Summer's Freedom (7 page)

As if uncomfortable with the turn in the conversation, he asked, “Where’s Samantha today?”

“She goes to church with my grandmother. I go to the eight o’clock service, but Samantha refuses to get up that early on a weekend morning. They usually have lunch and spend the afternoon together.”

“I’ve seen your grandmother,” he said. “The elegant lady?”

Maggie nodded with a grin. “That’s her.”

“Is that where you get that Texas sound in your voice?”

“I didn’t know I had one.” Maggie frowned quizzically. “Do I?”

“A little bit—just a word here and there. I heard it when you talked to the cat.”

Maggie laughed. “They tell me I had a right proper slur until I went to school. And I’ve never even visited Texas—isn’t that strange?”

“Was your grandmother around?”

“Yes.” With a barely audible sigh, a reflexive gesture linked to any mention of her childhood, she said, “My father was stationed at Fort Carson until I was seven. My mother doesn’t have a drawl anymore, but she must have when I was a child—they’d only been in Colorado for a year or so when my parents got married.”

“Are you an army brat?”

“Yes,” she said, immediately defensive.

“I would never have guessed.”

“Is there something you look for? A mark on the forehead or something?”

Joel grinned. “I didn’t mean it like that—army kids always made me feel like the biggest hick in the world.”

“Really? Why?”

“Your living rooms had things from Germany and Europe and Okinawa.” He laughed, meeting her gaze briefly before glancing toward the cat stretching and resettling on the couch. “You all had braces when you needed them and had seen dozens of places that were just names on a map to me.”

Maggie laughed in sympathy. “And I envied the natives of whatever city we were living in with a spirit bordering on hatred. You all had friends you’d known since kindergarten, and you didn’t have to start school in a new place all the time or live with the prejudice some entire towns hold against the military.”

He lifted his coffee cup in a mock toast. “To shattered misconceptions,” he said.

Maggie grinned and touched his cup. “Did you grow up here, Joel?”

He nodded, looking into his cup. “It’s been a long time since I’ve lived here. I left to go to college and didn’t come back until eight months ago.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Colorado State and Cornell.”

“Cornell? Well, now,” she said with a teasing lilt to her words, “I had no idea I was in the company of such a nimble brain.”

Joel laughed—a rich, earthy sound. “I’m no smarter than the next guy. Just dedicated. Like a pit bull.”

Maggie looked at him. He was undoubtedly dedicated, but the brains were there, too.

Another still pause fell between them, a space of moments Maggie filled by letting her gaze wander around his living room. Predictably, the books on the shelves leaned toward the natural sciences, and there was a huge collection of titles on birds. But there were other books, as well—Longfellow and Wordsworth, a cross section of modern paperbacks and a handful of the kinds of books required for a college English credit.

On the walls hung a distinctive selection of framed photographs: a trio of hawks at dawn; an empty beach; a single, watering deer. They were lonely photos. She wondered silently if he had taken them.

“So, Maggie,” he said, breaking her reverie, “I was planning to go out in a little while, go up to the mountains. Would you like to come along?”

Such a straightforward invitation, she thought, biting her lip—but spending time with him wasn’t the way to overcome her crush. Even now, as he waited calmly for her answer, he exuded an astonishing level of sexual appeal. Was it his eyes? His shoulders? His wide mouth?

Joel tried to maintain a poised facade, but he felt Maggie’s intense perusal. When her pale brown eyes tangled with his, he was surprised by the sultriness in them. For a moment, he let himself meet that fire, feeling his breath fill his chest with hot pressure, but when his imagination provided him with a vision of her, tawny and tigerlike beneath him, he inhaled slowly. “What do you say?” he asked.

His rough voice rolled all the way down her spine, pooling with velvet vibration in her lower back. “Yes,” she said. “I’d like that.”

“Good.” He stood up. “Why don’t we change clothes and meet outside in twenty minutes?”

“Okay.” She rose to her feet, too, and was struck again with the delight of having a man standing so much taller than her—it was a distinct pleasure to feel small for a change. She felt a primitive security in his size.

With a start, she realized she’d been staring far too long into his jeweled eyes. “I’ll meet you on the porch,” she said hastily.

At home, she changed quickly into a T-shirt and jeans, straightened up the house and left a note for Samantha. As she secured her front door behind her, she saw Joel lowering a pack into the back of his truck. He’d exchanged his tank top for a long-sleeved cotton shirt that did nothing to hide his powerful physique. They weren’t the muscles of a weight lifter, bunchy and obvious. Rather, Maggie thought, they were like the sleek, healthy configurations of a stallion. There was nothing she could do to prevent the recurring visions she had of running her palms over him. All over him. The thought made her grin to herself.

“Ready?” he said, lifting his heavy, dark brows. Maggie smoothed her grin away with the tips of her fingers. “Sure.”

“Do you mind if I play some blues?” he asked as he settled next to her in the cab of the pickup.

“Not at all.”

He pushed a button on the dash, and the mellow southern chords of Sonny and Brownie filled the cab.

“I have a brother who’s a blues fanatic,” Maggie commented.

“Does he live around here, too?” Joel asked as he maneuvered the truck onto the road.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Maggie said. “I’ve been talking about myself nonstop.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Your turn. I know you like the blues and animals and that you’re as smart as a whip.”

“See, there it is,” he said, throwing a dazzling glance at her. “That drawl—‘lahk the blues.’”

“Not fair,” she replied, refusing to be distracted. She needed to know more of him, needed to find some way to get a handle on who he was, exactly. “How many children in your family?”

“Four. Three girls and me.”

“You must have been spoiled rotten.”

Joel smiled, eyes on the road. “I’m also the youngest.”

“Hmm,” Maggie said, cocking her head. “Now I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because,” he said, his face suddenly serious, “you’d expect me to be a little more open, right?”

Startled at the insight, she stared at him. Grim tension gripped his jaw. “Exactly,” she said finally.

His throat moved as he swallowed, and he carefully negotiated a turn, heading west. When he spoke, each word was carefully enunciated. “I had a really rotten marriage.” At a traffic light, he braked and looked at Maggie. “Since then, I haven’t spent much time with women.”

In his eyes, she caught an undiluted glimpse of raw emotion—pain and hunger, sorrow and entreaty. In that moment, she felt an inexplicable link spring up between them, a link far beyond infatuation or attraction. It was almost, she thought, as if she had suddenly climbed inside him and he in her, without touching at all.

A horn honked behind them, and Joel released the brake. He looked out the windshield. “Have you spent much time up Rampart Range road?” His voice showed nothing.

Maggie tried to match his tone. “Not really,” she answered. She rubbed her palms together, staring out the window. The rhythm of her heart had nothing to do with the giddiness she had been feeling. It was terror, plain and simple. If he decided to draw her in, keeping this man at arm’s length would be no easy feat.

As she watched the buildings grow sparse, the trees thick, she realized she had discovered the first flaw in her newly created sincere men category. Intensity. Yes, she thought, stealing a glance at his profile, that should have been obvious. A man couldn’t very well be sincere without something motivating it. A certain amount of passion would be required.

She’d spent her life avoiding the emotional highs and lows that had proved so disastrous for her parents. Passion about anything was dangerous, a theory reinforced by the pain that had been reflected in Joel’s eyes.

The farther they moved from the city, the more relaxed he became. By the time they reached the destination he had picked out, Maggie could sense a new man emerging, one more in line with the youngest child and only son in a family of daughters.

“Do you like to hike?” he asked.

“Depends on how difficult a hike it turns out to be,” she countered. “I wouldn’t be thrilled to have to cling to the edge of a cliff, for example.”

She was rewarded with a grin. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” He slung a nylon backpack over one shoulder, then easily took her hand as they walked through a wide clearing of pale green grass. “I did it to my cousins from Jersey once, though.”

“What did you do?”

“I took them on the hardest hike of their lives.” His voice lifted with remembered mischief. “Right along the edge of a sandstone cliff over a drop of about twelve or fifteen hundred feet.”

“Oh, Lord,” she breathed, dizzy at the very thought. “I, for one, would have lost my breakfast.”

“And you wouldn’t have been alone,” he said, tongue-in-cheek. “They promised me their combined allowances for the next ten years if I would get them down.”

“Why did you do it?”

He swung her hand. “They always laughed about the Springs. I was jealous of them going into New York City to shop the same way I was jealous of all you army kids.” He laughed. “God paid me back, though.”

Maggie smiled. “Pray tell.”

He winced appreciatively. “I broke my ankle on the way down.”

“That’s perfect.”

“My cousins had to carry me back to the car, and while they went swimming and rode bikes and took part in all the wonders of summer, I hobbled around on crutches.”

“Oh, no.”

“It gets worse. My father whipped me good for taking them up there, giving my cousins even more to rib me about.”

“Was it worth it?”

Joel stopped, facing her for a brief moment. Then his clear eyes moved to scan the sky with familiarity and fondness. “When we reached the summit of the cliff, we startled a red-tailed hawk. He was a beauty, too, half as big as we were, perched on the tip of a rock out in the middle of nothing. He flew up, right above us, and it seemed like he hung there forever.” Joel had been outlining his words with his free hand as he spoke. Now he dropped it and looked at Maggie with a half smile. “I fell head over heels in love with that bird. I’d do the whole day over again in a second.”

As she looked at him, Maggie felt a swoosh of reaction within her, and she wanted to press a hand to the concrete manifestation of joy on his features. She didn’t dare. “Is there a chance we could see a big bird like that up here now?” she asked.

“Always. This is their country.” He inclined his head. “Come on. I’ll show you a great spot.”

He led her through a stand of coniferous trees, up the mountain for quite a distance. By the time they reached a tumble of pink granite boulders, Maggie was unabashedly breathing hard. Joel, however, settled comfortably on a speckled rock with no more sign of exertion than if he’d walked across their porch at home.

When she could breathe without gasping, she said, “I’ve got a feeling you’re one of those disgustingly healthy types who eats nothing but bean sprouts and runs marathons for the fun of it.” She collapsed on the ground, hearing him laugh.

“Not hardly.” He tugged a shaft of grass from its sheath and playfully reached over to tickle her face with it. “I was born to hike trails and till fields and break horses. I don’t expect everyone to be strong—it’s easy for me.”

“I’m not exactly a shrimp,” she muttered. But she was recovering more quickly than she’d believed possible, and in the wake of her gasps there came an exhilarated tingling to her veins.

“No, you’re not,” he agreed, smiling. “You were born for it, too. You just don’t know it yet.”

“How would you know?”

He laughed with a freedom Maggie would have said was impossible two hours before. “Look at yourself, woman. You’re as strong as an ox.”

Maggie frowned at him. “Thanks a lot.”

He moved to sit beside her on the grass. “That’s not what I meant,” he said in his gravelly voice. Gently, he lifted a hand to touch her cheek. “I really think you look like a tiger.”

At the warmth of his long fingers against her face, Maggie felt her heart flip oddly. It was a delight to simply stare into his eyes, she thought, to examine so closely the texture of his skin. He smelled like sun-dried clothes and warm earth, a faintly musky, pleasant scent. “I think you look like a redwood tree,” she offered in return.

“That’s new.” He touched her hair with the very tips of his fingers, following the gesture with his eyes. Slowly, he shifted his gaze back to her face. “I haven’t let myself like a woman for a long time, Maggie,” he said softly. “I might be a little rusty.” She felt his knuckles skirt the edge of her jaw. “You tell me if I’m breaking the rules.”

“I don’t think I’ve personally had enough practice to know the rules,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve broken any so far.”

“Good.” For another moment, he measured her seriously, then took her hand and helped to her feet. “Let’s go up a little higher.”

The climb from the boulders up the mountain was not as steep as the first leg of the hike had been, and Maggie felt a sense of solid well-being invade her. Overhead, in a sky so deep and blue that it defied description, the sun shone brilliantly. Blue spruce and ponderosa pine trees rustled with the breeze. Birds and small animals scurried away from the humans in their realm, and Maggie caught sight of a tiny bluebird high in an aspen.

Just ahead of her, Joel walked with deceptive ease, his hair glinting in the sun like a broken bit of volcanic rock that still glowed with ancient, reddish heat.