  See? All the important things, Tina knew.

  “Can I leave my purse here? I’m guessing I don’t exactly need my phone on this ride.”

  “Not exactly.” He smiled back. No interruptions. Not tonight.

  He nodded to a shelf, did a last saddle check, and they mounted up. He pointed Blue north and set off at an easy walk. Tina rode beside him, wearing a grin a mile wide. She looked left, right, up, and down, marveling in every view.

  She sighed. “I haven’t had the chance to get out riding in…well, a long time.”

  “Me, neither.” It had been years. But it felt good to be out. Really good.

  For Tina, too. She looked happier, freer than she had when she’d first driven up.

  “I think Blue has a crush on Star.” She smiled, glancing his way.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “He follows her with his eyes, his ears, his nose. Every move she makes, he follows along.”

  A little like I’m doing with you. “I guess he does,” Rick said quietly. “I guess he does.”

  They rode over the rise, skirting the hill where the cemetery lay, and Rick had the craziest image of old Henry and Lucy, arm in arm up there, waving him and Tina off, saying, Have a good time. His dad and mom were there, too, standing side by side, smiling and shooing them off like a couple of kids at a fair.

  And just like that, the stakes on this one night tripled. Quadrupled. Multiplied exponentially until he had to do like he’d done a thousand times at bat: take a deep breath and pretend it was just a game he was playing and not something much, much bigger than that.

  “So beautiful,” Tina murmured.

  “Yeah,” he managed, watching her hair sway with every step Star took. “Beautiful.”

  She smiled at a firefly. Pointed at a stand of purple twinevine. Tilted her head back and took in the deepening brushfire color of the sky.

  Time switched off, stripping away centuries, scraping away the tension. The dusky fragrance of a thousand desert flowers carried on the wind.

  “Beautiful,” she murmured when they paused at the edge of the mesa. Together, they looked over a thousand square miles of home, a mile-high sky of clean desert air.

  Rick closed his eyes, drinking it all in. Just the two of them and the horses and the dog that trotted in and out of sight. Not another soul as far as he could see.

  Then Blue nickered and Star whinnied. Time to get moving, boss.

  “That way.” He pointed to the track that wound into a grove of cottonwood.

  “That way?” Tina’s eyes grew wide, because she knew just where he meant.

  “Spring Hollow.” He nodded. Grand as the view up here was, he needed someplace smaller, lusher…more intimate to share with her.

  “Spring Hollow,” she echoed, biting her lip.

  He let Blue lead the way and thanked every saint in heaven when the sound of Star’s hooves followed, because it meant that Tina wasn’t galloping away from the past, but heading back in to explore it with him.

  Spring Hollow. The most beautiful corner of the ranch. Well, sort of a corner of the ranch, because Lucy Seymour had deeded it to the state when she died. One of her crazier last wishes, like naming him manager of the ranch. It was a peaceful little pocket of land where a fresh spring bounced and gurgled, feeding a hundred shady trees. A place that didn’t belong to the ranch or the state or anyone else. More like it belonged to God or Mother Nature or some powerful force a guy like him couldn’t begin to comprehend. All he knew was how perfect it was.

  “Rick…”

  He turned and looked at Tina, praying she wouldn’t protest.

  “It’s…it’s…” She fumbled with words.

  Home? Beautiful? Ours for tonight?

  “It’s just like I remember.”

  Yeah, just like he remembered, too. The rustle of leaves, the babbling stream—sounds, smells, sights you didn’t get in the open desert. Just in a secret hideaway like this.

  Blue whisked his tail and descended the overgrown trail with Star right on his heels. Trees arched overh
ead, forming a cathedral of the woods: a hushed, almost spiritual place. Rick dismounted, led his horse to drink, then tied the reins to a branch and looked at Tina.

  An all-or-nothing moment, because she was still two stories up on Star, chewing her lip. She could turn her tail and hammer away into the sunset, or she could slide out of the saddle and let him lead her to their special place. The spot on the boulders where they’d first kissed, first touched, first made love, all those years ago.

  Tina looked at him, and he could feel the ache in her as clearly as he felt in himself.

  Please, he wanted to whisper. Please, Tina. Trust me. Trust yourself.

  Her eyes flashed, telling him she knew perfectly well he wasn’t leading her into the past so much as leading her into a future.

  She waited so long, he was tempted to hang his head and let her go, except he couldn’t, because he’d never, ever give up on Tina. Maybe he’d have to give her an extra twenty days to decide. Maybe he’d wait forever. Maybe all he had to do was—

  Tina shifted, stood in her stirrups, and threw a leg over Star. Slid to the ground in one easy glide and, without another second’s hesitation, stepped right over to him.

  She was shaking her head like she was sure she was crazy, but she kissed him all the same. Kissed him with dry, craving lips that opened and closed as if she was whispering at the same time. Praying maybe. Telling him how crazy he was.

  She didn’t make a sound, though. Just kissed. Kissed and kissed without a breath in between, one hand still gripping Star’s reins like it’d be safer not to let go, and the other hand hugging him close. He threaded his fingers through her hair and hung on as emotions cascaded through those quietly whispering lips. Fear. Doubt. Hope. Desire. Each one slowly melting into the next until there was only one left.

  Love.

  “I love you, Rick.” He could swear he heard her think it—twice, in fact—before she said it, though by then it didn’t matter any more because she really had said it out loud. “I love you. I missed you. I want you.”

  He kept waiting for the but. Kept holding his breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  She didn’t say it, though he could feel it hanging in the air along with the rising moon. Her starved kisses continued until she paused long enough to lead him over to the flat red rocks by the stream. She lunged into a kiss then settled on his lap and started working down the buttons of his shirt.

  “Why?” He managed to get out. His hands swept over her back, cupped her rear, pulled her closer. “Why did we ever part?”

  A rhetorical question, really, although Tina hid her face in his shoulder and mumbled a reply. “I always wanted you. I only wanted you.”

  “Then why?”

  She shook her head. “Rick, I just want to think about now. I just want tonight.”

  A little voice inside started screaming, No! No! No! “I want more.” I want everything.

  Her lower lip wavered between a kiss and a word. Then she blinked and looked at him with those dark, tragic eyes. “I want more, too. I want it more than anything. I just…”

  There was no just. There couldn’t be.

  She shook her head hopelessly, and he could see the war in her eyes.

  Just when he thought he’d lost, her eyes darkened. Sparked a little and then glowed. It must have been the reflection from the moon and the sunset, filtering through the trees, but damn, her eyes really seemed to glow. And just like that, she was wild for him. Kissing, wet and deep and hard. Raking her nails over his back and straddling him, pushing him back on the rock at the same time. Her fingers tugged his shirt from where it had been tucked into his jeans. It was as if a wild thing had jumped out of a caged part of her soul and taken over the controls. A wild thing that lit every last one of his nerves so that he was on fire, too.

  She growled into the next kiss, and the points of her teeth nipped his lips. I want you. No more talking. I want us.

  Now he was imagining her voice in his head.

  She worked his zipper down, then his jeans, and yanked off his shirt. He stripped her, layer by layer, holding his breath the whole time. Tina was that beautiful, that perfect. His. When she slid down over him, she tilted her head back and moaned. Then she started rocking, and all he could do was grip her hips and pump and marvel at the woman doing this to him. Maybe even growl a little on the side, because there was a feral edge to this he’d never experienced before. His bare ass was cold on the rock, but Tina was an inferno, all friction and hunger and sheer feminine power. Her cries joined the steady hum of cicadas, the whisper of the brook, and it all roared in his ears. Like the brook wasn’t a brook but a gushing river. Like the hollow was a concert hall with a string orchestra playing full blast. Everything swelled beyond real-life proportions. Beyond pleasure, right up to the razor’s edge of a blissful kind of pain.

  Mine! Mine! Mine! Her body screamed the word with every tiny gesture, every heavy moan.

  Mine. If Tina allowed herself to think it, damn it, so could he. Mine. She was his, all his.

  His whole body shuddered when he came, and Tina cried out at exactly the same time. She grabbed his shoulders, convulsing, and murmured incomprehensible sounds. Then she slumped over him, and all he could think about was holding her. Holding her forever and never, ever letting go.

  She spent a long time panting into his shoulder before slowly pulling herself together. The sun was over the horizon, and night had set in, but when she looked up, the glow was still in her eyes.

  He pressed his lips to her collarbone. There was nothing he could say to capture what he felt. Nothing either of them could do to make this more perfect.

  “Rick,” she whispered, nuzzling him the way only she could. Scrubbing her chin against his skin like she wanted part of him to rub off on her. “Rick…”

  Perfect. Absolutely perfect. A dream.

  Until a split second later, when her whole body went stiff and her head popped up. He could swear her ears flicked.

  “What—?” He’d barely started when an ear-splitting howl cut into the night. A hellish cry of a tortured creature bent on revenge.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rick could have pulled a plug on the soundtrack of the hollow, it went quiet that fast. Then it roared back to life with crazed whinnies from the horses and the puff of Tina’s panicked breath.

  Aaaaaarrroooo… The creature howled from somewhere far away, but still much, much too close.

  Not a coyote. Not even a wolf like the ones Rick had heard as a kid. Something canine and dangerous but somehow different.

  Blue reared up and clawed against empty air, whinnying in alarm.

  Tina sprang off his lap. “Hell. How—” Whatever she was saying, it was urgent. Alarmed.

  Every hair on his neck stood straight up, every muscle tensed. He had no idea what creature made a sound like that. The frightening thing was that Tina seemed to know exactly what it was, and she was scared stiff.

  “Quick, quick!” She tossed his jeans at him and rushed to pull on her clothes in record time. She hissed at the horses, and they went silent instantly, though their hooves tore at the ground. Their nostrils were huge, their eyes panicked. Whatever evil was afoot had them ready to flee.

  Now. Fast. Far. The urgent message coursed through his veins.

  “Go!” Tina urged as she untied Star and leaped into the saddle. “Go!”

  Rick barely had a foot in the stirrup when Blue shot off, and it was all he could do was throw a leg over the saddle and hang on, ducking low over Blue’s mane as branches thwacked him from all sides. God, what was going on? The whole desert was on red alert, and him, too.

  A wild minute of bushwhacking later, they shot out into the open and thundered across the desert, heading home. Blue didn’t need any urging; more like he needed to be held back before he stumbled and broke a leg. He galloped at a pace no aging horse should attempt, straining for another gear.

  “Easy, boy.” Rick tried calming the horse, but his voice was un
even, unconvincing. Whatever was out there was evil. He could feel it in his bones.

  Three lengths ahead, Tina leaned so low over Star’s neck that she was practically part of the horse. Her dark hair streamed back and whipped wildly with the mare’s pale mane, the very picture of a goddess of the wind or the sky. Or maybe even a goddess of battle, because when Tina glanced back, her face was fierce, her eyes flashing as if she were planning to rally the troops and go hunt down whatever it was that pumped terror into the desert that night.

  The howls continued. From the direction of Dead Horse Bluff, maybe? He couldn’t tell, not at full gallop and with the desert screeching full-on panic in his ears.

  They thundered over a rise until the ranch came into view, and the only thought in his mind was to race for the barn and bolt every door. To grab Tina, carry her into the loft, and stand two steps in front of her on guard. Maybe even grab a shotgun along the way, or a pitchfork, or whatever he could grab, and fight to the death if it meant she’d survive.

  One howl oughtn’t do that to a man who’d walked some mean city streets, but it did. That howl was ghostly. Evil. Devilish, even.

  They thundered down the hill, past the outer paddocks, past the empty house and right through the open barn door, ducking to clear their heads. The horses scrambled to a halt, trembling. Their nostrils flared and they skittered in place, hooves clawing the dirt, while he and Tina leaped to the ground and rushed for the door. He had it nearly all the way shut when Tina stopped and slid halfway out.

  “What—?”

  “I have to go.”

  “Go?” With that thing out there? Was she nuts?

  But Tina wasn’t nuts. She was the goddess of the wind, or something very close. “I have to go.”

  “Tina, you can’t—”

  She put a hand on his arm, and for a split second, everything calmed down. The roaring in his ears, the sense of urgency, the fear. Everything but the instinct to protect.

  “Trust me, I have to go.”

  Any other woman, he’d have pulled back into the barn because it was crazy, absolutely crazy to drive out into that haunted night. His father had had just enough pagan in him to believe in ghosts and demons, and Rick believed, too. He couldn’t not believe, hearing the otherworldliness in the howl that had split the night.