Remember My Touch

“Can they?” she asked softly. There had been more to that than appeared on the surface. Something else underlay the quiet humor of his comment. “Are they deceiving?” she clarified.

“Most of the time,” he said, his voice as low as hers. Again their eyes held until Jenny determinedly pulled hers away to look down at her gloved fingers, the reins threaded loosely between them.

“You should have brought a hat,” he said. She glanced up to find his gaze still on her face.

“I didn’t intend to be out here long enough that I’d need one.”

“Then don’t let me keep you, ma’am,” he said. “I’d hate for you to get burned.”

“My skin’s pretty tough.”

He examined her skin, his dark eye moving slowly over the smoothly tanned oval of her face and then down the slender column of her throat into the deep V-neck of the shirt she wore. She could almost feel it, trailing hotly over the skin of her throat. She waited for him to make some response to the inadvertent opening she’d given him, some innuendo, some suggestive remark.

Instead, he met her eyes again. There was silence for too long, and she felt the heat of a blush pushing into her neck and cheeks, the rush of blood following the exact sequence his gaze had followed back up to her eyes. She wasn’t a blusher, and she couldn’t imagine what had prompted that sweep of color, but she knew he had to be aware of it. “Don’t let me keep you,” Jenny suggested.

“You’re not keeping me, ma’am,” he said politely.

She felt her own mouth twitch at his tone. “Did you find it?” she asked.

“Ma’am?”

“Whatever you were looking for when I rode up.”

“I’m not looking for anything, Mrs. McCullar,” he said, but his tone said something else, and he had deliberately made her aware of that. If he hadn’t intended her to know she had guessed right, then she wouldn’t have. He probably was an excellent poker player.

“Okay,” she said softly. “Whatever you say, Mr….?”

She did what he had done yesterday—deliberately left the blank for him to fill in. If he wanted to be mysterious about why he was out here, about whatever he had been looking at when she rode up, he could at least provide her with his name so she could check him out with Chase.

“My name’s Matt Dawson,” he said.

And that, too, is a lie, Jenny thought. Suddenly, it made her angry. She wasn’t certain whether she was angrier at Chase for bringing this stranger here and not telling her what he was up to, or angry at this man for doing nothing but lying to her.

“Think you can ride Harry back?” she asked. “I can follow you if you like. Just to make sure you get there safely.”

That remark was beyond the pale, she knew, and totally uncharacteristic. But he had goaded her to make it. It didn’t have quite the effect she had expected, however. He mounted Harry, swinging up suddenly into the saddle and then turning the horse to face her.

But there had been something undeniably awkward about the motion. She couldn’t decide whether whatever was wrong had occurred when he lifted his left foot to find the stirrup or when he swung his right leg across the stallion’s broad back.

The remarkable thing was that Lighthorse Harry hadn’t reacted. Despite the obvious awkwardness of his rider’s movements, Harry apparently had every confidence that the man who was mounting him knew exactly what he was doing.

“Nice to have seen you again, ma’am,” Harry’s rider said, tugging his hat down a little to shade his face. “Would you like for me to follow you home? Just to make sure you get there safe and sound?”

There was a quiet satisfaction in the question, and she knew then that he hadn’t been completely certain he could pull that remount off as well as he had. For his sake, she was glad he had succeeded.

“Oh, I think I’ll be able to make it home. Maybe I’ll see you later at Chase and Samantha’s. Are you making a prolonged visit?” she asked, matching his feigned politeness.

“Looks that way,” he said softly. “It certainly looks that way.”

He turned Harry toward Chase’s house. When they had gone a few feet, he touched his heels to the stallion, and Harry broke into a run, kicking up the dry dirt. Jenny watched until they disappeared over the small rise that led down to the river.

She realized that she was smiling, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She was a little disconcerted that she’d ended up enjoying this encounter. Her second encounter with the intriguing stranger with the unusual face. And again she was conscious, as she had been last night, that she was now alone.

Annoyed with herself, she decided not to head back to the ranch. Instead, she directed Spooner to the area where the man had been looking at the ground when she’d first spotted him. There seemed to be nothing there, nothing but the same hardy grasses that were ubiquitous here. Just to be sure, she dismounted, as close to the spot where she thought he’d been kneeling as she could and began walking in a widening circle.

When she found the duct-tape-covered plastic bag, she realized it was no wonder she hadn’t seen it from horseback. The empty sack was half buried, and it was almost the same color as the surrounding desert. That was deliberate, she imagined. The sack itself was certainly innocent enough, the kind of debris that dotted landscapes all over this nation.

Except here. She knew exactly what this had been used for here. And what the three others she found in the next ten minutes had been used for. No matter what Buck Elkins had told Chase, somebody was bringing drugs across this river. Or had brought them across. Given the half-life of plastic bags, it would be hard to judge how long these had been here. Since yesterday or…five years ago?

Her eyes lifted, scanning the familiar barrenness of the landscape while she fought the burn of tears behind them. You weren’t wrong, Mac, she thought. No matter what they say, you damn well weren’t wrong about any of it.

CHASE WAS WAITING for him at the stables when he got back. Mac supposed that Chase’s overprotectiveness was natural, but it was an unpleasant reversal of what their roles had been growing up. And an even more unpleasant reminder that he wasn’t the man he had once been. During the few minutes he had spent with Jenny this morning, he had almost managed to forget that.

“Where the hell have you been?” Chase asked.

His brother was clearly furious, his big body stiff with rage he was trying hard to control, but his blue eyes were almost glittering with that famous McCullar temper.

“Your horse is fine, little cowpoke,” Mac said calmly. It wasn’t a comment designed to appease Chase’s anger. It was instead a less-than-subtle reminder of exactly who Chase was talking to.

“How many times did he throw you?”

“Me and Harry got along just fine,” Mac said, looking down into Chase’s tight-set face. “You disappointed?”

“With Doc gone, there’s nobody out here to patch you up the next time you decide it might be fun to try to kill yourself.” Chase grabbed Harry’s bridle, and it was only then that Mac realized his brother’s hands were shaking.

Not just anger, Mac realized. Chase had been afraid. A real deep-down fear. His brother had honestly expected him to take a fall.

“If I hadn’t thought I could ride the damn horse, Chase, I’d never have taken him. I’m not really a fool, despite what you’re thinking.”

Chase’s lips closed over whatever rejoinder he wanted to make. His eyes held on his brother’s scarred face. Finally he swallowed, the movement forceful down the tanned column of his throat. At the same time some of the tension melted out of his body, a visible relaxation of his fury.

“Get down, and I’ll unsaddle him for you,” Chase ordered gruffly.

“I did the riding. I’ll do the unsaddling.”

“You don’t have to try to be Superman.”

Mac laughed, the sound of it remarkably free of bitterness, considering. “Not that I’d have much chance of pulling that off,” he agreed.

Mac took a deep breath, dreading making a spectacle of himself after the bravado he’d been spouting. He had been surprised that he’d managed to mount the big bay as easily as he had down by the river. Most of that had been due to adrenaline and sheer determination. And a never-forgotten habit of rising to the bait of Jenny’s challenges. He had never failed to do that through the years, and although he had had no right this morning to expect to succeed, somehow he had.

It ought to be easier getting off than it had been getting on, he thought, steeling himself for the attempt. He swung his right leg over the stallion’s back, but when he put his weight on it to take the left out of the stirrup, his right knee gave way, and he was thrown against Harry’s solid flank as he grabbed at the saddle to get his balance. Luckily, the horse still seemed willing to put up with his unorthodox rider’s shenanigans, and Mac couldn’t imagine why.

“You okay?” Chase asked.

His anger had been replaced by open concern, and Mac found he was far less willing to deal with Chase nursemaiding him than he was with Chase yelling at him.

“I’ll let you know when I’m not,” he snapped.