A Warrior's Vow

Leeza sighed as Daggert hefted the thick saddle pad, then the hated saddle, onto Belle’s back and cinched it securely. He packed her saddle as carefully as he had his own. When all was aboard the horse, with the exception of Leeza and her sleeping bag, he gave Belle a slice of apple.

The setter, apparently knowing Daggert’s ritual, came up, wagging his tail and whining at his master.

Daggert ran his hand down the dog’s soft neck. Leeza thought she’d never seen a man so completely comfortable around animals. It was as if he shared a telepathic communication with them.

“No use hurrying, Sancho. We have a half hour before full daylight, and if I know women—and contrary to your experience of me, I’ve known a few in my time—the lady won’t be ready, anyway.”

Leeza could have sworn the dog grinned as his feathered tail swept the earth. James ran his hands down the full length of the dog’s back, and Leeza wriggled even as the animal did.

Sancho barked.

Leeza groaned.

“She’s awake,” Daggert said. “Close your eyes now or her red pajamas will blind you.”

Daggert firmly believed that a good ninety-nine percent of the human population looked a bit worse for wear after a night out in the open. Not Leeza Nelson.

She looked as if she’d just stepped from a penthouse apartment, freshly showered, powdered and having had a manicure following a massage. Instead, she’d come around a scraggly mesquite bush and used towelettes for a bath. The only telltale sign that she’d been horseback riding most of the day before was her slightly stiff walk as she approached the campfire.

He pointed to the coffeepot, then poured some for her before she reached for it without a pot holder. She gave him a dazzling smile that made him wish he’d packed a Kevlar vest.

Not trusting her friendliness—she hadn’t struck him as a hail-fellow-well-met sort of person—he busied himself unrolling a chamois cloth and spreading out the items Sancho had collected the day before. He sat studying them.

“What’s all this?” Leeza asked brightly.

“Clues,” he said.

“Explain, please,” she said. Not a question, but a command, even if she had softened it. That do-it-my-way attitude again.

“Sancho brought them in last night.” He held up the branch of scrub oak the dog had carried in his jaws. He pointed to the thistles that had been embedded in his silky coat. “Russian thistle and tumble-weed. Broken, but still fresh, see? And these? Bits of chamisa. Another gum wrapper.”

“His path,” she said, a note of wonder in her voice. “That’s the path Sancho took—following Enrique?”

Daggert couldn’t help but look at her. Her logic wasn’t what snared him; it was the honest note of awe in her voice. Luckily, she wasn’t gazing back at him. She was beaming at his Sancho.

“You’re a good dog,” she said. “A very, very good dog.”

Sancho rose and came to her, tail beating against Daggert’s back.

Daggert was stunned. He’d never seen Sancho approach anyone other than himself. The mutt always seemed to maintain a purely business relationship on their mission, eschewing fraternization with the clients, just like his master.

Daggert found he preferred things that way. He pushed Sancho’s tail aside, but instead of moving away, the dog merely gave Daggert a happy grin and sat down beside the woman.

She looped an arm around his back, scratched at his ears and asked the dog, “So you know which way we’ll be going then?”

Daggert felt unreasonably irritated with Sancho’s defection, and the fact that she was talking to the dog instead of him.

“Thanks for saddling Lulubelle.”

“Call her Belle. That other name is stupid for a horse.”

“Noted,” she said. “And I guess we won’t talk about the fact that Enrique’s riding Dandelion.”

James tossed his cold coffee on the fire. “You’d better eat,” he said, handing her a plate of eggs and grilled toast he’d kept warm for her.

“Please. I’m barely to the coffee stage.”

“Give it to the dog, then,” he said.

“You want some of these eggs, boy?”

He did. She scraped the contents of her plate on to a flat rock.

“His name is Sancho.”

Sancho inhaled the food she’d set out for him, and wagged his tail at her.

“Apt,” she said. “Every Don Quixote needs a Sancho, right, boy?”

Daggert didn’t know which he disliked more, the ice queen with her barbed tongue or this falsely smiling tourist. And the damnable truth was he wanted to kiss her either way.

“I think we’re going to have to set a couple of ground rules,” she said, making his hackles rise. “I realize that I know nothing about tracking and that’s why you’re here. At the same time, you know nothing about Enrique, and that’s why I’m here. I see no reason we can’t work together harmoniously.”

Daggert stood up. He’d known the pretty smiles and the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth routine was a sham, but darned if he hadn’t fallen for it, anyway.

He quickly rubbed their plates with sand, wiped them with paper napkins, which he tossed into the dying flames, and stowed them in one of his saddlebags. He poured the remaining coffee on the fire and folded the pot in a heat-resistant cloth, shoving it in with the plates.

He rerolled her sleeping bag into a tight bolster—the woman had obviously never camped a day in her pampered life—and secured it to the back of Belle’s saddle. He tossed handfuls of sand on to the remaining coals and scuffed more on to them with his boot.

She rose and dusted her jeans.

“We’re heading north,” he said, bending over and cupping his hands to give her a leg up.

“That’s the spirit,” she said, stepping into his hand. She put all her weight into it, instead of using it as a hoist. He tossed her upward, and she landed in the saddle with a low “Oof.”

“Thank you,” she said, as if he’d merely given her a boost. “It’s good to know we have a meeting of the minds here.” Though she spoke cheerfully enough, he didn’t meet her gaze.

He reached for her stirrups to lower them.

She shoved her boots into the footholds and pressed down. “I don’t think so, Mr. Daggert. I may be forced to ride on a western monstrosity, but I refuse the full discomfort.”

He decided that icy tone of voice fit her long, elegant body to a T.

“Suit yourself.” She’d be singing a different tune by midday.

“All the children at Rancho Milagro keep a journal. It was one of my partner’s ideas—a chance for the kids to download. I read Enrique’s before we set out,” she said. Her falsely cheerful note was back. Why did Daggert think her more dangerous when she used it?

He swung his leg over Stone’s broad back.