"Better?"
"Hmmm," she said and closed her eyes, the fire flickering on her face, the crackling of the flames lulling her.
"You did really well today," he whispered. "You"re okay, Regina Holland."
She opened her eyes and smiled to herself before closing them again and falling into a deep sleep. She didn"t hear the scream that awakened J.T.
J.T. GOT UP, careful not to wake Reggie and, picking up the rifle, went out of the cave to the edge of the cliff.
The night was cold and clear. He wished to h.e.l.l he was at the ranch and that Reggie was upstairs asleep in the guest bedroom, safe. But he knew he"d made the right decision to wait.
He let his gaze travel down the mountainside to where Will Jarvis had camped, not sure what he thought he might be able to see. Maybe the trees around the clearing on fire.
There was nothing but darkness. Nor did he hear another sound. He told himself that the scream he"d heard could have been a mountain lion. Men didn"t usually scream like that. Unless they were in a lot of pain.
He shivered, thinking of Claude Ryan. If Will Jarvis was right, Claude would kill as many people as it took to get to him.
Back inside the cave, the fire had burned down to coals. He covered Reggie with his coat, then went to sit in the shadows at the cave entrance to wait. They would ride out at first light, going down a way that Claude would least expect-straight down to the county road.
A DARK SHADOW moved over her. Startled, Regina jerked back.
"It"s just me," McCall whispered. "Sorry to scare you."
She blinked, trying to wake up, the dream still with her, a dark weight that pulled at her. "I was having this horrible dream...."
"It was just a dream," he said and sat down across from her, the fire between them.
She sat up, letting herself drift as she stared into the flames of the fire and soaked up the heat. She could tell it was the middle of the night, still dark outside.
"Wishing you had just gone with a model?"
She looked up at him over the top of the fire and shook her head.
He chuckled softly. "You still haven"t given up."
"Have you given up getting back to the ranch, getting away from this madman?"
He shook his head, licked his thumb and reached across the fire to wipe a smudge of dirt from her cheek.
She froze, her gaze locking with his. He seemed to hold his breath. The fire popped softly. He drew back his hand to rest it on his thigh.
She reached out to touch his fingers. Her hand was cool on his but it sent a shaft of heat through him.
He shook his head. "You don"t want to do this, Reggie."
She smiled a little at that. "I"m a big girl, McCall. I know what I want." Tears shone in her eyes. "Hold me?"
He moved around the fire to her. She melted into his arms. The flames flared, sparks rising into the darkness of the cave.
She felt soft and warm and he wanted to envelop himself in her, to feel the pounding of her pulse, to hear the drum of her heart, to a.s.sure himself that she was alive. That he was alive as well.
He tried to think of tomorrow, how they would both feel if he did the one thing he wanted, make love to her. But right now it didn"t feel as if there would be a tomorrow. There was only now. The two of them in this cave. A crazy homicidal maniac or two out in the darkness.
Her kiss was soft, a gentle kiss, tentative, questioning.
His answering kiss was fire and heat, all consuming. She had known that it would be all or nothing with him. Like the first kiss, McCall didn"t do anything halfway. He wrapped her in his arms, in his kiss.
Her pulse jumped at his gentle touch, his big hands stroking her body until she was the fire, burning hot inside the cave. His mouth moved over her, warm and wet, sparking fissures of pleasure, stripping her bare beneath her clothing until he possessed every inch of her body.
Wrapped in his arms, he took her as she cried out in pleasure and release, her body pressed hot against his damp flesh, his mouth stealing her cries as the fire flamed, shadows flickering on the cave walls.
"IT"S TIME."
Regina opened her eyes. He still held her, his face inches from her own, their bodies melded together, clothes pushed aside, sleeping bare skin to bare skin.
She didn"t want to move. Didn"t want to leave this cave. Or his arms. But she feared they couldn"t stay here for long. Just as she feared what waited for them outside.
He moved away from her, getting up to dress. Cold air skittered over her exposed flesh. She could feel his eyes on her as she sat up and covered herself.
When she read his expression, she saw that he wanted to make love to her again almost as badly as she wanted him to. But faint light bled into the cave. They had to leave, had to try to get to the ranch. She tried not to think about all the miles. Or the darkness of the trees. The shadows that could be death.
She rose and stumbled ahead of him to the cave entrance, her ankle aching along with the rest of her muscles. She clung to their lovemaking, to the memory of McCall"s gentle hands, and tried not to look into the shadows as she stepped outside.
A slice of moon still hung in the dark sky high over the valley, a few stars, a shimmer of light low on the horizon the only hint of the coming day.
Regina shivered in spite of herself. The horses were saddled. McCall must have slipped away to do that, then returned to lie next to her. She couldn"t remember ever being this tired. Her whole body ached and she felt cold all the way to her bones.
Just the thought of getting back in the saddle made her want to cry. He helped her up onto the horse as if sensing her resistance.
He walked the horses down the mountainside. She had to lean way back to keep from going over the horse"s head, the terrain was so steep. Finally they reached flatter ground and he stepped into his saddle, motioning for her to keep quiet.
She nodded. It wasn"t like she had anything to say this time of the day anyway. It was too late to be out on the town, even in L.A., and too early to be getting up. She would have been sleeping in her warm bed, worrying about work, not worrying about dying.
The dream she"d had earlier in the night came back to her. She could feel it around her, hanging over her like a dense awful shroud. She couldn"t remember a lot of it, just that horrible feeling of being grabbed by the man. She never even saw his face. He"d come at her from behind, covering her mouth, then her eyes, then binding her so she couldn"t move, couldn"t scream.
She shuddered at the memory and let the horse lull her, drifting in and out of sleep, her mind like thick fog.
Regina heard the sound first, a noise off to her right. She opened her eyes, startled as she caught movement coming at her from the side.
The man came out of a thick stand of pines, running low, reaching for her, one b.l.o.o.d.y hand out-stretched, the other clutching a knife. The blade glistened in the dull light of the day where the blood hadn"t completely dried.
She screamed and tried to get off the horse, but her boot was stuck in the stirrup. Riding in front of her, McCall spun his horse around and was already leaping down as the man grabbed her calf with his free hand.
McCall lunged at the man, knocking him to the ground with the b.u.t.t of the rifle.
Regina"s horse reared and suddenly she was falling through the air. She landed on the ground hard, all the air knocked from her lungs.
When she looked up she saw McCall standing over Will Jarvis, the rifle pointed at the man"s head.
"Are you all right?" McCall cried, moving to her side, while keeping the rifle aimed at Jarvis.
She could only nod.
"Can you move?"
She nodded again. But she didn"t want to move. She wanted to lie here. She promised herself she would never get back on a horse.
"Help me," Jarvis whispered.
She could see the blood across the front of his coat, on his hands and the knife, and realized it was his blood he had all over him.
He released the knife, dropping it as his fingers opened and his eyes closed.
She heard another noise. McCall turned to listen. It sounded like a vehicle coming slowly up the mountain. As she turned her head, she thought she saw what looked like a dirt track down the hillside through the trees. A road?
J.T. motioned her to silence as a truck came around a bend in the road below them.
She saw the Sundown Ranch logo on the side and began to cry. There was no way the driver would be able to see them up here on the hillside. He would drive right past.
McCall raised the rifle, the barrel pointed to the sky and fired three shots. They boomed in the morning air.
The driver of the truck hit his brakes. Dust boiled up. McCall fired another three shots and the driver was out of the car, looking up the hillside.
Regina closed her eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks. When she opened them, two men with blond hair and blue eyes were looking at her in something close to disbelief. One of the brothers, the one J.T. was calling Cash, had on a sheriff"s uniform.
Vaguely she remembered McCall lifting her from the ground, touching her forehead, his palm ice-cold and him saying, "My G.o.d, she"s burning up."
He"d carried her down to the truck. She remembered leaning against him, her face buried in his chest, his arm around her, shivering, trying to say something but her lips felt so dry and her mind so filled with fog.... She thought she recalled McCall"s lips against her hair whispering, "You"re going to be all right, Reggie" as the truck b.u.mped down the mountainside.
Chapter Fourteen.
"Who is this woman, James Thomas?" Shelby McCall demanded of her son as she drew him aside into the empty den and motioned for him to take a seat.
J.T. was too tired to argue. He sat and scrubbed a hand over his face. He hadn"t slept last night, instead spending the hours beside Reggie"s bed after the doctor had left. "It"s a long story."
He was anxious to hear from Cash, to find out if they"d found Claude Ryan. If Claude really was alive.
After the pickup ride down the mountain with J.T. and Reggie, FBI agent Will Jarvis had been taken to the hospital where he had been flown to Billings for immediate surgery. The last time J.T. had checked, he was still in surgery for knife wounds.
But before Cash had got him out by helicopter from the ranch, Jarvis had said he"d wounded Claude badly and that they should look for his body on the mountain.
Unfortunately, Claude had also wounded the agent. Will Jarvis was lucky to be alive. If he hadn"t headed for the county road and stumbled across J.T. and Reggie...
"James Thomas?" His mother had her arms folded in front of her, waiting for his answer as if she had all the time in the world. She did.
"I"d rather hear about what"s going on with you and the old man," he said. He"d seen his mother and father with their heads together earlier, then Asa had left, taking Brandon and Dusty with him to try to find the missing cattle.
Cash had gotten a call from a bow hunter who"d seen a bunch of cattle with the Sundown Ranch brand on national forest land in the Bighorns south of the cow camp.
"Looks like your killer wasn"t after the cattle," Cash had said before leaving with the state investigators.
"You and the old man seemed to be arguing about something," J.T. said, watching his mother. She had never told any of them why she"d come back here after pretending to be dead for so long.
She gave him a look that only a mother can pull off even though she hadn"t been in their lives for over thirty years. "Don"t call your father "the old man."" Were those tears in her eyes? She really did seem to love the old man. "About this woman..."
J.T. shook his head, raked a hand through his hair and sighed. "I met her on the highway. She had a flat. I fixed it. She works for a blue jeans company and she was in Montana looking for a cowboy to do a commercial." He glanced at his mother. She was still waiting. "Reggie got the idea that I was that cowboy. I told her I wasn"t interested but as determined and foolhardy as she is, she conned Buck into giving her a job as our camp cook."
Shelby lifted a brow.
J.T. nodded. "You know the rest of it, at least as much as I do." He"d barely reached the ranch when the call had come in from a neighboring rancher that they"d found Buck and taken him to the hospital. He had a mild concussion and some abrasions, couldn"t remember what had happened to him. He thought he"d been bucked from his horse. But he was doing well and was expected to be released by the end of the week.
J.T. wanted to go see him, but couldn"t leave Reggie. Nor could he leave the ranch until he heard from Cash.
"This Reggie sounds like quite the woman," his mother commented.
J.T. smiled. "She is something, all right."
Shelby was eyeing him intently. He still couldn"t call her mother. "You obviously care about her."
"I"m just worried that she"s going to be all right," he said, wanting this conversation over. The doctor had said Reggie needed bed rest. She was suffering from exhaustion and a low-grade infection from a cut on her leg.
He"d noticed the cut on her calf last night when they"d made love in the cave. She"d said she didn"t remember when she"d gotten it. The past few days had been so crazy....
"It"s all my fault," he said.
"Oh, stop looking so down in the mouth," his mother said. "She"s going to be fine. She can stay here as long as she needs to. But what about this commercial?"
"I refused to do it."
Shelby gave him that mother look again, making him think of all the years he"d been spared it.