“Bob’s right about food,” Rafe said, his voice husky and warm. “You didn’t have breakfast.”
Alana shook her head, though it hadn’t been a question.
“I forgot to pack lunch,” she admitted.
“Merry packed enough for twenty in my saddlebag.” Then, smiling, Rafe added in a coaxing voice, “Share it with me, Alana. Even wildflowers have to eat something.”
Beneath his teasing was real concern. Alana was thinner than he had ever seen her. Too thin, too finely drawn, like an animal that had been hunted too long.
“Roast beef, apples, homemade bread, chocolate chip cookies . . .” he murmured.
Alana’s mouth watered. She licked her lips with unconscious hunger.
“Sold,” she said breathlessly.
She and Rafe ate in the shifting shade of a windblown pine. They sat side by side, almost touching, sharing his canteen. The mint-flavored tea Merry had made for Rafe tasted extraordinary in the clean mountain air.
Alana ate hungrily, enjoying food for the first time in weeks. Rafe watched her, smiling. This, too, had been part of his dreams. Alana and the mountains and him.
When everything else in his life had reeked of death and betrayal, he had dreamed of her.
“Saddle up,” called Bob.
Alana stopped, her hand halfway into the paper bag of cookies. Rafe scooped up the bag and handed it to her.
“Take them,” he said, smiling.
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to be hungry just because I was too stupid to remember my own lunch.”
“There’s another bag of cookies in there,” Rafe assured her, gesturing to the saddlebags draped across his leg. “Apples, too.”
He dug into the supple leather pouch and pulled out two apples.
“Here,” he said. “One for you and one for Sid.”
Rafe stood and pulled Alana to her feet with one hand, releasing her before she had time to be afraid.
“I’d better help Janice,” he said. “She’s going to be sore.”
Alana winced slightly, flexing her legs.
“She’s not the only one,” Alana muttered. “Although, considering that it’s been more than a year since I rode this hard, I’m not very sore at all.”
Then Alana heard the echo of her own words. Her face changed, tension coming back to her in a rush.
“That’s not true, is it?” she said, her voice raw. “It hasn’t been a year. It’s been less than a month. Why can’t I remember?”
“Alana,” said Rafe urgently.
He bent over her, so close that he could see the pulse beating in her throat, smell the minty sweetness of her breath. Close but not touching her, afraid to hold her and bring back nightmares in place of dreams.
“Alana, don’t. Clawing at yourself won’t help you heal.”
She drew several long, ragged breaths. Her eyes opened again, very dark but not as wild. She nodded almost curtly, then turned and went back to her horse, clutching a bag of cookies in one hand and two forgotten apples in the other.
The rest of the ride became a waking nightmare for Alana. It began with the first of the five Paternoster lakes, so named because they were strung out like beads on a rosary, shining circles of blue water joined by silver cascades.
The first, lowest lake was at six thousand feet and the highest was just above eight thousand. Pines grew down to the shores of the lower lakes, making dark green exclamation points against the silver-gray boulders that embraced the transparent water. The first lake was beautiful, reflecting the sky in endless shades of blue, serene and quiet.
And after one look, Alana felt fear rise and begin to prowl the corridors of her mind. She heard thunder belling from a cloudless sky, saw violent lightning in every golden shaft of sunshine, heard Jack’s voice where nothing but ravens spoke from high overhead.
Gradually, without realizing it, Alana’s hands tightened on the reins until Sid fretted, tossing her sleek black head. After a time, Alana’s nervousness was reflected in Sid’s actions. A line of foam grew around the steel bit. The horse’s long, easy stride became a mincing walk. Streaks of sweat radiated from Sid’s flanks despite the coolness of the air.
The pressure of Alana’s hands on the bit increased by subtle increments until finally Sid stopped. But even then the pressure didn’t decrease.
Sid shook her head repeatedly, seeking freedom from the bit.
“Alana.”
Rafe’s voice was soft and undemanding, despite the harshness of his expression as he watched Alana’s blank, unfocused eyes. He leaned over and pulled forward slowly on the reins, easing them out of her rigid fingers. Gradually the thin leather strips slid free, ending the relentless pressure of the bit.
“It’s all right, wildflower,” murmured Rafe. “I’ve come to take you home.”
Alana blinked and looked around with eyes that were still caught between nightmare and reality.
“Rafael . . .?”
“I’m here.”
Alana sighed and flexed hands that were cramped from the tension of hanging onto reins as though they were a rope pulling her up out of a nightmare. She started to speak, couldn’t, and swallowed. The second time she tried, her throat no longer closed around her dead husband’s name.
“Jack and I rode this way.”
Beneath the shadow of the hat brim, Rafe’s narrowed eyes looked like brilliant lines of topaz. He knew that the trail they were on was only one of three trails that led to Five Lakes Lodge. If Alana recognized this particular trail, she must be remembering at least parts of the six lost days.
“You’re sure,” said Rafe, no question in his voice.
She nodded stiffly. “The first storm began here.”
“The first?”
“There were several, I think. Or was it just one long storm?”
She frowned intently, reaching for memories that vanished even as she touched them.
“I don’t remember!” Then, more calmly, Alana said, “I don’t remember.”
She closed her eyes, hiding the shadows that haunted her.
When Alana finally opened her eyes again, she was living only in the present. Rafe and the two horses were waiting patiently. No one else was in sight.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“Over the next ridge. I told them we’d catch up later, if you felt well enough.”
Distantly Alana wondered what the two dudes thought of her. A woman with strange moods. Hysterical.
Crazy.
The word kept ringing in Alana’s mind, an interior thunder drowning out the rational words she kept trying to think of, to cling to.
“Am I crazy?” Alana wondered aloud, not realizing she had spoken. “Or does it matter? If sanity is terror, is there peace in madness? Or is there only greater terror?”
Abruptly Alana shuddered.
“You aren’t crazy,” Rafe said, his voice gentle and angry and sad. “Do you hear me, Alana? You aren’t crazy. You’ve been beaten and terrified. You’ve seen your husband killed and you damn near died yourself. And then you were out of your head with shock and exposure. You’ve hardly eaten at all and slept even less since Broken Mountain.”
Wide-eyed, Alana watched Rafe, feeling his words sink into her like sunlight.
“You aren’t crazy,” he said. “You’re just at the end of your physical resources, driven right up to the edge of hallucination in order to keep reality at bay until you decide there’s no choice but to face it.”
Alana listened, heard the certainty of Rafe’s voice, heard the state of her mind and body described so precisely in his deep tones.
“How did you know?” she asked achingly.
“It happens to people when they’re pushed too hard, too long.”
Slowly Alana shook her head. “Not to strong people. Like you. I used to think I was strong.”
Rafe laughed. It was a harsh sound, almost cruel.
“Anyone can be broken, Alana. Anyone. I know. I saw it happen i
n Central America time and time again.”
“Rafe,” she whispered.
“They said that I died. For a long time I believed them. It was like dying, only worse. There was no end to it. And then it happened again here.”
Alana searched Rafe’s eyes and found emotions she had never seen in him before. Violence and hatred and a rage so deep it went all the way to his soul.
“What . . . what happened in Central America?” asked Alana.
Rafe’s expression changed, becoming remote, shutting down, shutting her out. The muscles in his jaw flexed and he spoke slowly, with a reluctance that told Alana more than his words.
“I’ve never told anyone. But I’ll tell you. On Broken Mountain, I’ll tell you. Unless . . .” Rafe looked at her swiftly, concerned again. “Unless you want to turn back. I’ll take you back, Alana. If that’s what you want. Is that what you want?”
“I want to trust myself again, to trust my mind and my memory and my emotions,” she said in a rush. “I want to be me again. And I want . . .”
Rafe waited, an expression of restraint and longing drawing his face into taut planes and angular shadows.
“What do you want?” he asked softly.
“You,” Alana said simply. “I was never more myself than when I was with you.”
But even as she spoke, she was shaking her head, not believing that what she wanted was possible.
Rafe held out his hand, palm up, not touching Alana but asking that she touch him. She put her palm lightly on his.
“I’m yours, wildflower,” said, Rafe. “I have been since I saw you on that exposed trail with a lame horse and lightning all around. You were brave then. You’re even more brave now.”
“I don’t feel brave.”
“You came back to Broken Mountain. You’re honest with yourself, and with me. If that isn’t courage, I don’t know what is.”
Rafe’s voice was deep and sure, conviction reflected in every syllable and in the amber clarity of his eyes as he watched her, approving of her.
With fingers that shook slightly, Alana brushed away the tears that starred her eyelashes. Teardrops gleamed on her fingertips as she almost smiled at him.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For telling the truth?” Rafe smiled sadly. “I have a lot more truths for you. But not now.”
“What do you mean?”
“My truths wouldn’t help you now. And that’s what I want. To help you, and me. We’ll heal each other and then the past will stay where it belongs. In the past. Memories, not nightmares.”
Rafe held out his other hand, palm up.
Alana put her hand in his, felt the strong pulse in his wrist beneath her touch, saw the glitter of tears transferred from her fingertips to his smooth, tanned skin. Unerringly, he found the pulse point of her wrists and rested lightly against it, savoring the strong flow of her life beneath his fingertips.
“Are you ready for the mountain?” asked Rafe softly.
Slowly Alana withdrew her palms, letting his touch caress her from wrists to fingertips.
“I’m ready,” she whispered.
8
F OR THE REST of the trip, Rafe and Alana rode side by side when the trail permitted. When it didn’t, Alana rode first. When pieces of the nightmare condensed around her, she looked over her shoulder to reassure herself that it was Rafe rather than Jack who followed her.
The fragments of nightmare and memory came unexpectedly, out of sequence, tormenting Alana because she couldn’t be sure whether it was true memory or false nightmare that stalked her. When she heard Jack’s voice raised in anger, she didn’t know if it came from the far past or the recent past, or if the words were a creation of her own mind trying to fill in the six missing days.
Sometimes there was no doubt. The sound of wind through the aspens, the shiver of yellow leaves, the song sticking in her throat . . .
Those were real. Those she had heard before, seen before, felt before, and remembered only now. She and Jack had rested by the second lake, there, down by the glacier-polished boulder. They had drunk coffee from their individual canteens and watched trout fingerlings rise in the turquoise shallows.
Then the wind had come again, moving like a melancholy hand over the lake, stirring reflections into chaos, bringing the scent of the heights and storms boiling down.
Jack had watched the clouds seething around the lonely ridges. He had smiled. And he had said . . .
What had he said? Alana asked herself. Something about the land. Something. . . . Yes, that was it: I always knew this country was good for something. I just never knew what.
And then he had laughed.
Shivering, Alana drew an imaginary jacket around her shoulders. Sid stumbled slightly, jarring her into the present.
Alana loosened the reins, giving the horse more freedom. She looked over her shoulder. Rafe was there, riding the big Appaloosa stallion, his hat pulled low against the restless wind. She sensed his quick regard, his concern for her. She waved slightly, reassuring him that she was all right.
Other fragments of memory returned, hoof-beats following, wind twisting and booming between ridges, ice-tipped rain. An argument . . .
She and Jack had argued over something. The storm. And the fishing camp. She had wanted to stay at the Five Lakes Lodge until the storm passed. Jack had refused, even though the fishing camp’s five buildings were deserted and looked as though they had been empty for years.
In the end Jack had won, but only because Alana couldn’t bear to see the site of her greatest happiness standing blank-eyed and empty, cabin doors ajar and porches heaped with dead needles and random debris.
Everywhere she turned, she had seen shadows of Rafe. Every breath she drew had reminded her of the first time Rafe had made love to her, in the loft of the main cabin with a storm coming down, surrounding them. But she hadn’t been afraid then, She had been an aspen shivering, and Rafe the mountain wind caressing her.
Sid snorted and shied as she came around the shoulder of an old landslide. Again, Alana was jarred out of the past. Bob was waiting there, riding the big bay mare that was his favorite.
“Everything okay?” asked Bob.
His dark glance roamed his sister’s face, looking for and finding signs of strain.
“Yes,” Alana said tightly.
“You don’t look it,” he said, blunt as only a brother can be.
“I’m remembering a few things. Little things.”
“That’s great!”
“Is it?” she countered quickly. Then, “Sorry. Of course it is.”
“Have you told Rafe about remembering?”
Before Alana could answer, Bob was talking again, words rushing out in excitement and triumph.
“He was right!” Bob said, delight in every word. “He said you’d remember once you were here and knew it was safe. And neither doctor would let him go to Portland because—”
“Burdette.”
Rafe’s whiplash voice stopped Bob’s tumbling words.
Bob looked startled, then stricken. “Oh, God, I really stepped in it this time. Damn my big mouth anyway.”
Rafe gave Bob a narrow glance that spoke volumes on the subject of loose lips and secrets.
Alana looked from Rafe to Bob, questions in her eyes, questions Rafe knew he would have to answer, questions whose answers she wasn’t ready to hear. So he chose his truths and half-truths carefully.
“I told you I leaned on a few people to get you here,” said Rafe.
Uncertainly, Alana nodded.
“When Merry couldn’t be chief cook and tour guide, I thought of you,” Rafe said. “It would be a perfect opportunity to get you back home, where you belonged.”
Then Rafe looked toward Bob and spoke in a soft, cold voice. “Isn’t that how you remember it, Burdette?”
“Rafe leaned like hell,” Bob agreed, looking relieved. “Sis, you aren’t mad, are you? I mean, about coming home? We just want what’s right for you.”
Alana sighed, caught as always by her affection for the brother who rarely had an unspoken thought.
“No, baby brother, I’m not mad. Maybe,” she added, smiling crookedly, “I’m not even crazy.”
Bob drew in his breath sharply. “Alana, what in hell gave you the idea that you were crazy?”
“What would you call it when someone runs scared from six missing days?”
“I’d call it shock,” Rafe cut in smoothly. “Survival reflex. In a word, sanity.”
He looked from Alana to Bob.
“Let’s get to the camp,” Rafe said. “That storm won’t hold off forever.”
There was an urgency in his voice that allowed no argument. He didn’t want Alana to be caught in the open in a storm. Not now. She was off balance, easily startled, too tired. Too fragile.
She needed rest now, not a resurgence of nightmare and violence, It was enough that she had begun to remember. More than enough. He didn’t want the past to rise up and rend the delicate fabric of trust binding her to him.
He didn’t want her to remember too much, too soon. If she did, then he would lose her again. Only this time there would be no hope. She would be lost to him irrevocably, forever.
Don’t remember all of it, wildflower, Rafe prayed silently. Not yet. Give us time to love again.
“Move it, Burdette,” Rafe said aloud. “The storm won’t wait much longer.”
At Rafe’s curt signal, Bob set a fast pace to the cabins. Rafe hoped that riding hard would keep Alana’s mind in the present rather than in the nightmare he saw too often in her eyes.
Even after they reached the cabins, Rafe watched Alana without seeming to while she prepared supper. He saw no signs that the storm building outside the cabin was bothering her.
After dinner, Bob and Stan went to Janice’s cabin for a round of poker and conversation. Alana didn’t go. She spent as little time as possible near Stan.
Rafe, too, turned down the offer of cards. His excuse was the flies that needed to be tied for tomorrow’s fishing. But he doubted Bob was fooled. He was certain Stan wasn’t fooled. The cynical gleam in the big man’s eyes said he knew Rafe wanted to be alone with Alana.
As Alana finished setting the table for tomorrow’s breakfast, Rafe came back from turning off the generator for the night. He shrugged out of a yellow slicker that sparkled with rain. So far, the evening storm consisted mainly of fat drops randomly sprayed and distant mutters of thunder stalking elusive lightning.