Ride the Thunder (38 page)

“We have something special, Brig,” she murmured. “You can’t deny it.”

His reply was to slip his arm from beneath her shoulders, the one she had hugged to more fully encircle her. He rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up. In the darkness of the room, all Jordanna could make out was the black shape of his broad-shouldered frame. The bedsprings squeaked as he stood up, removing his weight from them. She frowned at the sounds of his movement that indicated he was dressing.

“Aren’t you sleeping here?” The question was out before she realized how shameless it sounded.

“No.” It was a flat denial that held no regret.

“Why?” She nearly choked on a sob.

For a minute, Brig didn’t answer as he walked to the door. The knob clicked when he turned it. “You can keep the bed, Jordanna . . .” he told her, “. . . and your lies. I don’t need them.”

Lies?!! Her heart cried in anguish, but no sound
came from her throat. The door opened and closed. How could he believe that all the things she had told him were lies? She had bared her emotions, stripped away all pretense, and virtually begged him to care about her. She had humbled herself and he’d walked all over her heart when he left her alone in the bedroom.

Her fingers curled into the pillow where his head had rested. She pulled it toward her and buried her face in it, so her wracking sobs would be muffled by its thick feathers. Jordanna wished Brig had slapped her. That pain would have eased in time, but the agony his rejection brought would be slow to heal, if it ever did. She cried until the pillow was drenched with her tears and there were no more left. But the dry, hacking sobs wouldn’t stop. She found no peace until mindless exhaustion swirled a black cloud over her consciousness.

A
COLD, BLUSTERY
wind accompanied the hunting party as they returned to the mountains. They rode with shoulders hunched and collars turned up against the icy blasts. The sky was a clear, sharp blue and there was a crystalline clarity to the air.

The second day on the trail, a stand of trees offered them partial protection from the whistling wind. The group stopped and dismounted to give the horses a rest. The horses turned their backs to the wind that whipped their tails between their legs, and huddled together.

Trying to stamp some feeling into her numbed legs, Jordanna watched Jocko bring out the thermos of hot coffee. Despite the layers of clothing, she was cold. So were the others. Kitt was slapping and rubbing his arms and her father was rubbing his hands together. Only Brig and Jocko, who were occupied with other things, weren’t attempting to warm some part of their body.

She felt the dryness of her lips and reached into her
jacket pocket for the lip balm. Her heavily gloved hands were shaking as she outlined her lips with the creamy stick. She, like the others, wore sunglasses to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun, which seemed doubly bright at this altitude.

Jocko brought her a cup of coffee, which she gratefully accepted. “It’s cold today.” She verbalized what her shaking hands told him.

His gaze surveyed the blue sky with its horizon of snow-capped peaks. “It will snow soon.”

“But there isn’t a cloud in the sky,” she pointed out.

The Basque shrugged that it didn’t make any difference. “The wind says it will snow.” He moved on to fill her father’s cup.

Brig had heard Jocko’s prediction as he left the horses to join the circle of riders. “If it does, it might drive the sheep down to the lower elevations.” Setting his rifle scabbard on the ground near Jordanna’s and Fletcher’s, Brig took off his gloves to warm his bands with the hot metal of his steaming cup of coffee.

Jordanna kept her gaze averted from him. Whenever it was possible, she avoided addressing any remark directly to him. Walling herself in was her only means of defense from further hurt being inflicted by Brig. It was prompted not so much by pride as by survival.

Her silence wasn’t noticeable since none of the group was very talkative this time. Everyone seemed concerned with his own private thoughts and expressed few aloud. Brig’s comment about the sheep had received an ambiguous response from her father. The break lasted as long as it took to drink the hot coffee; then it was time to climb in the saddle again.

Her foot was in the stirrup. She was just ready to mount the sorrel horse when she felt a hand at her waist help her into the saddle. Thinking it was Brig, Jordanna jerked away from the contact and cast an angry glance over her shoulder. But it was her brother standing there.

“What’s wrong?” His darkly handsome features were drawn into a concerned frown.

“Nothing. It isn’t you,” she added, in case he thought it was, and swung into the saddle unassisted.

Kit moved to stand beside the front skirt of the saddle, his hand resting on her saddlehorn. “What happened between you and Brig?”

Jordanna started not to answer him at all, before she decided he deserved some kind of response. “It was wrong to think he would care about me, that’s all. I’ll just have to start over.” And try to find a reason to go on without him, she added to herself. Beyond that, she couldn’t discuss it—not even with her brother. It was much too fresh and painful . . . and ongoing.

A horse snorted beside her, drawing Jordanna’s glance. The buckskin was tossing its black forelock near her leg. Her gaze darted to Brig. The mirror finish of his sunglasses kept her from seeing his eyes, but she realized that he had overheard her answer. She felt exposed. Jordanna faced the front, holding her head rigidly straight and staring directly ahead.

After a couple of seconds, she tapped a heel against the sorrel’s ribs. The horse moved reluctantly away from the windbreak of trees. The buckskin trotted past her to take the lead. There was a tightness in her throat at the sight of the lean, broad-shouldered man riding so easily in the saddle. Jordanna slowed the sorrel to bring up the rear with Jocko and the pack-string.

An hour before sunset, the riders reached the site of their previous camp. The wood frame for the tent was standing like a forgotten skeleton. A ring of stones encircled the blackened ash of previous campfires, and firewood was chopped and stacked in readiness for more. After the horses were taken care of, Brig and Jocko stretched the canvas over the larger tent. While Kit helped Jordanna set up her small, private tent, Fletcher started the fire. A golden sunset darkened to orange and tinted the wild country with its fiery glow.

The next day, the sky retained its cold blue shade, reminding Jordanna of polar ice. The biting wind sent the temperature plummeting to the freezing mark. On
the horizon, the first tendrils of clouds warned of a weather front moving closer. As the hunting party started out from camp, Jordanna was stunned to realize that Brig was taking the route that led up the switch-back trail.

“We aren’t going up that, are we?” she said in protest.

Brig hall-turned in his saddle, directing the dark mirrors of his sunglasses at her. “Why not? We have to go over the ridge.”

Her gaze was drawn to the point where Max had fallen. A cold chill raced through her, but she didn’t argue with his decision. The sorrel horse felt her nervousness and moved restlessly beneath her. Jordanna laid a quieting hand on its neck, trying to soothe her own nerves as well. They started forward again in single file. Jordanna didn’t breathe easily until they reached the top.

They sighted one band of young rams that morning. In the afternoon, they saw seven ewes with their spring lambs. The offspring were as hardy as their parents, capable of running surefootedly within two hours of birth. But they didn’t have a glimpse of the monarch her father sought.

The second day was as futile as the first. The only difference was that the sky had become solidly overcast with clouds. The wind stayed and it seemed colder than before. There was a thin crust of ice on the banks of the mountain streams they crossed.

It was drizzling when Jordanna woke on the third morning. In the night, it must have sleeted. The ground outside the tent had patches of ice. Kit slipped on one of them and sprained his ankle. Her father was practically livid with anger, although he never said a word. Both Jocko and Brig examined the injury and reached the same conclusion.

“Nothing looks broken,” Brig stated, sitting back on his heels. “I’m sure it’s just a sprain. If you want, we’ll take you back out of the mountains to a hospital where you can have it x-rayed to be certain.”

“No,” Kit refused. “It doesn’t hurt that much. It’ll be all right in a couple of days.”

Brig helped him to his feet. Kit winced when he tried to put a little weight on that foot. Jordanna gave him a worried look.

“Are you sure, Kit?” Her eyes told him not to be intimidated by their father’s obvious resentment that his hunt might be interrupted again.

“It’s
my
ankle,” he joked weakly. “I can be fairly objective about how much it hurts. I’ll just sit around camp here for a couple of days and keep Jocko company.”

“You can teach me how to play cribbage so I can beat Tandy this winter,” Jocko suggested with a bolstering smile.

Brig stepped away when Jordanna came to her brother’s aid. She noticed it and tried not to show that it mattered. She helped Kit inside the large tent, offering the support of her shoulder while he hobbled to the bench.

“I can stay with you,” she said.

“No.” His refusal was quick and sharp. “I want you to be with Dad.” He saw her curious frown and smiled crookedly. “Besides, what would you do here? Hold my hand?”

It did sound a bit silly. “Okay, I’ll go,” she accepted his decision with a ghost of a smile.

The hunting party was reduced to three riders. It was wet and miserable. Occasionally Jordanna felt the sting of ice pellets on her cheeks as they rode in search of the bighorn ram. In the late morning, they left the horses tied to some chaparral and climbed a rocky slope to glass a jagged ridge of mountains.

The ground was a cold slab of rock beneath Jordanna. Her rain suit kept out the dampness and stopped the tugging wind from piercing her clothes. Cold made it impossible to find a comfortable position. She chose to lie on her stomach so that her elbows could support her arms, while she slowly scanned the wild landscape with her binoculars.

“There, at two o’clock, halfway down the slope.” Her father directed their attention to a specific area. “Is that him?”

Jordanna focused her glasses on the bighorn sheep lying down, resting and chewing its cud. Brig did the same. “It’s too far away,” he said. “I can’t tell.”

“I don’t want to ride all that distance to find out it isn’t the one with the chipped horn,” her father grumbled. “Hand me the spotting scope, Jordanna.”

“It’s still in the saddlebag. I forgot to bring it,” she admitted and started to rise. “I’ll get it.”

“Never mind. I will.” Her father sounded impatient.

Jordanna started to argue that she was the one who had forgotten it; therefore she was the one who should get it. But her father was already on his feet and turning to pick his way down the rocky slope to the horses. She settled back in her former position. Relatively speaking, she was alone with Brig for the first time in several days. Jordanna tried to steady her suddenly erratic heartbeat and centered her binoculars on the ram.

“Do you think it’s the one with the chipped horn?” It was a stiff attempt at conversation.

“I already said I didn’t know.”

“I am aware of that.” Jordanna flushed. “I was merely asking for a guess.”

He lowered his binoculars to look at her. “I don’t make guesses.”

“Don’t you?” Her face was wet and shiny from the misting rain. “You’ve made all the wrong guesses about me.”

“You have tried many times to convince me that I have,” Brig said wryly.

Jordanna couldn’t hold that dusty look. Her hands gripped her binoculars until they hurt, as she stared at the gray rock beneath her. Tears welled in her eyes, stinging. She blinked at them.

“I don’t know why I bothered,” she said thickly.

His gloved fingers caught her chin and twisted her face toward him. “Tears?” One corner of his mouth
curled derisively into his mustache. “What am I supposed to do now? Kiss them away?”

There was something hard and hungry about the way his gaze devoured her lips. Her senses reeled under his look. Somehow she maintained her balance and jerked her chin from his hold.

“You don’t have a heart, Brig McCord,” Jordanna accused. “You’re made of stone. Instead of blood, you have molten lava running through your veins. All that fire is just lust. I only wish I had realized that before.”

“What flows in your veins?” he taunted.

“At the moment, it’s ice water,” she retorted.

“How long would it take, I wonder, to turn it to steam?” he mused.

Not long. All he had to do was touch her and she would melt. Jordanna knew it and she didn’t want him testing her to find out. She scrambled to her feet and looked down the slope for her father. He had just started back to them, carrying the leather case with the spotting scope.

The high magnification of the spotting scope convinced her father that, if it wasn’t the ram with the chipped horn, it was its equal or better. Jordanna excluded herself from the discussion of whether they should ride around and approach the ram from the back side of the ridge above him or try the valley route and stalk up. The former was decided as being the best choice, even though it was longer.