“I’m hungry.”
Dulcy didn’t even bother to look up from the repairs she and Hank were making on one of the stalls. “Honey, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Hannah kicked at the dirt. “You can eat without him.”
“No I can’t. Now, why don’t you go on out and keep an eye out for him. He should be coming back across the river anytime now.”
“It’s dark,” Hannah objected, the level of her voice nearing a whine. “I can’t see that far.”
That made Dulcy look up. She hadn’t really noticed. The rectangle of sky she could see outside the barn door had indeed darkened into that beautiful intense peacock in which floated the first stars. Even with Bart busy at his weekly poker night, Sally would still be chomping at the bit to get home. There was a special tonight on the gossip channel about the state of the royal family.
And Hannah was right. It was way past time to eat. Dulcy’s stomach was aching like a sore tooth for the chicken she could smell. The bunkhouse had been served, and now it was her turn.
Except that she couldn’t really eat without Noah there.
“You don’t think he got lost, do ya?” Hank asked without noticeable worry.
Dulcy sighed. “Nah. He’s been chompin’ at the bit to get out there since he showed up. Probably lost track of time. It’s not really dark. Hannah’s just bein’ a kid.”
“A hungry kid,” her daughter amended.
“Have a banana,” Dulcy retorted, just as she always did.
“Eeew,” Hannah flashed back the standard response as she clomped on out of the barn door.
“Think this’ll hold?” Hank was asking of their handiwork.
Dulcy straightened from where she’d been bent over the hinge they’d jury-rigged and stretched, a hand to her aching back. “It’ll have to. I’m tired and I want a bath. We’ll have Billy get a new hinge in town tomorrow.”
She bent to gather up the tools they’d used.
“Mom! Mo-o-o-om! I see Doofus!”
Dulcy pulled her hat off one of the posts and plopped it on her head as she turned for the tack room. “Good, honey. Why don’t you tell Sally? And wash your hands.”
“Guess the bath’ll have to wait,” Hank offered dryly.
Dulcy grinned. “Just till I get my stomach to stop growling.”
“Mom!”
That was a different sound altogether. Dulcy didn’t even bother to drop her tools. She just spun around the other way and headed for the sound of her daughter’s frantic call. Hank followed hot on her heels.
“Hannah?”
That was when Dulcy heard the hoofbeats. Fast, hard. She got outside in time to see Doofus run straight for her tiny daughter.
“Hannah!”
But that wasn’t what had scared Hannah. The tiny girl simply lifted her hands and brought the horse to a stuttering halt inches from her nose. Dulcy could see the white of the horse’s eyes, saw the sweat on his flanks.
Saw, most importantly, that his saddle-was empty.
She slowed to a halt. “Damn. He did get lost.”
Hank chuckled. “Looks like old Doof dumped him after all.”
Which meant that after a grueling day at Uncle Mike’s, a trip into town and a host of other small details to tend to, Dulcy was going to have to put off her dinner even longer while she saddled up a horse and went looking for her wayward boss in the dark.
She called him the worst name she could think of and headed on into the barn and lifted a saddle off the rack. “I’ll saddle up Colorado, Hank. Would you get Buster ready to take along so the boss doesn’t have to walk back? I don’t think Doof’s in the mood to be a gentleman.”
“Yeah…”
Dulcy was already in the stall, slipping a saddle blanket on the back of her horse, when she heard Hank’s hesitation.
“Boss, I think you’d better see this.”
She just took horse and tack out with her. “What?”
Hank didn’t look happy. Dulcy found out why when he turned to her and lifted his hand. On his fingers was something dark and shiny and wet.
Dulcy came to a stop. “What is it?”
“Blood. I think the boss did more’n fall off.”
Dulcy had never saddled a horse so fast in her life.
Colorado, infected by Doofus’s nerves and Dulcy’s urgency, danced around in the barnyard as Dulcy gave his cinch a final yank and pulled him around to mount him. Hank let Hannah take temporary control of Doofus so he could help.
“Get the others,” Dulcy commanded as she launched herself into the saddle. “Follow me up. And bring the cellular, just in case we need help. Hannah, let Aunt Sally know.”
“Mommy, I can’t,” Hannah protested, her young voice frantic. “Doofus is hurt.”
Dulcy paused just a moment to verify it with Hank. The older man nodded, no longer looking very sanguine about the whole thing at all. “Pretty sure it’s just a nick, but all the blood isn’t from the horse. Go on.”
Dulcy wheeled her own horse around and took off across the valley.
She was glad she’d decided to take Colorado. The big Appaloosa was as surefooted as a cat in the rocky high country. He never faltered as he carried Dulcy to the river and beyond to the other side of the broad, broad valley Noah seemed to love. Toward the trees he had been so delighted to call his own.
Up into them, the shadows deepening in the dusk until Dulcy could barely see. Slowing now, even as she checked back and saw the flickering lights of sudden activity back at the ranch building. Hoping against hope to come across Noah as he walked back down the trail. Hoping they were wrong, that Doof had just dumped him and hurt himself hurtling back to the ranch for the dinner he’d been due, too.
Frantic. Nothing more constructive. Mouthing an amorphous prayer that everything was all right. That nothing had happened to Noah up here on the steepening rocky ground in the dark.
He was the boss, after all. Dulcy was dependant on him. They all were. He held their futures in his hands, and if something happened to him, they’d all be in trouble.
She’d be in trouble.
Oh, God, if something happened to him.
Dulcy didn’t want to think about the fact that the fear that bubbled up beneath those very logical words had nothing to do with job security. It had nothing to do with anybody else on the ranch. Even Sally.
Even Hannah.
It had to do with that flashing, surprising smile. That ear for music and the perfect manners with a proper little girl.
It had to do with the surprising gleam of tears she’d caught when he’d looked up toward these very hills on another dark night.
“Noah!” she yelled, startling Colorado into almost losing his footing. “Noah Campbell, are you up here?”
All she heard were the pines, the skitter of the quaking aspen in the night breeze. The chirrup and chatter of birds settling for the night, and animals waking to the hunt.
She heard, far across the valley, an engine starting up.
“Noah!”
Nothing.
Dulcy rode on, fighting the urge to hurry. The last thing either of them would need would be for her to steer her horse right over him if he’d landed on the ground.
“Noah!”
He had to be here somewhere. She’d told him to take the trail. To just follow the trail up as far as it would go.
He hadn’t promised he’d do it.
If he wasn’t on the trail, she might never find him.
“Noah!”
“There you are.”
Dulcy almost fell off her horse. “Noah?”
She couldn’t see him.
“Up here.”
She kicked Colorado hard and sent him skittering up the slope. It wasn’t until she was almost on Noah that she saw his shadow.
“Noah? Are you all right?”
He was sitting on a boulder. She could tell by his shadow, the darkness now almost complete up here on the west side of the valley.
“I’m fine,” he answered easily. “You?”
That did it. Dulcy swung off her horse and stalked over to him. Tried like hell to see past the crooked grin and tilted head to what had left him sitting on a rock in the dark when his horse was a couple miles away.
“What the hell are you doing up here?” she demanded, relieved and angry and hurt at the same time. “Hannah thinks you’re dead! What happened to Doofus?”
If he’d deliberately tried, Noah couldn’t have made her more angry. His grin grew even bigger. “Is this how mothers say ‘I’m glad you’re okay’?”
Dulcy wanted to hit him. “Next time you decide to send your horse on alone, pin a note to his saddle blanket so we don’t have to come crashing up here in the dark. All right?”
“Is he okay?” Noah asked. “The last time I saw him I was somersaulting backward. He didn’t wait around to explain.”
“He’s bleeding.”
“I was afraid of that.”
Dulcy dragged in a shaky breath. She just wasn’t ready for him to be so damn nonchalant about this, after she’d been getting ready to airlift him to Billings. “What happened?”
Noah didn’t seem particularly concerned. “I must resemble an elk. Doof and I were just walking along minding our own business, when somebody tried to make us hood ornaments. Doof bolted, and I ended up on foot.”
“And just sat here on a rock waiting for us to show up?”
“No. I was walking down. When I realized you were coming up, I figured it would be prudent to just sit out of the way and wait. After all, I’d already had one person not realize there was a human in the area, and look what that did for me.”
“Did you see who it was?”
Dulcy could see him shake his head. “Uh, no. I kind of hit my head on the way down. It took a little while for me to remember who I was.”
That quickly, the sense of relief fled. “You hit your head?” she demanded. “Where? Is it all right? What else did you hurt?”
As if it were an answer in itself, Noah levered himself to his feet. “Dulcy. I’m fine. I’m hungry. Can we go now?”
“Nothing else is hurt?” she repeated, needing his denial more than she wanted to admit. Fighting for the first time in too long the urge to reach out and touch a grown man, if only to reassure herself.
“Nothing important. Besides, I’m hungry, and I’ll bet you guys ate all the chicken before I could get back.”
“We did not eat the chicken,” she protested. “We were waiting for you.”
“Then let’s go.”
Dulcy glared up at him for a moment, unable to tell anything with his hat shading his face into anonymity and his dark shirt and jeans hiding anything else. She just wanted to know he was all right. For the moment, she couldn’t think past that.
“You can ride behind me,” she finally offered, turning back to her horse.
“A pleasure.”
Colorado was still a little skittish, so that it took Dulcy a second to pull Noah up behind her. When she did, she heard him grunt, as if he were more sore than he was admitting. She was about to mention it, when he wrapped his arms around her waist.
Thought fled.
Dulcy froze.
Somewhere she knew that they had to get moving. They had to get back down to where the rest of the ranch was probably even now spilling across the meadow in a concerted rescue effort. She had to get them both some food, because why else would she be so suddenly light-headed?
“Dulcy?”
“Huh?”
“What’s wrong?”
Noah’s voice, right in her ear. His breath, fanning her cheek, igniting some weird glow in her stomach. He was so big, wrapping completely around her. If he wanted, he could just fold her completely to him. He could tilt her head back and kiss her with his soft mouth and mystic eyes and chiseled jaw…
This was stupid.
Childish.
Hormonal.
Dulcy knew better. She still couldn’t breathe.
“Dulcy?”
Did he sound breathless, too? Was he holding her just a little more tightly? His lips were so close to her ear that just that one word spilled shivers all down the side of her neck. His hands were stiff against her waist.
“Yes?”
“We need…uh…” Softer this time. More hesitant, the words fading away to soft breath, his face against her hair. Folded close, his chest against her back. His thighs alongside hers.
“To get, uh, back,” she agreed with a tiny nod of her head. “Yeah.”
But if she moved, she’d bump into him. She’d stoke that odd, dancing fire that licked along her limbs like heat lightning.
She felt him dip his head, felt his lips edging closer to her skin, to the exquisitely tender skin at the nape of her neck.
“Dulcy?”
Her eyes were closed now. Her heart was thundering. “Mmmm.”
He was smiling. She could feel it all the way to her toes. She could have told him what was wrong with him, if she could have breathed.
She couldn’t.
“Hey, boss!”
The two of them jolted apart so fast they almost fell off the horse.
It was only then Dulcy heard the clatter of horses approaching up the slope. The whole ranch must have, indeed, turned out.
Even before Dulcy could master a command, Colorado turned himself down toward his stablemates and whinnied. Probably disgusted with humans as a whole.
Dulcy could hardly blame him. She was sure pretty disgusted with herself. God, she’d come so close to stupidity. Her body was still shaking with surprise, with something else she didn’t even want to deal with right then.
“Right here, Hank!” she yelled back, her voice as unsteady as her heartrate.
“Find him?”
She didn’t need to answer. Everybody saw that she had, when they broke through the last of the trees. Dulcy just let Colorado continue his descent.
Hank pulled up within a few feet and considered Noah with a wry eye. “First you get my men drunk, then you get my horse shot. What’s next?”
“He okay?” Noah asked.
At the sound of his voice, Dulcy almost turned on him. How could he sound so normal? So…unflustered? She still felt as if she’d run up on her legs instead of Colorado’s. Noah sounded as if they were conversing at a bar.
“He’s fine,” Hank acknowledged. The rest of the men just waited behind him, their horses snorting and stamping a little, kind of like an equine Greek chorus. “You?”
“Need dinner. We ready to go?”
“Brought you a horse. You still want it?”
“No,” he said.
“Yes,” Dulcy said at the exact same moment.
She saw the eyebrows raise. She ignored them. “We’ll make better time.”
Noah couldn’t seem to come up with further objection. It took him a second to slide off and then climb on Barney, but in the end he took up his place in line in front of Dulcy, and everybody turned back toward the ranch.
As they started off, Hank pulled up alongside Dulcy on the trail. “You want me to…?” His focus strayed back up the mountain.
Still too rattled to think well, Dulcy just shook her head. “Tomorrow. It’s too dark now.”
Hank just nodded and eased back into line, leaving Dulcy with too many uncomfortable thoughts. It wasn’t simply what had happened up on that trail, but what could have happened. What she’d wanted to happen. Dulcy didn’t want to think of it. She knew she’d have to deal with it in the light of day, but till then, she thought she’d just concentrate on getting downhill.
She’d just be glad Noah was all right.
If only it were that easy.
It was getting dark, and the moon was rising over the Absarokas, spilling silver into the valley. A coyote tested the darkness, and a couple of the horses nickered. Other than that all was still. Peaceful and dark and magic, just as Dulcy usually liked it.
Not tonight. Tonight she couldn’t seem to hear the night sounds or feel the wind. She couldn’t even enjoy Colorado’s easy gait under her. She couldn’t seem to move past that very surprising contact on the slope.
Electric.
Seismic.
Over.
There was just no way she was going to allow herself to turn into Tammy and the Millionaire when so much depended on her keeping her job. She wasn’t going to let herself get involved with Noah, or worry about him, or wonder what would have happened if Hank hadn’t shown up when he did. The old saying about what else you shouldn’t get with your paycheck was true for too many good reasons.
It might have worked if she hadn’t bumped into Noah as they were all dismounting. Noah flinched and set off more than one alarm bell.
Dulcy turned on him to see that he was trying very hard to hide the hand he was using to shield his left arm. Worry flared right back up like a trick birthday candle.
“Noah?” she asked, turning her attention to that dark blue shirt that seemed suspiciously moist in the yard light. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m hungry,” he insisted, heading toward the house.
For once Dulcy let Hank take care of her horse for her. After all, she figured, if she let something happen to the boss, they’d both be out of a job.
“How ‘bout if I check your arm?” she asked, reaching out.
Noah danced away like one of the skittish horses, his eyes glinting oddly in the light, his right hand still around his left arm.
“It’s nothing,” he insisted.
“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s bleeding.”
He faltered to a stop, his sudden grin lopsided and endearing. “I know. But I didn’t want them to,” he admitted, motioning toward where the men were leading their horses into the barn. “I don’t want them to know what a wimp I am.”
Dulcy let an eyebrow lift. “A wimp.”
“It’s a scratch…”
“And a smack on the head,” she reminded him.
His shrug was embarrassed and uncomfortable. “I’m trying hard not to be a greenhorn, Dulcy.”
Dulcy couldn’t help it. She laughed. She shook her head and took gentle hold of her boss by the arm and guided him toward the house. “Cowboys fall off their horses all the time,” she assured him.
“But they don’t complain when it hurts.”
She laughed again. “You’ve been watching too many old Marlboro commercials. They whine louder’n a two-legged dog trying to hit a hydrant. Now, come on and let’s look at that.”
Just shy of the back door, he came to a sudden stop. “Dulcy, about what happened up there.”
Dulcy looked him right in the eye and thought herself the bravest woman on earth for not crumbling on the spot. He towered over her, his eyes almost glowing down at her with their moonstruck silver, his hair tumbling over his forehead like a little boy’s. She couldn’t lose her heart to this man.
She wouldn’t.
He wasn’t smiling. Dulcy wanted so very badly to lift a hand to that bristly cheek and soothe the worry lines. She wanted to produce that quick, flashing smile.
She didn’t. She did probably the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life, when she’d done many hard things.
“Up there?” she asked, her voice deceptively certain, so there would be no mistake. “Nothing happened up there.”
And then she turned from him and walked in the door.