Книга - Blackwolf’s Redemption

Blackwolf's Redemption
Sandra Marton


In the arms of an untamed stranger… Jesse Blackwolf – uncompromising, determined, and an undeniable success. He has no desire to deal with the sassy, outspoken bundle of femininity he’s found trespassing on his land!When Sienna Cummings awakes to find herself pressed against a muscled chest, she’s shocked and stunned! Where is she? Who is this man who holds her so possessively, with passion glinting in his eyes? It’s more than confusion that makes Sienna’s heart beat faster – she suspects his untamed wildness hides something that maybe only she can set free… Men Without Mercy Arrogant and proud, unashamedly male!







“I’m going to wake up.”

Jesse raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”



“You heard me. I’m dreaming. This is a dream. It has to be. I am definitely not standing on a ledge halfway up a mountain, talking to a man who—who looks as if he stepped out of Central Casting for a movie starring John Wayne.” A curl of golden brown hair blew over her lip; she shoved it behind her ear and her chin rose a little higher. “John Wayne is dead, and I am dreaming. End of story.”



Jesse almost laughed. She was a tough piece of work. Whatever else she was, he had to admire her for that.



“I’ve got news for you, baby. John Wayne’s alive. And this is no dream.”



“Wrong on both counts,” she said. If her chin went up any higher, she’d tumble over backward. “John Wayne is history. And I am sound asleep in my tent. There’s not a way in the world you can make me think otherwise.” Her eyes—more violet than ever—narrowed. “This is not real.”



“You’re wasting valuable time. The descent’s going to be tough enough without factoring in the heat.”



“No,” she said, though now there was a faint quaver in her voice, “I told you, this isn’t real.”



“It damned well is,” Jesse snarled, and he proved it by pulling her into his arms, bending his head and covering her mouth with his.


Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance is pleased to present this new and exciting mini-series!



MEN WITHOUT MERCY

Arrogant and proud, unashamedly male!

Modern™ Romance with a retro twist…



Step back in time to when men were men—and women knew just how to tame them!



This month:

BLACKWOLF’S REDEMPTION by Sandra Marton



Experience the drama, excitement and passion when an independent twenty-first century woman is thrown back in time and comes face to face with a twentieth-century man as arrogant as he is gorgeous and as confident as he is sexy…



Sparks fly and temperatures soar!





Blackwolf’s Redemption


By




Sandra Marton











www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Sandra Marton wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her she’d be a writer some day, and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understood—though, looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.

At last Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love that’s rich with fire and passion, love that lasts for ever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance. Since then she’s written more than sixty books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® award finalist, she’s also received five RT Book Reviews awards, and has been honoured with RT’s Career Achievement Award for Series Romance. Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the north-eastern United States.


‘Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.’ Albert Einstein, commenting on our perceptions

‘And now for something completely different.’ ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’, commenting on that very same subject




CHAPTER ONE


Blackwolf Canyon, Montana, 5:34 a.m.,

one hour before the summer solstice, June 21, 2010

THE moon had set almost five hours ago. Still, night clung tenaciously to the land.

The high, rocky walls of the canyon seemed determined to hold to the chill of darkness; a razor-sharp wind swept down from the surrounding peaks and whipped through the scrub, its eerie sigh all that disturbed the silence.

Sienna Cummings shivered.

There was a wildness to this place, but in these last moments before the dawn light pierced the bottom of the canyon, she could almost sense the land’s ancient, often bloody history.

A heavy arm wrapped around her shoulders.

“Here,” Jack Burden said, “let me warm you up.”

Sienna forced a smile and stepped free of the expedition leader’s embrace.

“I’m fine,” she said politely. “Just excited. About the solstice,” she added quickly, before Burden could pull his usual trick of turning whatever she said into a suggestive remark.

No such luck.

“I’m excited, too,” he said, managing to do it, anyway. “Lucky me. Alone with you, in the dark.”

They were hardly alone. There were four others with them: two graduate students, an associate professor from the Anthropology Department and a girl Burden had described as his secretary. From the way she looked at him, Sienna doubted if that was her real job, but that was fine with her; for the most part, it kept her obnoxious boss from sniffing after her.

Except at certain moments.

Like right now.

Never mind that they were about to view something remarkable. That soon, the sun’s light would be visible between the huge slabs of rock a third of the way up Blackwolf Mountain. That a shaft of that light would stream down and illuminate a circle some holy man had inscribed on a sacred stone thousands of years ago. Never mind that this would be the first summer solstice in decades that outsiders had been allowed in the canyon at all, or that everything here was about to change because the land was about to be sold to a developer.

All Jack Burden could think of was seducing her.

Yes, there were laws against sexual harassment. All she had to do was file a complaint with the university—and then live with the knowledge that her career would stall. It was the twenty-first century, women were the legal equals of men…

But in some of the ways that counted most, nothing had changed.

Some men still thought it was their right to take what they wanted, especially when it came to women.

“It’s almost time,” one of the grad students said breathlessly.

Sienna drew her thoughts together and focused on the jagged peak ahead of them. Half an hour, was more like it, but the waiting was part of the experience. She’d been on lots of ancient sites; she’d seen the summer sun rise at Chaco Canyon, traced the glyphs on the great temple at Chichén Itzá. One magical night, she’d been permitted to walk among the monoliths at Stonehenge.

And yet, there was something special about this place.

She could feel it. In her bones. In her heart. She would never say such a thing to anyone—she was a scientist, and science scoffed at what people claimed to feel in their bones. Still, there was something special here. About this night. About being here.

She must have made a little sound. A whisper. An indrawn breath, because Jack Burden leaned toward her.

“Aren’t you glad I brought you with me?” he said.

He made it sound like a gift, but it wasn’t. Sienna was months away from her doctorate; she had studied Blackwolf Canyon for two years. She had earned her place on this expedition. She knew everything about the canyon, from the ancients who had settled it, to the Comanche and Sioux warriors who had fought for it, to its mysterious last-known owner, Jesse Blackwolf, though what had become of him was uncertain.

He, too, had been a warrior. He’d fought in Vietnam a decade before she was born, returned home in what should have been triumph—and virtually disappeared.

She’d tried to find out what had become of him, telling herself it had to do with her studies, her thesis, but it wasn’t true. The man had captured her imagination. Ridiculous, of course. Cultural anthropologists studied cultures, not individuals. But there was something about Jesse Blackwolf…

“Here it comes,” one of the grad students yelled. “Just another couple of minutes!”

Sienna nodded, wrapped her arms around herself and waited.

Blackwolf Canyon, Montana, 5:34 a.m., one hour before the summer solstice, June 22, 1975

Jesse Blackwolf’s horse shifted impatiently beneath him.

“Soon,” Jesse said softly, stroking a calloused hand along the animal’s satiny neck.

Eyes narrowed, Jesse looked at the jagged peak ahead of him.

Half an hour, and he could ride out of this place and never look back.

His ancestors had come here to celebrate their gods. He had come to say goodbye to them. There was no room in his life for nonsense.

He hadn’t planned on this final visit. What for? A summer solstice was a summer solstice. The earth reached the top of its northernmost tilt and that was that.

His ancestors had figured it out and they’d venerated the process. They’d made a big thing out of these final minutes that marked the start of the longest stretch of daylight in the year.

Not him.

It wasn’t belief in superstition that had brought Jesse here. On the contrary. It was disbelief. Looking at this foolishness as it happened seemed vital. He’d accepted it as a boy but he was a long way from boyhood. He was a man, older and wiser than the first time he’d ridden out to view the solstice.

The big gray stallion snorted softly. Jesse’s hard, chiseled mouth turned up in what might almost have been a smile.

“Okay,” he said, “maybe you’re right. Older? Absolutely. Wiser? Who knows.”

The horse snorted again and tossed his massive head as if to say, What are we doing out here when we both should be sleeping? Jesse couldn’t fault the animal for that. Trouble was that an hour ago, he’d awakened from a fitful sleep, taken Cloud from the warmth of his stall, slipped a bridle over his head and obeyed the sudden impulse to ride out to the canyon and watch the sunrise.

Damn it, Jesse told himself coldly, be honest!

He was here by plan, by design, by the need to sever, once and for all, whatever ties remained between him and the old ways.

Impulse had nothing to do with it.

He’d known that the solstice was coming. You didn’t have to be part Comanche and Sioux for that. His mother’s Anglo blood was more than sufficient. So were the three wasted years he’d spent at university. The sun reached a certain declination, a certain height and angle in the sky, and twice a year, you had a solstice.

Solstices were real.

It was the god myths that were bull.

The stuff about the renewal of the earth, of the spirit. The nonsense about what it meant to a warrior to be on this very spot at the moment the sun rose behind the jagged peaks of Blackwolf Mountain, shone its light between the two enormous stony slabs on the rocky shelf some forty feet above the ground, then centered on the spiral the Old Ones had etched into the horizontal stone between them.

The idiocy about how viewing this particular rising sun could change a man’s life forever.

Jesse gave a bitter laugh.

His father had believed in all of it, as had his grandfather, his great-grandfather and, most probably, every Blackwolf warrior whose DNA he’d inherited.

For most of his thirty years, he’d believed in it, too. Not all of it—a twentieth-century man with the better part of a university degree under his belt wasn’t about to buy into mythology.

What he had believed in was respecting the old ways. Respecting the continuity of tradition. And, yes, he’d even believed in honoring, if only a little, events like the solstices.

What harm could there be, even if a man knew the scientific reasons for why such things occurred?

His father had brought him to this place when he was twelve.

“Soon the sun will rise,” he had said, “and the light of time past and time yet to come will fall on the sacred circle. The vows a man takes at the summer solstice will determine his true path forever. Are you ready to make a vow, my son?”

At that age, Jesse’s head and heart had brimmed with stories of his warrior ancestors. His father had told those tales to him all his life; his mother—born in the East, to parents who had never met an Indian until they met their new son-in-law—had read them to him from the children’s books she wrote and illustrated.

And so, of course, Jesse had been ready.

As soon as the sun began its slow rise into the heavens, he’d tilted his face to its light, arms outstretched, hands open and cupped to receive its gift of brilliance and warmth, and he’d offered himself, everything he was, to the spirit of the warriors who had gone before him.

His father had smiled with pride. His mother, told of his vow when he and his father rode home, had hugged him. Even as he grew older and slowly began to understand that the old stories were just stories and nothing more, he’d been glad he’d made the vow, glad his father had included him in this ancient tradition.

But by the time Jesse was in college, everything seemed changed. There was a war taking place in a distant land. Boys he’d grown up with were dying in it. He would not be drafted; college kids were not going to be put in harm’s way.

It seemed wrong. He was descended from warriors. What was he doing, hiding away in stuffy classrooms at a university where some had taken to ridiculing everything he believed?

At twenty, Jesse knew it was time to honor the vow he’d made when he was twelve.

He left college. Enlisted in the army. His father had been proud of him. His mother had wept. He went through basic training, was plucked from the others and offered the chance to become part of an elite group called Special Forces. He served with honorable men in what he thought was an honorable cause…

And watched everything he’d believed in turn to dust.

Cloud whinnied and pawed the ground. Jesse blinked, brought his thoughts back where they belonged, to this place where it had all begun, his descent into a way of life that had deceived him.

The solstice was starting.

The sky had taken on that faint purple light that marks the end of night as the sunlight began to fall on the mountain. Light filled the narrow space between the two great slabs of rocks placed there by his ancestors thousands of years ago.

The sun rose higher.

Jesse drew a deep breath.

The last time he’d sat a horse in this place, he’d been filled with childish idealism. Not anymore. He was a man, with a man’s knowledge of the world. He had lost everything: his father to cancer, his mother to despair only months later, his own honor to a war that had been a sham.

So, yes. He would make another vow here as the sun rose. He would vow to rid the world of superstition. He would sell the canyon, sell his thousands of acres, and if some ambitious snake-oil salesman decided to charge admission to view the solstice or the equinox or the moon-rise, let him.

He had already put a stop to the age-old tradition of permitting his people to ride here to view what they considered a sacred rite. Men—boys, especially—should not be taught to put their faith in things that could someday make a mockery of their beliefs.

This was a place of lies and ignorance. It was time to put a stop to it.

The sale papers were already on his desk. He would sign them, courier them to his attorney, and all this nonsense would be—

Cloud whinnied. Jesse looked straight ahead at the beam of bright sunlight beginning to slip between the two slabs of stone.

He drew an unsteady breath. His pulse was racing; he felt light-headed. Damn it, superstition could be a powerful—

What in hell was that?

He’d expected the shaft of light to fall on the so-called sacred stone. One thing about science: once you understood it, you could count on it to perform the necessary parlor tricks.

But what was that other light? That sudden green zigzag overhead?

There it was again. An electric bolt of color that shattered the sky.

His horse danced backward, shying with fear. Jesse grasped the reins in his right hand more tightly, murmured words of assurance to the horse.

To himself.

Lightning, in a clear dawn sky? Lightning without thunder? Lightning the color of emeralds? The weather could be unpredictable here. This was northern Montana, after all, a place of mountains and valleys and…

“Damn!”

Another streak of lightning sizzled through the sky behind the jagged peak. The sun vanished; darkness covered the land. Cloud rose on his hind legs and pawed the air, crying out with fear. Jesse fought to calm the agitated animal.

The sky lit again. Green lightning flashed between the stone slabs and pulsed at the heart of the sacred circle.

The stallion went crazy, screaming, trying to throw Jesse to the ground.

The breath caught in Jessie’s throat.

The lightning had stopped.

The darkness vanished.

The sun appeared, a bright yellow ball against a clear blue sky.

It lit the canyon, the peaks, the tenacious shrubs and lodgepole pines that clung to the inhospitable slope before him, but Jesse had eyes for only one thing.

A figure. A human figure that lay, still as death, in the very center of the sacred stone.




CHAPTER TWO


THE climb to the ledge was as tricky and dangerous as Jesse remembered, more like sixty feet instead of forty because of all the maneuvering necessary to find the right hand and footholds, and the rush of adrenaline pumping through him didn’t help. He could feel his muscles tensing.

Jesse stopped, counted to ten, took half a dozen deep breaths as the sweat poured off his tanned skin. If he fell, then there’d be two of them for the vultures to pick over.

Two of what? his brain said. Had he actually seen somebody up there?

Hell. There was no time for that. He had to keep moving.

The ledge was right above him now. This was the trickiest part; he’d have to lean back with nothing behind him but air to get a decent handhold. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if he’d gone through all this nonsense and the thing lying on the stone wasn’t human at all? There was lots of wildlife here. Elk, deer, but neither of those could have scrambled up this high. A wolf? No, again. A bear, maybe. Or a mountain lion.

He might have made this climb just for a look at the carcass of a dead animal. Or an injured one. Hunters might have ignored his No Trespassing signs. Nobody from around here. They knew better. But an outsider…

For God’s sake, you’ve seen what some of those idiots who call themselves hunters can do.

Why hadn’t he thought of that sooner?

A wounded grizzly would be a hell of a thing to find. Well, it was too late to worry about that now. Jesse took a deep breath. One last pull with the powerful muscles of his arms and shoulders and he hoisted himself up on the narrowest part of the ledge.

His heart caught in his throat.

There was something here, all right. And it wasn’t an animal.

It was a woman.

She was unconscious but alive; her face was white as a fish’s belly but he could see the faint rise and fall of her breasts.

A moan rose from her throat. She didn’t have any obvious wounds, but that didn’t mean anything. For all he knew, she might have been struck by that strange lightning. Lightning was dangerous. It might have damaged her heart. Or she might have hit her head and suffered a concussion.

He had no way of knowing her condition.

He told himself she deserved whatever had happened to her. Outsiders had no business here. Still, instinct took over. He had been trained to save lives, as well as take them. He knelt down beside her and took a closer look.

She wasn’t shivering. That was good. He touched his hand to the side of her neck. Her skin was warm. That was good, too. He could see her pulse beating—hell, racing—in her throat.

He put his hand over her heart.

Its beat was strong and steady…and her breast filled his palm. He jerked his hand away and sat back on his heels.

“Wake up,” he said sharply.

She didn’t move.

“Come on, open your eyes.”

She moaned again. Her lashes lifted, revealing irises the color of spring violets.

“Are you injured? Does anything hurt?”

The tip of her tongue came out and swept lightly over her lips. She was looking at him, but he doubted if she could really see him; her eyes were blurry.

“Concentrate,” he said coldly. “Listen to what I’m saying. Are you hurt?”

Her gaze sharpened; her eyes seemed to darken. Her lips parted.

“That’s it. Look at me and tell me if anything—”

“Oh, my God,” she gasped.

And then her mouth opened wide and her scream echoed and reechoed through the silence of the canyon.



The scream that erupted from Sienna’s throat was high and thin and filled with terror, but sheer, unadulterated terror was precisely what she felt.

A man was bending over her. He had the painted face of a savage, with black stripes delineating the sharpness of his high cheekbones. His hair was black, too, and long, held back with a strip of something, maybe deer hide. Her eyes dropped lower. An eagle’s talon was hung around his neck, dangling from a narrower length of leather.

Dangling against his—oh, God—his naked, tautly muscled chest.

Fear beat gauzy wings in her blood. There was only one explanation. A lunatic was wandering the Montana high country and she’d run straight into him.

Don’t scream again, she told herself. Do not scream again. Be calm, be calm, be—

“Get away from me!” she shrieked as he leaned toward her. She dug her elbows into the unyielding surface beneath her and tried desperately to scramble backward. No way. The man put his big, hard hands on her shoulders and shoved her down.

“Don’t move.”

His voice was low and rough, and now she was sure he was crazy. Don’t move? Of course she was going to move. She was going to run like the wind, but first she had to get free of his hands.

“I said don’t move,” he growled. “Or I’ll have to restrain you.”

Restrain? What kind of madman used a word like restrain? And wasn’t he already doing that? Questions tumbled through her head. Who was this nut? Where had he come from? For that matter, where was she? Her gaze flew past him, to the mountain that loomed over her, and beyond it, to the blazing sun.

The sun. The solstice.

That was it. The solstice. She’d been observing it, waiting for the moment the new summer sun would send a dagger of light between the standing slabs that guarded the sacred stone and then, without warning, lightning had torn apart the sky. Green lightning, zigzagging between the stones.

A black void had opened before her. She’d felt herself falling into it, spinning inside it…

And then, nothing. A nothing so cold, intense and empty she’d felt as if her bones might become petrified, as if the emptiness would swallow her.

But it hadn’t, because she was here, with a man she’d never seen before crouched beside her. A savage with a hard face, eyes as cold and black as obsidian, and a mouth as thin as the slash of a rapier.

Sienna tried to swallow. Impossible. Terror had leeched the moisture from her mouth. The man watched the motion of her throat, then lifted his eyes to her face again.

“Are you hurt?”

Was she? Carefully, she flexed her fingers, her toes, her back.

“I don’t—”

“Do you ache anywhere?”

Why would he care? Still, her response was automatic. “My head.”

One hand left her shoulder, rose to her head. She jerked away, or would have jerked away, but his other hand came up to cup her jaw and hold her head still while his fingers explored her scalp. His touch was light, almost gentle, a sharp contrast to his face, his body, his voice—but she knew it didn’t mean a thing. She had studied indigenous cultures in which the warriors treated their captives relatively gently until the moment of—

“Aah.”

Sienna hissed in pain. The man grunted.

“You’ve got a lump behind your ear.” His hands shifted, began a slow trip down her throat, along her shoulders.

“Don’t,” she said, but he paid no attention as he worked his way to her toes. His touch was efficient, not intimate, but that didn’t keep it from adding to her terror.

“How many fingers?”

She blinked. “What?”

“How many fingers do you see?”

She looked at his upraised hand. “Three.”

“And now?”

“Four. Who are you?”

Carefully, she rose on her elbows, felt the coldness of stone beneath her bare arms.

He leaned closer. She flinched back. He gave an impatient growl, caught hold of her shoulders and leaned toward her.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking your pupils.”

It was unnerving. Those black eyes boring into hers.

“My pupils are fine.”

“Turn your head. Again. Slowly. Good. I’m going to roll you over.”

“You are not going to—”

But he did. His hands danced over her, his touch still impersonal. When he was finished, he turned her on her back, slid an arm under her shoulders and sat her up.

The world spun. There was a kind of buzzing sensation in her head, as if a swarm of tiny bees had found their way inside and set up housekeeping.

Sienna moaned.

The man’s arm tightened around her. It was a strong, hard arm, deeply tanned by the sun, muscled and toned by work. She wanted to jerk away from him, but she didn’t have the strength and even if she had, she knew he wouldn’t have permitted it.

At last, the earth stopped spinning. She took a deep, shaky breath.

“I’m—I’m okay.”

He let go of her. She swayed a little, and he cursed and wrapped his arm around her again.

“Put your head down.”

“It isn’t nec—”

“Put it down.”

She complied. What choice was there when he was glaring at her? The last thing she wanted to do was anger a madman. He was angry enough already. At what? At her? Was anger a sign of psychosis? If only she’d paid more attention to those psych courses…

“Take another couple of deep breaths. That’s it.” He held her a moment longer. Then he let go and put a few inches of distance between them. “Your name?”

It wasn’t a question, it was a demand.

Should she tell him her name or shouldn’t she? She’d once read that violent criminals generally didn’t want to know anything about their victims, which was exactly why some shrinks thought you might save your life by making your kidnapper, your rapist, see you as an individual.

Your rapist, Sienna thought, and swallowed a wild rush of hysterical laughter. It sounded so mundane. Your hair stylist. Your bus driver.

Your rapist.

“Answer me. What’s your name?”

She took a breath. “I’m Sienna Cummings. Who are you?”

“How did you get here?”

Where? She didn’t realize she’d said the words aloud until his eyes narrowed to inky slits.

“Pleading amnesia won’t work. Neither will avoiding my questions. How did you get here?”

She looked at him. “Where is here?” she said, in such a small voice that Jesse was tempted to believe her.

But she’d told him her name. Yeah, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d dealt with enough wounded men to know that there was such a thing as selective memory loss. She might know her name but not anything else.

Or, he thought coldly, she might be lying through that soft-looking, rosy mouth.

“Here,” he said grimly, “is my property.”

“Blackwolf Canyon?” She shook her head. “You don’t own this place.”

“Trust me, lady. I damned well do. Every tree, every rock, every speck of dirt is mine.”

“You don’t own it,” she repeated stubbornly.

Jesse almost laughed. She was damned sure of herself. Did she think she could plead ignorance and get away with what she’d planned?

He could categorize her easily enough. She was either a hippie who hadn’t accepted the fact that the sixties were gone, or she was a thief.

There was a big market for relics from the long-gone past. “Sacred artifacts of Native Americans,” the fat, easily frightened guy he’d caught on his land last year, despite the No Trespassing signs posted around his ten thousand acres, had called them, though real Native Americans simply referred to themselves as Indians.

As for the sacred part…

Complete, unadulterated crap.

Yeah, there were those of his people who were suckers for that kind of nonsense. He’d come close, as a boy, but Vietnam had sure as hell changed that. The stones, the glyphs, the pottery shards were nothing but stuff leftover from another time. The ledge didn’t have any kind of woo-woo magical validity whatsoever.

But that didn’t mean he’d let thieves and leftover flower children intrude upon it.

This place was his. He owned it, at least he’d own it until he signed the sale papers.

A quick appraisal told him this woman was no leftover flower child drawn to a romanticized version of the Old West. She wore no beads, no flowered gown, nor was her hair flowing. Instead her hair was pulled back from her face in a nononsense ponytail. She wore a plain cotton T-shirt and jeans that looked as if they’d seen a lot of use. She was a thief, plain and simple, and that she’d sneaked onto his property angered him almost as much as that he had not spotted her all the time he’d sat on his horse and stared at the mountain.

Yes, it had been dark as hell then, but so what? As a boy, as a soldier, he’d been trained to observe. To see things others didn’t. And yet, she’d gotten past him.

Jesse’s eyes narrowed. His skills were getting rusty. That would have to change. For now, though, he had to concentrate on how to get her off this ledge. Whatever she was, he didn’t want her death on his conscience.

More to the point, he thought coldly, a corpse would bring not just the sheriff but a passel of reporters. More publicity was the last thing he wanted.

He shot a look to where the ledge jutted out over the floor of the canyon. The problem was getting her down without both of them ending up doing it the fast way. At the least, a fall would result in shattered bones. He needed rope, but he didn’t have any, and riding forty minutes back to the house, leaving her here to the tender mercy of the sun and maybe the first curious check of the menu by an inquisitive buzzard, wasn’t such a hot idea.

Rope, he thought. Not necessarily a lot of it, just enough to link her to him…

Quickly, he rose to his feet.

“Okay,” he said brusquely. “Take off your belt.”

Her face went white. “What?”

“Your belt.” He was already unbuckling his. “Take it off.”

“Don’t do this.” Her voice broke. “Please. Whoever you are, don’t—”

His head came up. His eyes met hers and, hell, it all came together. The look on her face. The terror in her voice. She thought he was going to rape her. Why? Because he looked like what she undoubtedly thought of as a savage? Well, yeah. Maybe. He was shirtless. He wore his hair long. There was an eagle talon half wrapped in rawhide hanging around his neck, a gift from his father.

To keep you safe, his father had said softly, the night before he had left for ‘Nam.

The stripes on his cheeks were the only thing that had no reasonable explanation. Okay. Maybe they did. He’d come here to say goodbye to his land, his mountain, as a warrior. He’d spent less than a minute choosing between his army ODs and the paint of his people. He didn’t believe in either, not anymore, but the link to those who’d preceded him could not be as easily discarded as a uniform, so he’d stripped off his shirt, striped his face, pulled his hair back with a strip of deerskin…

Jesse blew out a breath of exasperated comprehension.

The woman was a trespasser. She probably knew exactly where she was and that it was private land, but he couldn’t fault her for leaping to the wrong conclusion at being told to take off her belt by a man who sure as hell didn’t look like anything she was accustomed to.

“I need the belts to make a rope,” he said.

“A rope?”

“To get us off this cliff.”

She blinked. “To get us off this…”

He squatted beside her, grabbed her shoulders, forced her to turn her head and see the canyon. “Take a look, lady. We’re on the side of a mountain. As if you didn’t already know—”

“Oh God!” The words were a whisper, but they became louder and louder as she repeated them. “Oh God,” she said, “oh God, oh God…”

She began to tremble. Tremble? The understatement of the year. She was shaking like an aspen leaf in a windstorm. Jesse shook her. Hard.

“Stop it!”

“I’m on the mountain. Blackwolf Mountain. In Blackwolf Canyon.” She made a sound that might have been a laugh. “And this—this is the sacred stone!”

“Surprise, surprise,” he said coldly.

She swung toward him, eyes wide, face still devoid of color.

“I was in the canyon. In it, do you understand? I was looking up at the mountain. At this ledge. At these stones and the sun and then—and then there was lightning and then I was here and no, it’s impossible, impossible, impossible…”

If it was an act, it was a good one. Damn it, was she going into shock? No color. Sentences that made no sense.

He caught her wrist.

“Take it easy.”

She laughed. It was the kind of laugh he’d heard wounded men make on the battlefield just before they gave it all up and went into shocked insanity. A knot formed in his belly. No. He was not going to let this woman go there. He had enough blood on his hands to last a lifetime.

“Take it easy,” he said again. Her teeth were chattering, and he had nothing to warm her with except himself. On a low, angry curse, he wrapped his arms around her. “Calm down.”

“D-did you h-hear what I said? I wa-was down there. At the bottom of this—this pile of rock. And then I wasn’t. I wasn’t d-down there, I was—I was here. And you—and you—”

“Come here,” he growled, and he drew her hard against him. She struggled; he ignored it. After a few seconds, she gave a little sob; he felt the warmth of her breath against his naked flesh, the hot kiss of her tears. She felt delicate, almost fragile in his arms.

How on earth could she have had the strength to get up here?

It didn’t make sense.

Yes, she’d ignored his No Trespassing signs. She’d come here to steal artifacts. He was certain of that. But how had she climbed to this ledge? He knew how much muscle power it took, and he knew, too, that she didn’t have it.

Not that her body was soft. Well, yes, it was. Soft, as only a woman could be soft. But she was fit. Toned. Her arms. Her belly, pressed to his.

Her breasts.

Rounded. Full. Ripe. And maybe he was the savage she thought him to be, after all, if he was in danger of turning hard while he held a woman he didn’t know, and had every reason to dislike, in his arms.

Tonight, once he was off this damned mountain, Jesse thought grimly, he’d turn himself back into a man of the 1970s instead of the 1870s. He’d drive into town, hit the bar at Bozeman’s best hotel and find himself a woman, a sweet-smelling, sexy East Coast tourist.

It was time to work off the past months of foolish celibacy. And if there was one thing that had never changed about him, it was that he’d never had trouble finding a beautiful woman to warm his bed.

After a couple of hours of that, he wouldn’t get turned on holding a thief in his arms.

At least his thief had stopped shaking. She was making little hiccupping sounds. Carefully, he put her from him.

“Are you all right now?”

She nodded. Her hair had come loose. He’d thought it was brown, but it wasn’t. It was gold. Beige. Brown. And what in hell did the color of her hair matter? Quickly, he got to his feet.

“Good,” he said briskly. “Because you’re going to have to listen closely. And cooperate, if we’re going to get down safely.”

She looked up at him. “What happened to me?”

Her voice was soft, still shocked. He couldn’t afford that; she’d be too much a liability unless she got a grip on reality.

“Lightning.”

She nodded. “I remember. It was green. How could lightning be green?”

It was an excellent question. Lightning, especially here, came in lots of colors. Red. White. A kind of electric blue. But green?

“Save the questions for later,” he said brusquely. “Right now, what matters is getting off this ledge.”

She swallowed. Ran the tip of her tongue over her dry lips.

“I’m, uh, I’m not much for heights.”

That explained why she hadn’t tried to look into the canyon again. It sure as hell didn’t explain how she’d gotten herself up here—and then a thought came to him.

“Do you have an accomplice?”

She stared up at him. “A what?”

“Is there anyone with you?” There had to be. Jesse moved to the edge of their stony platform and peered down, scanning the canyon floor as he’d once scanned for the ‘Cong. Nobody. Nothing. Only Cloud, swishing his plume of a tail and munching on the leaves of a shrub.

“Yes,” the woman said slowly. “Of course!” She stood up, keeping her eyes on the mountain, but she wobbled a little. Instinctively, Jesse moved quickly to her and gathered her against him. “Jack. Jack and the others.”

“They abandoned you.”

“No. They’re at the foot of the mountain.”

“They’re gone,” Jesse said harshly. “They let you risk your life for nothing. There’s nothing here to steal. The guardian stones, the sacred stone itself, are too big. And there’s nothing else.” His mouth twisted. “Your people made off with whatever was up here fifty years ago.”

“My people?” She glared up at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

What, indeed? She was white. So what? He was, too. Half white, anyway, and what did it matter? He’d never given a damn about anyone’s color. It was just that there was something about this woman that was disturbing.

“Okay,” he said gruffly. “Here’s the plan.” An overstatement, but she didn’t have to know that. “I’m going to link our belts together. I’ll fasten one end around your wrist, the other around me. I’ll go down first and you’ll watch every move I make. You got that? Every single move, because one misstep and…Damn it, what now?”

Sienna Cummings was shaking her head. “I’m not climbing down this mountain.”

“What will you do, then?” Jesse’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Wish yourself down?”

The look she gave him was hot with defiance.

“I’m going to wake up.”

Jesse raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I’m dreaming. This is a dream. It has to be. I am definitely not standing on a ledge halfway up a mountain, talking to a man who—who looks as if he stepped out of Central Casting for a movie starring John Wayne.” A curl of golden brown hair blew over her lip; she shoved it behind her ear and her chin rose a little higher. “John Wayne is dead, and I am dreaming. End of story.”

Jesse almost laughed. She was a tough piece of work. Whatever else she was, he had to admire her for that.

“I’ve got news for you, baby. John Wayne’s alive. And this is no dream.”

“Wrong on both counts,” she said. If her chin went up any higher, she’d tumble over backward. “John Wayne is history. And I am sound asleep in my tent. There’s not a way in the world you can make me think otherwise.” Her eyes—more violet than ever—narrowed. “This is not real.”

“You’re wasting valuable time. The sun’s beating straight down. The descent’s going to be tough enough without factoring in the heat.”

“No,” she said, though now there was a faint quaver in her voice, “I told you, this isn’t real.”

“It damned well is,” Jesse snarled, and he proved it by pulling her into his arms, bending his head and covering her mouth with his.




CHAPTER THREE


SIENNA gasped as the stranger’s arms closed around her.

“Don’t,” she said, or tried to say, but he was too quick, too strong, too determined. She tried to twist her face away but that didn’t work, either. All he had to do was slide one hand into her hair, cup the back of her head and bring his mouth down on hers.

There was no way to call this a kiss. It was a hard imprint of his flesh on hers, a ruthless demonstration of sheer masculine power.

He wanted to show her that she was helpless against him.

But she wasn’t.

Her work took her to places that were often desolate and dangerous. She’d studied martial arts, and her instructor’s advice—look for an opening or create one—had saved her on a dig in the jungles of Peru, as well as on the streets of Manhattan. It would save her now. All she had to do was force herself to relax. Her assailant would follow suit by easing his hold on her. Then she’d bring up her knee and jam it, hard, into his crotch.

Wrong. Nothing about him relaxed.

If anything, as soon as she stopped struggling, he drew her even closer.

Her palms spread helplessly over sun-heated skin stretched taut over hard-muscled flesh. He tilted her head back, giving him greater access to her mouth. Sienna whimpered and tried to bite him. It was another misjudgment. As soon as her lips parted, his tongue swept into her mouth.

And everything changed.

What had been cold calculation turned hot and wild. She felt the press of his erection against her belly; the taste of him on her lips became dark and exciting. She heard herself make a little sound, almost a purr. No, she thought desperately, but even as she thought it, she was leaning into him, rising to him…

With a suddenness that left her reeling, he caught her by the shoulders and put her from him. She knew her cheeks were flushed, but when she looked at him, his face was expressionless. That frightened her even more than the way he’d kissed her.. .and the way she’d reacted.

Except, she hadn’t. She hadn’t! She wasn’t the kind of woman turned on by displays of macho male power. She was a woman of the twenty-first century and behavior like this had gone out decades ago.

Still, for that one, heart-stopping instant…

Sienna forced the thought aside. She looked up at the stranger. Deliberately, slowly, she wiped the back of her hand over her lips and then against her jeans.

“Do that again,” she said in a low voice, “and I’ll kill you.”

“Give me a hard time again,” he said in mocking imitation of her, “I’ll leave you up here and the only life you’ll take will be your own.” His mouth twisted. “Do you get it now? This is reality. You’re not dreaming.”

“Is using force the way you generally make a point?”

Something flickered in his eyes. “Only when there’s no other choice. A man does what he has to do.”

“So does a woman.” Her chin came up. “You might keep that in mind.”

“Hang on to that attitude. It might just help save you.”

From him? From the climb down? Sienna wasn’t foolish enough to ask. This was not a man to push too far, at least not until she was safely back in civilization with Jack and the others. For now, doing what she had to do made sense, and what she had to do was get off this ledge.

“The belt,” he said, holding out his hand.

He’d already stripped his from the loops of his jeans. She hesitated, then undid hers and gave it to him.

He worked quickly, his big hands moving with surprising grace as he joined the two lengths of leather. When he finished, he tugged hard at both ends. The leather held, but so what? Belts weren’t made to support the weight of two people descending a mountain. His improvised rope wasn’t long enough or strong enough or—

Thunder rumbled from somewhere behind the mountain. She looked up. Dark clouds were moving in. The sky looked ominous. Nerves made her sweep the tip of her tongue over her lips…

And she tasted him.

Anger. Power. Determination. And the darker tastes of man and desire.

“Ready?”

She blinked. The man was wrapping one end of the joined belts around his wrist. It was a big wrist but it matched the rest of him. His height. His shoulders. His powerful arms, ridged abdomen, long legs…

“Keep looking at me like that,” he said in a low voice, “you’re asking for trouble.”

A flush rose in Sienna’s face. “What’s your name?”

He looked at her as if she were crazy. Maybe she was, but before she stepped into space, real or imagined, it seemed she should at least know who he was.

“Does it matter?”

She turned, shot a glance at the yawning distance between them and the canyon floor. Then she looked at him.

“Yes,” she said stubbornly. “It does.”

Just when she thought he wasn’t going to answer, he shrugged those big shoulders.

“It’s Jesse.”

Sienna stared at him. “Jesse?”

“Jesse Blackwolf.”

“But—but—”

“You wanted my name. You’ve got it. Now, let’s get moving before that storm hits.”

“But…” she said again, and he grabbed her wrist.

“No more talking. You got that?”

She got it, all right. Besides, what could she say? How could she possibly tell him that he could not, absolutely could not be who he said he was, that Jesse Blackwolf, if he’d turned up, was in his sixties? So she kept quiet as he wrapped a section of the belt around her wrist, secured it, then gave it a tug that seemed to meet with his satisfaction.

“Do everything I do,” he said. “Concentrate on—” He grabbed her by the shoulders, hoisted her to her toes. “Listen to me, if you want to survive. The rules are simple.”

“Rules?” she said, with a nervous laugh.

“Rules. Five of them. Do not look down. Do not look up. Keep your eyes on your hands and feet and on me. Pay attention to what I say. Obey what I say, without question. Understand?”

She didn’t have enough saliva in her mouth to answer. Instead, she nodded her head, but the truth was, the only thing she actually understood was that she’d never been so scared in her life.

He turned his back to her and took a step forward.

“Wait!”

He looked over his shoulder, face taut with impatience.

“What now?”

“How—I mean, what, exactly, am I supposed to do?”

“I just told you.”

“No. I mean—I mean, I’ve seen people climb rocks. Should I search for handholds? Dig my toes into the crevices? Stay in one place until I’ve found the next—”

“Are you deaf, woman? You do what I do. Nothing else. And stop trying to analyze everything. This is a mountain. The ground is forty feet down. There’s a score of places in between where we can break our necks.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

Trust him? A man who couldn’t possibly exist, standing with her on a mountain she couldn’t possibly have climbed? A man who snapped orders like a general but looked like a savage and thought that the way to handle a woman who asked questions and proved she had a brain was to kiss her into submission?

“You have no other choice.”

It was as if he’d heard what she was thinking.

And he was right. What could she do but step off into space behind him? Maybe she was dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or whatever you did when you were unconscious. Maybe, indeed, but she was stuck up here, anyway, with no way down except this.

A whimper inched its way into her throat. She tried to stop it. Too late. Jesse Blackwolf, the man who called himself Jesse Blackwolf, had obviously heard it.

“Scared?”

What was the logic in lying? Still, she wasn’t going to sound pathetic about it.

“Damned right, I’m scared!”

He smiled. It didn’t last more than a second; it was the barely perceptible lift of one corner of his mouth, but it was a smile and it changed him from terrifying male to gorgeous man—and was she crazy, noticing such a thing at a moment like this?

“Good,” he said. “You’d have to be a fool not to be scared, and a fool’s the last person I’d want tied to me right now.” He reached out, one big hand cupping her chin. “Obey me. Be a good girl and I promise, I’ll get you down safely.”

Obey him. Be a good girl. Even now, with the coppery taste of fear on her tongue, Sienna almost laughed. Nobody had said anything remotely like that to her since she was twelve, but this didn’t seem the time or place to correct him on what her Women’s Studies prof called gender issues that still existed more than thirty years after the women’s lib movement.

“Is it a deal?”

She nodded. He leaned forward and brushed his mouth lightly over hers.

“For luck,” he said.

And then he turned his back to her and stepped off the ledge.

At least, that was the way it looked.

He hadn’t stepped off it, though. His head and shoulders appeared as if from nowhere, along with an extended hand.

“Let’s go,” he said briskly.

“I’m coming,” Sienna said. And she would—in a decade or two. Right now, her feet seemed glued to the sacred stone.

“Remember what I said? Just do what I tell you to do.”

“Something you should know about me,” she said with forced lightness as she inched forward. “I never do what anyone tells me to do. Especially a man.”

“You want to burn bras, do it somewhere else.”

Okay. This time, frightened as she was, she did laugh at the old-fashioned phrase.

“Good. Relax. Take a deep breath. Another. And give me your hand.”

“In a minute.”

“Now,” he commanded. “Hear that thunder? The storm’s getting closer. Bad weather’s not a pleasant thing to experience on an exposed ledge.”

A convincing roar of thunder followed his words.

“Sienna! Give me your hand.”

Who could possibly argue with such authority?

Not me, Sienna thought, and she took Jesse’s hand and stepped off the cliff.

A gentle rain had started by the time they reached the canyon floor.

As for the climb down…She had no clear memory of it. Halfway down, scree coming loose under her feet, fingernails torn off by desperately digging into cracks that only a very generous person would call handholds, she’d finally taken Jesse’s best advice.

She’d stopped thinking.

It had been easier after that, but he’d still twice saved her from plummeting to earth.

Each misstep had left her hanging, one hand clutching the rocky face of the mountain while her feet dangled in midair. Each time, he’d clasped his fingers tightly around her wrist, his face contorting with determination as he steadied her until she found a foothold.

Now they were down. And this time, when the man who said he was Jesse Blackwolf said “good girl” as she tumbled into his waiting arms, she didn’t give a damn for gender issues.

She was simply happy to be alive.

“Th-thank you,” she said in a shaky whisper.

It was all she could manage, but it was enough.

Jesse nodded, held her in the circle of his arms and wondered if he ought to tell her she’d surprised him with her courage.

No. Not now. There was no point to it. Why compliment her for creating a situation in which she’d risked both their lives? Besides, they had to get out of here before the storm hit with full force. It was going to be a bad one; the signs were all there. The dark sky, the wind, the thunder and lightning…

This would be a storm that would turn the lazy creek that ran between the canyon and his ranch into a raging torrent.

So, any second now, he’d let go of the woman in his arms.

But not just yet.

She needed to share his body warmth. Her teeth were chattering; her skin was icy. She might be going into shock. Anything was possible in the aftermath of danger.

He’d seen men—trained warriors—face the worst kind of imminent death and survive, then all but collapse when the danger was over.

Sienna Cummings had just come through that type of situation.

He’d made it sound as if getting down the mountain required nothing but her compliance. He knew better. The descent had called for guts and determination. She’d shown both.

Of course, she’d gotten up the mountain in the first place and that was almost as difficult. How had she done it? That was still the $64,000 question.

Damned if he could come up with an answer.

Maybe somebody had helped her. Climbed with her. That guy she’d mentioned. Jim or John. Jack. Yeah. Jack. Had he gone up with her? And then, what, left her?

What kind of man would abandon a woman that way?

Endless questions. No answers. None he could answer right now, at any rate, not with the storm almost on them and Sienna still trembling in his arms.

He could feel the race of her heart. Feel the soft whisper of her breath against his skin. He gathered her even closer, leaned his chin on the top of her head. Her hair was soft; it smelled of rain and, very faintly, of lilacs.

“Easy,” he said. “We’re down. You’re okay.”

He wasn’t sure she’d heard him. Then she drew a shuddering breath.

“I didn’t think we’d make it.”

“Blackwolf Mountain and I have known each other a very long time.”

She gave a little laugh. “A good thing.”

Not really, he thought, but she had no need to know that.

“You all right now?”

“I’m fine.”

She wasn’t. She was still shaking, her face devoid of color. And she was a mess.

Her hair was a mass of curls. He’d already seen the bump on her head. She’d broken her fingernails. Her jeans were torn and so was her T-shirt. Sweat and now the steadily increasing rain had plastered them to her, outlining her body. It was delicate but as lush and feminine as a man could want.

He could feel her belly and her thighs against his. Could feel her breasts pressed against his chest, the pebbled nipples seeming to burn against his naked flesh. The pebbling told him she was chilled. And braless. And that her breasts were gently uptilted as if in readiness for a man’s mouth.

He shut his eyes, willing the all-too-vivid image away, deliberately replacing it with an image of her face. That was safer.

She had a pretty face, but more than that, an intelligent one. Bottom line, she looked nothing like a thief or a flower child still caught up by the nonsense of the prior decade.

What she looked like was a woman a man would want in his bed. Not a man like him. His secrets were too dark; the shadows that engulfed him too ugly. But, yes, some man would want a woman like this.

He felt himself stir against her. He pulled back, hoping she hadn’t felt his erection. Goddamn it, he thought coldly. What in hell was this?

He had, absolutely, been without a woman far too long. There was no other reason Sienna Cummings would turn him on. Besides, the facts were simple. She had invaded his land, climbed his mountain.

All he wanted was to send her on her way.

“Okay,” he said gruffly, dropping his arms to his sides, “let’s get mov—”

A roar of thunder drowned him out. Lightning sizzled across the sky. White lightning. And as if someone had hit a switch, the dark clouds opened up, spewing torrential rain. Instantly, they were soaked from head to foot. His intruder gave a little shriek and raised her hands as if to shelter under them. The gesture was useless, but he couldn’t blame her. The temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees and the rain was ice cold and as sharp as needles.

Jesse grabbed her arm. She broke free, swung in a circle.

“What are you doing?” he yelled. It was the only way to make himself heard over the rain.

“Looking for my people.”

“I told you, your boyfriend abandoned you.”

“No. That’s impossible!”

“Listen, lady, you want to argue, argue with yourself. I’m going to head for shelter.”

She looked at him. He wanted to laugh. The last creature he’d ever seen this wet and woebegone had been a calf that had wandered into a stream.

“You coming with me or not?”

She gave a dejected nod. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The piercing sound carried over the roar of the rain and Cloud came thundering toward them. Sienna shrieked and jumped behind Jesse. That did it; the laughter he’d choked back a moment ago erupted in a snort.

“It’s a horse,” he said. “Not a mountain lion.”

“Don’t you have a truck?”

She was impossible. Jesse mounted the stallion, reached down and held his out his hand.

“You want transportation, this is it. You coming with me? Yes or no?”

She stared up at him. Then she clasped his hand and hoisted herself onto the animal’s back. A good thing, too. The last thing he’d have wanted to do was wrestle a wet, unwilling woman onto the saddleless back of an equally wet horse.

“Hold on.”

Sienna blinked. Hold on? To what? There was no saddle, there was nothing but man and horse.

“Put your arms around me. That’s it. Tighter, unless you want to make this ride hanging on to Cloud’s tail.”

He was right. Besides, a few minutes ago, his arms had been around her. Stupid to hesitate now, she thought, and wrapped her arms around his waist.

His skin was smooth and wet and warm. She felt the taut muscles of his belly contract under her fingers. It made her breath catch and she started to pull back, but at just that moment, he dug his heels into the animal’s flanks and the horse surged forward as if he were going to leap into the air and fly.

Sienna gave a muffled shriek and tightened her grip on Jesse until her breasts and belly were pressed tightly against his back.

“Good girl,” he shouted.

Sienna rolled her eyes. Another metaphorical sexist pat on the head, but what could she do about it? And, really, what did it matter?

If this was all happening, she’d be free of this man as soon as they reached, well, wherever they were heading. Bozeman, she hoped. Jack was probably there, waiting for her with the others, and surely he’d have some rational explanation for everything.

If this wasn’t happening, if she was dreaming, she’d wake up.

Those were the only two possibilities, and neither involved dealing with Jesse Blackwolf for more than just another little while.

Those were the only two possibilities.. .weren’t they?

No, she thought uneasily, they weren’t.

What if that green lightning had struck her? What if she was in a coma? What if she were lying comatose in a hospital bed, having wildly exotic dreams or whatever you called the stuff that filled your head while your brain was on medical hiatus?

It made sense that she might dream of a place she’d spent months and months studying. And, okay, it even made sense that she might dream of being rescued by a dark and dangerous man. Her life centered around her studies, but she was still a woman. And she was a scholar of ancient civilizations.

She’d never been the type for romantic fantasies, but if she were…

If she were, this man would fit the bill.

A coma made absolute sense.

And, actually, it was the far better choice, because otherwise, she was back to square one. How had she ended up on that ledge? Where was Jack? What was she doing, racing through a flooding canyon with a man who looked like an Indian warrior?

Sienna jammed her eyes closed. A coma, for sure. Any minute now, she’d wake up, see that she was in a hospital room…

“Hang on tight,” Jesse said.

Her eyes snapped open. What looked like the ocean was dead ahead, a rushing torrent of water that they surely could not ford. But the stallion plunged into the swollen stream without hesitation.

Could you drown in a stream you’d created in your mind?

God, she was going crazy!

Water coursed over her feet, her calves, her thighs. The horse couldn’t keep his footing, not in this, but he did, he did as Jesse urged him on.

“Good boy,” he said, and Sienna laughed and laughed and she knew, she knew there was a note of hysteria in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. All she could do was clutch the man who was not real despite what he’d said, press her cheek to his strong, hard, not-real-either back, and wait for the moment this would end.

An eternity later, the horse slowed to a walk.

“We’re here,” Jesse said.

Sienna sat up straight. They’d stopped moving, but the world was a blur of heavily falling rain. Good. She wasn’t ready to see past it. Not just yet.

“Where?”

He threw a long leg over the stallion’s head and dismounted. His big hands closed around her waist; he lifted her from the horse to the ground and she sent up a silent, tiny prayer of hope.

Maybe she was coming out of the coma. Maybe she’d see the comforting white walls of a hospital room.

Or maybe not. Maybe she was still trapped in a place that didn’t exist, and when she opened her eyes, she’d see, what? A log cabin? A tepee? A corral full of piebald ponies?

She took a deep breath. And forced herself to look. At the torrent of rain falling from a leaden sky…

And at all the rest.

There was no hospital room. No tepee. No log cabin. Well, not unless you called a sprawling, magnificent structure of cypress and glass, acres of glass, a cabin. There was also a corral. A huge barn. And a side yard.

Not a dream. Not a dream. Not a dream.

And not a coma. It couldn’t be. She didn’t know enough about cars and trucks to have populated the side yard with a bright red car so long and low she knew it had to be foreign, a black pickup truck and what she figured was a battered Jeep.

Each vehicle bore a license plate. Each read “Montana.” And each read—each read…

Sienna’s heart leaped into her throat. She swung toward Jesse.

“The date,” she whispered. “What’s the date?”

He stared at her. Maybe he hadn’t understood her. She knew her voice sounded choked. She cleared her throat, not certain she could form the words again. But she didn’t have to.

His eyes narrowed. “What now?” he said coldly. “Is this another part of the game?”

“No game. Just tell me, please. What’s the date?”

“June 22, as you well know.”

“Not June 21? The solstice…”

“It fell on the twenty-second this year. That only happens—”

She could almost feel the blood draining from her head.

“It only happens every four hundred years. I know that.”

“So?”

“So…” She licked her lips. There was only one last question to ask, but she was afraid to ask it. “So the last time it happened the year was—the year was 1975.”

Jesse put his fists on his hips. Legs apart, eyes locked to hers, he looked less savage but twice as dangerous.

“Was 1975? Give me a break, okay? This is 1975.”

“Now?” Sienna said calmly. “Right now, it’s—”

Her eyes rolled up into her head and she crumpled to the ground.




CHAPTER FOUR


ONE second, Sienna Cummings was looking at him as if one of them was crazy.

The next, her eyes rolled up and she fell to the ground. Or she would have, if Jesse hadn’t caught her. She was limp, her face bloodless, her lashes dark crescents against high cheekbones.

Great, he thought, clasping her shoulders as he held her up. A trespasser who’d perfected the art of Victorian swoons.

If she thought that was going to change anything, she was wrong.

“Miss Cummings,” he said roughly. “Come on. Open your eyes.”

He shook her, not altogether gently. Nothing happened, not even a flutter of those long, dark lashes. His mouth thinned. She really had fainted, right in the middle of what they’d have labeled a typhoon on the other side of the world.

And he was stuck with her.

The stallion nuzzled his shoulder.

“Yeah, okay,” Jesse said grimly. He wrapped one arm around the woman, slipped the bridle from Cloud’s massive head and ran a rough hand over the animal’s neck. “Go home, boy.” The big horse trotted for the open barn door and Jesse clamped both arms around his unwelcome guest and did the same, running for the shelter of the house.

Her head fell back; the heavy rain beat down on her upturned face and he cursed softly, cupped her head and brought her face to his shoulder.





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