Honey stirred and gave a slight sound in her sleep. A bolt of hunger went through him like the heat lightning on the eastern horizon. Now he was more than hot. He was rock-hard and tense with needs that weren’t going to be met in the near future.
Damnation, she might be his cousin, he reminded his libido. Since he hadn’t grown up with her, it would be hard to think of her as such if that turned out to be the case.
If not, there were other possibilities.
Waitress, tomboy, lover. There was a certain irony in the chain of thought, but at the present he didn’t find it humorous. Too much need raged through him.
From the other side of the seat, she moved again, pushing the sleeping bag aside as she grew warm. He cut the engine. The silence closed around them. He heard her sigh.
An electrical current shot through every nerve in his body. The dark felt sweetly intimate as he listened to the wind outside and the quiet sound of her breathing. If he woke her now, who would she be? Waitress? Cousin? Tomboy? Or lover?
None of the above, he mocked the thought.
It was his last thought before he fell asleep, the odd bliss of some forgotten happiness filling his dreams.
Chapter Three
Honey awoke with a groan. Her companion chuckled. She realized his stirring had disturbed her.
“The truck makes for an uncomfortable bed,” he mentioned cheerfully. “Even with carpet and a sleeping bag.”
“I noticed.” She peered at the faint light in the sky behind the hills. “What time is it?”
“Late. A little after five,” he added when she frowned at him. “I want to get home before noon.”
“Why?”
“Work,” he explained patiently. “I have to take you to the ranch, then head back to town.”
“You wouldn’t be going to the ranch if it weren’t for me, would you?”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t live there with your uncle?”
“Not all the time. I have a room in town.”
Combing her fingers through her hair, she watched him get out and walk to the rear of the SUV.
“Sorry about the cold,” he said, opening the rear door. He removed, then set up a little camping stove, poured water from a plastic jug and put it on to boil.
“Tea or coffee?” he called.
“Coffee.”
“Sugar? Powdered milk?”
“One sugar, please.” She cautiously pushed the covers down, creeping tentatively from the warmth of the sleeping bag. The temperature felt frigid to her.
“I’ll bring it to you.”
When he handed her the cup, she was almost too surprised to thank him. “It’s nice to be waited on.”
“Enjoy it while you can. It isn’t my usual style.”
She sipped the hot brew while he checked the road and declared it safe. The water was no more than six inches deep now. She retrieved her travel kit, freshened up, then paid a visit to the other side of the trees.
“You seem to think of everything—sleeping bag, stove, coffee, tea,” she said as they finished the last of the coffee, both of them in the front seat again.
“A person would be foolish to live in the mountains and not be prepared to wait out a storm.”
“Do you get lots of snow in Idaho?”
He grinned in that special way he had—rather humorous, more than a little sexy and definitely intriguing. It was his smile that had first suggested she could trust him. He’d rewarded her faith by being a perfect gentleman last night.
“Not as much as some places, but enough. Put that parka on. It’s about thirty-six degrees this morning,” he told her. “I don’t want you catching a chill before I get you to the ranch. My gear doesn’t extend to nursing facilities.”
She sighed raggedly, grateful her trust hadn’t been misplaced. There were so few people she dared put her confidence in these days. This man was very…nurturing.
She considered the descriptive word and, while she sensed there was more, much more, to the handsome deputy, it was a reasonable assessment of him.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded and noticed his glance at her hair. Since she didn’t have to hide it under a cap, she’d left it down around her shoulders.
“You look very different from your casino appearance.”
Lifting her chin, she returned his cool appraisal. “That was for work.”
“Or to hide your identity from someone?”
Her heart lurched at his correct assessment. She started to reply, then thought better of it. When unsure of what to say, it was better to be silent. He studied her briefly, then started the truck and drove onto the pavement. Almost three hours later, they arrived at a small lake formed by a dam. A community nestled close by. She opened the map of the state and asked where they were.
“Lost Valley. The town serves the ranchers and the tourists taking the scenic route on their way to Yellowstone or the Tetons or, heading west, those going to Hells Canyon in the summer.”
In the winter, she imagined, the place must be like a deep freeze. She mused on what it would be like, being snowed in for days on end. Her gaze was drawn to Zack, and her heart gave another of those odd lurches.
“Dalton,” she said suddenly. “Wasn’t there a gang by that name in the Wild West days?”
“Yeah. There’s a connection, but we’re descended from the branch that had the good guys.”
His grin was infectious. Smiling, she studied the map again and then the peaks around them when they topped a hill west of the valley.
From this vantage point, she could see all the way down to Lost Valley and the tiny town of the same name tucked in close to the reservoir. The valley was 5000 feet high, according to the map. He-Devil Mountain to the north was 9393 feet high. They were someplace between the two and still climbing.
“We’re nearly home,” he told her.
She gazed all around the panoramic scene of peaceful valley and majestic peaks, the lake and evergreen trees. “It’s beautiful here,” she said. “The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”
He gave her a skeptical glance.
“Well, I’ve only been in Southern California and then Nevada, actually only in Las Vegas, until yesterday,” she admitted. “But I’ve always been fascinated by mountains and how they formed, the vast upheavals of the earth and the forces of nature and all that.”
“Yeah, it’s fascinating,” he agreed.
She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or sincere. Keeping her thoughts to herself, she picked out more odd names on the map. There was a She-Devil Mountain, the mate to He-Devil, she decided, smiling.
“What’s funny?” he asked.
“The names. Seven Devils Mountains. He-Devil. She-Devil. Are there others?”
“There’s one called the Devil’s Tooth. Another is Mount Ogre. Mmm, the Tower of Babel, Mount Baal, the Goblin. Those are the official seven. On the ranch, we have an escarpment with a flat boulder on it that we named the Devil’s Dining Room.”
“Does your Uncle Nick live there alone?”
“No.