At Close Range (10 page)

Unable to stem the furious tide inside him, he began rocking into her. Slowly, achingly slowly, savoring each nuance of sensation, he felt her adjust to him, learn him and match his rhythm. When her fingers tightened on his shoulders, he withdrew only to plunge more swiftly into her, faster and faster still, driven by furious need.

Corrie felt as if he plundered her very soul. With every thrust, he seemed to awaken more and more of her. Her legs linked around his back, she could feel every pounding need he had. He filled her completely and still found more to discover. He began to murmur her name, almost as if in prayer. Then he spoke her name louder as he drove into her faster. Saying her name, driving deep. Calling her name, pounding against her. Faster and faster. And still it wasn't fast or hard enough. And she cried out his name, her hands on his jaw, her kisses drawing him closer and closer.

The fire he'd started in her suddenly exploded into a wild conflagration. She felt as if each part of her sparked and burst into flame. She clung to him, gasping his name, feeling the blaze of their passion washing over her.

Suddenly he stilled, deep within her, and called out her name once more, making it an imprecation, a desperate prayer, and she felt him shudder through her. She held on to him, despite being spun halfway across
the universe. Involuntarily, she convulsed around him, more fully united with him than at any moment in her life.
Ah, at last. At very long last.

On the heels of that sated thought, she heard a discordant note deep within her. Fire burns.

She clung to him as he seemed to turn to stone. And cried out when he called her name and lost herself in his release, in her own. It seemed hours before he gave a final shudder and uttered a groan, apparently trying valiantly not to crush her with his waning strength. He brought his lips to her collarbone and kissed her gently, seemingly reverently.

“Sweet, sweet Corrie,” he said.

She couldn't answer, could only let her fingers talk for her. She traced the still, hard cords at the base of his neck, the rippled skin on his back and the sharp planes of his face. She convulsed around him as his lips nuzzled her bare breasts. He gave a low moan she echoed.

In all her years, Corrie had never known a moment more right than this one. And she never wanted it to end. And was afraid to ask what came afterward, the next month, the next day, even the next hour.

Mack felt Corrie's grip on him slacken and raised his head to see her eyes closing, a faint, utterly womanly smile on her parted and full lips. She was so beautiful, so irresistibly lovely. He longed for words to express everything she'd made him feel. But he couldn't find the perfect phrase, the best description, so in the end, allowed his soothing kisses to speak for him.

She murmured something and raised a languorous hand to his face.

Watching her, tracing the tiny smile on her lips, he wanted to promise her the moon, sun and stars all wrapped up into one pretty package. He wanted to tell her that he'd always be there for her. He ached to confide in her, to let her know about his past, his fears. And knew he couldn't do any of those things, though God knew she deserved everything he could possibly conjure up.

He knew more than most people that futures were uncertain things. That all one could truly hope for was doing one's best. And when that failed, the nightmares followed. He didn't want to drag her down into his haunted world. But God help him, he wasn't sure how he could walk away from her now.

“Mack…?”

“Mmm?” He smiled when she didn't open her eyes.

“This is the very best I have ever felt,” she said simply.

He closed his own eyes against the sincerity in her voice, against her incredible gift. What could he possibly say to such bounty?

In the end he merely lowered his lips to hers and kissed her. Slowly, softly, and with all the promise he couldn't offer.

A
s they drove through the ranch gates, Corrie felt as if she'd been gone for two months instead of a mere couple of hours. When she'd left the place, everything had seemed quiescent, sluggish, a dull rusty-brown with hints of green in the desert Southwest.

Now the seemingly sparse, newly formed plants in the garden beds flanking the veranda seemed to have burst into flower in the short time she'd been gone. Red and pink hollyhocks waved gently in the breeze, though their northern cousins wouldn't be blooming until late July. Beside them, an array of rich purple, yellow and white irises rose above their stiff leaves, making their common name of “flags” an obvious call. A spindly tree, a hybrid cross of a catalpa and a desert willow—
chitalpa
—had burst into an amazing array of white, orchidlike blossoms.

Corrie felt her hand clench Mack's arm. “Do you see that?” she asked.

He nodded, but she saw he was looking at the children in the center of the circular drive.

“Not them,” she said. “That!” She pointed at the beauty beneath the veranda.

“What?” he asked, turning his eyes from the huddle of children and adults in the center lawn. He smiled at her. She caught her breath. Another miracle; Mack's smile no longer looked foreign on his face.

She dragged her gaze back to the flowers. “It was winter this morning,” she said. She looked from him to the magical blossoms.

He chuckled. “And now it's summer?”

“No…
look.
Flowers.”

He did as she ordered. His smile didn't fade in shock as she'd expected, seeing what she was seeing. Instead, he half chuckled and turned back to her in question.

She pointed. “The flowers. They weren't blooming yesterday. They weren't even blooming this morning.”

He stared at the flowers as if stunned. “Oh, my sweet heaven.”

“You see it?”

“Of course I do.”

“It's a miracle.”

He turned to her. His smile lit his blue eyes and turned them a deep blue denim color. The ice had melted. He reached a hand to her cheek. “You are such a sweetheart, Corrie. It's a miracle, all right, but a common one. This is the way it happens in the desert.”

But, looking deep into his eyes, seeing so much more than he wanted her to see, Corrie was sure that
Rancho Milagro's magic was the real cause. The sun was shining brighter, the sky was bluer, and even the temperature had risen to a balmy seventy-five degrees in the couple of hours they had been absent from the headquarters of the ranch.

The blossoms flanking the veranda were a simple underscoring of the enchantment she'd found. The smile on his lips, his calling her a sweetheart, these were the real miracles.

She closed her eyes and opened them again swiftly. Mack still sat inches from her, and beyond him, the flowers still bloomed, a powerful combination of magic.

Corrie had been half-convinced both might disappear in the literal blink of an eye.

She was also afraid that every nuance of what she and Mack had shared at the ruined adobe dwelling would show on her face as happily as it did on the grounds of Milagro.

She needn't have worried. Everyone at the ranch was too busy worrying about what Juan Carlos had seen in the barn.

“Corrie, Mack!” Analissa cried out as they climbed out of the Bronco. “Juan Carlos sawed a ghost.”

“It was La Dolorosa,” Juan Carlos was insisting loudly from his place at the center of a human cluster. “She was all dressed in black and she walked right through Lulubelle's stall.” He demonstrated this remarkable feat, looking more like a contortionist than a wraith.

Little Pedro shrank back against Jeannie's long skirt. “No.
Señora,
no. He's wrong.
No es verdad!
”

Analissa pulled on Mack's pant legs, and when he
looked down, she raised her arms imperiously. In a single sweep, he hefted her to his shoulder.

Corrie marveled that his features could be so impassive as the little girl wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed tightly. He hid his heart from the children, she thought. But she saw his jaw work and the hand on the little girl's back splay protectively.

But he hadn't hidden a thing from her earlier.

Which one was the real Mack Dorsey?

“Was La Dolorosa all ugly and stuff?” Jason asked.

“Did she call your name?” Rita queried.

“She didn't say anything. And I don't know if she was ugly. She was old, I know that. About as old as Señora Leeza.”

“Juan Carlos,” Jeannie remonstrated as Corrie choked back a chuckle.

“Well, she was.”

“I think you ate too many sausages at breakfast,” Jorge suggested.

“That wouldn't make me see things. I eat lots of breakfast every day,” Juan Carlos protested. “If you all don't believe me, why don't you go to the barn and look for yourselves!” It wasn't a question but a hot demand.

“Actually, though the way you said it was very rude, Juan Carlos, I think that's a pretty good idea,” Chance said.

With a whoop, the children—with the exception of Pedro and Analissa—took off at a run for the barn. Almost as if on tethers, they slowed to a walk just before reaching the doors, then to a scuffling stop. Like marionettes, their arms dropped to their sides and all heads turned to look back at the adults.

Chance, holding up a hand to belatedly signal the children to wait for him, asked, “What did you two find out at the ruins? Any sign of our mysterious hitchhiker?”

Corrie didn't dare look at Mack. “Just my duster,” she said, cradling the coat of many pleasures to her chest. “No sign of the woman.”

Something in her tone made Chance look at her a little more closely. “No sign whatsoever?”

She fought a blush. He couldn't know what had transpired between she and Mack. No one could.

“No sign at all,” she said, glancing pointedly at Analissa to warn Chance that she didn't want to scare the little girl by revealing that they'd found no footprints. Of course, once Mack had kissed her, made love to her, there could have been a host of spirits and she'd never have noticed, let alone gone searching for traces of them.

“Curiouser and curiouser.” Chance wriggled his eyebrows Groucho Marx-style as he quoted Alice on her journey through Wonderland. He gave a nod, which Corrie took to mean they would continue the discussion later, and looked questioningly at Mack.

“I'll join you,” Mack told Chance. He looked at Corrie as if he might blurt out some deep truth, but only smiled instead. He shifted his gaze to the little girl in his arms. Their faces almost touched. “You want to stay with Corrie and Jeannie?”

Analissa shook her head, “No, you.”

“How about you, Pedro?”

Pedro shrank deeper into Jeannie's skirt.

Mack nodded again before turning another inscrutable and level look on Corrie.

A thousand unspoken words fell into the unreadable chasm that stretched between them, Corrie thought. She lifted a hand, as if to touch him, but he'd turned away before she connected.

She watched the two men walking away, mentally comparing them—one boisterous and easygoing with a hard edge, the other quiet, somewhat forbidding, and fathomless. Even their strides underscored their differences. Chance walked as if he might have been raised at sea, a rolling, meet-the-ground gait. Mack walked almost like a mountain lion, cautious, wary and ready for danger.

But he was a lion carrying a little girl.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” Jeannie asked.

“God, yes,” Corrie said, but she was unable to take her eyes off the two men.

“I'll go put some on,” Rita said, and all but ran for the hacienda.

“Such excitement,” Jeannie said. Then, with a side-long glance she added, “I can see you and Mack are talking now.”

Corrie didn't say anything as Jeannie reached down and took little Pedro's hand. “I don't believe in ghosts, do you?”

The little boy nodded.

Jeannie ran her free hand over his hair. “I think they'll find an old saddle blanket or one of Juan Carlos's jokes.”

She led them toward the main house. “Feeling better?”

Corrie had to turn away to mask the smile that refused to stay hidden. She'd told Mack she'd never felt better in her life. She stared at the flowers blooming
in the beds in front of the veranda—flowers blooming in the desert. “I'm fine,” she said. “The flowers bloomed this morning.”

“Isn't it amazing? And so gorgeous.”

“Mack says it's common in the desert. For the flowers to suddenly bloom all at once.”

Jeannie gave her another sideways glance. “So, you're not angry with him anymore?”

“No,” Corrie said, but didn't elaborate. The fact that she didn't have to remained one of the things she most loved about Jeannie's friendship.

“Leeza missed all the fuss.”

For a moment, remembering only how it felt to be in Mack's arms, struck by the flowers ablaze in their desert beds, Corrie thought Jeannie meant something else—it hadn't been a fuss, it had been sheer fireworks and more.

Jeannie continued, “She took off for the airport about a half an hour after you left this morning.”

Corrie hadn't heard the ranch Jeep Cherokee pass the feeding track. She'd heard little but the beating of her own heart and the rich sound of Mack's passion-rasped voice. She wished she'd remembered to say goodbye to Leeza, however.

“How long is she going to be gone this time?” Corrie asked. She couldn't imagine ever wanting to go back to D.C.

Jeannie shrugged, stopping to turn her eyes back to the barn. “Who knows? She's thinking maybe a month or two. Maybe more. I guess it takes a while to do this last merger, though you'd think with all her practice, she'd be an old hand at it.”

“The Land of Mañana is getting to her,” Corrie
said, using New Mexico's local slogan instead of the state's official, “Land of Enchantment.”

“Is it getting to you, Corrie?” Jeannie asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said simply. The state—and Mack Dorsey—were changing her entire way of thinking. She turned her eyes to the barn, as well. The door to the cavernous interior stood open, but the shadows hid the group inside.

“I'm glad for that.”

“We'll see,” Corrie hedged.

“He's a good man.”

“It's not a man who makes a place right,” Corrie said stiffly.

“It sure doesn't hurt,” Jeannie said.

No, it didn't hurt. In fact, except for a brief disappointment and embarrassment the night before, nothing about Mack Dorsey hurt. She felt wholly and gloriously alive.

And hungry.

And happy.

And suddenly, horribly frightened for the future.

 

Mack followed Chance into the barn, the little girl in his arms scarcely any weight at all. Her hands were linked behind his neck and her forehead pressed against his chin. He didn't like to think about the trust she was placing in him.

The other children, with Juan Carlos in the lead, pushed into the barn right behind them.

“She was over there,” Juan Carlos said, pointing toward the farthest stall. “All dressed in black, like in the stories.”

“You kids stay back, okay?” Chance asked, mov
ing for the stall. “I want to see if I can see any footprints.”

“The hay wouldn't show any. Ghosts don't have footprints, anyway,” Juan Carlos said with the sure knowledge of the one who had seen the apparition. “But she was there. I don't need any proof.”

“He still needs to look,” Mack said, lowering a hand to Juan Carlos's shoulder. He kept his eyes on Chance.

The marshal had his back to the ghost hunters behind him and was squatting near the base of one of the horse's stalls. And Mack could tell by the way he sifted through the straw and straightened abruptly that he'd spied something that disturbed him.

“I know I saw La Dolorosa,” Juan Carlos insisted.

“Did Corrie tell you we saw her last night, too?” Mack asked.

“No way! Tell me!”

“Corrie's back at the house. She's a better storyteller than I am,” Mack said. “Why don't you guys all go there and ask her about it?”

The children hesitated for a moment, as if suspecting him of trying to get rid of them, then at his shrug, dashed for the main house. Analissa struggled in his arms and he set her down. She ran away from him like a caged animal released to follow her pack.

“Thanks,” Chance said. “You saw?”

“That you found something, not what it was,” Mack said.

Chance held out a strip of black cloth. Mack took it and nodded. “Wool. I'm pretty sure that's what our ghost was wearing last night.”

“Doesn't prove much,” Chance said.

“If it's not from someone's shirt or sweater, it pretty well tells us that whatever we've been seeing around here isn't a ghost,” Mack said.

Chance frowned. “I'd hoped everything was over.”

“You're thinking about the trouble you had last year?”

Chance shot him a sharp look. “That's about the size of it.”

“From what I've read and heard about him, sending a ghost to do his work doesn't sound like your El Patron's style. He'd just send henchmen to kidnap the kids.”

Some of the weight seemed to drop from Chance's shoulders. “You're right about that. He'd have sent flunkies in, guns blazing. Subtlety wasn't his strong suit. Luckily, most of his henchmen are in prison now.”

“So who would send a supposed ghost?”

“That's the question, all right. You have any ideas?”

“Only one. What do we do about it?” When Chance didn't immediately come up with an answer, Mack added, “I understand you and Jeannie are heading out today.”

“We can postpone that. It's just that Jeannie's first husband and daughter were killed in a car wreck three years ago this weekend. She has some notion of us going together to the graves. Introduce…hell, it sounds crazy.”