Twice A Target (Task Force Eagle) (11 page)

“Rob’s extravagance on the house hurt the ranch,
didn’t it?”

He sighed. “You’ve noticed.”

“Hard not to. You’ve done lots of recent repairs. I’ve
seen you babying that old field truck to get it running. And the barn roof.” A
sad tilt to her mouth, she gave a quick apologetic smile before she zipped the
camera in her case.

“Yeah, he let upkeep go. Rob was never very practical.
The ranch’ll be all right, but I have to watch every penny. There’s enough to
pay those two teenagers.”

“But no more hands. Espie said she’ll be there. She’ll
be happy to see to Bobby. I’d like to help.” She beamed him a smile, like she
was remembering other brandings when they were kids.

Maddy had already woven her way into their lives, his
and Bobby’s, with her gentle care and energy. Depending on her for any more was
a bad idea. He couldn’t let himself want to. He shook his head. “No.”

She gripped his arm. “I know how to do the vaccinating
and ear notching. Come on, you know you can use the extra hands.”

The same restlessness that had her volunteering for
ranch chores would take her away sooner than Holt wanted to think about. He
worked his jaw. “Your responsibility is Bobby, not the ranch. I’ll have to make
do. It’ll just be slow going.”

Her cheeks pinked in the freshening breeze. Even
without makeup, her creamy skin glowed as if lit from within. “And you don’t
have to pay me any money.”

No, but he’d pay, one way or another, and it would
come out of his hide. Or another vulnerable organ. He couldn’t contain a wry
grin as he replied. “Denying you’s as hard as saying no when Bobby reaches out
his little hand toward the hot stove.”

“Except I won’t get burned.”

But
he
might.

Chapter 11

Maddy watched as Holt started down the steep slope,
edging sideways in the loose scree and pine cones that crunched and clattered
as he went. Rough going for anyone.

“You need any help? I can carry your camera case,” he
called back.

At his protectiveness, she concealed a grin. Didn’t he
remember the tomboy who used to race her pony alongside him and Rob? It ought
to irritate her how he kept underestimating her, but instead it amused her.

She strapped on her case like a backpack. Using his
same crabwise maneuver, she scooted along behind him. “No, I’m used to this. My
camera stays with me.”

Rocks and pebbles skittered downhill, kicked free by
their progress.

Halfway down, she stopped and extracted her camera.
She pointed at scarred and splintered tree trunks. “Were these broken trees
damaged by the crash?”

The inner pith stood out as white as bones against the
peat-brown boles. Jagged points speared skyward. On one, a lone cedar waxwing
kept sentinel.

He hunched his shoulders. “The truck rolled and
bounced over and over. It slammed into the pines and Douglas firs. Snapped them
like twigs. It landed on its roof at the foot of the incline. You can see the
digs in the soil down there.”

In the long, muddy scrapes at the foot of the incline,
tiny green shoots poked through the soil where determined roots had taken hold.
New life where life had ended.

The futility of it stabbed Maddy like one of the
splintered branches. Seeing the fury and misery pleating Holt’s brow twisted
the point. Tears blurring her focus, she snapped pictures of the hillside and
trees before stowing the Nikon.

A few minutes later they reached the bottom.

Stones and pebbles skittered down from their recent
path of descent. The clatter built to a tumble of stones.

Before she could move, he tackled her from the side.
“Get down!” With her wrapped in his arms, he dove for cover behind a jumble of
boulders.

Like a growing snowball, each skidding nugget and
pebble attracted brothers. Stones the size of bricks caromed downward. Finally
a mass of rock and stick-littered earth crashed down the steep slope.

Maddy’s heart raced and rattled like one of the stones
that banged off their protecting boulder. Whether her reaction stemmed from
fear or from lying beneath Holt’s big body she couldn’t say. “Did we do that?”

“Looks like we started something, for sure.”

Started something? A landslide and something as
overwhelming.

Long legs on either side of hers and arms caging her,
he pressed her to the ground. His sheepskin jacket was pulled up to protect
their heads. Scented with rich, dark coffee, his hot breath warmed her cheek.
As long as the landslide didn’t smash into them, she could lie like this
indefinitely. Never mind the rocks digging into her spine.

Only when Holt slid down his jacket collar and cool
air brushed Maddy’s face did she realize that quiet had returned. An occasional
ricocheting ping announced further settling of the altered mountainside.

“Landslide’s over,” he murmured, his mouth a
millimeter from hers. His puff of breath brushed her lips, set them tingling.

“We’re okay,” she whispered. Complication or not, she
willed him to kiss her again. If he didn’t, she would grab him. Except her arms
were trapped beneath his.

He hovered above her, his eyes depthless lapis, molten
with desire, his parted lips brushing hers. “It’s safe now. We can get up.”

Deep and thick and roughened, his voice enveloped her
like a steam bath. Honeyed excitement sluiced into her. Even through their
thick clothing, each place on her body he touched became a pulse point,
trembling with want.

Arms. Breasts. Belly. Thighs.

“I know.”

On a deep breath, he lunged upward and away from her.
Standing, he held out his hand. “You all right?”

All right? More than a little loony to think she could
avoid the complication of involvement with Holt. Other than that, all right. He
had more will power than she. And yet she trembled in the aftermath. Only
adrenaline fleeing her system. Sure.

She hoisted her scuffed case. “Fine. Just fine. I want
a few more shots before we leave.”

Grasping her shoulders, he turned her toward the
hillside. Clouds of dust wafted from the stretch of rubble. More trees lay bent
and broken in its wake. No sign of the gouged earth or the hopeful sprouts that
had sprung up in the wounded soil.

He released her and lifted his arms, then swung them
down, his hands in tight fists. “Underneath that little mountain was where
Rob’s truck landed. Might as well forget it. If there was any evidence down
here at the foot of that slope, that damned slider has wiped it off the map.”

*****

The next evening, Holt and Maddy pored for the
umpteenth time over the four dozen images parading across her laptop screen.

“I hope you had fun with those last shots at the
bottom of the landslide,” he grumbled. “Nothing to see in those but rocks.” He
was being unnecessarily grumpy, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Maddy’s
presence, fresh-scrubbed with wet hair sleek and golden as honey, disconcerted
him. Even the weather conspired against him, flinging curtains of rain across
the valley all day long.

Add to that his frustration over finding so little
evidence. Nothing he could see in the pictures. In the last week, they’d
visited nearly every ranch in the valley, talked to every foreman and owner and
found nothing. No motive. No hint of lying. Nada. Only rumors of Rob’s jealousy
and temper but nothing concrete.

And a niggling suspicion that landslide didn’t start
by itself. He’d found no tire tracks up on the roadside, but the ground
might’ve been too hard to show a trace. Hell.

“Rocks, yes. Maybe more,” Maddy said, a noncommittal
expression on her face. “Let’s label them and decide which to enlarge and
print. Then we’ll begin to see something.”

“If anything’s there to see.” He was grumping again.
He shrugged. “Murphy at the Ponderosa Photo Lab in Fort Adams is a friend of
mine. He said he’d give your photos priority and do whatever you need with
them.”

A short time later they’d selected a dozen images.

“I could take the flash drive to the lab tomorrow.
Espie’ll be here,” she suggested.

He ought to agree. She’d be far enough away so maybe
he wouldn’t itch to run his finger across the smooth slope of her cheek or kiss
the vulnerable hollow of her collarbone.

Damn. It had been too long since he’d had a woman.
He’d have the hots for any woman under these circumstances. Maybe. Eight years
ago, when he’d returned home to see the girl he’d thought of as a bratty kid
marry his brother, her fresh beauty and subtle sensuality had jolted him with
heat that had him sweating.

His attraction to her and their devastating kiss had
shamed him, but that was mild compared to this craving for the woman she was
now. Her boundless enthusiasm and energy fascinated him. Why would she want
him, a stolid drudge? A grouchy, stolid drudge.

He left the table and fished a beer out of the fridge.
“In the morning after the animals are fed, I’m heading over to the Circle-S. If
you send the photos to the lab by email, you can go there with me if you want
to.” Hell, it was once her granddaddy’s ranch. He gulped a long swig of the
frosty liquid.

Maddy’s eyes glowed amethyst with pleasure. “Oh, I’d
love to see it in operation now they have guests.”

“Trail rides and trout fishing and campfires for
tenderfeet aren’t my way of ranching, but I reckon they help pay the bills.
They do run a hundred or so head of cattle too.”

She lowered her gaze to the photographs on the screen.
“Is there any reason to suspect anyone on the Circle-S?”

“Luke Rafferty may be a deputy sheriff, but he works
part time on his family’s spread. He acted mighty odd when I was at the
sheriff’s office last week.” He described the face-off between Rafferty and
Chris Hawke. “Afterward, Chris clammed up. Wouldn’t say a word about why they
pawed the ground like a couple of bulls.”

An unaccountably relieved expression on her face,
Maddy laughed, a melodic sound that heated his blood. “I know Luke, and I have
one thought.
Cherchez la femme
.”

“A woman. You think so?”

“We’ll see what we can find out tomorrow.” Standing,
she yawned and stretched. The movement pulled the soft cotton of her tee across
the swell of her breasts.

Holt downed another slug of beer.

*****

During the night a front swept the rains away, leaving
behind puddles to mirror the radiant blue sky.

At mid-morning Holt tore himself away from ranch work
to ride to the Circle-S. He wanted to just get there and talk to the Raffertys
and their hands, but no, Maddy had to make it a damned outing like they used to
when they were kids. Innocent kids.

By the time he joined her in the barn, she’d already
saddled both horses—Bandito, his paint gelding, and Chica, the buckskin mare
she’d co-opted. If she had a picnic in her saddlebags, it wouldn’t surprise
him.

As they crested the first Ponderosa pine-dotted hill
and meandered toward the bank of Ghost Creek, he hung back to study Maddy. She
wore Bonnie’s sheepskin jacket and a flat-crowned white hat of her own.

He chuckled at the excitement in her every movement.
In the high color on her fine cheekbones. In her restless gestures. In the way
she could barely sit still in her saddle. Her manner put Holt in mind of a bird
ready to take flight.

Not too far off the mark.

With customary tolerance, the gentle buckskin walked
at an even pace, but her tulip-shaped ears angled upright and inward with
curiosity.

Maddy cocked the hat back on her head for a better
view of the scenery. With the reins looped over one hand, she made a frame of
her gloved fingers and peered intently at a stand of budding aspens, their
trunks gleaming white in the sun. She withdrew her camera from a saddlebag and
clicked happily away.

She turned around to the south and stood in the
stirrups. Her enthusiasm made her complexion appear even more luminous. “Just
look at that, Holt. It’s so clear today you can see all the way to Pikes Peak.
It’s framed perfectly above the tree line. The angles and shadows are so
dramatic. This high meadow is such a magical place.”
Click.

Though he’d seen the panorama more times than he could
count, he obediently followed her gaze. The bare, rocky crest of the Peak stood
head above the fir-covered hills before them. He couldn’t help grinning—and
agreeing with her. It was a special place. Now if he could only afford to keep
it his.

“Do you look at everything like it’s a photographic
subject?” He let the sociable Bandito edge closer to Chica as they continued on
their way.

Maddy lifted one shoulder carelessly. She aimed her
camera at the creek, splashing along with spring run-off.
Click, click
.
“It’s second nature. Once I look at these on my laptop, I’d like to be able to
print some out. That could get expensive.” She stowed the Nikon.

“I can’t pay you for taking care of Bobby, but I’d
lend you money for some prints.”

“No way. You’re feeding and clothing me. I can wait
until my check comes. I gave my agent your mailing address.”

“It wouldn’t be charity. I’d like pictures of Bobby.”

A wide smile was his reward. “That’s different. A gig.
You’ve got a deal.”

He didn’t want her gratitude. Besides, it irritated
him how much she intrigued him. “When did you take up photography? I don’t
remember seeing you with a camera when we were kids.”

“You were away at college. In high school, the art
teacher put the bug in me. Back then it was film photography. Then in college,
I majored in art.” Her grin flickered to a sober expression. “Of course, I
never did finish college.”

Following her and Rob’s sophomore year and the aborted
wedding, she’d jetted away to greener pastures. “You always raved about these
peaks, their shades of green, their shadows, like they were paintings.” Or
photographs. She was a natural.

Her musical laugh triggered a reaction that made
straddling a horse damned uncomfortable.

“I have a good sense of composition and color, even
drama I’m told, but I can’t draw or paint worth a lick. That’s why the art
teacher handed me a camera.”

“I saw drama in the article on the Sudanese orphans.
And the emotion.”

“Too much emotion. It was a very tough assignment.”
She lowered her hat brim as if to block out the memories. “I wish I could have done
more for them than take their pictures. I’ve told you about Easter Island and
the Andes. Those were the fun assignments. But mostly I shoot disasters, wars,
and refugees. I always feel so helpless in the face of such tragedies.”

“Where do you see your career heading next?” Dammit,
he ought to ask, or care. A knot tightened his jaw. By the time Maddy left he’d
need dental work.

“This next assignment in June is a calendar.”
Anticipation glowed in her oval face. “I’m supposed to photograph Haitian
children for an international charity.”

“A charity, huh? Sounds like you can help people after
all.”

Her smile widened, sending sparklers through his
blood. “How perceptive of you, Holt. If the pictures help the people I
photograph, that keeps me going when I’m worn to the bone from too much travel
and too many starving babies.”

“And you’ve wound up here taking care of a baby.”

“Bobby’s a pleasure.” Her smile was genuine.

Maddy’s life wasn’t frivolous jet-setting. It had
substance and noble purpose. But her career still meant world travel. He’d
likely never see her again. She was only a temporary solution to his problems.
And a temptation he didn’t need. He kicked the gelding into a trot.