Lifeline Echoes (11 page)

Silence fell between them while he
contemplated the woman across the blanket. For just a minute
incredible sadness had shown on her face, but she'd recovered
quickly. He chose his words with care. "I think we've got the
beginning of something nice here. I'm really wishing it'll keep
going."

****

Sandy opened her mouth for the mango he held
to her lips. Closing her eyes, she chewed slowly, savoring the
splash of sweet juice washing over her tongue while she considered
the odd combination of pleasure and fear his words gave her. "It's
having a pretty good start. I don't see any reason to stop."

"It's also going fast," he reminded her.

"So you've said. A couple of times." She
scooted across the blanket and right-angled her body against his,
supporting the back of her head on his chest. Turning her head
sideways, she glanced up at his face. "Too fast for you?"

Surprise registered briefly in Ryan's eyes,
then was gone. He drew lines along her wrist with one finger as he
spoke. "I don't think so. We obviously have physical
chemistry."

She couldn't hold back a laugh. "You do have
a gift for understatement."

Ryan toyed with the ends of her hair. "I'm
thinking maybe we should get to know each other."

"I kind of thought that's what we were
doing."

His gentle laugh rumbled beneath her cheek.
"I'm talking about the other-than-sexy stuff."

She reached up to touch his jaw, enjoying
the feel of light stubble beneath her fingertips. "I want to take a
long time to get to know you, Ryan. I don't want to find out your
favorite color is blue because you tell me. I want to know it's
blue because it's the color of your car, and it's the color of
every shirt I've seen you wear."

Ryan gave a little start, and she smiled.
Direct hit.

"I plan to learn all about you," she
continued. "And that includes the sexy parts. I want to find out
what you like by your reaction when I touch you."

She ran her thumb over his lower lip,
smiling at his sudden indrawn breath. She could feel the muscles in
his chest tense but he didn't move.

She fought the sadness that could so easily
overwhelm her. "But I also want to pay attention to the music you
listen to, and what movies you watch." A tear slipped down her
cheek and she swiped at it impatiently. "Because I've done it the
other way, Ryan, with the questions and answers. And I promise you
the ending to that one sucked."

Mortified that she was breaking down in
front of him, Sandy tried to roll away but Ryan tightened his grip
and she ended up half curled into a ball against his chest.

"Who hurt you, Sandy?"

She couldn't quite meet his eyes. "No one
hurt me. Sometimes life just hurts. Things don't work out. You
think things between you and me are moving along fast? Try falling
in love in twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes and having
your heart ripped apart in just under sixty seconds."

Confusion clouded Ryan's face. "What?"

"That's how long it took me to fall in love
for the first time in my life." She shrugged. "And how long it took
for my heart to be completely shattered by circumstances no one
could control."

Sandy watched the emotions streaming across
his face, as readable as a Wall Street ticker. He didn’t like the
thought of another man in her life any more than he liked finding
mustangs on his open range. Any more than she'd liked thinking of
him with another woman. What did that say about them?

"Ryan, have you ever wished for just one
more day with someone?" She hesitated, frowning. When had she
started needing him to understand who she had become seven years
ago? "Have you ever wished you had a day when you could tell that
person exactly how you feel and have him know without a doubt that
you mean it?"

A spasm of pain flickered in Ryan's eyes
until she saw him forcefully push it away. "Yeah." He nodded.
"Yeah, I have."

"But all we have is now," she said softly.
"We can't go back and change things to make them come out better,
and we don't even know for sure we'll have tomorrow, so we need to
live today. That's what loving him taught me. To live in the
moment. If something makes us happy, and it doesn't hurt anyone
else, we should embrace it."

"For as long as it lasts," he qualified for
her.

Sandy shrugged. "For as long as it
lasts."

He looked at her with nearly unbearable
kindness. "What happened, Sandy? What happened to break your
heart?"

Sandy raised her eyes and met the
uncertainty she saw in Ryan's. "He died," she said calmly.

****

The breath left his lungs like he'd been
sucker punched with her emotionless disclosure. She spoke of it
like she was announcing she'd been to the market, but the pain
rolled off her, tangible waves slamming into him.

He wanted to hold her and soothe her. He
wanted to bear her pain for her. All he could do was close his eyes
and absorb the agony that flowed around her like a tangible entity.
"Sandy, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Don't!" She sat up. This time he let her
go. "It was a while ago. I'm glad you know about it, because it's
part of who I am now. But Ryan," she said, her gaze showing no
emotion. "I don't sing the blues about it. And I'm not looking for
you to sing them for me. Are you okay with that?"

Would she run if he told her he wasn't? Very
slowly, Ryan nodded once, and Sandy settled comfortably back into
his arms.

"I didn't expect it to be so hot up here,"
she observed suddenly, firmly closing the door on the subject of
her lost love. "I'm thinking of wading in that stream."

With a lazy turn of his head, Ryan glanced
over at the bubbly stream meandering through the clearing. It was
running fast but not deep. "You could do that," he agreed. He
lifted his chin, indicating the mountains behind her. "But the
water's all runoff from the snow up there."

She wrinkled her nose. "Never mind
then."

This time the silence was comfortable,
broken only by the gurgling stream and the occasional call of a
blackbird. Ryan laced his fingers through her hair and combed down
to the ends, finally settling his hand at the nape of her neck. She
sighed softly. It was a contented sound. He watched her eyelids
flutter downward.

****

"Hey, what kind of food do you like?" asked
Mick. "We'll go to dinner. Just tell me where you want to go."

Sandy's breath caught as she heard the
sickening rumble before she felt it. Aftershock! A bad one. It
seemed to take forever, though it was probably less than a couple
of minutes before she heard the radio squawk in her earpiece, but
no voice came across the comm.

"Mick! Are you there?"

Another moment of silence, then, "I'm here,
Angel. Dropped—the radio. Few more chunks fell is all."

He sounded so normal and casual.

"So how about that dinner, Angel?"

"Italian. With breadsticks and we can share
some cannoli. And . . . and when you pick me up, you can bring me
flowers. I like daisies. The white and yellow ones growing by the
side of the road near Big Bear Lake in the National Forest."

His chuckle was laced with pain that she
felt along with him.

"That's a deal. Angel?"

"I'm right here."

"You want to go to Vegas with me and get
married? I figure we've already spent most of the night together.
Sorry . . . that I can't get down on . . . one knee just now."

Sandy's pain was exquisite, lancing straight
through her heart. It was getting harder to do, but somehow she
kept her voice light. "So, Mick, do you always just jump in with
both feet?"

"It's the only way, sugar." She could hear
his smile. "You're not really living if you're always looking at
life from the outside."

"Don't you ever think about how you could
get burned?"

He was silent for a moment, then soft
laughter filled her earpiece. "Every time I climb on the truck when
we're called out, sweet stuff."

Color flooded Sandy's face. "I'm sorry—I
didn't mean—that was incredibly insensitive of me."

His laughter grew a little louder. "Relax,
honey, I'm messing with you. I knew what you meant. Look at it this
way. If you don't take chances, you won't get any rewards." He
finished softly, "And right now, I'm thinking marrying you would be
one really great reward."

"You know, you're taking a heck of a chance
asking me to marry you when you don't even know what I look like. I
could be paper-bag homely."

"Then I'll have to lay up a good supply of
paper bags," he teased. Then his voice softened again. "'Love looks
not with the eyes but with the mind.'"

She laughed. "It's hard to fight with a man
when he's quoting Shakespeare."

"That would be the point of doing it." He
laughed softly. "It doesn't matter what you look like on the
outside, Angel. I think you're beautiful."

She had no idea how to respond.

"Angel?" His voice was just a bit louder
than a whisper. "I was serious about getting married. We don't have
to do it in Vegas. You can carry white daisies when you walk down
the aisle to me."

"I know you were serious," she said. "I was
mulling it over."

He chuckled. "And?"

"Yes, Mick. I'd love to marry you." She
closed her eyes against the pain of knowing that day would never
come.

****

Ryan shifted to get a better view of Sandy
while she slept. A week ago he hadn't even known her. Now he
couldn't imagine not being with her. In sleep, her vulnerability
touched him even more deeply than her sensual playfulness when she
was awake. He was at a loss to explain his reaction. He'd never
expected to feel so strongly again.

"Ryan," she murmured as she stirred against
him.

Sitting up, she threw back her head and
raised her arms, stretching like a cat in the sun. The movement
thrust womanly curves against the soft, thin fabric of her tank
top. Her body invited his touch. He sat still, drinking in the
sight as his hunger for her spiraled upward.

She caught his eye and smiled. "I know who
I'm with, Ryan. I've been alone in every sense of the word for a
while now. It's always going to hurt when I wonder about the
might-have-beens. But I'm here with you right now because I want to
be with Ryan McGee, not because I'm looking to replace someone I
can't have."

She bent to lay a tender kiss against his
throat, moving upward to find his mouth. Her lips tempted, his
cried out for more. Hers teased, his sought and found. His hand
rested against her chest. He could feel her heart beating
frantically beneath his fingertips.

The guttural, bawling scream was not of the
earth. Emanating from the thick woods, it echoed unnervingly across
the idyllic clearing.

Sandy leapt away from Ryan, her eyes wide
with alarm.

"What the devil is that?"

Ryan was already on his feet, grabbing the
Winchester from his saddle holster and sprinting toward the sound.
"Calf in trouble! Stay here!" he shouted over his shoulder, before
he pushed into the woods.

****

Paralyzed with fear for several heartbeats,
Sandy finally unstuck her feet and followed Ryan. The brush was
thick. It clawed at her, leaving deep bloody lacerations along her
arms and back as she struggled to get through. It grabbed her hair
and wouldn't let go. Where was he? Where was Ryan? Which way had he
gone?

She forced herself to stop and listen. The
bellow rang out again, and she heard thrashing in the undergrowth
to her left. Resolutely slowing her rapid gasps for air, she calmed
herself enough to see the trail of broken branches.

The bushes directly in front of her parted
and Ryan stepped through. Sandy sprang backward, swallowing her cry
of alarm. He had a fair-sized calf cradled in his arms.

"Take her back to the clearing," he ordered
brusquely, shoving the calf at Sandy.

The weight of the calf was less than she
expected and Sandy stumbled a bit when she overcompensated.

"Ry, what is it?"

He caught her arm and steadied her, then
shot her a pointed look. "Just do it," he barked. "And don't leave
the clearing. Don't follow me under any circumstance." Then he was
gone, swallowed again by the thick brush.

Terrified, she fought the tangled
underbrush, making her way back to the clearing. The squirming calf
bellowed frantically in her ear.

"Shush, baby." She set the small calf down
onto the blanket where she and Ryan had shared their picnic, and
sat down next to her. Rubbing the calf between her huge brown eyes,
Sandy was grateful when the baby's bawling quieted.

She wished she could still her own
trembling, as she sat staring at the bushes, awaiting Ryan's
return. The sound of a nearby rifle report tore through Sandy as
though the bullet had physically ripped into her flesh. Leaping to
her feet, she was halfway across the clearing when she recalled
Ryan's instructions not to follow him for any reason. So once
again, she found herself waiting.

****

"How badly are you pinned?" Sandy asked when
Mick checked in. "Is there any chance you can work yourself out
some?"

"Not a chance," Mick told her easily. She
could almost picture a grin. "Got a cement beam across my legs and
a chunk of something across part of my chest. Pretty sure at least
one of my legs is broke. Feels like a couple of ribs bought it,
too. Kind of hard to catch my breath. I can hear my partner
breathing but he's not answering. Don't know how bad off he is.
It's hard to just lie here, Angel."

She could hear Mick's labored breathing. "I
know it is. I wish I could be there to help you."