She needed the peace she could find only in the desert.
She most certainly didn’t need to spend the next three days evading Roger Royce’s propositions, no matter how gently and elegantly they would be put.
Roger was neither insensitive nor stupid. He read Holly’s refusal in her tight lips and silence.
“That bad?” he asked, his tone wry, “I just thought . . . you were so upset at what that rude cowboy said. It worried me. Are you all right now?”
“Of course.”
“You don’t act like it.”
Saying nothing, Holly shifted the carton in her arms and turned back toward the Jeep.
Roger continued talking like a man exploring hostile country—wary and ready to retreat instantly.
“There’s something between you and Lincoln McKenzie, isn’t there?” Roger probed.
“No,” Holly said curtly.
Not any more, she thought. Probably there never was. Just a dream, that’s all.
And now a nightmare.
“Shannon?” Roger asked softly.
Holly dumped the carton of supplies in the front of the Jeep with unnecessary force before she turned to face Roger. She owed him more than the cool, abrupt facade that was Shannon.
If nothing else, Roger was her friend as well as the man who had literally invested millions of dollars in her career.
But Holly couldn’t talk to the very sophisticated Roger Royce about her childish dreams of love and Lincoln McKenzie. So she told Roger about the rest of the truth, the part she could talk about without feeling like a juvenile fool.
“This is the first time I’ve been back since my parents died,” Holly said. “There are . . . memories.”
“I realize that,” Roger said. “It will be worse at Hidden Springs, won’t it? You shouldn’t be alone, Shannon.”
As always, Roger’s kindness touched Holly.
“I’ll be all right,” she said.
Roger’s expression said he didn’t believe it.
“Really,” she said.
Holly went to Roger and kissed his cheek quickly.
“But thanks for caring,” she said.
Roger caught her shoulders, holding her only inches from his lips.
“I’d care more, if you’d let me,” he said.
Holly felt herself freeze up inside. She knew she had to stop this now, before she lost one of the few people in the world who mattered to her.
“It wouldn’t be worth your time,” she said stiffly. “I’m frigid.”
There was a moment of shocked silence.
“Jerry is a bloody swine,” Roger said finally, his voice harsh.
Holly’s laugh was short and humorless.
“I won’t argue that,” she said. “But he’s right. I’m just not a sensual woman.”
“Rubbish! Do you think I haven’t watched you? You’re always touching things, tasting textures with your fingertips. Hot, cold, rough, smooth, whatever is within reach. You drink sensations.”
“That’s not the same.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Roger said in a husky voice. “Your body changes when silk slides over it, Shannon. You need a silken lover, not a selfish swine like Jerry.”
Memories of Linc washed over Holly. His body had felt exciting beneath her hands, silk over steel. She needed both the silk and the steel, the unique combination that was Linc.
Silk alone, Roger alone, just wasn’t enough.
“I wish silk was all I needed,” Holly whispered, surprised by the weight of tears in her lashes.
“Don’t cry,” Roger said gently, releasing her.
She gave him a wan smile.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “The last thing I wanted was to upset you. I just thought that maybe this time . . .”
Silently Holly shook her head.
Roger looked at her closely.
“You aren’t angry, are you?” he asked.
“No,” she whispered. “You?”
“It’s not the first time you’ve said no to me,” he answered with a rueful smile.
Then his smile vanished, leaving behind an intent, intense, very male expression.
“If you change your mind,” Roger said, “don’t be shy about telling me. Any time. I mean it.”
Holly nodded, but looked away from him.
“I’ll meet you at the Hidden Springs gate on Monday,” she said, quickly sliding behind the wheel of the Jeep. “And be sure that all the vehicles have four-wheel drive. Anything less won’t make it to the springs.”
Roger nodded.
The vinyl seat of the open Jeep was brutally hot beneath Holly’s legs. Before she even put the key in the ignition, her jeans felt scorched. She pulled a pair of driving gloves out of her purse, knowing that the steering wheel would be too hot to touch.
When Holly looked up, Roger was watching her. She grabbed a battered straw cowboy hat, pulled it firmly over her head, and drew the chin cord up. Sunglasses followed. The lenses were so dark that her eyes were invisible behind the ovals of blue-green plastic.
Leaning forward slightly, Holly turned the ignition key. The Jeep surprised her by starting the first time. She shifted smoothly, backed out of the hotel parking lot, and waved at Roger as she turned onto the palm-lined street.
During the white-hot days of summer, Palm Springs was a quiet place. Most of the wealthy people migrated to more gentle climates. The rest of the populace either embraced the rhythms of the desert—laze away the hottest hours and emerge at twilight—or they huddled inside air-conditioned cocoons and didn’t come out at all.
Holly waited at a stoplight, impatient for the signal to change and allow her to create her own breeze again. She needed the illusion of movement as much as she needed the cooling wind.
She needed to get away.
It was hotter than it had been yesterday, when Linc had appeared like a mirage, ruining her day and her dreams.
Stop thinking about it, Holly advised herself curtly. Think about the weather. Everyone else does.
Finally the light changed, releasing her. She sped off toward her beloved mountains, her mind firmly set on the weather.
Not only was it hot today, it was also humid, an unusual thing in the western desert. The humidity was caused by moist air slowly sweeping north from the Sea of Cortez. As the hot, thick air met the mountains, it was lifted up and transformed into clouds.
By the end of the day, summer thunder would peal through dry mountain canyons, shaking the land down to its granite bones. If there were enough clouds, it might even rain, cooling the incandescent country for a few sweet hours.
Such cloudbursts were rare. But then, water in a desert was always rare.
Now, in the flatlands between the mountains, even the thought of cool rain was impossible.
Holly drove quickly, unconsciously trying to escape her uncomfortable thoughts as well as the heat.
She could no more outrun herself than a sky empty of clouds could rain. The memories came at her in waves, called up by the sound of the Jeep and the smell of metal baking beneath a relentless summer sun.
Holly had first learned to drive her father’s battered Jeep when she was a long-legged, shy fourteen-year-old begging to help feed the horses that were held in a Garner Valley pasture eight miles from the North’s ranch. That particular pasture bordered on Linc’s ranch.
She used to go there as often as she could, hoping to see him as he rode the fence line, looking for breaks.
Don’t think about it, Holly raged silently at herself. Think about driving. Think about mountains. Think about Hidden Springs.
Think about anything but Linc, who didn’t recognize me, hates what I’ve become, and never cared enough to remember me in any case.
After the first miles Holly drove the Jeep automatically, confidently. The familiar feel of the vehicle helped to calm her as she took the Palms to Pines Highway, speeding toward the land she had not seen for six years.
When Holly had refused t
o sell Hidden Springs, Sandra had turned over the management of the ranch to the McKenzies. It had seemed like a good solution to Holly six years ago, for she couldn’t bear to auction off the home and land that were all she had left of her childhood.
And there was always her dream, hidden under layers of logic and excuses, that someday she would go back and Linc would be there, waiting for her.
The gap between dreams-then and reality-now was a slicing pain that left Holly bleeding no matter how she tried to deny or ignore it.
By the time she reached the unmarked dirt road leading to Hidden Springs, clouds had condensed around the purple peaks of the San Jacinto Mountains.
The air was visibly thicker, unbearably humid, clinging to Holly’s skin like clouds to the mountaintops. A breeze moved restlessly across the dry land, rubbing over the brittle sage with a distant, secret sound.
The gate to Hidden Springs was locked, but the combination hadn’t been changed since Holly left. Well oiled, painfully hot to the touch even through her gloves, the lock opened with a metallic click.
She drove the Jeep through and locked the gate again behind her. A tantalizing hint of coolness curled down from the mountains, riding the fitful wind.
As she drove ever higher, clouds changed color and density, going from oyster to blue-tinged slate. The road dwindled to nothing more than twin ruts winding up rocky ridges and over dry riverbeds.
Holly watched the clouds constantly, looking for the first sign of rain in the mountain peaks rising above the road. She was relieved to see that despite the growing heaviness of the clouds, they hadn’t yet frayed into sheets of rain.
Even so, she wasted no time when the road dipped down to cross one of the many dry washes that radiated down the steep, rugged mountain slopes.
Normally the ravines held nothing more than sand and rocks and wind. Any moisture that existed was well beneath the surface, beyond the reach of even the hottest summer sun.
But Holly knew that a storm higher in the mountains could change that very quickly, even if it never rained at the lower elevations. A hard rain ran off the baked land rather than soaking in. Soon every crack, every crevice, every crease in the dry land overflowed with water.
Then rain spilled down rocky slopes in tiny streams that met and joined into walls of water that roared like muddy avalanches down formerly dry ravines.
Such flash floods usually lasted only a few hours before they outran the high-altitude rainstorms that had created them. The floods left behind tangles of muddy brush, rapidly drying puddles, and riverbeds that would know no water until the next storm came.
To anyone who understood that mountain rains could mean desert floods, the sudden appearance of rivers in a dry land was more exciting than dangerous.
Still, Holly breathed a silent sigh of relief as the Jeep churned up out of Antelope Wash, the last big ravine between her and Hidden Springs. She was well above the desert floor now, into the chaparral zone. A few thousand feet higher would bring her to the first pines.
But the Hidden Springs road didn’t go that high into the mountains. The twisting, rock-strewn ruts ended less than a mile away, where water welled silently from the base of a shattered cliff.
Above Holly thunder rolled across the peaks, pursuing fickle lightning, never quite catching up. Clouds veiled the mountains, bathing granite peaks in mist. Though the wind was stronger now, cooler, there was still no smell of rain. For all their tossing and flirting, the clouds weren’t yet ready to embrace the land.
Holly unloaded her gear before she drove the Jeep a hundred yards from the place she had chosen for her camp. If lightning danced over the land, she didn’t want to be sleeping near the only metal on the mountainside.
Nor did she pitch her tent too close to the five rocky pools that glittered like gemstones along the cliff’s base. As much as she liked water, she liked the desert animals better. Bighorn sheep drank at Hidden Springs. If she crowded too close to the water, the animals would stay back among the dry rocks, waiting and thirsting until the thoughtless intruder left.
Holly started making a trench around her tent to carry off any rain that might come. Just as she finished, thunder rumbled down the granite face of Hidden Springs.
Straightening, she measured the sky. The sun was no more than a pale disc burning behind clouds that thickened and changed as she watched. Streamers of mist flowed down the flanks of stone peaks, softening their masculine angles.
Lightning flickered too fast to be seen clearly in the late-afternoon light. Thunder came again, closer now, carried on a rising wind.
The sudden coolness of the air was more intoxicating to Holly than any wine. She laughed aloud and stretched her arms out as though to hold both clouds and mountains.
Later, when she was cold and wet and water overflowed her careful trench, Holly knew she would rue the moment she had greeted the storm with laughter and open arms.
Yet at this instant she was like the land itself, hot and dry, waiting for the pouring instant of release.
Sunset was as sudden as thunder. Light drained out of the sky between one moment and the next. Needles of lightning stitched randomly through the lid of clouds.
Holly smelled rain on the wind, but no drops fell nearby. Somewhere above her on the mountainside clouds were pouring themselves into the land. Somewhere water was brawling down dry ravines, playfully juggling boulders as big as her Jeep.
Somewhere the waiting had ended and the storm had begun.
But not here, not yet. Here there was only her and the silence between bursts of thunder.
Even when Holly lay within the tent trying to fall asleep, the rain hadn’t yet come. It was cooler, though, almost cold. Lightning flared randomly over the rocky land, pulling thunder behind like another color of darkness.
Then came a different noise, hoofbeats pounding down the mountainside.
Holly couldn’t tell the exact direction the horse was coming from. The rocky cliffs and ravines baffled hoofbeats, adding echoes that overlapped and faded and changed directions until she wondered if she had imagined the sounds in the first place.
White light blazed directly over the tent, followed instantly by an explosion of noise so great she didn’t immediately identify it as thunder. Blinding light and black sound alternated with dazzling speed.
Wild hoofbeats rattled in the silence between thunderclaps. A horse screamed in fear. Somewhere near Holly’s camp a horse was running over the rugged land mindlessly, terrified by the storm.
She came out of the tent at a run. She knew there was little chance of helping the panicked animal, but she couldn’t simply cower in her tent and listen to the horse’s terrified scream.
She ran to the shelter of a boulder field just up the slope from her tent. Crouched with her back to the wind, Holly stared into the night, trying to find the horse.
An explosion of sheet lightning lit up the sky from horizon to horizon, freezing time into a black-and-silver portrait of a horse rearing wildly on the low ridge just above her camp. Nearly lost in the horse’s long, flying mane, a rider fought to control his crazed mount.
For an instant it seemed the rider would win. Then thunder came again, breaking apart the world. Black sound and white sky melded into light so fierce that the eye couldn’t see, sound so brutal that the ear heard only silence.
Lightning continued in an incandescent barrage, outlining the plunging horse. Holly knew the ridge, knew it was impossible for a wildly running horse to keep its feet.
With each new stroke of white light, she expected to see the horse go down, smashing itself and its rider against granite boulders, killing them both.
And then a chill greater than the rain swept over Holly as she realized who the rider was.
“Linc!”
Four
Holly called Linc’s name again and again, screaming at him to jump and save himself.
She kept on screaming even though she knew he couldn’t possibly hear her. The thunder was s
o loud and continuous now that she couldn’t even hear herself, though her throat was tearing apart with the force of her cries.
Yet still Holly screamed at Linc to jump off, because that was the only way he could save himself from the mindless terror that drove his horse.
Horse and rider kept plunging together down the dangerous, boulder-strewn slope.
Holly made an anguished sound when she realized that Linc had no intention of abandoning the horse to its own terror. He was sitting deep in the saddle, using all his strength and skill to keep the horse from going down, riding a whirlwind with a savage determination to save both of them.
Though Holly screamed with fear for Linc, she didn’t blame him for wanting to save the horse from its own folly. Even in the grip of panic, the Arabian was magnificent. Its body rippled with muscular beauty. It moved with a cat’s quickness and grace.
Linc, too, was magnificent to watch, so extraordinary in his skill and strength that Holly forgot to be afraid for him. He was part of the horse, shifting his weight from instant to instant, braced in the stirrups, using his powerful shoulders to drag up the horse’s head whenever the animal stumbled.
Holly began to believe that horse and rider would survive the wild plunge down the boulder field.
Then the world turned inside out and an ocean poured out of the sky.
Instantly she was up and running toward the ridge. She knew that no skill, no strength, nothing but a miracle could prevent the Arabian from going down in the greasy mud that would be created during the first instants of the cloudburst.
The inevitable fall came during a burst of lightning. The horse twisted and turned wildly, trying to keep its feet where nothing could walk, much less run.
At the last possible instant Linc kicked free of the somersaulting animal. He fell like the trained horseman he was, head tucked in, body relaxed, ready to roll and absorb the worst of the impact.
Linc did everything possible, but there was nothing he could do about the boulders in his path.
Holly ran through the rain, crying soundlessly. The ground turned to grease beneath her feet, sending her staggering and sliding. A river of rain poured over her, choking her.