The Lies Uncovered Trilogy (Books 4, 5, and 6 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (53 page)

Annie looked at him with irritation, assuming he was trying to impress her with his agility as a mountain goat. She was about to express her annoyance when he said, "These aren't pictographs, they're petroglyphs."

"How do you know?" Annie asked, again surprised that Ryan's aptitude seemed to go beyond the usual rodeo tunnel vision.

"The red's not paint. It's the natural rock after the topmost surface has been scraped away," Ryan said, while running the pad of his finger across the figure. "These are Coastal Indian designs of mythological sea monsters. This one's a sea wolf since it's got a wolf's head, a dorsal fin and a fish tail. Designs like these are pretty common on sites along the coast, but it's unusual to find them this far inland."

Annie looked at Ryan, curious. "Are you an archaeologist turned cowboy or something?" she asked. Knowing the difference between pictographs and petroglyphs, and recognizing the designs of Coastal Indians seemed odd for a champion rodeo rider.   

"No, my brother, Marc, and his wife are. It was their wedding you attended," Ryan said. He ran the pad of his finger over another image. "This one's a sea grizzly. Marc’s writing his doctoral thesis on petroglyphs so he'd be interested in seeing these, since they're so far inland, which shows a mixing of the Coastal and Plateau Indians. We have petroglyphs in a cave on the Dancing Moon. Marc and Kit figure it was some kind of place where couples came to conceive since the figures on the cave wall are obviously fertility-type figures, and there's a hot spring pool in the cave where they could do ritual bathing."

Annie knew she didn't want to get into the specifics about fertility figures, especially with Ryan, so she said, "We have a hot spring on the ranch. It's enclosed in a springhouse that was built over a hundred years ago. Dad had the guys fix it up so guests could sit in the pool, but it's too long a ride for today so you'll have to find it on your own. The men can point out the way."

Ryan turned and hopped to the rock below, and in another spring, landed on the ground with an unusual amount of agility for such a big man. Then Annie realized it was a result of all that rodeo training—a reminder that he was just another glory-seeking cowboy, in case she found herself appreciating the man in other ways. Which she didn't.

"Is the springhouse on a trail where I'm expected to take guests?" Ryan asked.

Annie shrugged. "I suppose."

"Then let's go."

The glint in Ryan's eyes sharpened, like he was eager to be off with her, though Annie didn't know what happened to change his mood. There had been nothing amiable about their time together so far, which made her suspicious as to why he'd want to continue. "We have less than a dozen guests here right now," she said. "They don't need to go on that particular trail."

"I've been hired to oversee the trail rides and I want to know all the trails," Ryan insisted. "Unless you're worried about being alone with me in the springhouse." 

"I'm not," Annie clipped, and was determined to prove it. Turning Bridgette, she retraced their tracks. But instead of following the valley floor, she started up a trail that took them up a wash, the rocky pathway made by a stream that had long since dried up. Once on the wide flat top of the mesa, she continued, and a few minutes later passed a natural swimming hole that was referred to as Indian Hollow from as far back as she could remember. The swimming hole was fed with warm water from the hot spring via a long cedar trough.

Catching sight of steam rising from the surface of the pool, Ryan said, "Looks like a nice place to swim in the raw."

Annie said nothing, though she found herself intrigued by the idea of seeing Ryan in the raw, while wondering if he was as well put together below the waist as he was above.

"So, how far to the hot springs?" Ryan asked.

Blinking away the image of a muscular man in the buff, Annie replied, "Just a short walk from here."

"You told me it was a long ride," Ryan said. "We've barely been gone ten minutes."

"That's because I didn't want to bring you here at all," Annie replied. "It’s just a hot spring pool in a springhouse."

"I still want to see it before I bring guests here," Ryan insisted.

Annie glanced up the footpath. The last place she wanted to be alone with Ryan Hansen was the springhouse. Riding alongside him was one thing. Having him follow her up a narrow path to a tiny stone building hidden among aspen was another. But not taking him would give him the impression he affected her in some way, so grudgingly she dismounted.

After tying Bridgette to a juniper she started up the trail at a fast clip. But once at the entrance to the springhouse—a building made of natural stones fitted together like a small fortress—she stood in front of the door while deliberating whether to go inside. She couldn't set aside Ryan’s earlier smile, like something was up.

"Is there a reason we're not going in?" Ryan asked, when Annie made no move to open the door.

"Umm… no," Annie replied.

"Good." Ryan curved one arm around to Annie's left, bracing his hand on the door jamb, and the other arm around Annie's right. Grabbing the door handle, while pressing his chest to her back, he opened the door. Annie had made up her mind moments before to remain outside, but with Ryan effectively blocking her exit, she stepped inside and immediately walked around to the back wall of the small building, positioning the hot spring pool between them.

To her alarm, Ryan followed her around the pool.

"What are you doing?" she asked, glancing beyond him for her escape.

"Testing a theory," Ryan replied, while closing the gap between them. "You owe me for humiliating me in front of everyone, including your father and the men I'll be working with, and I intend to collect."

Annie backed away and found herself up against a cold stone wall. "If you do what I think you intend to do you'll encounter a knee again and I won't be as gentle as before," she warned.

Ignoring her completely, Ryan continued toward her, tucked a finger beneath her chin and kissed her. At first Annie did nothing, both startled and curious to have a man's lips pressed to hers, while also finding it not so disagreeable, actually kind of, pleasant. Her eyes drifted shut and she had a vague awareness of a muscular chest beneath her palms, and little moans of pleasure coming from somewhere inside her, and the scent of licorice filling her nostrils...

Before she realized the sweetly-pungent aroma was on her tongue... and his...

Instantly, she broke the kiss and stared at Ryan in shocked surprise.

He eyed her in amusement. "My theory was right. You are more bark than bite." Releasing her, he crouched on his heels and turned his attention to the pool of steaming water.

But after Annie had gotten her wits about her, she said, "If you think I'm more bark than bite then you have a lot to learn about me." Rushing out of the springhouse, she raced down the trail. On reaching the horses, she quickly untied them. Taking Sultan's reins, she mounted Bridgette and headed for the ranch, Sultan loping behind.

Maybe after walking a long, winding, dusty, uneven trail back to the ranch in the heat of the afternoon, Ryan would think twice before pulling that stunt again.

Annie also realized, about half way home, that not only would he be pretty steamed by the time he returned to the ranch on foot, but she'd beat him at his own game. At least she thought she'd beat him, except that his soft, sweet kiss and the taste of licorice on her tongue still lingered, making her heart quicken, while stirring in her a bizarre desire to try it again.

CHAPTER 3

As Ryan was approaching the stables, after having walked for nearly an hour in the hot afternoon sun, over a rough, rocky, dusty trail, and across the wide-open stretch from the cottonwood trees at the base of the mesa, Deke intercepted him and said, "I take it Annie outmaneuvered you again."

His shirt wet from sweat and open down the front, his face hot, with beads of perspiration running down his brow and alongside his temple and jaw, Ryan glared at Deke and replied, "Look, I'm a little pissed right now, so just say what you have to say and be done with it."

Deke splayed his hands, palms out, like he didn't want to get into anything with Ryan, and said, "You're not planning on quitting, are you?"

"You have a problem with that?" Ryan asked, although quitting was the last thing on his mind. Getting his comeuppance with Annie couldn't happen if he tucked his tail between his legs and headed back to the Dancing Moon.

"Yeah, we'd all have a problem with it," Deke replied. "None of us want to take a bunch of city slickers on rides. We'd rather be moving cattle or mucking around in manure."

"Well, you can rest easy," Ryan said. "I'm not quitting. I have unfinished business here."

"Annie?" Deke asked, while looking askance at Ryan.

"You got it," Ryan replied. "If she were a man we could settle it with fists in about two seconds. Has she always been like this or is it something about me that gets her dander up?"

"She's pretty scrappy," Deke admitted, "but we've known her since Matt and his ex-wife adopted her when she was two. Matt's ex left him a few months later so we all pitched in to help with Annie. Some of the time we forget she's a girl, but she pretty much holds her own against our teasing."

"Then Ruth’s her step mother," Ryan surmised.

"Actually no, she’s her real mother, but Annie was kidnapped just before Matt adopted her and it wasn’t discovered until four years later, when Ruth hired on here as a nanny. Ruth already suspected Annie was her daughter but didn’t know for sure until she was here a while. It’s a long story. Ruth’s made attempts over the years to change Annie some, but Annie’s just Annie and we’re all okay with that."

"Well, I'm not okay with it. I take it she doesn't go out with guys," Ryan said, as he headed into the stables to check on Sultan.

Deke trailed along with him, while replying, "She's already given you a couple of reasons why the cowboys around here stay clear of her, and that's okay with Matt. If anyone ever manages to catch her he’ll have to get past him first, which will be just as much of a challenge as landing Annie."

It bothered Ryan that he wanted to meet that challenge, not to land Annie on a permanent basis, but because she'd made a damn fool of him twice, and he wanted to bring her to her knees, figuratively speaking. Having her kiss him back because she wanted to would be a start, but he suspected that taking her to the next level would be a bigger challenge than hanging onto a bullrope for an eight-second ride on a bucking, rearing, kicking, sunfishing, two-ton bull, although the cowboys hanging out at Pete's Pub seemed determined to do just that, which he now found a little puzzling. "Then in high school she didn't date either?" he asked, not trying to analyze where his questioning was leading, but curious to know.

"The only high school's over a hundred miles away in Crane, and it's one of only a few public boarding schools in the country, so when it came time for Annie to go, she refused, saying she'd complete high school through the state home school program, which she did," Deke said. "Matt and Ruth tried to get her to go because they were worried she wasn't mixing with other kids her age, but Annie wanted to stay here where she could watch the wild horses, and she wants to be with Boone, the old Indian who lives on the ranch. Boone has a silver studio and he's been teaching Annie how to do silverwork since she was a kid. But Seth and I figure Annie's afraid to venture away from the ranch. She was six when the kidnapping trial against the black market adoption agency took place and she heard all about how she was stolen out of her front yard, and six is a pretty impressionable age."

"She mustn't be too afraid," Ryan challenged. "She confronted several men in Pine Grove and she's pretty much made a name for herself for… various reasons."

Deke laughed. "Like protesting bow hunting, leg-hold traps and the rodeo. But whenever she's done that, Matt sends Seth or me out to mingle in the crowd and keep an eye on her, and she knows it, even though we try to keep our distance."

"And the cowboys in town?" Ryan asked. "Do you know about the bets they're making?"

"If you mean bets about Annie, yeah, we know," Deke replied, "but those cowboys are all a bunch of hot air because they know they'd be dealing with us if anyone laid a hand on Annie."

From the look Deke was giving him, Ryan realized Deke's words were also a warning to the Kincaid Ranch's newest wrangler. To make sure Deke understood clearly where he stood, Ryan said, "Don't include me in that bunch. If I'm ever within kissing range of Annie it'll be because she moved in on me, which isn't likely to happen any time in the next millennium." He looked into Sultan’s stall, where he found Sultan contentedly munching on grain, then turned to find Deke's outstretched hand. Deke smiled. "Welcome to the ranch, Hansen."

Ryan clasped Deke's hand. "Thanks."

Deke glanced at Sultan, and said, "Annie looked pretty smug when she trotted in leading the stallion so I take it she took off with him instead of the stallion dumping you."

"Yeah," Ryan grumbled. "Willful, unmanageable horses I can handle."

Which, when Ryan added nothing more, sent a clear message to Deke that he couldn't handle one willful, unmanageable woman. But that was about to change. In fact, he made a silent bet to himself that he'd have Annie coming willingly to him, even to his bed—or sleeping bag under the stars if that were the case—within the month, or he'd join her wild-horse crusade.

The idea of taming Annie wasn't so farfetched. She'd definitely responded to his kiss. No promised knee to his crotch, just a sweet little moan while her hands kneaded his chest and her lips moved on his, and the tip of her tongue shyly teased his in a way that made him wonder if it might have been the first time she'd kissed a man back… or maybe even kissed a man. Which he found puzzling, even if she was raised in isolation, given the remoteness of the ranch…

Deke gave him a friendly slap on the back. "None of us who truly know Annie believe she's as ornery and unmanageable as she puts on. We just think it'll take the right man to handle her." His smile widened, like maybe the new wrangler could be that man.

Ryan eyed him with uncertainty. "Am I to take that as a challenge?"

Deke shrugged. "You can take it any way you want. And good luck."

As Deke walked away, Ryan looked beyond him to where Annie was standing beside an older model pickup truck while talking to an elderly man who looked to be Native American, presumably the man named Boone, who Deke mentioned. Ryan figured the man wasn't one of Matt's wranglers because he looked too old, but maybe he was retired and living out the rest of his days on the ranch. He could see Kincaid keeping the old guy on out of a kind of family obligation.

The man had his hands on Annie's shoulders and was bending toward her, like he was explaining something to her. But as he watched Annie listening intently to a man for whom she obviously held a lot of affection, he also saw the angel face that had stuck in his mind from the first time he laid eyes on her two years before. On seeing that sweet look again, the stakes in his silent bet just got higher. He wouldn't settle for just having Annie in his bed. When the big moment came he wanted to see that angel face with its big blue eyes and angel-wing lips looking up at him like she wanted him there too.

Those cowboys know they'd be dealing with us if anyone laid a hand on Annie...

On the other hand, maybe he'd better keep it in his pants like his father instructed him and his brothers to do from the time they each learned it did funny things when they played with it, and concentrate on why he was at the Kincaid Ranch, which wasn't to get it on with Annie Kincaid between trail rides.

***

Annie looked beyond Boone and saw Ryan staring at her. It was hard concentrating on what Boone was saying, knowing Ryan had to be fuming mad after his long hike back, and on arriving at the ranch, having to explain to Deke why he was on foot. When Deke saw her trotting in leading Sultan and asked what happened, she’d told him to figure it out himself, leading Deke to believe Sultan dumped Ryan. She also wondered if maybe she'd overreacted to the kiss.

"You connect with horse here." Boone tapped a dark finger against the side of Annie's head. "Watch boss mare. Study signals. Watch ear position and height of head, and foot stomping and tail swishing. Watch how she communicate with members in her band. It all about fear and trust with mare and band… the same with mare and you."

Annie was catching most of what Boone was saying, but while Boone talked, she couldn’t seem to keep from glancing over at Ryan to see if he was still watching, which he was…

"Horse interpret body language of human," Boone continued. "When human show fear, horse become dominant and aggressive and—" he stopped mid-sentence and glanced in the direction Annie was looking, and seeing Ryan, said to Annie, "and mind can't be divided when listening and learning, or when facing wild horse."

Annie looked into the astute black eyes of a man she'd come to love over the years. "My dad just hired him," she said, knowing she'd hidden nothing from Boone, who had a kind of sixth sense about people as well as horses, maybe because he was a full-blooded Shoshone who’d convinced her, when she was a kid, that Shoshones were all-knowing.

"You want this man," Boone said, as if it were a fact.

"Are you kidding?! I can't stand him," Annie replied. "He's a rodeo cowboy and you know my position on rodeos."

Boone looked over at Ryan again, and after studying him at length, said in a perceptive tone, "He has touch with animals."

Annie let out a short snort. "I'm sorry, Boone, but this time you're dead wrong. The man took the new stallion up the mesa practically at a run to prove he was Mr. Hotshot Bronco Buster." But, she couldn't deny that, from the moment Ryan was up on Sultan, the big horse seemed to want to do what Ryan asked. It had been an unexpected moment when she came to that realization.

"I watch man with stallion earlier," Boone said. "They connect. Stallion ran up mesa to please man. Horse knows."

"And I suppose Ryan Hansen won all those rodeo championships because he communicated with each of the bulls or broncs he was about to ride and they came to an agreement that they'd work as a team," Annie replied, knowing she was being testy and that Boone would probably make something of that as well.

Instead, Boone smiled and said nothing, but his silence said it all.

You want this man...

Shaking off that troubling thought, and wanting to get off the subject of Ryan Hansen and return to the subject of wild horses, she said, "I saw Chantilly's band from the mesa a couple of days ago. They were moving this way. I've been after Dad to fence off a few hundred acres out there so they won't migrate back onto BLM land, but so far Dad's not open to the idea because he says the horses tear up the pasture. But there are only fourteen horses in Chantilly's band, which couldn't do much damage. Maybe you could say something to Dad. He seems to listen when you tell him visionary things."

Boone raised his thin shoulders in a shrug, and replied, "I don't tell your father how to run his ranch. He gives me home and land to live on and asks for nothing."

Which was true. From as far back as Annie could remember, Boone lived in a stone cottage that had been built about the time of the springhouse. In years past, he raised chickens and had a small flock of milk goats and supplied the ranch with eggs, milk and cheese. But Boone was also a master silversmith, and in a studio he built himself from stones on the ranch, he made silver belt buckles, bridle rosettes, ornamental clasps for bola ties, exquisite bracelets, and other silver pieces which he sold through his son's gallery in Bend. He also taught her silverwork from the time she was old enough to handle an acetylene torch, and now her silver pieces with her signature abstracts of wild horses worked into the designs brought her an income that allowed her to live somewhat independently from her parents, though she still occupied the room where she'd lived since she was a child. But as soon as she saved enough, she planned to build a house, maybe one made from stones gathered from the ranch. She'd always liked Boone's house.

Eyeing Boone’s stern face, she said, "You wouldn't be telling Dad what to do with his land, only suggesting that if the horses wandered onto BLM land and were captured, some kind of evil spirits would descend on the ranch and cause something bad to happen, maybe another wildfire."

Boone placed his hands on Annie's shoulders again and leaned toward her like he always did when he wanted to make sure she was listening closely, and said, "I do not lie. You do not lie."

And Annie felt like a child again, and Boone had just given her a dressing down because she wanted him to do a war dance and make Indian noises and cast a spell on Seth, who'd teased her about wearing a dress. "It was just a thought," she said.

Boone eyed her with that deep dark gaze that seemed to look into her mind, and said, "You and man work together to make things right for horses."