"Mr. Blackthorn-"

"Ten," he interrupted.

"-whether I hate or love men is irrelevant to you or any other man I meet."

"I'll agree about the other men, but not me."

"Why?"

"I'm the man you're going to spend the next five days alone with."

"What?" Diana asked, staring at Ten.

"One of the grad students broke his ankle climbing up a canyon wall," Ten said. Without pausing in his explanations, he whipped the truck around a washout on one side of the road and then a landslide ten yards farther down. "Another one got a job in Illinois working on Indian mounds. The other three can come out only on the weekends because they work during the week."

"So?"

"So I'm staying at the September Canyon site with you."

"That's not necessary. I've been alone at remote digs before."

"Not on the Rocking M you haven't. There will be an armed guard on the site at all times." Without altering his tone at all he said, "Hang on, this will get greasy."

The relaxed lines on Ten's body didn't change as he held the truck on a slippery segment of road where sandstone gave way to thin layers of shale that were so loosely bonded they washed away in even a gentle rain.During the summer season of cloudbursts, the parts of the road that crossed shale formations became impassable for hours or days. Nor was the sandstone itself any treat for driving. Wet sandstone was surprisingly slick.

"There are professional pothunters in the area," Ten continued. "They've worked over a lot of sites. If someone objects, they work them over, too. Luke and I decided that no one goes to September Canyon without a guard."

"Why wasn't I told this before I was hired?" Diana asked tightly.

"Because the sheriff didn't tell us until last night."

Diana said something beneath her breath. Ten glanced sideways at her. "If you can't handle it,tell me now. We'll be back at the ranch in time for dinner."

She said nothing, still trying to cope with her seething feelings at the thought of being alone with Ten in a remote canyon for five days.

"If I thought it would do any good," Ten said, "I'd give you my word that I won't touch you. But you don't know me well enough to believe me, so there's not much point in making any promises, is there?"

Diana didn't answer.

Without warning Ten brought the truck to a stop in the center of a wide spot in the road. He set the brake and turned to face his unhappy passenger.

"What will it be?" he asked. "September Canyon or back to the ranch house?"

Almost wildly Diana glanced around the countryside. She had been so excited when Carla had offered employment for the summer. The salary was minimal, but the opportunity to study newly discovered ruins was unparalleled.

And now it was all vanishing like rain in the desert.

She looked at Ten. Part of her was frankly terrified at the prospect of being alone with him for days on end. Part of her was not-and in some ways, that was most terrifying of all.

Shutting out everything, Diana closed her eyes. What am I going to do?

The image of Ten's powerful hands holding the kitten with such care condensed in her mind.

Surely Carla wouldn't send me out here alone with a man she didn't trust. After that thought came another. My father was never that gentle with anything. Nor was Steve.

The ingrained habit of years made Diana's mind veer away from the bleak night when she had learned once and forever to distrust men and her own judgment. Yet she had been luckier than many of the women she had talked with since. Her scars were all on the inside.

Unbidden came a thought that made Diana tremble with a tangle of emotions she refused to name and a question she shouldn't ask, even in the silence of her own mind.

Would Ten be as gentle with a woman as he was with that kitten?

5

Ten sat and watched the emotions fighting within Diana-anger, fear, hope, confusion, curiosity, longing. The extent of Diana's reluctance to go on to September Canyon surprised him. He had glimpsed the depth of her passion for the Anasazi; if she were considering turning and walking away from September Canyon, she must be in the grip of a fear that was very real to her, despite the fact that Ten knew of no reason for that fear. While most women might have been initially uneasy at spending time alone with a stranger in a remote place, their instinctive wariness would have been balanced by the knowledge that their unexpected companion was a man who had the respect and trust of the people he lived among.

That fact, however, didn't seem to make much difference to Diana.

"Can you talk about it?" Ten asked finally.

"What?"

"Why you're afraid of men. Is it your father?"

Diana looked at Ten's searching, intent eyes, sensing the intelligence and the strength of will in him reaching out to her, asking her to trust him.

Abruptly she felt hemmed in, required to do something for which she was unprepared.

"Stop hounding me," Diana said through clenched teeth. "You have no right to my secrets any more than any man has a right to my body!"

For an instant there was an electric silence stretching tightly between Ten and Diana; then he turned away from her to look out over the land. The silence lengthened until the idling of the truck's engine was as loud as thunder. When Ten finally turned back toward Diana his face was expressionless, his eyes were hooded, and his voice held none of the mixture of emotions it had before.

"In an hour or less, those clouds will get together and rain very hard. Then Picture Wash will become impassable. Anyone who is at the September Canyon site will be forced to stay there. Which will it be, Dr. Saxton? Forward to the dig or back to the ranch?"

Ten's voice was even, uninflected, polite. It was like having a stranger ask her for the time of day.

Bitterly Diana reminded herself that Ten was a stranger. Yet somehow he hadn't seemed like one until just now. From the moment Ten had held out the injured kitten to Diana, he had treated her as though she were an old friend newly discovered. She hadn't even realized the…warmth…of his presence until it had been withdrawn.

Now she had an absurd impulse to reach out and touch Ten, to protest the appearance of the handsome, self-contained stranger who waited for her answer with cool attention, his whole attitude telling her that whether she chose to go forward or back, it made no personal difference to him.

"September Canyon," Diana said after a minute. Although she tried, her voice wasn't as controlled as his had been.

Ten took off the brake and resumed driving.

Eventually the silence, which Diana had welcomed before, began to eat at her nerves. She looked out the window but found herself glancing again and again toward Ten. She told herself that it was only his casual skill with the truck that fascinated her. She had done enough rough-country travel in the past to admire his expertise. And it was his expertise she was admiring, not the subtle flex and play of his muscles beneath the faded black work shirt he wore.

"You're a very good driver," she said. Ten nodded indifferently.

Silence returned, lengthened, filling the cab until Diana rolled down the window just to hear the whistle of wind. She told herself the lack of conversation didn't bother her. After all, she had been the one to resist talk during the long hours since dawn. When Ten had pointed out something along the road or asked about her work, she had nodded or answered briefly and had no questions of her own to offer.

But now that she thought about it, she had a perfect right to ask a few businesslike questions of Ten and get a few businesslike answers.

"Will it distract you to talk?" she asked finally.

"No."

Brief and to the point. Very businesslike. Irritating, too. Silently Diana asked herself if her earlier, brief, impersonal answers had seemed cool and clipped to Ten.

"I didn't mean to be rude earlier," she said.

"You weren't."

Diana waited. Ten said nothing more.

"How much farther is it to September Canyon?" she asked after a few minutes.

"An hour."

Diana looked up toward the mesa top where pinon and juniper and cedar grew, punctuated by pointed sprays of yucca plants. The clouds had become a solid mass whose bottom was a blue color so deep it was nearly black.

"Looks like rain," she said.

Ten nodded. More silence, more bumps, more growling sounds from the laboring four-wheel-drive truck.

"Why is it called Picture Wash?" Diana asked in combination of irritation and determination.

"There are pictographs on the cliffs." Six whole words. Incredible.

"Anasazi?" she asked. Ten shrugged.

"Did other Indians live here when the white man came?" Diana asked, knowing very well that they had.

Ten nodded.

"Mountain Utes?" she asked, again knowing the answer.

"Yes," he said as he swerved around a mass of shale that had extended a slippery tongue onto the roadway.

Diana hardly noticed the evasive maneuver. She was intent on drawing out the suddenly laconic Ten. Obviously that would require a question that couldn't be answered by yes, no or a shrug. Inspiration came.

"Why are you called Tennessee?"

"I was the oldest."

"I don't understand."

"Neither did Dad."

Diana gave up the word game and concentrated on the land.

The truck kicked and twitched and skidded around a series of steep, uphill curves, climbing up a mesa spur and onto the top. There was a long, reasonably straight run across the spur. Pinon and juniper whipped by, interspersed with a handful of big sage and other drought-adapted shrubs.