Lifeline Echoes (9 page)

In between bursts of static they talked,
sharing the inane bits of information two people getting to know
one another often exchanged, as if they were meeting for the first
time over coffee.

He liked the color of the sky on a clear day
in the mountains. She liked ice cream in the winter. He liked to go
for runs on the beach at sunrise. She liked puppies and kittens. He
didn't have any pets but he'd saved a mother dog and her pups from
a fire once and she'd gone crazy kissing his face.

"My hero!" Sandy sighed in her best Southern
Belle voice.

After a long pause, he finally whispered,
"Naw, I'm not a hero. I'm just a man stuck under a building,
talking to an angel he'd really, really like to kiss now."

****

"Here you go, Chicory." Ryan emerged from
the stable leading a pair of horses. "You ready to ride?"

"Now that kind of depends what I'm going to
be riding."

His startled blink signaled a direct hit by
her double entendre and Sandy smiled.

"I noticed you go out without a hat. Not a
good idea to ride without protection." He tossed a white hat in her
direction.

Those green eyes of his lit with mischief
when she caught his own double meaning and she licked her lips.

"Nice to know you're thinking about me,"
murmured Sandy, setting the hat in place. Especially since she'd
been thinking about him nonstop for the past few days.

Ryan gave her a leg up onto a small but
sturdy sorrel gelding named Galaxy. With a carefree grin, Ryan
mounted the gelding he'd chosen for himself, a buckskin with the
rather unimaginative name of Buck. Side by side, they moved onto
the trail without speaking. Early morning sun slanted across
dew-coated fields of hay ready for harvest, turning them the color
of fresh honey.

The silence between them swelled to its own
life, and with it, Sandy's uncertainty. What was he thinking? Why
didn't he talk? Why didn't she? What was she doing here? As soon as
they came to even ground, they opened up to an easy, ground-eating
lope. Still they didn't talk, but the ride began to work its magic
and Sandy started to relax. She contented herself with watching
Ryan.

He sat easy in the saddle, his hands light
on the reins. His own movements were the perfect counterpoint to
those of his horse, and he didn't look like he'd spent any time at
all away from the ranch. He was taking in the scenery the same
hungry way he'd been looking at her.

Enchanted by the look of him, Sandy raised
her camera and discreetly captured some shots. When he turned to
glance at her, the camera was slung over her shoulder once
again.

****

Climbing back on a horse had been another
part of coming home. Like all the other parts, Ryan moved easily
into it, but he still found himself wondering if this was right. He
hadn't expected the feeling of a horse beneath him to generate such
overwhelming emotion. He wanted to talk, craved the human
companionship he'd been finding with Sandy but now he was
fascinated by the land. And uncharacteristically tongue-tied with
her.

To the north a series of bluffs came into
view, and the trail led them into the shadows of a narrow canyon.
The walls were close. When he'd chosen the route, Ryan hadn't
realized how much the tight quarters would bother him. Little
twitches between his shoulder blades grew stronger as the passage
between the rock walls grew tighter.

A movement on the bluff above them sent a
barrage of gravel sliding down the cliff. Probably an elk or a
bighorn. Buck shied and Ryan flinched. The sound of falling debris
prickled at his nerves, scraping along old memories and drawing
them to the surface.

Ryan turned to warn Sandy about the
mini-avalanche but she had already guided Galaxy to the far side of
the trail. She waved a reassuring hand at Ryan then tilted her head
to look upward, squinting at the edge of the cliff overhead.

"Is there another way out of here?" Her
voice trembled, an echo of the tremors in Ryan's gut.

"Yeah," he said a little more brusquely than
he'd intended. "We'll take a different way home."

****

The walls of the canyon finally began to
open up, the single narrow path widening and flattening into a
trail of loose shale. Slowing the pace, Ryan pointed to the left
and urged Buck upward through a break in the trees. The path was
lined with sediment washed down from the heights through years of
spring rains and winter melts.

Gravel crunched and rolled underfoot as the
two horses climbed the steep wash. Sandy was afraid one or both of
them would tumble back to the bottom, but the seasoned geldings
were sure-footed.

They burst into the sunlight on a high crest
and Sandy drew in a long awestruck breath. The valley was long,
bordered on two sides by dense pine forest stretching toward the
distant shadow of the stately heliotrope mountains. A creek
meandered through the center, edged by tall grasses, and yellow and
white wildflowers.

Each direction held more wonder and she
snapped at least a dozen different pictures without moving. "I
thought you said this was open range."

Ryan scanned the deserted meadow, a puzzled
frown shadowing his face. "It is. It's where Cross MC turns the
herd out for the summer."

"Where are the cattle?"

Sandy snapped a picture of Ryan looking over
the valley. His love for the land was reflected in his eyes. He
drank in the sight like a very thirsty man drinking from a
well.

"That seems to be the question of the
moment," he said after a long time.

****

Chapter Five

Sandy followed Ryan,
amused when he would cast a look over his shoulder as if to assure
himself she was there. She was expecting one any minute now. And
there it was. With a laugh, she squeezed the shutter and captured
his impatient
hurry-along
look before nudging Galaxy onward.

Unexpectedly, he pulled his horse up. When
Sandy edged Galaxy beside him, he held up a hand to warn her into
silence, then pointed ahead and to the right. The bay stallion
stood regally on a low bluff overlooking a sizeable herd of mares
and foals grazing peacefully in the valley below.

Sandy almost forgot to breathe. She caught a
few wide shots of the whole herd and then zoomed in to capture the
majestic stallion watching over them. The breeze lifted his mane
and pushed his tail as he stood stiffly, nostrils flared, ears
pricked forward. He was in every way the king watching over his
kingdom.

The wind shifted and the stallion picked up
human scent. Tossing his head, he cried a sharp warning and his
obedient mares perked up their heads then began to trot away. The
thud of their hooves blended into one continuous roll of thunder as
they picked up speed and moved up the valley. Sandy shot pictures
until they were out of sight.

"That was incredible," she breathed.

"Unforgettable."

Sandy swiveled in Ryan's direction, saw his
contented smile, the glint in his eyes. Her gaze lowered to his
awkward seat in the saddle. She smiled. "You weren't watching the
horses, were you?"

His smile widened and the green of his eyes
darkened. He shrugged, sweeping his eyes downward, pausing
occasionally to rest on her lips, her chest, her legs where they
met the saddle. "I can't imagine why I'd want to watch horses when
I can look at you."

Never in her life had Sandy felt like she
was in a perpetual state of excitement. But with this man, every
look ignited a conflagration of need that burned through her body
like lightning. Sandy forgot the mustangs as an urgent need to be
touched insinuated itself in her center.

"What are you thinking about all of a
sudden?" Ryan asked softly, shifting his gaze back to her eyes.

One sizzling look had taken her from zero to
oversexed in less than sixty seconds. Awesome! "I'm thinking that
you are a force of nature."

****

Something tugged on his memory but before he
could think it through, Sandy shuddered. It wasn't an overtly sexy
move. He didn't even think it was intentional. But it signaled her
awareness of him, and in turn he became even more aware of her.

Inhaling sharply, Ryan took in the
rock-strewn ground, the dense bushes encroaching onto the narrow
trail. He blew out a frustrated breath and urged his horse forward.
"Come on. It's not much further."

"You aren't thrilled about the mustangs up
here," Sandy said as she followed him along the trail.

That was quite a subject change. Deciding to
go with it, Ryan shrugged. "I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. It was obvious the
first time you saw my pictures."

"I think they're beautiful. I like watching
them. I admire their adaptability and how they handle
adversity."

"Those are all the polite answers." She
challenged. "What's the 'but' that I'm not hearing?"

"They compete with the cattle for the best
grazing. So ranchers consider them pests." Ryan pulled his mount up
when he reached a small crest. "And he's obviously comfortable, so
they've been here a while."

Sandy pulled up next to him and put on an
exaggerated show of looking around. "Weren't we just discussing the
lack of cattle up here? So what's to compete with?"

"That's just it." Ryan couldn't ignore his
sense of disquiet. "There should be cattle up here, and Sean should
be concerned about the mustangs on our range." He shook his head.
"Something's off."

Ryan set Buck in motion again, leaving Sandy
to follow.

****

Sandy could tell the apparent mystery of the
open range was eating at Ryan on more than one level. She wondered
if Sean and Justin were keeping something from him. That would
likely disturb him more than not being able to figure things
out.

Was the Cross MC in trouble? She'd known the
ranch was having some setbacks. Every ranch in the county was
experiencing difficult times, though. The MacKays had sold off a
third of their herd the previous fall, and had just put a prime
piece of land on the market. And Colt Ford had made a few cutbacks
as well.

She resolved to ask Sean if he needed some
help. He might resist but Ryan would flat out turn her down. She
didn't have to know him long to be certain of that.

"Where are we stopping?" Sandy was anxious
to do some exploring on foot.

"Almost there," he tossed over his
shoulder.

"Have you been up here since you got
home?"

Ryan shook his head. "Nope, first time back
on a horse for me."

Incredulous, Sandy stared at his back. "In
sixteen years?"

"Yep."

Sandy wondered if he realized how quickly
his accent and attitude had slipped back to his cowboy roots. The
man sitting the horse in front of her was as far removed from the
dangerous city slicker stranger she'd first glimpsed behind the
wheel of his fast sports car as he could get.

Ryan pulled up just inside a clearing, and
Sandy brought Galaxy alongside him. The rustic log and stone cabin
nestled in the shade of the tall pines was something out of another
era.

"It's like a postcard from the old west,"
she murmured. "All it needs is smoke coming from the chimney."

Because Ryan had gone completely still,
Sandy turned to look at him. His face was marred by a scowl of deep
confusion as he surveyed the clearing. He eased his horse forward,
a step at a time.

"Ryan, what is it?"

But he only shook his head. "Nothing. Place
is empty."

"Where are we?" Sandy was already focusing
her camera on their surroundings.

"It's the cabin we use as a base when we
come up here to check on the herd."

The dusty old cabin didn't look particularly
welcoming with its boarded up windows. "Doesn't look like anyone's
been here in a while."

"They must not have moved the herd up
here."

Sandy followed his gaze as it drifted to the
tall grass near the cabin. It had obviously been cut back recently.
And even she could tell the trails in and out had seen some recent
use.

The thump of his booted feet on the wooden
planks of the cabin's covered porch broke the eerie stillness
surrounding them. Ryan withdrew a key from a hook on one of the
overhead beams and slid it into the lock on the door.

"Seems a little pointless to board it all up
and lock it if you're leaving a key out where anyone can find it,"
Sandy observed.

His hand on the door latch, Ryan chuckled.
"It's locked against the elements and the wildlife, Chicory. But if
someone happens on it when we're not using it—hikers, hunters,
whoever ... they might need to get inside. Nothing particularly
valuable here except the shelter itself."

After Ryan entered the cabin, Sandy waited a
moment to be certain he wasn't going to pop right back out, then
made a face at the empty doorway.

"I can think of a better use for that
tongue," he told her, materializing at the side of the cabin.

Sandy's yelp echoed across the clearing.
Both horses stamped their feet and tossed their heads in protest.
"You just went in there! Where the heck did you come from?"

Ryan set his hat back on his head with his
familiar cocky grin. "Originally from my parents after a stolen
night in the middle of cattle branding."

A picture formed in Sandy's mind of
clandestine love in a sleeping bag, of stolen moments and steamy
covert glances between lovers. She smiled when she realized the
faces she had mentally put on the couple belonged to herself and
Ryan. Casting the object of her daydream a glance from veiled eyes,
she decided that was a fantasy she'd like to try.