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  He cringed, remembering his decision to print her name. At fourteen, his cursive stank.

  He pulled out the folded paper and memories fell around him—the unexplainable ache in his chest when he learned she’d be leaving. His sadness over her father’s death, the things he wanted to say and couldn’t. Not even in writing.

  At the time, he’d justified his cowardice by thinking he’d wait for her new address. But he never learned her new address. Never heard from her again. Never got rid of the letter.

  With a man’s eyes he read a fourteen-year-old boy’s words:

  I wish you didn’t have to go.

  Come back again.

  Eli Hawthorne III

  In the day’s fading light, for a long, painful moment, he questioned which had been worse—the day the roadside bomb blew him out of the Humvee or the day Laura moved away.

  Chapter 11

  Laura cocooned herself in the quilt on the front porch swing, wondering where Eli waited on this moonless night. Or would Garcia take the first watch?

  Eli had been right again about the late rise, and the ranch laid dark and silent, the buildings barely distinguishable in the starlight.

  He’d worn a blue shirt at dinner which brought out the blue in his eyes. Funny, but she would always see him with two eyes, in spite of the bold, black patch.

  Above her to the east, Pennington’s outside light glared over his house, barn and the granite boulders jutting from the hillside. He, too, could be sitting on his porch, watching the valley, a rifle across his lap.

  She shivered.

  Soon Pennington’s cattle would no longer push through her fence. She tugged the quilt tighter. Why hadn’t her dad fixed that fence years ago? Didn’t he have the money?

  There had been so much love in her family and so little money—one reason she’d been drawn to Derek Stone. She exhaled a shaky breath.

  She’d thought she’d found both love and money when she fell for the handsome, successful banker. He’d been so taken with her.

  But being in love wasn’t the same as loving, and soon another attraction took him away.

  The ache began behind her breastbone, throbbing slowly. She blamed her hasty decision as much as she blamed him for his unfaithfulness.

  Unwilling to spoil the day with post-traumatic pain from her former fiancé, she went inside and locked the door.

  * * *

  The next morning, common sense told Laura to drive the half mile down the hill and park at the edge of the lane. Who knew how far she’d be going with Mary, and she might die if she had to walk back up after their run.

  Pride won and she walked.

  The sun had barely glazed the cottonwoods as she took to the lane, and on the north face a few late wildflowers clung to the shady spots—purple fiesta, popcorn and the delicate white blooms atop the platelike leaves of miner’s lettuce. Overhead a woodpecker thrummed against a steel telephone pole, and she marveled at the bird’s dedication to a hopeless endeavor.

  A shadow slipped through her mind. Was she doing the same, trying to chip through Eli Hawthorne’s tin-man armor?

  She shook off the depressing thought and quickened her pace. At the bottom she waited across from the mailboxes, unwilling to further darken her mood by checking hers and finding it empty again.

  Mary appeared around a bend, her long strides bringing her steadily closer.

  “You made it.” Mary greeted her cheerfully with an outstretched hand.

  Laura was glad she hadn’t driven. At least she’d stretched her legs out a little. “Thanks for inviting me, but I have to warn you, I’m in terrible shape.”

  Mary gave her a quick once over. “Not really. No extra weight. You’ll do fine. Probably just need to build up your lungs.”

  Laura inwardly winced with a long-held desire to build up more than her lungs.

  Mary was kind. They jogged down to the Hawthorne Ranch gate, about a mile, and then headed back. Laura could feel those inadequate lungs screaming for relief, but she forced herself to keep up with her merry mentor. Not only could the woman outrun her, but she talked while she was at it.

  “What’s it like coming back after such a long time?” Mary looked straight ahead, waiting for Laura’s reply.

  “Different.” If she could stick with one-word answers, she might survive.

  “I can imagine. We moved here from Oregon a dozen years ago. Never looked back. Rich wanted to live here ever since visiting as a kid. Crazy, I thought. Oregon is hard to beat, but I’ve grown to appreciate the beauty here, though it isn’t as green in the summer.”

  “I’ll bet.” Two words.

  “He’s retired, but not me. I run the store and he runs errands.” Mary looked Laura’s way and smiled. “I imagine there are more homes around here than when you were growing up.”

  “Absolutely.” One word.

  “The valley that opens past the next couple of curves is a well-kept secret.”

  “Hmm.” No word.

  “We love it here.”

  They were nearing her lane, and Laura prayed she could keep jogging until they got there. Without falling down.

  Mary slowed to a walk and Laura nearly hugged her. Sucking in as much air as possible, she lagged only a half step behind the older woman. At the mailboxes, she stopped and leaned on her knees.

  “You did great, Laura.”

  She turned her head sideways to see Mary’s generous smile. “Thanks.”

  “You want to meet tomorrow, too?”

  “Sure.”

  Mary laughed and lightly patted Laura’s back. “You’re a trouper. It’ll get easier, I promise. See you tomorrow.”

  Laura straightened and nodded. “I’m counting on it.”

  As Mary jogged off toward home, Laura thought she might throw up. She eyed the lane snaking up the hill and considered trudging down to the pond instead and throwing herself in.

  The sour note of a gate hinge rolled up from the ranch, and a horse whinnied. If Eli and Garcia could see her now, they’d laugh her to scorn.

  No—Garcia wouldn’t laugh. But Eli would howl.

  The climb took less from her lungs but more from her legs, and by the time she limped up the porch steps, Laura knew spaghetti had replaced her bones. She flopped onto the sofa, too weak to answer the furtive meows coming from behind the laundry room door.

  Tomorrow she would drive down.

  She must have dozed off, for a drawn-out feline snarl woke her with a start.

  “I’m coming.” Pushing herself to a sitting position, she took a deep breath before standing. Her legs were less rubbery and hope surfaced that she would, indeed, live another day.

  Pete and Re-Pete dashed from confinement and skittered through the kitchen.

  “If I had your energy, I’d be invincible.”

  The kittens trotted through the house on the hunt for any excuse to play.

  After a shower and fresh clothes, Laura felt like herself again. She put in a load of laundry, gave the carpet a cursory run with the vacuum and sat down to check her email.

  * * *

  Eli dismounted and led Buddy and an older mare through the north gate and onto Bell property. Then he rode a diagonal line up the hill to fencing just below the house. Pleased with his surprise, he stopped in front of the barbed wire separating Laura’s yard from the pasture. He’d waited until after nine, giving her time to shower and do whatever she did every morning. If she’d stayed true to her younger leanings, she’d be outside digging something up.

  He stood in the stirrups and stretched his thigh muscles. The saddle creaked as he settled against it, and the mare whinnied impatiently.

  He’d been counting on that.

  The front door opened and Laura stepped onto the
covered porch. He tipped his cowboy hat and lowered his voice with his best Western gentleman’s accent.

  “Mornin’, ma’am. Nice day for a ride to Slick Rock, wouldn’t you say?”

  A smile slid across her face as she folded her arms and cocked her head to the side.

  “You’re awfully sure of yourself, Mr. Hawthorne. Or do you always bring a spare mount along when you’re out riding?”

  Buddy stomped a hind leg and lipped at the sweet grass hugging the fence line.

  Laura looked past him to the bottom land. “How’d you get in here?”

  “No lock on the gate down at the west corner.”

  “I might have to fix that.” She tossed a visual challenge his way. “Looks like I’ve got more than the neighbor’s livestock trespassing on my property.”

  He reined buddy away from the fence and turned him downhill.

  “Wait!” Laura jumped off the porch and hurried to the fence. “I’ll go.”

  He pulled his horse around and eyed her cutoffs and pink tank top. “Not like that, you won’t.”

  “Give me five minutes.” She slipped under the porch railing.

  “Don’t forget a hat, Miss Bell.”

  Waving a hand over her shoulder, she disappeared inside.

  Laying the reins against Buddy’s neck, Eli turned back to face the ranch. He marveled again at how pristine it appeared from a distance. Tracing a line from the east pasture where the rustler had been and up over the draw, he saw how easily a rider could make a clean getaway. If he figured right, the rodeo grounds lay below the ridge on the other side—a perfect place to hold calves before trailering them out unnoticed on a moonless night.

  Anger simmered under his skin as he tallied the money he’d lost to rustlers. He planned to take a closer look today when he and Laura came back from the waterfall.

  The screen door slap jerked his head around. Laura wore a ball cap with a long ponytail hanging out the back, jeans and tennis shoes—not safe for a ride. He’d have to remedy that. A fair payback for all the groceries.

  He stepped off Buddy and over to the fence where he stepped on the bottom wire and pulled up on the next strand. Laura slipped through the opening without snagging her shirt and moved around Buddy toward the mare.

  “Easy, girl,” she murmured, running her hand down the mare’s neck toward the saddle.

  Eli handed her the reins, and she deftly gathered them and grabbed the saddle horn. With the other hand she took hold of the cantle, did a little half hop, then jumped, catching the stirrup with her left foot. She swung her right leg over the mare’s rump and settled in.

  “Bet you thought I forgot that trick.”

  He nodded. “Looks like I was wrong. How are the stirrups?”

  She stood on the balls of her feet. “Just right. Good guess.”

  “Good memory,” he said, and turned Buddy downhill toward the gate. Laura hadn’t gained much height in the past twelve years, so he’d let the stirrups out one notch.

  “No boots?”

  “No need.” She threw him a side glance. “Until today.”

  “Well, as long as she doesn’t run off with you, you’ll probably be all right.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him—that childish face she’d thrown his way a hundred times when he’d been right and she didn’t want to admit it. He chuckled.

  At the gate, he rode through first and closed it after her, then they turned toward the hills at a slow steady pace, side by side.

  No trail led to the falls, other than the memory of their frequent hikes to the giant granite slab. The horses picked their way along the grassy slopes, effortlessly climbing a couple hundred feet that would have left Eli and Laura panting. The animals’ bobbing heads set a steady rhythm that rocked the world away.

  As they topped the next hill, Slick Rock lay below them, shimmering white in the morning sun. Washed smooth by centuries of rain and runoff, its broad, bare face hugged the eastern side of a watershed. Only in the spring was it an actual waterfall.

  Eli pointed his horse down a gentle slope and stopped in a narrow flat place on the rock’s southern edge. He dropped the reins and Buddy lipped at the grass, twitching his ears and swishing his tail.

  Laura dismounted and hugged the mare’s neck, cooing something soft in her ear.

  Eli climbed onto a wide slab of bedrock pocked with bowl-shaped hollows several inches deep. Laura joined him, sat down cross-legged between two holes and ran a hand around the smooth insides of one.

  “Heck of a way to grind acorns,” she said.

  “Not for the Yokuts.” Thanks to Pop, he knew the Native Americans had roamed the foothills long before Hispanic farmers and ranchers moved in.

  “It’s just like I remember.” Laura leaned back on her hands and gazed at the dry waterslide. “I hope people don’t build around here. I’d hate to see that great blank face marred with graffiti.”

  “Belongs to the Bureau of Land Management. Probably won’t ever be built on.” He hoped.

  “Mary Travers told me there are quite a few homes farther up the road. Back in the little valley past those curves.”

  He nodded. “City people who want to live in the country—including a highway patrol officer. Nearly everyone commutes to work. Not many ranchers.”

  She studied him a moment. “Are you and Pennington the only cattlemen left up here?”

  “No. And don’t count Pennington in the bunch. He’s no cattleman.” He took his hat off and set it upside down on the rock.

  Her silence accentuated his scorn.

  “Gillette still owns a lot of the foothills,” he said. “Old family, if you remember.”

  “I remember the name.”

  “They drive their cattle higher in the summer and back down to the valley before the snow flies. One of the few remaining cattle drives in the area.”

  A sudden sadness tinged her voice. “We can’t stop change, can we? Go back to the way things were.”

  His lip curled when she mentioned his inner turmoil. “Nope.”

  She looked squarely at him then, her dark eyes clear and questioning. “If we could, what would you change?”

  Her boldness surprised him. He’d thought age would have tempered her brash, straight-forward manner. It hadn’t. Any more than it had his.

  He stuck his left boot out and pulled up his pant leg. “This, among other things.”

  She didn’t flinch, didn’t gasp or shrink back in horror. Just stared at the prosthesis connecting boot and leg.

  What had he expected? Pity? Revulsion?

  Again she surprised him with a bold appraisal.

  “Doesn’t look like it’s slowed you down any.”

  He grunted, pulled his pant leg down. “I manage.”

  “I suppose you’d change everything that happened in Afghanistan.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” He glared at her. What did she know about ambush and pain beyond description?

  She dipped her head, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Yes, I would.”

  Guilt knifed his gut. He hadn’t intended to assault her with his self-pity. He tried again. “What would you change about your life?”

  “My mom would be alive.” She answered without hesitation. Then she paused, looked at the mortar holes pocking the slab. “And I’d change some of my choices—decisions I made that didn’t turn out so well.”

  He nodded, remembering her remark about coming close to marriage. He wanted to know what happened, but like he’d said before, it wasn’t any of his business.

  “You never married?” She beat him at his own game.

  “No.” He watched her run her fingers around the inside of a mortar. “Never came close.”

  “I did. Came close, I mean.�
� She stared at the bedrock. “But I picked the wrong guy.”

  He couldn’t help himself. “What happened?”

  “A week before the wedding, he picked someone else.” She dropped her head as if ashamed.

  Anger surged through his arms at the gesture, and his fingers curled around the throat of an imaginary idiot.

  The question spilled out before he could stop it. “Why didn’t you write?”

  A short gasp escaped her parted lips, and surprise drained the color from her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “You don’t have to answer that.” He grabbed his hat and slammed it on. “I didn’t mean for this to be a depressing ride.”

  As he gathered himself to stand, she reached to stop him.

  “It’s not depressing. And I’m glad you asked the question. It’s one I asked myself for a long time, and I think the answer has to do with pain.”

  He relaxed and tipped his hat back, sensing she had more to say.

  She crossed her legs, wrapped her fingers around an ankle and looked at the slide.

  “I didn’t want to leave. This was the only home I’d ever known. I loved it here.”

  She paused, swallowed. “And my best friend lived here.”

  Her best friend? He didn’t remember her ever talking about her school friends, and the two-year difference in their ages had put them in different buildings with different schedules. He didn’t see her much at school.

  In a near whisper she added, “I didn’t want to leave him behind.”

  Eli’s heart bucked and his muscles tensed. A learned response. He willed himself to stay seated and calm.

  “I was afraid that if I wrote, you wouldn’t write back, and that would have been more than I could bear.”

  He tried and failed to dislodge the gravel in his throat. “I would have written.”

  She faced him with a sad smile. “It’s kind of you to say so.”

  He thought of the note in the wooden box on his dresser, realized he was a lying coward. He had written her.

  Taking a deep breath, she straightened her back, lifted her chin. “So I filled my life with school and helping my mother. Good grades led to scholarships which led to a teaching degree.”