Water Witch (3 page)

With the sleeve of her chambray shirt, she mopped the sweat off her face and made her way over the rocky terrain toward where her pack lay. It was already one-thirty and she’d barely made a dent in the area to be covered. So far there wasn’t a hint of water on the property. Not once had the small limb twisted in her hands, nor had the tip dipped downward. Whistling for Dowser, she sat down on the limestone boulder and laid the willow branch she’d cut this morning beside her. Maybe her skills were just rusty. After all, she hadn’t witched for water since she was thirteen or fourteen and under Gramps’s careful eye.

When Dowser came bounding up, she scratched his head and laughed. “You’re not having any luck either, are you, boy? I doubt if we’re going to find any oil around here.” She dug a bowl from her pack and poured him a drink of water from her canteen. As she watched him lap up the water, she sighed. “I wish you were as good at locating water as you are oil. Water,” she said, wiggling her fingers in his bowl. “We need to find water.”

Dowser sat back on his haunches and gave her a tongue-lolling grin. She tossed him a dog biscuit and watched him trot off to the shade of a scrub oak nearby. Until the bottom had fallen out of the domestic oil market and she’d lost her job with Tex-Ram Petroleum two years ago, they’d made a darned good team. When her witching rod and Dowser’s nose agreed, there was always a good producing well drilled on the spot. Nobody ever knew her secret—not even John Ramsey, the owner of Tex-Ram. Everyone simply thought she was an excellent geologist. And lucky for her, for even the best geologists hit dry holes. Max never missed.

For the three years she had worked for him, John Ramsey had rewarded her well. After her first big strike, he’d given her the blue Silverado pickup she still drove; after the second, a new Lexus; after the third, a trip to Hawaii. Then cash bonuses added up to provide a down payment on a house and furniture. The last year John had started giving her a share of the business with every strike. He’d laughingly said that at the rate she was going, it wouldn’t be long before she owned more than he did. But with the downswing in the economy and the domestic oil business, Tex-Ram went the way of most of the small producers. Oh, they had managed to hold on longer than some, but in the end, the company had folded. Even the big concerns had huge layoffs. And geologists were a dime a dozen.

Max walked to the truck, took a bologna sandwich and an apple from the cooler, and returned to the boulder. A breeze ruffled the damp tendrils around her face and rustled through the scrub oaks as she ate her meal and looked out over the rolling hills, remembering happier times. Remembering summers long ago when she walked those rocky hills with her grandfather.

*    *    *

Sam Garrett paused as he climbed to the crest and watched Max, half reclining and propped on one arm, staring into the distance, nibbling an apple. Even in field boots and jeans, she was lovely. All night and all morning his mind had been full of her. Those black eyes had haunted him. He’d almost convinced himself that his fantasies had exaggerated her appeal.

He was wrong.

Her hair, in a thick braid over one shoulder, was the same color as the long silky tufts of delicate grass dried golden by long days in the summer sun. The curve of her hip and long line of her leg were a contrast in softness against the weathered gray boulder. He ached to capture her beauty on canvas—or better yet, in his arms.

A crunch of gravel brought Max out of her reverie. Glancing toward the sound, she saw Sam Garrett, thumbs hooked in the pockets of low-slung jeans, sauntering toward her. A deep rust-colored knit shirt, nearly the same shade as his hair, molded his big frame and matched his cowboy boots. A peculiar feeling fluttered over her as she watched his approach. He was even better-looking in daylight.

“Hello,” he said, flashing a wide grin. “Found any water yet?”

An answering smile sprang to her lips. “Not yet. I’m just getting acquainted with the land. It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it? I can understand why Mrs. Barton wants a house here.”

Sam sat down on the hard outcropping beside her and followed her gaze out over the slopes and arroyos where twisted junipers, prickly pear cacti, and stunted mountain laurels clung to the craggy inclines. “It’s even prettier in spring.” He pointed toward the highway and the open fields below. “When the bluebonnets bloom, that whole area is a sea of blue. Honey Bear loves bluebonnets.”

Max laughed. “From the number of paintings at the cottage, I kind of figured that.”

“You should see the house in Houston. Her blue-bonnet paintings are liberally sprinkled among the Renoirs and the Wyeths. Even I have several. She often gives everyone in the family a bluebonnet painting for Christmas. They’re real gifts of love.”

“She sounds delightful,” Max said, tossing her apple core toward a stand of scrub oaks where she’d seen a white-tailed doe earlier that morning. “She deserves a home here where she can enjoy the hills. I’ve always loved this country. In another month or so the sumac will begin to turn red and yellow and orange. My grandfather always said sumac looked like fires dotting the hillsides.”

“Your grandfather?”

She nodded. “He lived here until his arthritis forced him to sell his business and move to East Texas with his sister. He had a water drilling company in Kerrville. I spent every summer with him here until I was about fourteen. I adored him. Most of my happiest memories are of the vacations I spent with Gramps. He died less than three years after he left the hills.”

“So now you’re carrying on the family tradition.” Sarn picked up the forked branch lying beside Max and began absently snapping off bits of the wood and tossing them toward the spot where Dowser was snoozing. “Are you a ground water geologist?”

Horrified when she noticed that Sam was mutilating her dowsing stick before her eyes, Max almost shouted at him to stop. Then she caught herself and clamped her mouth shut. She couldn’t tell him that she was a dowser, a water witch. At best, most people thought that finding water by such methods was superstitious mumbo jumbo. For some reason she didn’t think she could tolerate this man, of all people, ridiculing her.

“I beg your pardon?” She’d missed his question when she’d seen him pick up the willow branch. Disgusted with herself that she’d only cut one this morning, she was already figuring how much time she would lose driving to the river, finding another private area with willow trees, and cutting another. A good dowsing stick had to be cut fresh each day, and Sam had destroyed this one.

“I asked if you were a ground water geologist. Is something wrong?”

“No, not a thing.” Her voice squeaked like Minnie Mouse. “And no, I don’t have any sort of hydrogeology specialty. Not in terms of formal training. I’ve worked mostly in oil. But,” she added, challenging him eye to eye, “I have a great deal of practical experience. I assure you that if there’s water here, I’ll find it.”

Sam cocked an eyebrow and, with an amused look, gave a little nod as if to concede the point. “How did you and Buck get together? Did you work for him in the oil industry?”

She lifted her chin and announced, “No, I worked for John Ramsey of Tex-Ram. I met Mr. Barton at the Petroleum Club in Houston. He mentioned that he hadn’t been able to locate any water here and his wife was heartsick about it. I agreed to take a look.”

She didn’t tell Sam that she had been working as a cocktail waitress at the posh club that catered to oilmen. She’d figured that, with generous tips, it paid as well as any other work she could find in that economically depressed area. Several of her colleagues with Ph.D.’s were selling shoes or delivering the Houston Chronicle. The added advantage of working at the Petroleum Club was that she could pick up rumors there of any kind of an opening for a geologist. She had located a few consulting jobs, but in the last several months there had been nothing.

Desperate, during the summer she’d even tried to sell some of the songs she’d written over the years through an agent in Nashville. A musician friend had recommended the Bullock Agency, but, although Smith Bullock seemed genuinely interested in the tapes she’d sent and agreed to represent her, nothing had come of it. In some ways, that was the most devastating blow of all. It was the loss of a secret dream.

She’d done everything she could to pick up extra money here and there, including several part-time jobs and taking in a roommate to help with the enormous expense of her house. That house she loved so much had taken a healthy chunk of her salary when she’d been riding high, and was now an albatross. It had been up for sale for almost two years without so much as one reasonable offer. If the mortgage company foreclosed, her credit rating would be ruined, and she’d be damned if she would give her father the satisfaction of knowing that she couldn’t make it. Not that he’d ever really know—she hadn’t seen or talked to him in nine years—but she’d know.

With her mouth set in a determined line, she stood and brushed off the seat of her jeans, planning a similar brush-off of Sam Garrett. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my project.”

“Great,” he said, standing and tossing away the remains of the stick he’d shredded. “I’ll tag along and watch.”

“Oh, I’m sure you have better things to do than watch me.”

He hung his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans, rocked back on his heels, and grinned. “Nope, not a thing.”

Max groaned silently. Lord, deliver her from bored buttinskys. Why had she ever thought he was attractive? Right now she’d love to strangle him with rusty barbed wire. The dowsing stick he had destroyed had to be replaced before she could continue her search. Driving back to the river meant at least an hour or two delay. She was losing valuable time. Somehow she had to get rid of him. Politely, if possible.

“It’s such a beautiful day,” she said, “you should be fishing.”

“I’ve been fishing already. Caught four nice cats. Want to come over for dinner and help me eat them?”

“No, I don’t want to come over for dinner. Why don’t you go paint some pictures or tend to your goats and chickens and let me get back to work?”

“Sheep.”

“Huh?”

“Sheep, not goats. And I have a man who tends the sheep. Anyway, Manuel says there’s not much to do with them right now except stand and watch them eat.” One eyebrow lifted as he added, “And I’d rather watch you.”

“What about the chickens?”

“I don’t have any chickens yet. Anyway, I’ve about decided against raising chickens. They’re nasty little things.” He hoisted her tool bag. “I’ll carry this for you. What do we do first?”

Max rolled her eyes and stomped off. She fought against telling him exactly what he could do as she tried to think of some tactful way, some plausible reason to get him off the site. She had to fetch that willow stick, and she didn’t relish explaining her water witching methods to Sam.

Hitting upon an idea, she turned and said, “I need to drive into Kerrville and buy some map pencils. I seem to have forgotten to bring mine.”

“Great,” he said. “I’ll go with you. I know just the place to get them. I need some art supplies myself.”

“Maybe you should take your own car, then you won’t have to make an extra trip.”

“No problem. I don’t have a car.”

She was puzzled. “Then how did you get here?”

“I had the fellow from the station where my car’s being serviced drop me off at the foot of the hill. I wanted to ask you to dinner, and I didn’t think you’d mind giving me a ride home. I don’t have your cell number. Remind me to get it later.

*    *    *

Three and a half hours later Max was still fuming as they loaded Sam’s art supplies in the back of the Silverado. He’d practically bought out the store, while she’d purchased a packet of colored pencils she didn’t need and couldn’t afford. He’d chatted with half a dozen local artists who’d dropped in, laughing and talking to them with enviable ease. And he’d charmed the store owner, a middle-aged lady with a middle-aged spread stuffed into shiny purple stretch pants a size too small.

No doubt about it, Max thought, Sam Garrett had charisma. Lots of it. You could feel it vibrate across the room. It could suck you in if you weren’t on your guard—which she was. This russet-haired giant was nothing but a pain in the posterior to her. But somehow Sam had managed to charm everybody in sight—even Dowser, who followed the man’s every step, licking his hand and gazing up at him in rapt devotion.

“Benedict Arnold,” Max muttered to the Doberman as she motioned the dog up into the truck that was piled high with easel and palettes and boxes of paints. Dowser didn’t even have the good manners to look remorseful.

Any hope of working this afternoon was shot. By the time she delivered Sam and this stuff to his house, cut another willow branch, and drove back up to Honey Bear’s hill, it would be almost dark. Damn!

“Nice to meet you,” the shop owner said to Max before turning her magenta-painted smile on Sam. Handing him the last of his parcels, she fluttered lashes clumped with black mascara and said, “We’ll look forward to seeing you at the Art Association meeting next Wednesday night, Sam.”

“I’ll be there, Carrie.” He hugged Max against him with one long arm and looked down at her as if they were lovers. “We’ll both be there, won’t we, sweetheart?”

Max wiggled out from under his arm and slammed the back door of the truck. “I’ll probably be washing my hair that night.” She strode to the driver’s side of the pickup and climbed in.