A Fortune's Children's Christmas (22 page)

H
e should have turned around right then and headed back to town. It would have been the smart thing to do. She was distracting the hell out of him, and he had a feeling the situation was only going to get worse the longer they were in each other’s company. He would turn back now, take her back to her place and recommend she call Joe Little Hawk. He was a good tracker and old enough to be her father. Maybe Joe could take her with him on his snowmobile and not feel anything, but he sure couldn’t. And if she gave him any trouble about backing out on her, he just might be tempted to tell her that.

But even as he started to brake, an image of a little girl flashed before his eyes. He didn’t have to see a picture of her to know that Laura Windsong looked like her mother. Some things were just inevitable. She would have the same dark hair, the same wide gray eyes, the same stubborn chin. And right now, she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in in her life, and she needed him.
Him.
Not Joe Little Hawk or Michael Crow or any of the other men he’d met on the reservation who had a knack for following a trail. They were good—he didn’t doubt that. But he was better. Time and again, he’d found lost souls who’d
been long since given up for dead because he refused to give up. And he wasn’t giving up on Laura Windsong.

And when her mother came face-to-face with the lowlife that had stolen her heart, he was going to be there, he thought grimly. He didn’t know why it was so important to him, but he knew with a certainty that went soul deep that he had to be there for her. In the meantime, there would be no going back. He would have to find a way to deal with her, and he didn’t for a second fool himself into thinking it was going to be easy. Not when it was colder than hell, and the woman only had to touch him to make him sweat.

They picked up James’s tracks right where Hunter had found them earlier and started up into the mountains. Naomi had thought it would be simple enough—all they had to do was follow the snowmobile tracks and they would lead them right to Laura. But she quickly learned nothing was that simple. In his rush to get away, James hadn’t, unfortunately, forgotten to be cautious. Obviously expecting to be followed, he seldom traveled in a straight line. Instead, he darted in and out among the trees, winding up and around and back again, seeming, at times, to be heading in no particular direction. And every time he’d left the protection of the trees for more open ground, the previous night’s snowfall had obliterated his tracks.

Holding on to Hunter as he lost the trail, then found it again, only to lose it once more, Naomi soon appreciated his skills as a tracker. There were times
when the trail appeared to just give out in a smooth expanse of snow. There was nothing to show which direction James had gone next, nothing to show that he had even been there at all. If the decision had been left up to her, she wouldn’t have a clue which way to turn, but Hunter had no such problem. With a patience she couldn’t help but admire, he dismounted from the snowmobile and carefully inspected the area on foot. And where she saw nothing, he found broken limbs or clumps of snow that had been carelessly knocked from low-lying branches to point the way.

Still, it was a tedious process. Hunter had warned her that finding the spot where James might have been watching them with binoculars earlier in the day wouldn’t be easy, and he was right. With painstaking slowness, they kept climbing, but never seemed to get anywhere. James’s tracks—when Hunter could find them—always wound higher up the mountain, with no end in sight.

And every time they lost the tracks, they lost precious time. In spite of that, Naomi hadn’t been able to let go of the hope that she would hold her daughter in her arms again before nightfall. But as the sun began its downward descent and the temperature started to drop with it, Naomi had no choice but to accept the fact that that wasn’t going to happen.

Exhausted, realizing for the first time the enormity of what they were up against in their search, it was all she could do not to lay her head against Hunter’s back and cry. She was so tired…and not any closer to finding Laura than she had been that morning.

“It looks like we may have gotten a break,” Hunter said suddenly over the low roar of the snowmobile’s motor. “There’s a line cabin up ahead.”

Lost in her misery, Naomi hardly heard him at first. Then his words registered. “What? Where?”

“In the clearing off to the right,” he said, nodding to the area fifty yards ahead of them. In the gathering shadows, the small, single-room dwelling looked deserted, but Hunter had no intention of driving right up to the front porch without checking it out first. Naomi didn’t think Barker had a gun, but Hunter wasn’t so sure. Any man who would kidnap his own daughter and drag her up into the mountains just to torture her mother was capable of anything.

Braking to a stop well short of the cabin, he cut the snowmobile’s engine and said quietly in the sudden silence, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

He knew what he was asking of her, and for a minute he thought she was going to insist on going with him, but he only had to shoot her a narrow-eyed look to remind her that they had an agreement. She didn’t like it—in fact, if looks could kill, the resentful look she shot him would have slain him on the spot—but he had to give her credit. She was a lady of her word. Her mouth compressing in a flat line, she sat back and didn’t offer a single word of protest as he soundlessly slipped off into the trees that surrounded the cabin.

He was back almost immediately, his rugged face carved in shadows as he moved toward her as silently as an eagle gliding through the pines. In his hand he
carried a small stuffed teddy bear that was worn and tattered and missing an ear. “Recognize this?”

Naomi took one look at it and cried out softly as she quickly dismounted the snowmobile and reached for it. “Oh, God, it’s Chester—Laura’s bear! She never goes anywhere without him. Where—”

“In the cabin,” he said, anticipating her question. “It looks like Barker holed up here with Laura last night, then took off after he spotted us down in the canyon with binoculars this morning.”

“And he made her leave Chester behind?” she said indignantly, her gray eyes snapping. “How dare he! He knows what that bear means to her. She won’t even go to sleep at night without it. The one time he got misplaced, she cried for hours.”

“We don’t know that Barker deliberately made her leave without it,” he said. “In the rush to get away, he might have just overlooked it.”

“No. You don’t know him. He did this on purpose to taunt me. He wants me to think she’s been crying all afternoon.” Her throat tightening at the thought, she could do nothing to stop the tears that suddenly flooded her eyes. “Damn him, he’s not going to get away with it,” she said huskily. “He couldn’t have gotten that far. If we hurry—”

“We wouldn’t get a quarter of a mile,” he said flatly. “I know you’re upset and you’d like nothing more than to get your hands around Barker’s throat as soon as possible, and I don’t blame you—the man’s a bastard—but we’re not going anywhere tonight. Look around you,” he said when she started to object.
“It’s already dark and we’ve both had a long day. That adds up to an accident waiting to happen. If you want to help Laura, the best thing you can do for her right now is get a good night’s sleep and start fresh in the morning.”

“But—”

“This isn’t open to discussion, Naomi. This is the end of the trail for tonight.”

If she hadn’t been teetering on the edge of exhaustion and worried to death about Laura, she might have reacted differently. As it was, all she could think of was one more man was trying to come between her and her daughter, and she’d had just about enough of it.
No one
was telling her what she could and couldn’t do when it came to Laura.

“Maybe for you, but not for me,” she said coolly. “As long as there’s any daylight left, I intend to keep searching.”

“Don’t be ridiculous—”

Ignoring him, she turned on her heel and began to retrace her steps to the last spot they’d seen James’s tracks. While Hunter had been in the cabin, the sun had completely disappeared behind the tallest peaks to the west, and the shadows were already darkening under the trees. If she was lucky, she might have another thirty or forty minutes before she completely lost the light. And that was thirty or more minutes that they wouldn’t have to waste tomorrow looking for James’s tracks.

Her head down, her eyes trained directly on the snow-covered ground at her feet, she found the trail
left by James’s snowmobile less than fifty feet from the cabin. They headed west, deeper into the mountains. Her jaw firm with resolve, she started to follow them.

Watching her, Hunter was half-tempted to let her go. He’d told her what could happen to her up here in the mountains, warned her how quickly she could get into trouble if she didn’t do as he said. But did she listen? Hell, no. Instead, she was hell-bent on going off on her own, and it irritated him no end. Did she think he wanted to spend one more minute than he had to, chasing Barker all over the godforsaken mountains? He had a life to get back to and work to do, dammit! And the sooner they found Laura, the quicker he could get back to it.

But they weren’t going to find her in the dark, and the only thing Naomi was going to accomplish by traipsing off by herself was to get lost. Then he’d have to spend half the night looking for her in the dark, and by God, he wasn’t going to do it! Not after the day he’d had. And if she didn’t like it, that was just too damn bad! Muttering curses under his breath about stubborn, hardheaded women, he stormed after her.

“Dammit, Naomi, I’m not letting you do this!” he growled as he caught up with her at the edge of the clearing that surrounded the cabin. “It’s too dangerous.”

Up to her knees in snow, her shoulders hunched against the wind, she never took her eyes from the tracks that were barely visible in the gathering dark
ness. “You’re not my keeper, Hunter. I don’t need your permission to look for my daughter.”

It was the wrong thing to say to a man who had reached the end of his patience. Swearing, he snagged her arm and hauled her around to face him. All he intended to do was shake some sense into her, but the snow was deep, and he caught her unaware. Gasping, she lost her balance and fell right into his arms.

Too late, he realized he never should have touched her. She’d spent most of the day with her arms around his waist, clinging to his back. As they’d made their way up the mountain, her breasts and thighs and hips had brushed against him with every dip and sway of the snowmobile, teasing him unmercifully. She hadn’t, he knew, set out to drive him out of his mind—she’d had no choice but to hold on to him or fall off the snowmobile—but the result was the same, nevertheless. She’d lit a fire in him that had been burning low in his gut all day. And it just got hotter.

He should have released her then—he meant to. But his fingers wouldn’t follow the dictates of his brain, and instead of letting her go, he drew her closer. In the dusky shadows, he saw awareness flare in her eyes, heard her soft gasp, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. He knew then he’d just lost any chance of walking away without kissing her.

It should have been simple. A first—and last—kiss just to satisfy his curiosity. There was nothing complicated about it; it didn’t even require a second thought. Or so he thought until his mouth covered
hers. That was when he discovered that nothing was ever going to be that simple with Naomi Windsong.

Judging by her reaction, Naomi was as surprised as he was by the sudden heat that flared between them and didn’t seem to know what to do about it. She’d obviously been kissed before—she had a child, for God’s sake!—but she acted as if passion was something she wasn’t accustomed to dealing with. She hesitated, and he could almost feel the battle going on inside her. Then he nipped at her sensitive bottom lip, and all her defenses just seemed to give way. Bewildered, she clung to him, as soft as a kitten, and sweetly, blindly kissed him back. When he didn’t want to let her go, he knew he was in trouble.

Naomi, lost in his arms, felt Laura’s tattered bear crushed between them and abruptly snapped to her senses. Dear God, what was she doing? Her daughter was out there in the cold and the dark somewhere, totally dependant on a man who had ruthlessly put her in danger without a care for her safety, and what was she doing? Kissing Hunter Fortune like a woman possessed. What kind of mother was she?

Suddenly furious with herself and him, she pushed out of his arms and glared up at him in the thickening twilight, her gray eyes fierce with outrage. “I think we’d better get something straight right here, Mr. Fortune. I sought you out for one reason, and one reason only—to track down James so I could get my daughter back. That’s all I’m interested in. So if you thought I insisted on coming up here with you because I might want something else from you, you can think again.
I’m not looking for sex or romance or even a man, for that matter, so you just keep your hands and your mouth to yourself and we’ll get along fine. Otherwise, you can take me home in the morning, and I’ll find someone else to help me find Laura.”

She stood toe-to-toe with him and just dared him to touch her again, kiss her again. Just because she’d once fallen for James’s lies didn’t mean she was still that same naive woman waiting for another man to take advantage of her. She was tougher now, stronger, and no one was ever going to hurt her again.

And something of that must have shown in her eyes, because Hunter made no move to take her back into his arms. Instead, he swore softly and said, “Look, I’m sorry. I know your only interest is finding Laura, and in spite of what just happened, mine is, too. Just for the record, I have a company to get off the ground by the end of the year, and I don’t have time for anything else. Especially a woman. So you’re safe with me. Okay?”

There was no doubting his sincerity. He looked her right in the eye and didn’t flinch from her searching gaze. And although she had no reason to believe that he would keep his word, she did. Hugging herself, she nodded.