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  “You’ll feel better soon. I promise.” He took the rifle from her, and holding her hand led her to the narrow game trail.

  The rock-strewn path made for a rough climb. Isabel could not have made it without Kee’s help. Most of the dwellings had crumbled into ruins from the rock slides. But where Kee led her, the room was nearly whole. She stood near the opening, searching out their back trail for a sign of dust. There was nothing but broken rock and the shadows slowly deepening as morning light spread over the land.

  Using a pack rat’s nest, Kee got a fire started. Others had camped here and there was wood enough for a day or so if they were careful.

  “Come and sit, Isabel. Take off your boots, too.”

  She heard the grind of stone against stone as she walked toward the welcome fire. In the far corner Kee had removed a large round stone that had covered a well.

  “All the comforts of home. Our own well. I need to get Outlaw up here, but while I’m gone I want you to bathe your feet. If I don’t find those horses we’ve got a lot of walking ahead. ’Sides, it’ll make you feel better.”

  She heard small scurrying sounds coming from the tumbled rocks and listened to the rising wind. She glanced over at him, seeing the play of firelight and shadow over his hard-cut features and remembered vividly the moments when he had held her.

  “Come closer to the fire,” Kee invited. “I can see from here that you’re shivering.” Her reluctance to turn around had him adding, “Don’t worry, I won’t bite. That is, I don’t, unless invited.”

  As soon as the words were out, Kee regretted them. The air was charged with an intimacy that had been absent. He felt the tension as he slowly rose to his feet and started toward her. From the tips of her dust-laden boots to the wild tangle of her hair there should have been nothing to attract or arouse him.

  But the stirrings of need and wanting were there. Stronger than when he was about to kiss her. With her arms wrapped around her waist, dark eyes watchful and wary, Kee knew he could not, would not take advantage of her.

  As she started toward him, drawn to him by what she read in his eyes, she barely realized that he veered away from her. Without another word he left her. And she looked after him going down the path, wondering how she would deal with this new threat.

  Too weary to stand, she sat near the fire and stared at the flames. How many other women from times past had sat like this and pondered the intentions of a man?

  She felt no fear of Kee Kincaid. He would never force himself on a woman. He would not need to, a little devil’s voice supplied.

  Isabel wrapped her arms around her raised knees and watched the flames. She caught herself nodding off. Her thought was to close her eyes for a few minutes and rest, but the exhausting day had taken its toll and she slept.

  That is how Kee found her, curled like a bedraggled kitten near the fire. What he never expected was the rush of protectiveness for her.

  Wanting to share a kiss with a pretty woman was one thing. This feeling welling up from deep inside him was quite another.

  And he wasn’t sure he liked it one bit.

  Why this woman? She’d lied to him.

  So his blood pumped a little harder and a hell of a lot hotter near her; that didn’t mean he was ready to settle down.

  Whoa! Where the devil had that come from?

  Like a rope-shy colt, Kee found himself backing away from her. He set about unpacking his bedroll. But his backing away physically only lasted a few minutes. He had to pick her up, and there was no way he could mentally back off from where his thoughts were taking him.

  Isabel’s sleepy murmurs, the trusting way she curled against him, her head resting against his heart, all seemed to conspire against him. He couldn’t set her down fast enough. Then he stood there, looking down at this black-haired woman, as he absently rubbed his chest where her warm breath had slid beneath the cloth and heated his skin.

  He wasn’t sure he trusted this woman. He had made himself a promise to protect her and get her somewhere safe. That was it. He’d ride on.

  That easy, huh?

  Kee softly swore with disgust. He didn’t know. He just didn’t know the answer to that.

  Chapter Seven

  Isabel awakened to the harsh cry of a hunting hawk. Sunlight splashed the walls and floor of the stone room. Grandmother would say she had slept the sleep of the dead. She snuggled deeper beneath the warmth of the thick wool blanket and inhaled the scents of horse and sage from its folds.

  Kee’s scents. Her eyes opened wide. What a strange thought. But it was true. They were Kee’s scents and she had taken them in without knowing.

  Stretching and yawning she sat up, and everything came rushing back. All the danger of yesterday, and what she still faced. She tossed aside the blanket. As she started to stand she caught sight of the message scrawled on the earthen floor: “Eat. Rest. Gone for horses. Don’t go out. K”

  She glanced over to where the fire was contained within a ring of stones. The coffeepot sat on a large flat rock. On another rock, the pan rested with crisp bacon curled on top of a pan-size bread that had baked in the drippings.

  The note was so like the man. Nothing wasted, all orders, expecting to be obeyed. She looked with longing at the jagged-shaped window.

  Contrary to what Kee thought, she did have the sense to know she should not be seen outside. Benton and the others would be hunting for her. They would never be paid unless they handed her over.

  Her stomach rumbled a protest as the aroma of the coffee reached her. First eat, and then take advantage of these minutes of privacy which had been few since she started on her quest.

  She ate quickly, then refilled her coffee cup and went to stand to one side of the window. The day was clear and hot, yet this high up, a slight breeze made itself felt. She wondered how many times a woman had stood in this very place and watched the trail below for the sight of her man or her children.

  She glanced around, drawn to the dark doorway on the far side. Last night’s gloom had not revealed this. And today, even with sunlight in the outer room, it did not penetrate here. Perhaps a place used for storage, or a place for retreat when danger threatened. She stepped forward, dawn by some need to do so and kicked something that rattled. Afraid of snakes, she backed away to return to the sunlight. Outside in the stone room a long stick caught her eye. She could light it and explore the inner room.

  Where or why the idea came from she did not know. The feeling of being pushed to do this was strong enough that Isabel obeyed.

  The thin wavering light revealed little of the whole inner room. She discovered that what she kicked was not a snake but shells. Tiny clamshells strung together to make a bracelet. It was a thing of little value, yet Isabel lifted it carefully. Long ago some other woman stood in this place and lost this. Had she, too, been fleeing an enemy or had she been taken captive? This room, then, was not a good refuge from danger, but a trap.

  Yet as Isabel turned to go, the faltering firelight showed something against the back wall. Closer inspection showed it to be a wooden ladder. She held the lit stick high, but no trace of daylight showed. But if there was no opening, why put the ladder here?

  She was not tall enough to touch the roof, and while the ladder appeared sturdy, she was not going to attempt it alone. Cupping the shell bracelet, she once more went back to the sunlight.

  There was no telling how long Kee had been gone, but she guessed he would not be returning soon. The stone well beckoned with its supply of water. She could use the coffeepot to heat water for bathing. And while she hesitated about opening Kee’s saddlebag, she had no choice. She had nothing of her own to wear if she washed out her shirt.

  The late-afternoon sun slanted across the earthen floor when Isabel spotted Kee on the sloping trail below. She hurried to button his shirt that she still wore. A closer look and disappointment flooded her. He had not found his mares.

  As she stood to one side of the window, watching Kee, he led his horse abo
ut halfway up the trail, slapped his rump and then Kee returned below. He walked out, bending to grab handfuls of sand, then backtracked, letting the sand drift from his hand to cover the horse’s tracks.

  A careful man. She must not forget that about him. He would be tired and hungry. The hunger she had taken care of. Beans and bacon simmered in the pan, a flat rock served to bake the hoecake, made with the cornmeal she found in his pack. Coffee was ready, too.

  She waited for Kee to come, staring at the man who made her heart beat a little faster, despite his dusty appearance. Her nostrils flared like those of an animal suddenly scenting danger. Watching his long, powerful legs eat up the distance between them sent excitement rippling through her.

  All this time a little voice warned that she must not get involved with him. She had no place in her life for a man. Not one like Kee. He would take all she had, all she was, and absorb her into himself. She had to remind herself that she was not free until she completed what she had set out to do.

  But primitive forces stirred in this place. She’d felt their hovering shadows ever since she had found the shell bracelet.

  Once a woman’s home, now another woman’s refuge.

  The earth and stones provided the basic shelter necessary for survival.

  The fire offered warmth and comfort against the coming darkness.

  Food to still one hunger.

  A woman.

  A man.

  When his shadow melded with those the dying sun left behind, she turned to stare at him. A dark, powerful force made its presence felt. She named it to herself. Need. A compelling need to go to him, to offer Kee every solace that was hers as a woman to command.

  Kee stood there after he ducked through the doorway, his breath caught somewhere for a few moments. Isabel, framed by the sun’s rays in the open window, stared at him. Was she truly unaware that her eyes were wide and dark with passionate curiosity, or that her lush mouth had parted with invitation?

  He looked his fill. Her black hair a braid of dark silk that beckoned his gaze to follow its fall from her shoulder across the curve of her breast down to her slender waist. He absently noted that she was wearing his shirt. The cloth had time to absorb her warmth and scent.

  How long he stood there, he didn’t know. Every bit of the frustration that twice he’d found horse tracks and twice he’d lost them was put on hold. His gaze drifted back to her face. She hadn’t lost that almost breathless, waiting expression. He studied the delicate refinement of the angles and planes of her features.

  Here was a woman a man would never tire of looking at through all the seasons, through all his life. He found that tiny claws of need had hooked themselves inside him.

  Isabel stilled, as a fawn hiding in a thicket would still when a predator was close by. A very elemental womanly fear asserted itself. The wrong move, the wrong word…she could not understand what had happened, but she felt Kee aware of her, as she was of him. With every nerve ending alive, every beat of her heart speeding up, and the blood flowing hot and sweet as wine.

  Kee broke the spell with a muttered curse as he turned away from her. What the hell had gotten into him? He had to use his iron will to control the need that urged him across the distance to where Isabel stood with bated breath.

  For a moment he saw a flicker in her eyes and he couldn’t tell if it was relief or disappointment.

  “I’m glad to see you made yourself useful. You go ahead and eat. I’ve got my horse to tend.”

  And he was gone.

  If it were not for the instinct that she trusted above all else, Isabel would swear these past minutes had not happened. But they had, and they changed things.

  She had not imagined Kee’s hot look, nor the husky tone of his voice. Her passionate culture precluded lying to herself about when a man was aroused and very interested. Yet Kee had walked away from the taut heat between them.

  Kee Kincaid was no simple cowhand; he was complex male creature, every bit as contrary as most men claimed women were.

  That decided, Isabel looked at the food she had prepared with thoughts of sharing the meal with him. Disappointment quickly became anger. Somehow his male thinking had turned things around and he blamed her for what transpired.

  But nothing had happened. A shared long look. A tense feeling of heat building and…poof…he was gone like the cool breeze she’d enjoyed all afternoon.

  And he whistled.

  He dared stand a few feet from the doorway and whistle while he brushed dry grass over his horse.

  She bit her lip. Everything happened for the best. She did not want to kiss him. She did not want to be near him now, either.

  As if he could divine her thoughts, Kee whistled a little louder. He had a fondness for women, raised as he was in a household where their wants, their imaginings, even their direct and explosive anger were freely expressed. He knew a great deal about women’s little tricks to get the men in their lives to do what they wanted. He had had some of the best teachers to show him how to avoid a woman’s snares.

  But even as the thoughts formed, Kee wondered why he’d gone off in this direction. Isabel had not done one darn thing but stand there by the window.

  With a body so delicate she moved like a shadow.

  He couldn’t forget that.

  Or her eyes that seemed to look inside a man and demand everything he was or could be.

  And that mouth…

  He stopped his brushing and leaned against Outlaw.

  Isabel’s mouth was worth at least an hour or two of the deepest, and most serious male contemplation.

  The taste, and the feel, fast heat or cool passion.

  Damn! He gave himself a mental shake. He knew exactly what had gotten his back up.

  All day long he could not keep her out of his thoughts.

  Kee stroked his mustang’s neck. “This is bad, boy. Real bad,” he whispered with a hard look toward the dwelling. “I’ve lost my horses. I’m entangled in who knows what. I should be demanding that she tell me her story, only the truth this time, and all I can think about is how that mouth of hers would fit to mine.”

  Outlaw tossed his head and Kee’s hand slipped off. “All right, boy. There’s a lot more about how we’d fit that clouded my head today. And it’s going to stop.”

  Kee led the horse into a broken-walled room where sparse grass fought to grow through the cracks in the rock. He had already watered him down below at the springs where he had found the second set of his horses’ tracks. With a light slap, Kee left the mustang. He took a long look around as dusk covered the land, noting where the shadows fell, and the deeper pockets that could provide concealment.

  There was no sign that he had been followed.

  But then, he reminded himself as he slung his saddle over his shoulder, he had not cut any rider’s sign all day.

  Isabel looked up as he came inside. She wore a carefully schooled neutral expression. “The food is still warm, if you want to eat.”

  “I owe you an apology.”

  She twisted fully around, her hands clasped in her lap. “For?”

  “For that crack about making yourself useful. It was uncalled for, and I apologize.”

  “I see. Accepted.” And she turned back to the fire.

  Kee dropped his saddle opposite where she had spread out his bedroll. He shot one long, regretful look at the blankets that would be sleeping one for tonight and maybe awhile to come.

  He settled himself across from the fire that Isabel stared into.

  “While I eat,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument, “you can tell me the truth about this gold mine and those men.”

  If Kee had expected a protest or some other feminine ploy to put him off, her direct gaze quickly disabused him of that. The woman, he decided, had the damnedest way of keeping him off balance. Just when he figured he had her all figured out, she changed into someone else.

  “Yes, Kee. It is time for you to know.”

  Chapter Eight
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br />   Isabel closed her eyes for a moment, praying for courage. When she opened them, she found that Kee watched her with his dark, steady gaze that she thought saw too much of her.

  “Kee, I owe you an apology, too, for I have lied to you about where the mine is.”

  “And that’s not the only lie,” he snapped.

  The hot flush of color tinting her high cheekbones made him mumble that he was sorry for jumping on her. He was just having trouble keeping his mind where it belonged—on facts and the truth. Words and his own trusted instincts.

  But sane reasoning had to fight Isabel, lovely and mysterious, lit by the firelight, caressed by the play of shadows. That hot, restless feeling that he’d tried to deny from the first time he saw her was back. With a vengeance.

  And it was his problem to deal with. As Isabel began, Kee leaned forward to hear her soft voice.

  “To understand, I must tell you of what happened at the time Coronado came to this land. It is then that my grandfather’s family began this quest. In his search for the seven golden cities of Cibola, Coronado came north from Mexico in 1540. The lands here were the golden heart of the Apache Thunder god. It was their belief that here is where storms are born, and it is home to an evil spirit that will kill any who try to find the trail to the treasure.

  “Superstition Mountain. An apt name for a place that began and ended in legends so colored by truth and lies, few will ever know the whole story. It is a secretive place, dark gray with its jagged peaks so forbidding to a child.”

  Her pause drew out as memories seemed to hold her. And Kee filled the silence.

  “Is that how you saw it, through the eyes of a child?”

  “The first time, yes. My grandfather took me there. Not to the mine, but to stand at the foot of the mountain. It was there that he told me what befell the soldiers with Coronado. Two brothers of my grandfather’s family had accompanied him. One went with a small band to search up the mountain. After a storm they were found. It was days later. The bodies were—” here her voice broke and she looked down “—they were headless. The brother wished to take back to his mother the golden cross like his own. And he wished to bury his brother and the others. There was a fight with the other soldiers. They wished to flee the place quickly.