High Country Hero. Lynna Banning

would like to sit down and eat some breakfast.”

      It wasn’t a question, more like a softly spoken order, but the grumbling of his stomach made a response irrelevant. Jupiter, could she get under his skin! He noticed that she ate standing up.

      The crisp bacon broke up in his mouth like little shards of sweet-flavored cookies, and the biscuits! Fluffy white tumbleweeds that melted on his tongue. He swallowed and nearly groaned with pleasure. “Who taught you to cook?”

      “Billy West. He’s my father.”

      Cord stopped chewing. “I don’t know who my father is. Could have been any one of four men, all of ’em outlaws.”

      “Outlaws?”

      “Only family I ever knew. My mother died having me. They fed me and clothed me until I was fifteen.”

      “And then?”

      His face changed. “And then I turned them in. They’d killed a Chinese woman and her baby.”

      Sage opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. What brutes men could be. Some men, anyway. Her father and Uncle John were both wonderful men, strong and smart and gentle inside, where it counted.

      She glanced at the man seated on the other side of the fire. What about him? A brute? Or a gentle man?

      A dark whisker shadow lay over the lower half of his face. His skin was tanned the color of her leather saddle, his chest and back, as well. And he wore no drawers.

      An irrational thought flicked through her mind. Could a man’s backside get suntanned right through his jeans?

      He was a brute, she decided. A man who chased other men for money. A bounty hunter who would turn in his own father for a price. Hardheaded and hard-hearted.

       Then why did he want to save his prisoner’s life?

      She could feel him staring at her, asking a silent question. It took all her courage to meet his gaze. His eyes were hard. Calculating. And unusual. The gray-green irises were ringed with brown, as if they had started to be one color in utero and then changed to another before birth.

      There was something undisciplined about him. Primitive, like a wild animal. A wolf—that was it. A hungry wolf. One who hunted alone.

      She dropped her gaze to the tin plate in her hand. That fact didn’t exactly make him unacceptable. It made him dangerous.

      * * *

      Three switchbacks down Frog Jump Butte it started to rain. The cold, stinging droplets dampened the trail, then turned it into mud. The horses twitched their tails and stepped daintily along the precipitous cliff edge while Sage’s heart thumped.

      She’d packed into the woods before with her father and Uncle John, but if it rained, the three of them would hole up in a cave or a tree hollow and wait it out. Camping trips when she was a girl had been for fun.

      Now she was “all growed up” as her father put it, and it wasn’t fun. Not with rainwater sluicing off her hat and a sopping wet riding skirt clinging to her legs. The brown denim material made a swish-slap sound with every step the horse took.

      As the morning wore on, the sky grew darker. Rain dribbled in rivulets off the toes of her boots, splashed onto the ground and made the already sodden trail even more slippery. She reached one gloved hand to pat the mare’s neck. “Good girl,” she murmured. “We will soldier on.”

      Sage had picked up the phrase from her father, had used it at medical college when things had seemed insurmountable—dissecting her first cadaver under the eagle eye of three professors ready to pounce on a false move; fending off the rude, hurtful jests by her male colleagues when a patient happened to be female; even forcing herself to eat when she was so tired just opening her mouth took more energy than she could muster.

      She had soldiered on. Hour by hour, day by day. More than her examinations and flawless oral presentations, her medical degree had come through dogged perseverance.

      A little thing like rain might be cold and wet and uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t stop her.

      But the river, when they reached it, did. It rippled deep green and turquoise around a cluster of water-smoothed gray boulders and a half-sub-merged fir stump.

      “Why,” she said to the man who drew rein at her side, “did we climb up that butte yesterday only to unclimb it today? Why not just go around it?”

      He studied the riverbank, the waterlogged tree, then the opposite bank. “Because you can see the whole valley from up there.”

      “And be seen, as well.”

      He hesitated. “True.”

      He dismounted and shucked off his poncho. “River won’t be this smooth for long. It’ll rise with the creek runoff.” He began to unbutton his shirt.

      “What are you doing?”

      “Going swimming.” He pulled off his boots, rolled them up inside his shirt and poncho and tied them behind the saddle. Raindrops rolled down his bare chest and back.

      “Now? In the rain?”

      He flashed her a grin. “If you’ve never gone swimming in the rain, you ought to try it. Rain makes the water seem warm, feels good against your skin. Like silk.”

      He slapped the mare’s rump. “Come on, Sugar.” When the horse jolted forward, he splashed into the river alongside her.

      Sage watched his half-clothed body slice through the water. Halfway across he rolled onto his back, stretched both arms wide and opened his mouth wide to the rain. “Goddamn, this feels good,” he called. “Care to join me?”

      She sat frozen on her horse. “What on earth for?” she shouted.

      “For pleasure, pure and simple.” She thought she heard a low laugh, but she wasn’t sure.

      “It’s one good way to get across the river,” he added in a lazy voice. “Besides, my trousers are getting washed at the same time.”

      Oh, God, the river. She had to cross it, too.

      She couldn’t swim fully clothed. She’d have to take off her rain gear, then her shirt, her riding skirt. Her boots. She could strip down to her camisole and underdrawers, but he would be watching and…

       Does it really feel like silk?

      In her entire life, she had never done anything just for pleasure alone. She’d gone camping to learn about medicinal herbs and roots. She’d even kissed a boy once, but only because someone dared her to, and she never backed away from a challenge.

      But just to feel…silky? It seemed indecent, somehow. Decadent.

      This was crazy. He was crazy.

      And yet…

      Chapter Five

      Cord lay spread-eagled in the water, sculling his cupped hands to keep from drifting downstream. He let the raindrops beat on his face and chest as he watched her horse dance back and forth on the sandy riverbank while its rider tried to make up her mind about something. To swim across or ride across, he guessed. Not a big decision; the water was only four, maybe five feet deep.

      Swimming in the rain is a real sensual pleasure, Doc. So why not swim across and enjoy the experience? Lord knew there weren’t that many real pleasures in this world. When one dropped into your lap, you ought to savor it.

      She stepped her mount to the river’s edge, studied the wavelets lapping at the mare’s hooves, then reined the animal away.

      What is she waiting for? The rain had already drenched her; she looked sodden and miserable, with her head down, her shoulders hunched. She was probably shivering so hard her teeth chattered. Wet is wet, Doc. Choose the way that feels good.