Outside, a silvery quarter moon had climbed into a sky dense with stars. It seemed odd to see the same familiar constellations, but comforting, a reminder David hadn’t landed on a completely different planet. Bending over double to step through the circular entrance to the tipi, he found the lantern and turned it on as he let the canvas door flap fall shut behind him, frowning at the harsh blue glow of the LED bulb.
It was cozier than he’d expected. The walls didn’t slant outward clear to the ground. A four-foot-high canvas liner circled the inside, forming a near-vertical wall decorated with a parade of crudely painted animals, most of which were vaguely recognizable as horses, wolves, buffalo, deer, or elk. The ground was also covered by canvas and a hodgepodge of rugs, but the center had been left open for a pit circled by rocks. Logs and kindling were stacked inside, and the tipi smelled of woodsmoke from fires past.
A trio of lawn chairs were scattered around the interior, and against the far wall a low camp bed was piled with pillows, blankets and what appeared to be a buffalo hide. Half of one anyway, David saw when he lifted it from the bed. One side tanned, the other covered with coarse, curly hair. And heavy. The weight of it would go a long way toward sealing out the chilly night air. He folded it in half and set it aside, then spotted a blue plastic cooler.
The evening’s drama had left him with a powerful thirst, so he flipped open the lid. Inside, half a dozen cans of store-brand soda floated in melted ice. David contemplated the selection and then picked grape because it was Adam’s favorite and he had a sudden, intense need to feel closer to home.
He stacked up the pillows and sleeping bag on the camp bed and sat down, using the bedding as a backrest so he could recline and stare up at the converging poles of the tipi above him, a tiny slice of jet-black sky visible through the smoke hole at the top. Fatigue pooled like lead in his muscles. Geezus, what a day. He closed his eyes, let his tired brain go blank to everything except the skitters, squeaks, and sighs of the night.
He was on the verge of dozing when Mary’s front door opened and then closed. David’s pulse jumped. He hadn’t expected to see her again tonight. Or was it Kylan sneaking out? David listened intently but couldn’t hear footsteps. Whoever had come outside, they must be crossing the lawn, not the gravel driveway.
The tipi flap rustled, and Mary poked her head in. “Oh. Hey. I guess I don’t have to tell you to make yourself at home.”
“Hope you don’t mind.” He should sit up, but he felt like his bones had melted.
“The least I can do is buy you a drink.” She stepped through the door, letting the flap fall behind her. “I just wanted to tell you that there’s an electrical outlet inside the door of the barn, if you want to plug your trailer in.”
“Thanks. I will.”
She clasped and unclasped her hands, then cocked her head, eyeing him. “It’s weird, seeing you laid back. You are a very upright sort of person.”
“I try to be.”
“I noticed. You’ve swooped me up and out of danger twice now.” She fluttered one hand over her heart and faked a smile. “My hero.”
He toasted her with the grape soda. “Dudley Do-Right, at your service.”
Her eyebrows arched, questioning.
“Like the movie.” Damn. Why did he bring that up? “Someone called me that once, because I’m so…upright.”
Make that uptight. At least, that’s what the blond interviewer in Cody had implied when he’d turned down her offer. And he’d been so self-righteous, so smug because he was so much better than that and Emily deserved nothing but the best. Lucky for her, she’d found it. Too bad for David it wasn’t him.
“The bravest of the Canadian Mounties and his trusty horse. I can see you playing that part.” Mary laughed softly. Because the humor chased some of the strain from her face, he didn’t mind that it was at his expense. She glanced around, as if deciding which of the chairs to take.
He surprised both of them by patting the camp bed next to him. “Sit with me.”
She eyed the spot like it might be booby-trapped. “Why?”
“I like it when you’re close.” Crap. What was he saying? The tipi must be working some kind of weird voodoo on his brain, because he patted the space beside him again. “You look like you’re about to fall over. Trust me. Would Dudley lead you astray?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do I know you aren’t Snidely Whiplash in disguise?”
“You’ll have to take my word for it.”
She wavered, the doubts chasing across her face, one after another, as she pondered all the reasons she should stay the hell away from him. He didn’t suppose trust came easily for Mary at the best of times, and their whole situation was anything but. Air backed up in his lungs when she moved toward him like she was a wild fawn and he might frighten her away if he took a breath. She eased down on the camp bed, perched on the very edge, not exactly beside him but better than across the room. Or tipi, in this case.
“How’d it go in there?” he asked, tilting his head toward the house.
“The usual. He’s sorry. He never meant to scare me. He feels terrible.” She blew out a troubled sigh and then angled a questioning look at David. “He’s afraid you think he’s dumb and irresponsible, and you won’t let him help you shoe Frosty tomorrow like you said. Obviously, the two of you spent more time together today than I realized.”
Wow. Was that just this morning? It seemed like a week had passed since Kylan’s impromptu shoeing lesson. “We’re still on.”
She dipped her head, lacing and unlacing nervous fingers. “Thank you. Knowing how precious Muddy is to you…it meant a lot to Kylan that you trusted him to help. I guess that’s why he went along to Rusty’s. He felt like he owed you.”
“That wasn’t why I let him help me.” David bristled, insulted by the implication. “Is it impossible for you to believe a person could do something without an ulterior motive?”
“Not impossible. But not exactly easy, either.”
“Why is that?”
She clasped her hands and pushed her thumbs up to form a steeple. “I have a mother who only calls when she needs someone to listen to her problems, a sister who’d trade me and her son for a dime bag of anything with a decent kick, and the army…” She wrinkled her nose. “If you have any illusions about humanity before you enlist, you can bet they’ll be gone by the end of your first overseas deployment.”
David frowned, studying her profile. “Why do you stay here? With your credentials, you could go almost anywhere, get Kylan away from people like Weasel.”
“I’d also be taking him away from Galen and Cissy. JoJo.” She rubbed one thumb against the other, up and down, eyes focused on the motion. “There are bad people everywhere, and they seem to gravitate toward Kylan. Or he gravitates toward them. Either way, at least here I know who they are.”
“The devil you know?”
“Yeah.” She rubbed one thumb across a smear of dirt on the knee of her jeans where she’d fallen when Kylan pushed her. “There are plenty of good people around here. We take care of each other. Everybody keeps an eye out for the kids.”
A whole network of spies to help her keep track of Kylan. But the watchdogs couldn’t be on guard every single minute. Look at tonight. At some point, somehow, Kylan had to learn to handle himself. If he didn’t…
David would rather not think about the alternative. “Did you live with Galen and his wife, the way Kylan lives with you?”
“Yes.” A fond smile came and went, the sadness creeping back into her eyes. “After my brothers died.”
“What about your mother?”
“She was a mess. She could barely take care of herself.”
“Does Galen have kids of his own?”
“Yep.” She held up four fingers. “The last daughter had just graduated from high school and left for college, and along I came to foul up their empty nest.”
“I bet they didn’t think of it that way.”
“You might lose that bet.” She shook her head. “I was a handful before the accident, let alone after.”
“Really? I would’ve figured you for the straight-A student.”
“I was. Didn’t mean I wasn’t a wreck lookin’ for a place to happen.” The expression in her eyes was so bleak that David had to work at keeping both hands on his soda can and off her.
“The accident was bound to have some effect.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Her mouth twisted. “Didn’t teach us a damn thing. The day of their funeral, we all went out and got drunk in their honor. Like it couldn’t happen to us. Probably would’ve, if it hadn’t been for Cissy. I stayed out all night, came stumbling in expecting her to chew my ass, but she just looked at me and said, ‘Please don’t make me have to bury you beside your brothers. I don’t think I could stand it.’”
Mary shivered, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if to chase away a chill. “I actually saw myself in the coffin. And it finally hit me that I could die, and I really didn’t want to.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, staring into the cold fire pit as if she could see the scene playing out there.
“Can we light the fire?” David asked.
She started and then frowned. “It’s late.”
“You said you wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while.” He ran his gaze around the inside of the tipi. “Artificial light doesn’t do this justice.”
She shrugged. “Go ahead. I could use warming up.”
David refrained from offering his body as a ready and willing source of heat, peeling himself off the bed instead. Much safer to keep the flames inside the fire pit.