Desert Heat (5 page)

 
Unless there was something to
Skeeter’s
map.

Mike
was beginning to understand how desperation could make the most honest of men
into something they ordinarily weren’t. And make them do things they normally
wouldn’t.
Like searching for a lost gold mine.

 
Charging out into the desert in search of gold
wasn’t as easy it sounded, though. What he’d told Mallory was true—if the SRPL
got any indication that he had harmed the desert in any way, the radical
environmentalists would be on him like a crow on a carcass.
With
about the same results.

The
Cholla meant everything to him.

Was
it worth the risks?

Dropping
the torn half of the map on his desk, he went to the sliding glass doors and
opened them. He leaned against the doorframe, staring into the night sky,
trying to come to the right decision. He’d already lost Elisha because of his
obsession with the land. How much more was he willing to sacrifice?

~*~

Mallory
tossed and turned, unable to relax.

The
bright green numbers on the clock near her bed told her it was 1:15
a.m.
Her eyes felt like they’d been
through a sandstorm, but sleep wouldn’t come. She’d always believed when her
father came to his senses, he’d come home with a plausible explanation for
where he’d been for the last twenty-two years. She wasn’t a naive child any
longer, when that hope had kept her going when nothing else could.

Now
she found out he’d simply dropped out. Become a bum with no more goals than a
coyote looking for his next meal in the desert. She thought she’d quit crying
over him a long time ago, but her cheeks were damp. Angry that she cared, she
wiped them away. What had drawn her father here? Something compelling had to
have kept him from his wife and child. She refused to accept anything less.

For
about the hundredth time she turned over. On her back, she stared at the
ceiling.
The lights from the pool just outside played chase
across the stucco.
Although earlier she’d been chilly, she was now too
hot.

Someone,
walking very quietly, approached her door and stopped.

Mallory
fumbled for her glasses and slipped them on.

Someone
turned the doorknob.

Slowly,
the knob spun back.

Then
the person on the other side moved away.

Who
had tried her door?

Heart
pounding, Mallory got up and slipped on her shoes and a jacket then slipped
down the dark hall. Seeing no one, she tiptoed outside. Only a cricket chirped.
Then, after her ears adjusted, she picked up the sound of a horse moving. For a
minute she thought it was just one of the horses in the corral probably going
for water or hay. But the longer she listened she realized the animal was
walking briskly away from the barn. Who was riding at this time of night? Could
one of those SRPL people be up to no good?

Mike
needed to know. She slipped inside, ran down the hall to Mike’s door and
knocked. He didn’t answer. It was late, he was probably sound asleep. She
pounded harder. No answer. Gosh, he slept like the dead. She debated for a
moment. She didn’t really want to get into something dangerous. But, as his
guest, she felt a certain responsibility to see if someone was doing something
they shouldn’t.

In
the
rec
room, she found a flashlight, and she stuffed
it in the pocket of her sweater. Closing the front doors softly behind her, she
moved out into the desert night. For a minute, she thought she’d waited too
long to go after the rider, because she could no longer hear anything. After a
few moments of concentration, she caught the faint sound of hooves still moving
away. Flipping on the flashlight, and waiting until her eyes adjusted to the
inky dark night, Mallory walked in the direction she thought he traveled
although she couldn’t see any horse or rider.

Not
normally spooked by the night, her scalp felt too tight and goose bumps covered
her skin. As she moved from the lights of the buildings the dim beam of the
tiny flashlight illuminated the desert and she saw towering saguaros,
palo
verde
trees, and
cholla
but no rider. She scanned the desert but he seemed
to have vanished into the night air. Something skittered and the hair on her
arms rose.
Too cold for rattlesnakes or lizards.
Probably a rabbit.
Or a
javelina
.
She hoped not. The wild pigs could be
dangerous if provoked. So could a criminal.

She
hurried her steps.

Where
had he gone?

Although
there were a lot of cacti out here, an animal as big as a horse shouldn’t be
that hard to find. She paused for a moment, and looked over her shoulder.
Surprise filled her at how far she’d come from the buildings. She should’ve
tried harder to wake Mike.

Straining
to hear, all she picked up was the sound of her own quick breaths.

No
hoofbeats
.

No
rustle of clothing.

Nothing.

Maybe
she had imagined the whole thing.

She
hadn’t had a lot of sleep, after all.

The
best thing to do would be to go back to the ranch and get some rest. Wandering
around in the desert in the middle of the night wasn’t the smartest thing she’d
ever done. She turned back when she caught a glimpse of something out of the
corner of her eye.

Chapter
Five

Mallory
turned her head. Something that sounded like a fire-breathing dragon bore down on
her as if to pick her up and carry her off. Even though logic told her it was
the horse, she screamed and threw her hands up to ward him off. But the
enormous beast hit her shoulder and knocked her spinning.

Without
her glasses, she instinctively reached out to break her fall. Too late she
realized her error. Her wide open palms landed in a pile of Cholla. Its sharp
prongs penetrated her skin, sunk in, and spread its fishhook-like prongs,
instantly causing shoots of agony to fill her hands and arms. The plant stuck
worse than crazy glue. No amount of shaking could loosen it.

Mallory
held in another scream and moaned.

Getting
to her feet was next to impossible. She couldn’t push to her feet with her
hands full of thorns and the more she struggled the more Cholla she drove
deeper. Not only
her palms were
full of thorns, but
her sleeves and the front of her sweater, too. It covered her from elbows to
feet. No matter how much she wiggled, she couldn’t get up. She imagined she
looked like an armadillo on her back. If she didn’t hurt so
bad
,
she would’ve almost laughed.

Her
glasses lay a few feet from her and she had no way to pick them up.

Seeing
she had no choice, she opened her mouth and yelled like she’d never yelled in
her life. She screamed again and again, as if she were being murdered. Someone
had to hear her. Sound carried across the desert air as if sent by an
amplifier.

Tears
leaked from the corner of her eyes when the resort stayed dark and silent. “Out
here! Somebody, help me!”

 
“Where are you?” She recognized Mike’s voice.
Thank God.

 
“
Here.
This way.”
She lifted a hand to wave and pain shot up her
arm.
“Hurry.”

He
came toward her
carrying
 
a
flashlight and she watched it like a lifeline.
“Mallory?
Where are you?”

 
“Here,” she cried.
“To your
left.
Just another dozen yards or so.”

Like
a hunting dog, he came straight at her. As he approached, relief filled her and
she began to shake. She tried not to move, although she wanted to jump up and
run into his arms.

He
reached her and knelt by her side. “Oh, man. What have you done?”

 
“Fell,” she managed. “My glasses . . .”

He
retrieved them and put them in his pocket. She blinked back more tears. Without
warning, he reached under her and picked her up.

 
“I can walk,” she whispered.

 
“No, you can’t. You’re covered in Cholla. If
you walk, you’ll get it shoved into your feet.” He moved swiftly, and although
he didn’t mean to hurt her, the uneven ground made the going rough and every
bump pushed the prongs in a little further. She bit her lip and buried her head
in his shoulder to keep from crying out.

Reaching
the front doors of the main building, he carried her to the
rec
room and placed her on the wide couch. He took her glasses out of his pocket
and slid them on her nose. “Don’t move.”

Sitting
like a statue, she bit on her lip to keep from crying like a baby. Now that she
could see, it was worse than she thought. Her palms were full with chunks of
cactus. Her shirt, pants, and shoes had more than their share, too.

Mike
dashed out of the room, and came back in a minute carrying a first-aid kit. He
knelt in front of her and pulled on a pair of leather gloves. “I’m going to
take your shoes off first. I don’t think you have any in your feet. It hasn’t
penetrated the soles.” He worked as he talked, untying her laces and slipping
the
tennies
from her feet.

 
“Now, your pants.”
He
talked in a soothing voice that somehow did calm her racing heart. He crouched
and took hold of her hips. “That’s it. Stay still. We don’t want to get any in
your legs.
Got it.”

With
his support, Mallory stood on unsteady legs. She moaned a protest when he
reached for the waistband of her gray sweats, but she knew he was right to get
her pants off before the cactus prongs went through the thin material and poked
her skin. His fingers skimmed her hips as he hooked his thumbs in her waistband
and tugged. The soft cotton fell from her hips and landed on her feet. Mike
bent and steadied her by one ankle as he lifted the other and took the clothing
off. He repeated the action with the other foot.

Mallory
wanted to die of humiliation. She wasn’t in the habit of standing in front of
strange men in her
undies
. Thank God she’d worn a
nice pair of pink bikinis, and not something hideous. A hot blush covered her
cheeks as he again steadied her by the hips and sat her back down. Mike,
however, didn’t seem to notice her unease. He was focused on her hands. He took
her left wrist and held it out for inspection. A soft whistle slid through his
lips.

 
“Oh, baby. That’s got to hurt like hell.”

 
“Yeah.”
She nodded
toward a Navajo blanket on the back of the sofa. “Do you mind throwing that
over me?

 
“Sure.” He tucked it around her lap and
reached for a pair of tweezers. Gently, he began to pull the spines from her
palms and drop them in an empty bowl. Although she knew he was being as gentle
as possible, it still burned like fire and she couldn’t keep the occasional
whimper from escaping her lips.

 
“I know,” he said. “It hurts.”

 
“You said you helped my father do this?” She
gasped as he pulled a deeply imbedded thorn out of her thumb.

The
tweezers stilled for a moment.
“Skeeter?
Naw
.
I
never helped him pull thorns. He took care of himself. I came up on him pulling
some out of his pant leg one time, though. Come to think of it, he had some in
his shoes when he came in this last time.”

 
“Have you ever fallen in
cholla
?”
she asked to distract herself. Her heart hurt more
than
 
her
hands. Her dad hadn’t needed
anyone. Not even when he was hurt or ill. He’d rather face it alone than turn
to her.

He
glanced up for a moment and his blue eyes held hers. “Got stuck by
cholla
? Sure.
Most anyone who lives in
Arizona has at one time or another.
Being a desert native yourself, I’m
surprised you went out at night in unfamiliar territory.”

He
left the question hanging, but Mallory answered it any way. She couldn’t
believe how she had gone out alone. “I couldn’t sleep so I went out to the
pool. I heard a horse and I went to investigate. It headed into the desert and
I followed.”

The
look on his face turned from concern to disbelief. “You heard a horse clear
around by the pool?”

 
“Yes. I know what a horse sounds like.” To her
own ears, Mallory knew she sounded defensive. “And it was definitely a
four-legged animal.”

 
“Did you see it?” He concentrated on her hand
and didn’t look up.

 
“No,” she had to admit. “Well, not until it
knocked me down.”

 
“What do you mean?” His hands stilled.

She
felt foolish now. What had possessed her to go out in the night like that? “I
guess I got too close to whoever went for a midnight ride. They galloped right
over the top of me. That’s how I ended up looking like a pincushion.”

He
looked up and the look in his eyes was unreadable. “You’re telling me you went
in the desert at night after someone, and they saw you? And knocked you down?”

 
“I tried to wake you,” Mallory said. “I
thought somebody might be doing something rotten and I wanted to catch them at
it.” Now that she said it out loud, she couldn’t believe she’d been willing to
play Nancy Drew.

“I
don’t want to scare you,” he said, “but I have to ask you not to go out alone
again. The SRPL has vandalized some of my neighbors. They haven’t physically
injured anyone but they’re crazy enough to do something. The horse you heard
was probably one of my employees keeping an eye out for one of the vandals.”

Mallory
shivered. “Is that what you were doing out there? Looking for troublemakers?”

 
“I was in bed.” He pulled a thorn and she
jerked. He tightened his hold.

 
“But you came from the desert, not the ranch.”
She distinctly remembered the direction his flashlight had come from and it
hadn’t been from the buildings.

 
“I came the long way, from the lodge. You
sounded like you were closer to the river.” He placed her left hand on her lap
and picked up the other to begin pulling spines. She didn’t believe him, but she
wasn’t going to argue about it.

He
painstakingly pulled the needles from her skin. As the pain began to lessen,
she noticed his tousled blond hair as he bent over her hand. Had more than
sleep mussed it? Had Dianna run her fingers through his sun-bleached locks?
Mallory was surprised to find the idea bothered her. Why? She had no right to
care. She’d barely met the man. He was only a kind stranger, absorbed with the
problems in his own life.

 
Shelby stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes.
Alan peered over her shoulder. “What’s going on? We saw the lights and wondered
what was up.”

Mike
answered, “Mallory thought she heard a horse and went after him. She met up
with a
cholla
.”

 
“Oh, man,” Shelby said. She moved beside
Mallory and sat. “That sucks.”

Alan
hovered at Mike’s shoulder. “You’re going to be one sore girl for a few days.
If you’re not careful, you can get an infection where those spines went in.”

 
“She’s not going to get an infection,” Mike
said. “I’m getting all of them.”

 
“There’s no way to get them all,” Alan
insisted. “She ought to go to the hospital.”

Tired
of them talking about her as if she weren’t there, Mallory said, “I don’t need
the hospital. I’ll be fine once all the thorns are out. If you have some
Benadryl, I’ll take that.”

 
“Almost there,” Mike said. Mallory winced as
he dug at a stubborn spine.

Shelby
placed her hand on Mallory’s shoulder. “He’s almost done.”

 
“Did you find the horse?” Alan asked.

 
“Yeah, when he
mowed
me down,” Mallory said.
“And knocked me into the
cholla
.
After that, I didn’t pay a lot of attention
to where he went.”

 
“Do you mind going to take a look?” Mike
directed the question to Alan. “There’s nothing you can do here but watch. If
the
gate’s
open the whole herd might get out.”

Alan
stood. “No problem.”

 
“I’m going to stay here.” Shelby came to her
feet. “I’ll get the warm water and glue.”

 
“Glue?”
Mallory
asked, alarmed. What did she intend to do, stick her to her seat so she
couldn’t cause any more trouble?

 
“You cover the entry wounds with glue, cover
it with gauze, let it dry and then pull the bandage loose. It’ll bring out the
thorns Mike can’t see,” Shelby explained. She turned and walked Alan out.

 
“Don’t look so worried,” Mike said. “Shelby’s
a nurse. She’s pulled tons of cacti out of guests.”

 
“I’m so sorry to cost everyone their sleep,”
Mallory said. She wasn’t a very good houseguest.

 
“Don’t be sorry,” Mike
said,
his voice husky. “This place is so quiet it’s like Tombstone after the
gunfight.”

In
spite of her misery, Mallory smiled. “I bet this is a wonderful place when
you’re busy.
Not that it isn’t now,
but it must be so
full of fun and life when you’re operating.”

He
placed the tweezers aside and looked up. “It is.”

 
“What an amazing way to live,” she said.
“People dream about living the way you do.”

 
“It’s all I know,” he admitted. “I’ve been in
the hospitality business my whole life. I don’t know how to do anything else,
and I don’t want to.”

Mallory
didn’t know how to respond. From the looks of things, he might well have to
find another line of work. If the SRPL won, he’d be out on the streets looking
for a job. He’d said he’d do anything to protect the ranch. Once again she was
reminded of
Skeeter’s
gold and map. “Is there any
gold left in the mountains?”

 
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s doubtful. Those
stories are just legends. Every area has them. The west, and especially
Arizona, has more than their fair share. Why do you ask?”

She
was saved from answering by the reappearance of Shelby carrying a pan of water,
a towel, glue, and bandages.
“Got the stuff.
Ready?”

 
“I think I’ve done all I can with the
tweezers.” Mike took hold of her sweater jacket sleeve and pulled, careful not
to get any of the clinging
cactus
in her arms or his
hands. Then he moved aside and Shelby sat by Mallory.

 
“Put your hands in here,” she said.

Mallory
did as told. “Ouch.”

 
“I bet that stings.” Shelby made a sympathetic
face. She told Mike, “Grab a glass of water and some Benadryl from the cabinet
in the kitchen.”