Given her nature, this did not make her feel remotely better.
“He can use that chip on his shoulder to light a forest fire,” she told Belle. She grinned, feeling a little giddy. “Okay, wait, I have another one. There once was a man named Daggert…that’s too hard. There once was a man named James, who never would talk to the dames.”
“Enjoying yourself?”
She blushed as she never had before. It wasn’t a gentle rise of color; it was a raging conflagration of embarrassment. She hadn’t seen him halt his horse, and had caught up with him, literally unaware. But she lifted her chin, met his eyes directly and said, “Immensely.”
“We’ll stop here for lunch,” he said, and dismounted.
“Fine. Good.” Her stomach growled at the mere thought of food. She’d been foolish to give her eggs to Sancho. But she wasn’t about to admit it. “Belle could use a break.”
“Right,” he said. “Want a hand down?”
“No, thank you. I’m perfectly capable.”
“Just keep hold of the saddle horn.”
It took her about five minutes to dismount and another five before she could let go of the saddle horn. “I’d kill him,” she murmured to Belle, “but then how would we find Enrique? And I’m not sure I could find my way back alone.”
She gratefully accepted the moist towelettes he handed her, and leaned against the large boulder he’d selected as a shady picnic spot. She’d been too tired—and too busy making up nasty Daggert limericks—to notice the terrain while riding. It had changed considerably since dawn.
Low foothills, sparsely covered with scrub pine and liberally dotted with cholla cactus and chamisa, gave way to taller mountains in the distance. She’d read somewhere, probably in the material that came when they were first considering buying Rancho Milagro, that the Guadalupe Mountains weren’t technically part of the Rocky Mountains proper. They belonged to an older range, from the Devonian Period, and were more similar in nature to the Appalachians than to the Rockies, filled with caves, such as the Carlsbad Caverns, and pocketed with numerous sinkholes. Beneath the Guadalupes, oil awaited recovery, and within them somewhere, a little nine-year-old boy needed rescue.
Daggert whistled for Sancho and set out a bowl of water for him.
Leeza waited for a cup this time and accepted the warmish liquid with as much gratitude as she had the towelettes. She remained standing as she drank this time; however, her bottom being so sore she’d have cried out at contact with the solid ground.
Apparently unfazed by the long ride, Daggert sat down Indian-style and used a long, curved knife to pry apart something in a deep pouch. A moment later he pulled out a long strip of beef jerky. Using the blade of the knife, he handed the piece up to her.
While she was a personal fan of beef, believing recent medical findings declaring red meat to be rich in iron and calcium, she couldn’t say she was remotely fond of it salted, dried and rendered into strips of peppered leather. Add jalapeños to it and it was pure torture.
She spat her bite into her used towelette.
Daggert used his knife to tear off another piece of jerky and tossed it to an eager Sancho.
Sancho caught the bit of beef with alacrity and gulped it down after slashing it only a couple of times with his white teeth. He sat on the pebbled sand and whined.
Daggert tossed him another piece, which the dog caught but set down. He whined again.
“What is it, boy?” Daggert asked.
The dog lifted his right paw as if wanting to shake hands, or as if he’d acquired a thorn.
Daggert checked the raised paw, apparently found nothing amiss and ruffled the dog’s neck. “Go ahead,” he said.
The dog looked from the beef to his master and whined as he again lifted his paw.
“What are you telling me, Sancho-dog?” Daggert asked.
Sancho barked in answer before finally eating the piece of jerky he’d set aside.
Daggert watched him, frowning, then tore another piece free and passed it up to Leeza.
She held up her hand. “Please. No.”
“Too hot?” he asked. “So you’re as tender mouthed as you are a tenderfoot.”
“I think I have this figured out,” she said. “In your mind, I’m the ‘disliked one,’ the one who caused Enrique to run away.”
Daggert looked at the dog nearby. He gave Sancho a nod and the setter answered with a swift bark before tearing away from the picnic site.
“You don’t even want your dog to hear this,” Leeza said.
Daggert sighed, and the patronizing patience on his face fanned her fury. “You’ve decided the whole subject is taboo—at least you won’t talk to me about it. You don’t care to know the reasons why he may have decided to dislike me. Not you. Oh, you asked me last night, but you didn’t make any comment on my answer. Because you don’t care. Your mind is made up. It’s as obvious as the nose on your chiseled face that you’re making me a whipping boy. The more discomfort I feel, the more you like it. And you think the harder you push me, the more I’ll fall apart right in front of your golden eyes. Do you want to know why?”
He didn’t say anything, but his eyes had narrowed.
“I do,” she said, ignoring the sign of his growing anger. “I’ve had hours to study the question. And I think I have the answer. I think your whipping-boy complex stems from a deep-rooted fury at yourself because you didn’t manage to find someone. That you failed in your big search once. I don’t know who or what they meant to you, but it was—”
Leeza didn’t see Daggert move. She heard a low growl and a whoosh and then felt the wind being knocked out of her. For a full two seconds, she wasn’t even aware he’d lunged at her.
She focused on several things simultaneously: his muscled body pressing her against the boulder behind her. The knife he’d been using to tear the beef jerky being held against the hollow of her throat. And the tawny eyes she’d stupidly thought unreadable glaring into hers, filled with rage.
“Never talk about my son again,” he said. How had she thought his voice was like velvet? It was a razor, sharp and deadly.
She tried to nod, but his hand against her chin prevented movement.
So slowly it made her tremble, he lowered the knife’s point from her throat. But he didn’t release her. His eyes still burned with fury, but no longer, thankfully, with murderous intent. His knife hand trailed down her arm in a slow, strangely electrifying sensation. It was the very opposite of sensual, yet every nerve ending she possessed seemed attuned to his touch.
“Tell me you’re listening to me,” he growled.
“I—I’m listening.”
“Tell me you won’t do it again.”
“I won’t. Of course I won’t.” She could feel the heat of his body covering hers and sharp edges of the boulder digging into her shoulder blades. She registered the corded muscles in his legs against hers and, most of all, his arousal. “Please,” she murmured, not sure what she was asking him for.
“Please?” he whispered.
Her breath felt trapped inside her and she was fairly sure he could feel her heart thundering against his chest. He looked from her eyes to her lips, and something twisted on his face. His eyes closed and she had to bite back a whimper as she felt the anger draining from him.
When he opened his eyes again, she realized that while the anger might be ebbing, the tension in him hadn’t. But