“Being carried off like a sack of flour is hardly my idea of excitement, Mr. Lang.”
“Ah. A career woman.” He made it sound like a mutated strain of leprosy.
“I’m not a career woman. I have a job that I like and I’m very satisfied with my life and myself.”
“How old are you?” he persisted.
“Twenty-five,” she said after a minute.
“Not a bad age,” he remarked. He blew out a cloud of smoke. “I’m thirty-seven.” She didn’t say anything and he smiled mockingly. “No comment? No curiosity about my life?”
“What do you do, Mr. Lang, besides run this ranch?” she asked politely and folded her restless hands in her lap.
“I’m a mining engineer. I work for a company near Bisbee. You’ve heard of the Lavendar Pit, I imagine? It was the biggest mine around in the heyday of mining here in southeastern Arizona. Of course, now it’s little more than a tourist attraction. But we have plenty of other mining interests, and I work for one of them.”
“I’ve heard about the Lavendar Pit, but I haven’t seen it yet. I don’t know much about Arizona. Do you like your work?”
“Sometimes. I like geology. Rocks fascinate me. I was a rock hound as a kid and as I got older, I found that I liked it enough for a career. I studied it in college for four years, got my degree, worked briefly for an oil company and finally wound up here.” He took another draw from his cigarette. “I might have gone to Alaska to work, but my father died and mother couldn’t manage the dude ranch alone.”
“You…never married?”
He shrugged. “No reason to,” he said honestly. “It’s a great time to be a man, in a world where women would rather be lovers than wives. All the benefits of marriage, no responsibilities.”
“No security, no shared life, no children,” she added.
He shifted in his chair. “That’s true. Especially, no children. How about you, Miss Haley? Why are you still single yourself?”
“I haven’t ever been in love,” she said simply, smiling as she glanced his way. “I’ve had proposals and propositions but I’ve never cared enough to give my heart.” Or my body, she could have added.
“I can understand that.”
She glanced at him, but she couldn’t see him well enough to gauge his expression.
He leaned toward her, his eyes narrowed. “Why did you come out here?”
“I wanted to do something wild just once in my life, if you must know,” she replied. “My sister—she’s five years older than I am—leads me around like I’m a lost soul. She’s so afraid that I’ll have a terrible accident and die. Our parents are gone, and that would leave her alone in the world. I can’t seem to breathe without Joyce Ann asking if I’ve got asthma. I haven’t been out of Jacksonville in my whole life, so I thought it was time. I escaped on a plane and didn’t tell Joyce Ann where I was going. I left her a note and told her I’d call her in a week and tell her where I was.”
“I imagine she’s worried,” he said quietly.
“Probably.” She stared at her hands. “I guess it was a cowardly thing to do.”
“Why don’t you go inside and call her? You don’t have to tell her where you are. Just tell her you’re all right.”
She hesitated, but only for a minute. “I should, shouldn’t I?” she asked softly.
“Yes, you should.” He got up and reached a lean, very strong hand down to pull her up. For a few seconds, they were almost touching and she had her first really good look at his face.
He had a lean face with a jutting chin and thin lips and high cheekbones. His eyebrows were dark over deep-set eyes and there were little wrinkly lines at the edges of his eyes. His hair was thick and very dark and he combed it all straight back away from his face. He was a hard-looking man, but appearances could be deceptive. He was much more approachable than she’d imagined.
If she was looking, then so was he. His gaze was slow and very thorough, taking in her delicate features like a mop soaking up water. The hand still holding hers contracted with a caressing kind of pressure that made her stomach tighten as if something electric had jumped inside it. She almost gasped at the surge of delicious feeling.
“Don’t stay up too late,” he said. “You’re two hours behind your time in Jacksonville. It will take a couple more days for you to get used to the difference.”
“All right. Thank you, Mr. Lang.”
“Most people call me Nate,” he said quietly.
“Nate.” She liked the way it sounded. He must have liked it, too, because he actually smiled. He dropped her hand and stood back, letting her move around the chair and back to the small guest cabin she occupied. She paused at the corner of the patio and looked back. She made a little farewell gesture with her hand, smiled back self-consciously, and went on her way.
Joyce Ann was outraged when she found out where Christy was.
“You might at least have asked my advice,” the older woman said. “Honestly, Christy, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. The new clothes, the new hairstyle, and going without your…”
“Now, Joyce Ann,” Christy soothed, “you said yourself that I was getting into a rut. I’m fine. There are some very handsome men out here,” she added, dangling the sentence like bait.
Joyce Ann swallowed it whole. “Men?”
“That’s right. Especially one. He’s very dashing and romantic, and he’s always talking to me.” Well, that was true, except that the way he was talking to her wouldn’t sound very romantic to her sister.
“Well, he couldn’t be much worse than Harry, I guess,” came the reply.
Christy didn’t like thinking about Harry. He was more of a last resort than a suitor, the kind of man her more staid image attracted. Harry probably wouldn’t have cared for the new her. “Harry’s been nice to me,” she said. “It’s just that he wants a mother for his sons more than he wants a wife.”
“You aren’t desperate enough to marry Harry,” Joyce Ann said firmly. “Now tell me about this Arizona man.”
“He’s sexy and very nice.”
“That’s different,” Joyce Ann said, and laughed. “In that case, I’ll forgive you for worrying me to death. How long are you going to stay?”
“Another week or so.”
“Good, good. Darling, do let me know how things go. And do, please, wear your—”
“Goodnight, Joyce Ann. I’ll keep in touch, I promise!”
She hung up with a long sigh. That was out of the way. Now she could enjoy herself, without having Joyce Ann hang over her shoulder trying to shove men in her path.
The image change was her own idea, though, not her sister’s. She was tired of the routine her life had become. She wanted to do something wild, something different. And people had to take chances and do outrageous things once in a while if they didn’t want to stagnate. So she’d signed on for this expedition, something she’d always longed to do, she’d bought new clothes unlike anything she’d ever worn before, and she’d changed her appearance. There were a few little minor drawbacks, like walking into people, but in the meantime she was having a ball. Until tonight, she’d actually forgotten Harry and his plans for her.
As