The Pretender (5 page)

She went on gazing at him, and the off-balance sensation grew. He felt as if he were falling into her eyes. Then she smiled—really smiled—and his breath stopped.

“So, you are Indian… And if you’re the ranch manager,” she said, “that would make you also a cowboy, right?”

He gave a short bark of surprised laughter, and somehow found himself smiling back at her, the defensive belligerence stuffed back in the bottom drawer of his past where it belonged. She didn’t deserve it.

She’s not Heather.

“I prefer Native American, but yeah, I guess it does. Half and half, actually. My mother’s people are local Tubatulabal and Navajo. My father was white.”

She was still looking at him, chewing on her lower lip in a way that made him wonder whether she’d even heard him. Once again, he asked, “What?” without the defensiveness this time, smiling wryly.

She shook her head. “I didn’t expect… I thought the lawyer would be picking me up—Mr. Branson....”

The carousel beeped a loud warning and started to move. She stepped up to the edge,
and Sage moved with her, leaving the cat carrier unattended. The way he figured it, if someone wanted to snatch the cat, good luck to him.

“Alex?” he said. “He lives in Beverly Hills. Sorry to disappoint you. You got me.”

She threw him a quick look. “I’m not…disappointed. It’s just…you’re not what—you’re not
who
I expected.” And there was that
something
in her eyes again, something
he couldn’t figure out. Uncertainty? Vulnerability? Fear?

She watched a line of suitcases make its slow, wobbling way toward them, then glanced at him again and said, “Am I what you expected?”

That was unexpected. He tried a smile. “What kind of question is that?”

“Just wondering.” She gave a one-shoulder shrug and turned from him, in a way that made her seem isolated and alone,
there in that crowd of people.

And it occurred to him suddenly that she could very well be scared, and that she had every reason to be. She was a New York girl—a city girl—who’d come all the way to the wild California mountains to meet a grandfather she’d never seen, never knew existed until a few weeks ago, on the strength of a letter from a lawyer she didn’t know from Adam. And she was
met by someone she’d never heard of, who could be anybody, in fact. So, no wonder she was edgy, he thought. His chest warmed with sympathy for the woman as he took his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

“You’re exactly what I expected,” he said to reassure her, and he was thinking,
That’s a lie. I didn’t expect you’d steal my breath, make me feel like a newborn calf.
Like a boy, not a man.
“But I understand if you need to make sure I am who I say I am. Here—you can call Alex yourself. He’s number three on speed dial, or you can punch in the number he gave you if that makes you feel better.”

Abby stared at the phone, at the strong work-worn hand that held it, her thoughts in a dizzy whirl.

What should I do? He obviously thinks I’m Sunny. I should
tell him. But…I don’t know who he is, what he is to my—to Sunny’s grandfather—to this Sam Malone. I can’t just blurt out to an employee that she’s dead. Can I? I have to tell him—Sam Malone—personally. Or at least the lawyer, Alex Branson.

She shook her head, refusing the cell phone. “No—that’s okay. I’m sorry, I’m just…” She tried to laugh, the shrugged. “Hey, what can I say, I’m a New
Yorker. We don’t trust that easily.”

“I guess a little paranoia’s probably a good thing to have in the Big City.” He said it like it was in capitals. He was smiling at her, his teeth white in his dark-tanned face.

She said, “Yeah.” And laughed again, though she barely had breath.

She hadn’t expected
that.
A man who took her breath away.

Abby moved in a world of beautiful
people, beautiful faces, beautiful bodies. Beautiful men, beautiful women, every single one of them desperate to turn that beauty into a career, or at the very least, a paycheck. It was a world where physical beauty was a commodity, something to be jealously guarded and tended. She wondered if what made this man, Sage, so different was that he didn’t seem aware of the fact that he was gorgeous.
Or if he was, simply didn’t consider it important.

He wasn’t all that tall, barely taller than she was—his cowboy boots had modest heels, similar in height to her own—but the light blue shirt and Western-style leather jacket he wore couldn’t disguise the width and power in his shoulders and chest. His hips were slim in comfortable-looking jeans, and the leather belt at his waist had a silver
buckle inlaid with turquoise in a Native American design. He moved with a natural and unself-conscious grace most of the dancers she’d known in the world of New York City theatre would have given anything to possess.

But it was his face that captivated her in a way she found almost hypnotic. His skin was flawless, the richest, warmest shade of brown she’d ever seen, and lay smoothly over
bones that were strong and proud as some magnificent sculpture. His cheekbones were high and broad, his nose slightly hooked, his chin strong and masculine. But his mouth was sensual, with lips as beautifully shaped as a woman’s, and when he smiled his teeth showed white and even. His eyes were black as coal, set deep beneath straight brows and shaded by straight, thick lashes, and even when he smiled,
their gaze remained somber and mildly appraising. His hair was glossy black, swept sleekly back from a high, smooth forehead, twisted into a thick rope and knotted tightly at the back of his head in a style she thought might be traditional Navajo. She found herself wondering how long it was, and whether he ever wore it hanging loose. The image that rose in her mind at that thought made her
breathing quicken.

She wanted to go on looking at him. Found it hard to tear her gaze from his face. Which was not only unnerving, but embarrassing and probably rude, and no doubt why he kept asking her,
“What?”

She really did have to stop staring at him.

“I guess one of these must be yours?” His voice seemed to come from a great distance.

She jerked her attention back
to the carousel, and to her predicament. “Oh—yes—I think that’s it—the sort of greenish gray one without wheels…”
Sunny’s suitcase.
She watched it slide toward her, her vision suddenly shimmered and fogged by unexpected tears.
I have to tell…if not him, then someone. But how? And when?

What am I going to do?

Sage snagged the suitcase and swung it effortlessly to the floor. “Do you
have anything else?”

“Just a backpack—it’s dark blue with black trim. I think that might be… No, wait…” His sleeve brushed hers, and she flinched as if a torch had narrowly missed setting her ablaze. Embarrassed, she stood miserably next to him, watching other people’s luggage drift past, wondering what he must think of her reaction. Her insides vibrated and her jaws cramped with tension.
She felt more nervous than she’d ever felt before a performance, waiting in the wings, listening for her cue.

Then she thought:
A performance. That’s what this is—a role. I’m playing Sunny. I have to, for now. For just a little while longer. I need to remember that.

“There—that one.” She pointed, and Sage snatched the backpack from the carousel one-handed and swung it onto his left
shoulder. With his right hand he picked up the suitcase, then set it back down with a soft grunt and gave her a wry grin. “No wheels, huh?”

She shrugged an apology. “I know—sorry. It’s all I had. I thought about getting a new one with the credit card Mr. Branson sent, but I wasn’t sure if I—”

“Hey, it’s okay.” He drew himself up, flexing his arm, and his smile grew pained. But he shook
his head and reached again for the suitcase. “I was kidding.”

He tipped his head toward the cat carrier, standing alone in the diminishing crowd. “If you’ll bring your kitty cat—”

She picked up the carrier and fell in beside him. “You mean, The Beast.”

He chuckled, and the sound was like warm fur on her shivering nerves. “My truck isn’t too far away.”

“Truck? As in…pickup?”
She hefted the cat’s carrier and raised her eyebrows, asking a silent question.

He didn’t look her way, but a smile teased the side of his mouth. “Don’t worry, it’s got a backseat.” Then he flashed her an appraising look. “It’s not far to where I’m parked, if you don’t mind walking.”

“Hey, I’m a New Yorker,” she retorted, and was rewarded with that soft laughter. She laughed back.
It felt good, and she began to relax a little.

I’ll tell them when I get to the ranch,
she told herself.
He’ll probably be there—Sunny’s grandfather. Sam Malone. To meet me—
her.
Of course he will.

I’ll tell him then.

“I can’t get used to all this…this
space,
” Abby said, waving a hand in the general direction of the hills rolling by outside the windows of the late-model white
pickup truck.

“The Basques still graze sheep on these hills. I haven’t seen them in a long time, though.”

The compulsion to look at him became too much for her willpower. She gazed at his profile, dark against the moving scene, and something stirred inside her chest. “The Basques? What about your—um.” She stuttered to a halt and looked away again, not wanting to say the wrong thing.
The politically incorrect thing. Wondering why that should be, when as a New Yorker she was used to blurting out whatever was on her mind, and if someone had a problem with that…tough.

“My
people?
” He sounded amused rather than insulted. “The native people here were hunter-gatherers, not sheepherders. There weren’t any sheep or cattle before the white men came.”

“It must have been
very different. Before—”

“When the first white men came to this valley, they found the native peoples camped on the shores of a lake. There was plenty of food—elk and deer, ducks and geese, and fish. They gathered the reeds that grew in the shallows to make baskets.”

“Your people?” she asked when he paused.

He shook his head. “No, they were Yowlumni-Yokuts—a different tribe.
The Tubatulabal were from the valley to the east of here—up the river, where we’re going. Anyway, the white men thought this looked like a good place to live, so they built a city.” Now there was no mistaking the amusement in his voice.

“Only trouble is, they weren’t wise in the way of this land, like the native people. They didn’t know that in the springtime when the snow melts in the high
country, the water comes here—to fill the lake. For the native people this was no problem, they just packed up and moved to higher ground. Kind of hard to pack up and move a city.”

“So, what happened? I’m guessing it got flooded?”

“Sure did.” He glanced at her. “After it happened to the white men’s city a couple of times, the Army Corps of Engineers came and built a dam. So, instead
of flooding the city of Bakersfield, they flooded the valley upriver.”

“The valley of your people.”

He shrugged. “By that time the valley belonged to the white cattle ranchers, so it didn’t really affect the Native people that much. It flooded some of the old village sites.” His tone was neutral, and a smile played around his lips as he looked at her again. “It’s still a beautiful
valley. And a beautiful lake.”

“And…how do we get to this beautiful valley? Don’t tell me—we have to go over these mountains?”

“Not over—through.” He nodded toward the windshield, where the mountains loomed ahead like a wall, growing ever closer.

“I don’t see— I mean,
how?
”

He chuckled. “Follow the river.”

Then she saw it—the mouth of the canyon, like a giant fissure
in the earth—or a hungry maw waiting to swallow them. She gasped.

“I hope you don’t get carsick,” he said, as the pickup slowed abruptly, then swept into the canyon, past rock cliffs that seemed to hang directly above their heads, close enough to the side of the car to scrape the paint. “If you do, the trick is to find a focal point—”

“Hey—I’m a dancer, I know about focal points, okay?
How do you think we keep from getting dizzy when we spin?”

It was false bravado; what she wanted to do more than anything was shut her eyes, squeeze them tight so she couldn’t see Death coming. But she was damned if she’d let him see how terrified she was. And damned if she was going to get sick in his car. Or pickup truck.

Oh, Sunny, she thought as she gripped the door’s armrest and
silently prayed.
What have you gotten me into?

To Sage’s relief, she didn’t get sick, though he couldn’t help but notice she had some trouble remembering about the focal point. She kept craning her neck to look up, or hitching forward in her seat to look past him, over the side to the river below. And while he couldn’t very well look at her to confirm his suspicion, he would have sworn
more of her suppressed gasps had to do with the vision of wildflowers cascading down the canyon walls than with the roller-coaster twists and turns of the road.

“It’s beautiful,” she said finally, sitting back and evidently trying once again to focus her eyes on the pavement ahead.