She glanced down at the basket she held and toyed with a delicate bloom. “It’s not really a flower. It’s wild germander, an herb—and rare in this part of the high country.”
“And rare makes it special enough to risk falling off the side of a mesa?”
He thought he saw a shadow of pain cross her delicate features. Luke knew about pain, both personally and professionally, knew how it ate at a man’s soul.
His soul.
She pinched off a blossom and raised it to her nose, sniffing its scent. “It’s special for its…medicinal value,” she said, then her chin rose. “I really do have to go.”
She took a step, but again Luke stopped her. “What’s your name?”
She hesitated as if trying to decide if it were proper to introduce herself to a man she met on a mesa in the middle of nowhere. After a moment trust won out. She gave him a slight smile. “Mariah,” she said.
“Mariah.” He repeated it after her, liking its lilt, its music. It would slide easily off a man’s tongue during a night of lovemaking. “I’m Luke,” he offered. “Luke Phillips.”
He deliberately didn’t mention the doctor part. He wasn’t sure he could claim the right—or that he wanted to. All his finely honed skills had failed him the one night they had mattered the most.
Now they were of no use to him.
“Hello, Luke Phillips,” she answered. There was a slight hesitancy to her soft voice, something he could understand, given the circumstances.
But there was something quiet, serene, about her. Something that gave him peace somehow. Was it a part of who she was? Or something she had perfected? Whichever, he liked that about her—and wished he could find some for himself.
“Tell me about its medicinal value, this…this wild germander.”
Mariah Cade studied the man in front of her. She wasn’t afraid of him—though she had been at first. Just a little. Or maybe she’d just been surprised at seeing him. She seldom ran across another living soul when she was out gathering her herbs.
It was her quiet time—time to take stock of her life, perhaps wish things could be different, better. Better for Callie. She’d do anything to find the right herbs for her daughter, whether they grew on the side of a mesa or the far side of the moon.
She considered how best to answer the man, whose very shadow dwarfed her with its size. He had shoulders as wide as a mountain, a broad, densely muscled chest, lean hips and a strength, a potent masculinity that emanated from him like shimmers of heat off the desert plain.
His face commanded a woman’s attention, with its strong Nordic features that hinted at a ruthless Viking or two in his ancestry—steel-blue eyes, a straight proud nose, square chin and a mane of brown hair, tipped blond by the sun. His skin, too, showed the kiss of sunshine, his body glistening like gold dust.
“It’s an herb with many uses,” she said, not sure she wanted to reveal more to this stranger. Perhaps she was protecting Callie, perhaps herself.
She hadn’t missed the smile that had played at the edges of his mouth, a smile that played there now, as if he might be mocking her and her simplistic ways.
She ran a finger down a long entwined root, secure in her knowledge that this would help Callie, which was the important thing. The only thing, she thought as her daughter’s bright smile flickered through her mind.
Callie was her life, had been from the moment she’d been conceived. They were bound together as tightly as two people could be.
“Plants can cure,” she said, her voice low and wispy. “And sometimes they bring peace and calm.”
Peace.
Calm.
Luke could use a little of both in his life—and he wondered if this small slip of a woman had somehow cornered the market on them both, if she held the key there in her basket of jumbled roots and flowers.
He was tempted to stick around and find out—but he lived in a world of reality. A painful reality. And the only cure for it was to keep moving. Where, he didn’t know. Or care. Anywhere would do, if it eased his pain; if it made him forget—even a little.
His gaze skimmed over her, taking in her appealing curves in her dusty jeans and soft red blouse. Small Indian beads dangled from her earlobes in a spill of silver and bright color—and he longed to reach out and touch them.
Touch her.
If only to assure himself she was real—and not a dream his tired mind had conjured up.
Her shoulders were slight, her spine straight as a new sapling, and he had the feeling she could move over the terrain as easily as the white-tailed deer he’d glimpsed from the road as he’d passed through this high-desert land.
“So, are you off to gather more plants?” he asked, wondering if she took a siesta to escape the afternoon heat—or if she were somehow immune to it.
She checked the level of the sun, judging her time from it the way others would consult a watch. “Yes—for a little while yet.”
She turned to leave. Again Luke wanted to keep her with him, but he had no reason to, at least no logical reason. He was merely passing through and their paths had crossed.
He watched her go, tripping off down the trail in her soft moccasins. He wondered what—or who—might be waiting for her at home.
A husband?
A child?
But that, he knew, was none of his business.
At least for a little while she’d made him forget his pain. And that was something no one had been able to do for him these past dark, empty months.
A few hours later Mariah’s basket was full to overflowing. Indian fig, wild licorice, comfrey root. Mariah was pleased to have found them all. It had been a good day. She now had enough herbs to last for a while.
She turned and started back toward the ancient truck she’d parked down by the stream that flowed briskly in the spring, fed by the snowmelt from the high mountains.
When summer came, it would dry up to dust and rock, but for now there was enough cool water to splash over her face and arms before she began her drive home.
She’d strayed farther than she’d intended today, but the hope of finding more plants had lured her on. Many of the herbs she needed were scarce in this high-desert region, but Mariah would search until she found that one lone plant. And when she couldn’t find what she needed, she’d substitute.
Una Roanhorse had taught her well. The old Hopi woman’s eyes were failing now—she could no longer gather roots and plants for herself, so Mariah shared what she had with her. In return, Una looked after Callie. It was a good arrangement. Callie loved the older woman, loved the Hopi tales Una often told her, the same tales Mariah had heard as a child growing up on the land of her people.
Mariah’s father had been a bahana, a white man. She didn’t remember him, though. He hadn’t bothered to stay around. Her mother had died many years before, and Mariah had strayed from the native ways—not feeling like a bahana, not feeling entirely Hopi, either.
She’d known very little about the plants and herbs the earth gave, or how beneficial they could be. Not until she’d needed them—for Callie.
Mariah was grateful to Una for sharing her knowledge. The herbals helped Callie as nothing else had been able to do.
Certainly not the doctors’ medicines.
Una had become a friend when Mariah moved here two years ago. Mariah’s marriage to Will Cade had