"It's there."
"I can see that," she muttered, leading the Appaloosa closer. "Does it hurt? Do you have any feeling in it? Is it frostbitten?"
"Are you cold?" he asked, ignoring her questions.
"Damn it, Nevada, I'm not the one who's hurt!"
"Neither am I. Guess that means we're both fine. Take it easy, you knothead."
At first Eden thought Nevada was referring to her. Then she realized he was talking to the spotted horse, which had shied when Nevada came awkwardly to his feet. That was the end of Nevada's awkwardness, however. He grabbed the saddle horn and vaulted into the saddle with catlike ease.
"Hand me my rifle."
For a moment Eden was too stunned to say anything. Nevada was going to ride off into the storm without so much as a thank-you. She could handle the lack of gratitude. What made her furious was the knowledge that he wasn't nearly as "fine" as he said he was. His face was too pale and she was afraid the stain of red over his cheekbones owed more to fever than windburn. But apparently Nevada was angry about being guarded by Baby, or too proud to admit he needed anything more from her, or both.
Eden handed the rifle up to Nevada, shrugged into her backpack and walked off up the trail toward the cabin without a word, too furious to trust herself to speak. Her short temper shocked her. Normally she was the last one to lose control – but normally she wouldn't have spent the last hour digging a man out of a hole before he froze to death. And not just any man. A man she had taken one look at and gone to with the absolute certainty of water running downhill to the waiting sea.
A man who thought love was a fairy tale.
A spotted flank materialized from the snowstorm in front of Eden. The Appaloosa was standing across the trail, blocking her way. At an unseen signal from Nevada, the horse turned toward her and then stood motionless once more. Nevada kicked his stockinged foot out of the left stirrup and leaned toward Eden, holding out his left arm.
"Climb on."
"I've never ridden," she said tightly.
"I've never had a wolf sicced on me. Learn something new every day."
"I didn't sic-"
"The hell you didn't. Grab hold of me."
Eden was never sure what happened next. All she knew was that the world swung suddenly, crazily. When things settled into place again she was behind the saddle, hanging on to Nevada with both hands, for he had become the stable center of an otherwise highly mobile world.
"Well you've got the first part right," Nevada said dryly.
"What?"
"You're hanging on."
She started to speak, only to make a high, startled sound when the horse moved. Target snorted and sidestepped lightly.
"Go easy on the screaming," Nevada said. "Target is skittish. That's how we got into trouble in the first place."
"You screamed?" she retorted.
Nevada turned around enough to look at Eden. His narrowed eyes gleamed like gems between his thick black eyelashes, but she would have sworn his look was one of amusement rather than anger. She decided that she liked that particular gleam in his eyes much better than the icy distance that was his normal response to the world.
Then Nevada's glance shifted to her mouth and Eden remembered the instant when his fingertip had caressed her lips. Her heart hesitated before it beat with increased speed.
"Does that quick little tongue of yours ever get you in trouble?" he asked finally.
The intriguing rasp was back in Nevada's voice, making Eden shiver.
"Only with you," she admitted. "Normally I'm rather quiet. But I love the sound of your voice, especially when it gets all slow and deep. Like now."
His eyes narrowed even more, all amusement gone, replaced by something as elemental as a wolf's howl. The searching intensity of Nevada's glance made Eden shiver. He turned away abruptly.
"Can Baby lead us to the cabin?" Nevada asked harshly.
"Yes."
"Then tell him to do it."
"Lead us home, Baby. Home."
Baby turned and began trotting along the base of the scree slope. Nevada turned Target to follow the wolf's tracks. The instant the horse began moving, Eden made a stifled sound and clung very tightly to Nevada. He looked down, saw her arms wrapped around him, saw hands that were slender even inside gloves, knew that the hard rise of his flesh was only inches from those feminine hands, and tried not to swear aloud at the ungovernable rushing of his blood.
For several minutes there was a silence that was at least as uncomfortable as Nevada was.
"Nevada?"
He grunted.
"I wasn't making fun of your voice."
"I know."
"Then why are you angry?"
Nevada hesitated, then shrugged. "Some kinds of honesty are dangerous, Eden."
"I don't understand."
"Drop your hand down a few inches and you'll understand just fine."
Nevada's voice was remote, clipped. When Eden realized what he meant, she was glad he couldn't see her blazing cheeks. Beneath her embarrassment she was shocked. When Nevada had told her he lived every instant as though it were his last, he had meant it, and the proof was right at hand.
"Makes a girl wonder what it would take to cool you off," Eden muttered against his back, certain he wouldn't be able to hear.
He did, of course.
"Hell of a question," Nevada retorted. "Sure you want to hear the answer?"
Eden opened her mouth for an incautious reply, only to think better of it at the last instant. Before she closed her mouth, she felt the unanticipated, fragile chill of snowflakes dissolving on her tongue. Her eyes closed and she held her breath, waiting for the exquisite sensation to be repeated. As she waited, the world swayed gently beneath her and her arms clung to the living column of strength that was Nevada.
Suddenly Eden had a dizzying sense of the wonder of being alive and riding through a white storm holding on to a man whose last name she didn't even know, while snowflakes melted on her lips like secret kisses. She laughed softly and tipped her face back to the sky, giving herself to the miracle of being alive.
The sound of Eden laughing made Nevada turn toward her involuntarily, drawn by the life burning so vividly in her. He looked at her with a hunger that would have shocked her if she had seen it, but her eyes were closed beneath the tiny, biting caresses of snowflakes. When her eyes opened once more, he had already turned away.
"Nevada?"
He made a rough, questioning sound.
"What's your last name?"
"Blackthorn."
"Blackthorn," Eden murmured, savoring the name as though it were a snowflake freshly fallen onto her tongue. "What do you do when you're not rescuing maidens or falling down mountains, Nevada Blackthorn?"
"I'm segundo on the Rocking M when Tennessee is there. When he isn't, I'm ramrod."
"Segundo? Tennessee? Ramrod? Are we speaking the same language?"
The corner of Nevada's mouth lifted slightly. "A ramrod is a ranch foreman. A segundo is the ramrod's right-hand man. Tennessee is my brother."
"Is the Rocking M your family ranch?"
"After a fashion. We're the bastard line. The legitimate folks are the MacKenzies. Tennessee bought into the ranch when Luke MacKenzie's father was trying to drink himself to death. I own a chunk of the Devil's Peak area. Cash and Mariah gave it to me for a wedding gift."
For a few moments Eden was too stunned to breathe. "You're married?" she asked faintly.
"It was Cash and Mariah's wedding, not mine."
"They gave you a present on their wedding day," Eden said carefully.
Nevada nodded.
"Why?"
"It's a long story."
"I'm very patient."
"Could have fooled me."
"I doubt that much fools you," she said matter-of-factly.
Nevada thought of the instant he had seen Eden coming toward him in a smoky bar and his whole body had reached out to her with a primitive need that had shocked him. But he would have been a fool to talk about that, and Nevada Blackthorn was no fool.
"Mariah is Luke's sister," Nevada said. "She had a map to a gold mine that had come down through the family. The map wasn't much use because it was all blurred. I passed the map along to some people who are real good at making documents give up their secrets. When the map came back, I gave it to her. She found the mine, Cash found her, and they got married. They gave me a chunk of the mine as a wedding present."
The hint of a drawl in Nevada's voice told Eden that she was being teased. She didn't mind. She liked the thought that she could arouse that much playfulness in Nevada.
"Why do I feel you left something out?" she asked.
"Such as?"
"Such as how a segundo knows the kind of people who can make crummy old documents sit up and sing."
"I wasn't always a segundo."
Eden hesitated. The drawl was definitely gone from Nevada's voice. Even as she told herself she had no right to pry, she heard herself asking a question.
"What were you before you were a segundo?"
"What the Blackthorn men have been for hundreds of years – a warrior."
Vivid images from the fight in West Fork flashed before Eden's eyes, followed by other images. Nevada lying half-buried in a rock slide with a rifle in his hand. Nevada checking the rifle's firing mechanism with a few swift motions before he even tried to stand up. Nevada's bleak eyes and unsmiling mouth.
Warrior.
It explained a lot. Too much.
The vivid joy in life that Eden had experienced moments before drained away, leaving sadness in its place. Her arms tightened protectively around Nevada's powerful body as though she could somehow keep whatever might hurt him at bay. When she realized what she was doing, she didn't know whether to laugh or to weep at her own idiocy. Nevada needed protecting about as much as a bolt of lightning did.
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