Lifeline Echoes (6 page)

"Ryan McGee." Into the darkness, she
whispered his name, testing the feel of it on her tongue.

She wasn't worried about
why he'd left Orson's Folly, nor why he had unexpectedly returned.
None of that had anything to do with her. On the other hand, her
own over-the-top response to him was confusing. He wasn't
her
returning prodigal
anything. But something had drawn her attention in his direction
from the start and she wasn't certain she could back off. Or if she
wanted to.

For sure, he was easy to look at, with his
long legs and fit muscular build. Wherever he'd been, he'd spent
plenty of time outside. His skin was well-tanned. Sun-kissed, dark
blond hair feathered away from a face that was just passing
scruffy, and fell straight to touch the top of his collar. She
always had been a sucker for that look.

She was intrigued by the way his expressive
green eyes changed color with his mood. And she really liked the
way he studied her with those eyes, especially when he knew she was
looking back.

Touching him had been daring for her, even
in the context of her performance. But she'd liked the feel of him.
Even more, she'd liked knowing she had thrown him just a little off
balance when she'd admitted in the heat of her anger that she had
been thinking about him.

Tired, unsettled, just at the edge of sleep,
she nevertheless found herself wondering if Ry was home to stay or
just in for a visit. Either way, she figured her summer had
suddenly become a lot more interesting.

****

With shaking hands, Sandy pushed the button
to open the com again. "Are you there, Mick?"

After a very long pause, the radio squawked
and the voice answered, "I'm here. What's the status?"

She tried to keep it professional. "I've
been advised you need to check your emergency locator signal. Help
is on the way. And you should conserve your radio battery by
turning the unit off and checking in every hour."

There was a lengthy pause. She could hear
him breathing. Then she was surprised by a wry chuckle. "Good try,
sweetheart. You get points for caring. But I know the score. I'm
pretty sure the thing sticking in my back is an office chair. Since
we're in the parking garage, that makes it at least a couple of
floors of rubble on top of us."

A tear slipped down Sandy's cheek and she
lost the battle for objective professionalism. "Maybe it's not as
bad as you think. Maybe a furniture truck fell on you instead of
the building."

His laugh in her ear belied the gravity of
the situation. "So you're a glass-half-full kind of gal, huh?"

"More like a
grateful-the-glass-holds-anything-at-all kind of gal," she
countered.

He laughed again. "I like you. Got a
name?"

"Oh, it's um, Alexandra."

"Whoo-hoo! Ms. Yum-Alexandra. That's a
mouthful," he said, exaggerating his Wyoming accent. More softly,
he asked, "How 'bout I just call you Angel? That's what your voice
makes me think of."

****

She woke up shivering in the chill of the
wee hours. The night breezes washing off the mountain lifted her
pink chintz curtains, raising goose bumps on her exposed flesh.
She'd fallen asleep on top of the covers. Sandy stretched, enjoying
the scents of pine and wildflowers wafting through her window. Give
her the chill any day so long as it came with the fragrance of the
mountains.

The dream hadn't been unexpected. She had
them often this time of year. She'd grown used to her memories
intruding sometimes. Thanks to the dream, though, she was now
wondering if starting something with Ryan was a good idea after
all. Maybe they could share a meal and it would be the start of a
nice friendship.

Her erogenous centers twitched in protest as
she recalled her sexy little dance for him the night before. Yeah.
That genie probably wouldn’t be stuffed back in the bottle so
easily.

The first touch of dawn was just starting to
creep over the windowsill and she watched the morning light arrive
before she got out of bed.

While the rushing water steamed up the
bathroom, Sandy drank her coffee and painstakingly selected the
makeup she would need in order to face the day. And her impromptu
date with Ryan McGee. She stood naked in front of her closet for a
full ten minutes trying to decide what to wear. She had no idea why
she felt like a nervous girl going to her first dance, but she sure
hoped the unaccustomed feeling went away, and quickly.

****

Cursing the excitement worthy of a teenaged
geek about to go on a date with the head cheerleader, Ryan found
himself in the parking lot of Valentine's a full thirty minutes
early. There were a couple of other cars in the parking lot but
either the lunch crowd hadn't arrived or she didn't do a large
midday business.

Ryan's steps slowed as he approached the
heavy wooden doors. Just beyond that entrance he would find the
woman who'd been on his mind nonstop over the past several hours.
It was no use reminding himself that he had no business being here.
He knew it, yet here he was. Sandy's voice was like a siren's call.
He couldn’t ignore it. The moment Sandy had crossed his path,
everything and everyone else seemed to fade in importance. Even the
search for the woman who'd once been the most important person in
his life. He didn’t understand it but he was powerless in the face
of it.

He pulled open the heavy wooden door.

She was sitting at one of the tables off to
the side, concentrating on a red laptop computer. Ryan's heart rate
picked up a bit as he let his eyes trail along the curves beneath a
form-hugging pale pink tank shirt tucked into another pair of
low-riding blue jeans. One leg was folded beneath her on the chair,
the sandal she'd kicked off lying on the floor next to her.
Purple-tipped toes moved in rhythm to the juke box music.

Captivated, he tipped back his Stetson and
lingered against the doorway, watching her. And because he was
watching her, he knew the instant she became aware of his presence.
Her hand hovered over the keyboard, then she pulled it back. She
sat motionless for a moment. Finally, she angled a look over her
shoulder to meet his intent scrutiny.

Her own gaze swept a fiery path down his
body, then back up again and she greeted him with a leisurely,
steamy smile. "Have you been there long? I didn't mean to keep you
waiting." Like a calculating cat, she rose gracefully to her feet
and slid her foot into her sandal.

****

Ryan took off his hat and set it on the end
of the bar, holding her eyes with his own as he sauntered across
the room. "No hardship." His voice was low and sizzling with the
barest suggestion of sex.

When he was standing directly in front of
her, well inside her bubble of personal space, she had to resist
the sudden urge to lean in and kiss that incredibly sexy mouth.

Then thoughts of resisting temptation faded
to nothing as he took the initiative. Ryan leaned closer, paused
for an instant, then leaned again. Sandy lifted her face, her
eyelids heavy, her breath hanging up in her throat. The first brush
of his lips was subtle, a butterfly hovering. Only their lips were
touching. It was a relatively chaste kiss, but Sandy's reaction to
it was anything but. She steadied herself with her hands on his
waist as little zings of pure wow factor traveled to her brain.

Ryan deepened the kiss only slightly, but he
lingered for a long moment with his lips on hers. His hands slid up
her arms to cup her bare shoulders, his thumbs drawing tiny
circles, which sent flashes of electricity rocketing to all the
appropriate places. When he leaned back, she moaned in protest. Her
grip tightened on his waist, willing his mouth back to hers. Ryan
eased back another inch, running his hands down her arms to her
hands, squeezing lightly before breaking the contact.

"What was that?" she whispered.

He touched a finger to her nose. "If you
have to ask, I must not've done it right."

Sandy laid her fingertips against her lips.
"Oh no," she breathed. "You did it right." Maybe a little too
right, considering she no longer felt she had the upper hand in the
encounter.

His eyes lit on her fingers and Ryan's
roguish grin faded into a look of pure physical hunger, which
painted fiery brushstrokes of need into Sandy's brain. She wasn't
used to needing. But her pulse skipped into high gear with the
certainty he'd intentionally shown her his hunger, and just maybe
that meant he was feeling as off balance by whatever was happening
between them as she was.

"Fact is, Chicory, I've wanted to do that
since about two seconds after you called me a jerk." The playful
grin returned. "Thought I'd get that first one out of the way so
it's not hanging there between us anymore."

She felt a little dizzy. "And now that you
have?"

He tipped his head and slid a glance over
her lips. "I'd like to go back for seconds at some point," he said
softly. "Would that be a problem for you?"

"I'd say there's a good chance I won't have
a problem with that. In fact. . ." Sandy pushed her hair behind her
ear, leaning toward him. She froze, stepped back and looked up.
"What did you just call me?"

Ryan winced. "Chicory. Bad habit of mine, so
I'm told. Nicknames."

Sandy wrinkled her nose.
"I remind you of a coffee
substitute
?"

He shrugged and then smiled one of those
devastating, toe-curling, dripping-with-desire smiles. Sandy felt
herself salivating and it had nothing to do with lunch.

****

Apparently she wasn't thrilled with being
compared to a substitute anything, let alone a substitute some
folks considered less satisfying than the real thing. "Not the
root," he corrected. "The flower. Your eyes are the same blue as a
chicory flower. It's what I first noticed. Out there on the road
the other evening."

As he stood there, lost again in those eyes,
they flashed with something that might have been irritation or
arousal, or maybe something else. Ryan wished he knew which, but
before he could discern, she was turning away.

Ryan caught her hand and tugged her closer.
"Hey, it's just a nickname. I won't use it again."

"No, no, it's okay. You can call me whatever
you want. I was just thinking about how much energy you're gonna
take." She shot him a considering look. "And I'm trying to figure
out if it's sweet that you compared my eyes to flowers or
disturbing that you know the name of a wildflower."

He wasn't used to feeling self-conscious. "I
know the names of a lot of wildflowers," he admitted. "My mom liked
flowers. She spent a lot of time teaching me and Sean about things
other than cattle."

"She sounds amazing."

"She was. She'd have liked you." When Sandy
raised a disbelieving eyebrow, he nodded. "She would have liked
your independence and admired your . . . spirit."

Sandy laughed. "I guess spirit's one way of
putting it." With a pointed look at his hand on her arm, she added,
"If y'all want to eat, you'd best let go."

Oh, he wanted to eat all right, but it
wasn't food on his mind. Reluctantly, he slid his fingers along her
palm, lingering where their fingertips met for a bare second. He
heard her draw a deep breath at the contact and smiled. And when
she ambled off to see to their meal, his eyes followed her smooth
sensuous walk. Heck yes, it was going to be fun. When was the last
time he'd allowed himself anything solely for pleasure?

He wondered how Sandy would do in the city,
then realized with a frown, he really didn't want to go back. He
also was becoming less sure of his desire to doggedly pursue a
dream that was proving too elusive.

He pushed back the thoughts dampening his
mood and looked around the bar. Being nearly deserted gave it a
different feel. He wandered over to her computer. An expensive
digital camera sat next to it, connected by a thin white cord. He
didn't know what he expected to find. Maybe she was just doing the
weekly accounting or balancing her checkbook. When he looked at the
screen, though, he was immediately grabbed by the photo of a group
of bison trekking single-file across a valley.

It was a technically good photo.
Artistically, it was great. A still picture, yet it conveyed a
sense of unrelenting lumbering forward. Curious, he rolled the
mouse over the album, bringing up the next picture, a relative
close-up of a bison in profile, lazy and unconcerned. He flipped
through image after image, prairie dogs playing, a mother moose and
her twins, black bears, grizzly bears, foxes, coyotes, rock
formations, cloud formations, dead trees, budding trees,
snow-kissed mountains, and a powerful red sunset over Diamondback
Bluffs.

The pictures pulled him in. Here was a piece
of home he'd missed. Over and over Sandy's images captured the bits
and pieces of Wyoming he'd once described to someone else with the
hope of one day bringing her home with him. Once again past and
present began a battle centered in the region of his heart and Ryan
considered making his excuses and leaving. Instead, he clicked the
mouse on the next picture. Then the next.

He was so caught up in the images, he didn't
noticed Sandy's return until she spoke. "House specialty burgers
and fries coming up."

Slowly, Ryan turned away from the computer,
expecting to see anger, or at least irritation. Instead, she was
setting up the table for their meal, completely unconcerned about
his snooping.

He gestured toward the computer. "Sorry. I
should have asked."

A gentle smile curved her lips, and her
eyes, those amazing eyes, glittered with humor. "If it was
something personal, I would have turned off the computer. They're
just pictures from my rides with Domingo. I was wondering about
framing some of them. Still a few bare spots on the walls."