A Man of His Word
Merline Lovelace
Reece Henderson knew that the two most sacred things in life–the truth and a man's marriage vows–were also the hardest to stick to. So he'd sworn to uphold the former and avoid the latter. Then beautiful Sydney Scott's return tested his promise.Ten years ago, Sydney had left in disgrace. Now she was back, determined to do the job she'dbeen hired to do and move on. But she hadn't counted on Reece Henderson. He got her thinking that maybe, with the right man by her side, she could go home again….
“I’m trying to think of a way to talk Reece Henderson into reading the script for me.
“He’s got just the voice I want, all smooth rawhide and rough velvet,” Sydney said.
The camera operator snorted. “If I wasn’t married, I’d surely to goodness be trying to get Reece Henderson to do more than read to me.”
“He’s not interested in anything more,” Sydney replied, eyes downcast. “I offered to buy him dinner. He turned me down flat.”
“Turned you down? Uh-oh. That means he’s either A, engaged, B, married, C, gay or D, in love with his grandmother.”
Sydney was forced to fess up. “According to him, it’s not A or B, and from the kiss he laid on me the other night, I know it’s not C. I can’t speak to D, though—”
“For the record,” the rawhide-and-velvet voice drawled from the door, “it’s E…none of the above.”
Dear Reader,
I never know what’s going to catch my attention and spark a novel. In this instance, it was a National Geographic photo of a small village in Italy, abandoned and subsequently flooded when the government built a massive dam just a few kilometers away. Once every ten years engineers drained the reservoir to perform maintenance on the dam and the village rose like Brigadoon from the murky waters.
I was so enthralled by the photo, I immediately started spinning a story in my head. The village became an ancient Anasazi site in Arizona, the heroine a documentary filmmaker determined to capture its reemergence, and the hero the hardheaded engineer in charge of emergency repairs to the dam.
And the best part was I got to make the hero one of the five Henderson brothers—all men of the Bar-H. So I hope you enjoy Reece’s story and will look for the stories of his brothers.
All my best,
A Man of His Word
Merline Lovelace
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MERLINE LOVELACE
Merline Lovelace spent twenty-three years in the air force, pulling tours in Vietnam, at the Pentagon and at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform, she decided to try her hand at writing. She’s since had more than fifty novels published, with over seven million copies of her work in print.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Prologue
F our of the five Henderson brothers stood in a loose semicircle, nursing chilled champagne while they watched their grinning brother waltz his bride of thirty minutes around the dance floor. Tall, tanned, each seasoned as much by his chosen profession as by his youth on the northern Arizona ranch they all still called home, they made a striking collection of broad shoulders, hard muscle and keen blue eyes.
Jake, the oldest of the five and the only other married Henderson male present, shook his head. “Still hard to believe it happened so fast. Of all of you, I expected Sam to hold out the longest. Instead he fell the hardest and the fastest. Molly’s gonna lead that boy around more than the dance floor.”
Tough, cynical Marsh, the middle brother, grunted in disgust. “He reminds me of your polled Herefords right now, Jake. Big, moon-faced and completely dehorned.”
Even Evan had to agree. Smiling, the attorney tipped his glass in a salute to his newly married sibling. “Sam’s got it bad, all right. He told me he would have strangled the bastard who came after Molly with his bare hands if the police hadn’t arrived when they did.”
Only Reece kept silent. Closest to Sam in both age and temperament, he wavered between a fierce happiness for his younger brother and an equally fierce hope that Sam and Molly could hang on to the love they didn’t even try to disguise at this moment.
So few couples did.
Involuntarily his gaze shifted to the vibrant, laughing mother of the groom. Despite her dove-gray hair and the character lines that came with raising five boys and running a twenty-thousand-acre spread in the shadow of the rugged northern Arizona San Francisco Mountains, Jessica Henderson looked almost as young as Jake’s wife, Ellen…and so unlike the woman who’d fallen apart one cold, February night that Reece’s heart clenched.
None of his brothers knew about that night. About the terror of those dark, desperate hours, when Reece had come home unexpectedly between the engineering jobs that took him all over the world, and found his mother ravaged by loneliness and alcohol and a bitter, corrosive anger. She was almost incoherent when Reece arrived at the Bar-H, but she’d cried and clung to him, begged him not to call a doctor, not to shame her any more than she’d already been shamed.
A grim, shaken Reece had forced gallon after gallon of coffee down her throat. Walked her the length of the ranch house and back a thousand times. Listened to her wrenching sobs and searing anger at the husband she’d buried two years before.
That was when she told him about the letters she’d found hidden in a storage closet…and about the woman his father had carried on an affair with for years. At his mother’s fierce insistence, Reece had burned the letters. Many of his illusions about marriage went up in smoke with those blue-edged notes.
Jessica Henderson had bottomed out that night, emptied the well of her self-pity and anger. Soon afterward, she’d turned the ranch over to Jake, who now managed it along with his own spread for the absent Henderson brothers. She’d bought a condo in Sedona and taken up golf, of all things. Now she traveled with her new friends and drove out to the ranch occasionally to visit the old ones. She’d put the terror of that cold, desperate February night behind her…as well as her anger at the husband who’d betrayed her.
Reece was still working on it.
Seeing his mother laughing and his younger brother grinning like a dope at his new bride helped.
What didn’t help was knowing that Reece had to leave right after the reception to make the long drive back to the sleepy little town of Chalo Canyon in south-central Arizona because of an early-morning meeting with another determined home wrecker.
His champagne goblet hit the bar with a chink of crystal against wood. “I’m claiming a dance with my new sister-in-law,” he told his brothers, “then I’m out of here.”
Marsh lifted a brow. “You’re not going to stay and help us send Sam off on his honeymoon in the hallowed Henderson tradition?”
“Right,” Jake drawled, “the ‘hallowed’ tradition you clowns started with me. Ellen still shudders when she remembers our wedding night.”
“You boys will have to handle this one on your own,” Reece said. “I have to be back on-site by dawn tomorrow. I’ve got a reservoir draining at the rate of eighty cubic feet per second and a dam with some cracks in it waiting for me.”
Among other things.
His jaw tightened at the thought of the woman who’d pulled every string in the book to muscle her way into the restricted area behind the dam. She intended to shoot a documentary film of a sunken Anasazi village as it emerged from the waters of the reservoir, or so the letter from the Bureau of Reclamation directing Reece’s cooperation had stated.
He knew better. She was returning to Chalo Canyon for one reason and one reason only…to finish what she’d started ten years ago. Everyone in town had told Reece so, including the man she’d begun the affair with.
Well, he didn’t have to watch the woman in action. He’d meet with her bright and early tomorrow morning as promised. He’d advise her of his schedule, set some rules of engagement. Then she was on her own. He had more important matters to engage both his time and his attention than Sydney Scott.
Putting the woman firmly from his mind, Reece crossed the floor to claim a dance with his radiant new sister-in-law.
Chapter 1
A rms wrapped around her knees, Sydney sat bathed in warm summer moonlight on one of the limestone outcroppings that rimmed the Chalo River Reservoir. Although she couldn’t see the movement, she knew the water level in the vast reservoir was slowly dropping. She’d been gauging its progress for hours now, measuring its descent against the shadowy crevasses on the cliff face opposite.
Another thirty-six hours, she estimated with a shiver of anticipation, forty-eight at most. Then the magical, mystical village she’d first seen as a child would emerge from the dark waters of the reservoir and feel the touch of the sun for the first time in a decade.
Once every ten years, the sluice gates of the dam that harnessed the Chalo River yawned fully open. Once every ten years, the man-made lake behind the dam was drained to allow maintenance and repair to the towering concrete structure. Once every ten years, the waters dropped and the ancient ruins reappeared. This was the year, the month, the week.
Excitement pulsed through Sydney’s veins, excitement and a stinging regret that went soul deep.
“Oh, Dad,” she murmured softly, “if only you’d had a few more months…”
No! No, she couldn’t go down that road. She shook her head, fighting the aching sense of loss that had become so much a part of her she rarely acknowledged it anymore. She couldn’t wish another day, another hour of that awful pain on her father. His death had been a release, a relief from the agony that even morphine couldn’t dull. She wouldn’t grieve for him now. Instead, she would use these quiet, moonlit hours to celebrate the times they’d been together.
With the perfect clarity of a camera lens, Sydney recalled her wide-eyed wonder when her father had first shown her the wet, glistening ruins tucked under a ledge in this small corner of Chalo Canyon. Then, as now, goose bumps had raised on her arms when the wind whispered through the canyon, sounding much like the Weeping Woman of local legend. According to the tale, an ancient Anasazi warrior had stolen a woman from another tribe and confined her in a stone tower in his village. The woman had cried for her lost love, and leaped to her death rather than submit to the man who’d taken her.
A youthful Sydney had heard the legend within days of moving to Chalo Canyon, where her father had taken over as fish and game warden for the state park that rimmed the huge, man-made lake behind the dam. Her dad had pooh-poohed the tale, but it had tugged at his daughter’s imagination. So much so that she’d counted the years until she could capture the ruins on film as a special project for her cinematography class.
Sighing, Sydney rested her chin on her knees. How young she’d been then. How incredibly naive. A nineteen-year-old student at Southern Cal, she’d planned the film project all through her sophomore year. Couldn’t wait for summer and the scheduled draining of the reservoir. Pop had gone with her that day, too, maneuvering the boat, keeping it steady while she balanced their home camcorder on her shoulder and shot the emerging village from every angle. Sydney had been so elated, so sure this project would be the start of a glorious career in film.
Then she’d tumbled head over heels in love with handsome, charming Jamie Chavez.
Even after all these years, the memory could still make Sydney writhe with embarrassment. Her breathless ardor had by turns amused and delighted the older, more sophisticated Jamie…much to his father’s dismay. Sebastian Chavez’s plans for his only son didn’t include the daughter of the local fish and game warden.
Looking back, Sydney could only shake her head at her incredible stupidity. Jamie was more than willing to amuse himself with her while his fiancée was in Europe. Even now Sydney cringed when she remembered the night Sebastian found her in his son’s bed. The scene had not been pretty. Even worse, the swing her father took at the powerful landowner the next day had cost him his job. The Scotts had moved away the following week, and neither of them had ever returned to Chalo Canyon.
Until now.
Now Sydney was about to see the ancient ruins for the third time. With a string of critically acclaimed documentaries and an Oscar nomination under her belt, she intended to capture the haunting ruins and the legend she’d first shared with her father so long ago on video-and audiotape. She’d worked for almost a year to script the project and secure funding. The final product would stand in loving tribute to the man who taught her the beauties and mysteries of Chalo Canyon.
Hopefully, she thought with a wry grimace, the documentary would also take her fledgling production company out of the red. Her father’s long illness had cut both Sydney’s heart and her financial resources to the quick. Even with the big-money financing her recent brush with the Oscars had generated, starting up her own production company had eaten what little was left of her savings. This project would make her or break her.
She brushed at a gnat buzzing her left ear, thinking of all the obstacles she’d overcome to get even this far. The preproduction work had taken almost eight months. She’d started on it just after her dad’s leukemia robbed him of his breath and his mobility. She’d shared every step of the process with him during those long, agonizing hours at his bedside. Talked him through the concept. Described the treatment she envisioned, worked out an estimated budget. Then she’d hawked the idea to the History Channel, to PBS, to half a dozen independent producers.
Pop’s death had hardened Sydney’s resolve into absolute determination to see the project through…despite Sebastian Chavez’s vehement objections. When Sebastian heard of the proposed documentary, he’d used every weapon in his arsenal to kill it. He’d refused all access to the site through his land. He’d flexed his political muscle to delay filming permits. He’d even rallied Native American groups to protest the exploitation of sacred ruins. Evidently the hard feelings generated ten years ago hadn’t died.
As a last-ditch attempt to block the project, Chavez had dragged the engineer in charge of the dam repair into the controversy and got him to weigh in against any activity in the restricted area behind the dam.
Sydney had played shamelessly on every connection she had from L.A. to D.C. to overturn Reece Henderson’s nonconcurrence. Finally the powerful coalition of PBS, the National Historic Preservation Society, and her wealthy and well-known financial backer, who just happened to have contributed significantly to the president’s reelection campaign, had prevailed.
As a condition of the approval, however, Sydney had to coordinate her filming schedule with the chief engineer and shoot around the blasting and repair work at the dam. Henderson’s curt faxes in response to her initial queries had set her teeth on edge, but she refused to allow some bullheaded engineer to upset her or her tight schedule. She had only two weeks to capture a legend…and recapture the magic of her youth.
Her chin wobbled on her knees. Weariness tugged at the edges of her simmering anticipation. She should go back to the motel, grab a few hours of sleep before the rest of her crew arrived. She’d learned the hard way that rest and exercise were essential to countering the stress caused by tight schedules, the inevitable snafus, and the sheer physical and mental exhaustion of a shoot. Even more important, she’d need her wits and all her charm in full functioning order when she met with this Henderson guy in the morning.
She’d give herself just a few more moments, she decided. A last stretch of peace before the work began. A quiet time with her father and her dreams.
A rumble of thunder shattered the quiet less than a half hour later. All too soon the moon disappeared behind a pile of dark storm clouds
Sydney lifted her head, chewing on her lower lip as she eyed the lightning that lit the clouds from the inside out. Damned El Niño. Or maybe it was the depleted ozone layer that was causing the violent, unseasonable storms that had plagued the southwest this summer.
Whatever had spawned them, these storms could wreak havoc with her exterior shots, not to mention her shooting schedule. With luck, this one would break soon, dump its load, and move on so her crew could shoot their preparatory exterior tests tomorrow in bright sunshine. Sydney wanted light. She needed light. Light formed the essence of film and video imagery.
Scowling at another flash of white against the dark sky, she pushed to her feet and headed for her rented Chevy Blazer. She’d taken only a few steps when the wind picked up. The leaves on the cottonwoods lining the canyon rim rustled. The ends of the mink-brown hair tucked haphazardly under her L.A. Rams ball cap flicked against her cheek.
Suddenly, Sydney spun around, heart pounding. There it was! The sigh. The cry. The sob of the wind through the canyon.
Aiiiiii. Eee-aiiiii.
She stood frozen, letting the sound wrap around and through her. She could almost hear the despair behind the soughing sound, feel the unutterable sadness.
Another gust cut through the canyon, faster, deeper. The leaves whipped on the cottonwoods. The cry increased in pitch to a wail that lifted the fine hairs on the back of Sydney’s neck.
Slowly, so slowly, the wind eased and the eerie lament faded.
“Now that,” she muttered, rubbing the goose bumps that prickled every square inch of her bare arms, “was one heck of an audio bite. I wish to heck Albert had caught it.”
Her soundman wouldn’t arrive from L.A. until tomorrow noon, along with the camera operator and the grip she’d hired for this job. Only Sydney and her assistant, Zack, had come a day early—Sydney to snatch these few hours alone with her memories before the controlled chaos of the shoot began, Zack to finalize the motel and support arrangements he’d made by phone weeks ago.
Sydney could only hope the wind would perform for them again tomorrow afternoon when they shot the exterior setup sequences she’d planned—assuming, of course, this Reece Henderson approved her shooting schedule when she met with him in the morning.
Another frown creased her forehead as she dodged the first fat splats of rain on her way to her rented Blazer. She had enough documentaries under her belt to appreciate the intricacies of negotiating permits and approvals for an on-location shoot, but the requirement to coordinate her shooting schedule galled more than a little. Hopefully, this guy Henderson would prove more cooperative in person than he had by fax.
Sliding inside the Blazer, she shut out the now-pelting rain and groped for the keys in the pockets of the military fatigue pants she bought by the dozen at an Army-Navy surplus store in south L.A. The baggy camouflage pants didn’t exactly shout Rodeo Drive chic, but Sydney had found their tough construction and many pockets a godsend on isolated shoots like this one.
One foot on the clutch, the other on the brake, she keyed the ignition and wrapped a hand around the shift knob, wishing fervently she’d thought to specify automatic drive before Zack arranged for rental vehicles. From the way the gears ground when she tried to coax them into first, the Blazer obviously wished so, too.
“Sorry,” she muttered, working the clutch and the stick again.
After another protesting snnnrck, the gears engaged. With rain pinging steadily against the roof, Sydney eased the Blazer onto the road. She kept her foot light on the accelerator and her eyes on the treacherous curves ahead.
Little more than a dirt track, Canyon Rim Road snaked along the canyon’s edge for miles before joining the state road that accessed the dam. The stone outcroppings that edged the road on the left made every turn a real adventure. The sheer drop on the right added to the pucker factor. The deluge that poured out of the black sky didn’t exactly help either visibility or navigability. Chewing on her lower lip, Sydney downshifted and took a hairpin turn at a crawl.
A few, tortuous turns later she was forced to admit that it might have made more sense to wait until daylight to drive along the canyon rim. She’d needed this time alone with her memories, though. And there’d been no indication earlier that a storm might—
“What the—!”
She came out of a sharp turn and stomped on the brake. Or what she thought was the brake. Her boot hit the clutch instead, and the Blazer rolled straight at the slab of rock that had tumbled onto the road from the outcropping beside it.
Choking back an oath, Sydney swung both her foot and the wheel. With the rock wall on the left and the sheer drop-off on the right, there was no room to maneuver around the obstacle. The Blazer swung too far out before she jammed on the brake and stopped its roll.
To her horror, she felt the road’s narrow shoulder begin to crumble under the Blazer’s weight. The vehicle lurched back, dropped at an angle, stalled. Frantic, Sydney dragged the stick back to neutral, twisted the key.
“Come on! Come on!”
The engine turned over at the exact moment another piece of the rim gave. The four-wheel tilted at a crazy angle and started to slide backward.
“Oh, God!”
Shouldering open the door, Sydney threw herself out. She hit on one hip and twisted desperately, scrabbling for purchase on the rain-slick earth. Beside her the Blazer gave a fearsome imitation of the Titanic. Metal groaned against sandstone. Nose up, headlights stabbing the rain, it slid backward like the great ship slipping into its dark grave, then slowly toppled over the edge.
The echoes of its crashing descent were still ringing in Sydney’s ears when sandstone and muddy earth crumbled under her frantic fingers and she followed the Blazer over the edge.
Reece Henderson slapped a rolled-up schematic of the Chalo River Dam against his jeans-clad thigh. Jaw tight, he waited while the phone he held to his ear shrilled a half dozen times. He’d started to slam it down when the receiver was fumbled off the hook. Reece took the mumbled sound on the other end for a hello.
“Where is she?”
“Huh?”
“Where’s Scott?”
“Whoziz?”
Gripping the receiver in a tight fist, Reece glared at the mirrored calendar on the opposite wall of the office set aside for his use.
“This is Henderson, Reece Henderson. Chief engineer on the Chalo River Dam project. Where’s your boss?”
“Dunno.” There was a jaw-cracking yawn at the other end of the line. “What time izit?”
“Eight forty-seven,” he snapped. “She was supposed to be here at eight.”
The irritation that had started simmering at 8:05 was now at full boil. He’d hung around topside waiting for the blasted woman, wasting almost an hour he could have spent down inside the dam with his engineers.
“Did you, like, try her room?” The kid at the other end of the line sounded more alert now, if not more coherent.
“Yes. Twice. There wasn’t any answer. The motel operator said you were her assistant and would know where she was.”
Actually, Martha Jenkins, who pulled triple duty as owner, operator and day clerk at the Lone Eagle Motel, had provided Reece with more details than he’d either asked for or wanted. Martha hadn’t been on duty when Sydney Scott and her gum-popping, green-haired, multiple-body-pierced assistant Zachary Tyree checked in late yesterday afternoon, but things got around fast in a town the size of Chalo Canyon.
“Hang loose.”
The phone clattered down. The sound of sheets whooshing aside was followed in quick succession by the snick of a zipper and padding footsteps. Long moments later the phone rattled again.
“She’s not in her room.”
Reece rolled his eyes. He thought they’d already established that fact.
“Well, if she strolls in anytime soon, tell her I left my brother’s wedding early and drove half the night so I would make the meeting she didn’t bother to show for. She can call me here at the site. I’ll get back to her when and if…”
“You don’t understand, dude. She’s not here.”
Reece felt the last of his patience shredding. “Tell your boss—”
“The blinds in her room were open and I looked in. Her bed hasn’t been slept in.”
Worry put a crack in the kid’s voice. A different sort of emotion put a lock on Reece’s jaw.
God! He’d been hearing the rumors and gossip about this Scott woman for weeks. How she’d thrown herself at Jamie Chavez ten years ago. How Jamie’s father had all but dragged her out of his son’s bed. How her father had knocked Chavez, Sr., on his butt the next day. Now she was a big, important Hollywood director, coming back to Chalo River to impress everyone with her success…and to try her luck with Jamie again.
Reece couldn’t suppress the disgust that swirled in his gut. The woman had arrived in town only yesterday afternoon and had already spent the night somewhere other than her motel room. Pretty fast work, even for a big, important Hollywood director.
Well, Reece had complied with his boss’s direct communiqué. He’d cooperated with the woman, or tried to, damn near busting his butt to get back here in time for their meeting this morning. The ball was in Ms. Sydney Scott’s court now, and she could lob it at the net from now until next Christmas for all he cared. He started to hang up when the sharp concern in the kid’s voice stilled his hand.
“Syd drove out to the canyon right after we got settled here at the motel yesterday afternoon. She could still be out there.”
“What?”
Reece’s irritation spiked into anger. He’d made it plain to Ms. Scott in their exchange of faxes that neither she nor any of her crew should go poking around in the restricted area behind the dam until he briefed them on the repair project and the potential hazards during the blasting period.
“Syd said she wanted to check the water level in the reservoir and get her bearings. Told me not to wait up for her. You don’t think she, like, got lost or something?”
“I understand Ms. Scott used to live in this area. She should know her way around.”
“That was ten years ago, dude.”
“The name’s Henderson.”
“Right, Henderson. Could you, like, drive around and check on her? She sorta gets involved in her projects sometimes and forgets what day it is. I’d go myself, but I don’t know the geography, and Syd’s got the Blazer, which leaves me, like, without wheels until Tish and the others get here.”
Reece wanted very much to tell the kid what he and his boss could, like, do, but he’d assumed responsibility for this project and all the challenges and headaches that went with it. Including, it appeared, Sydney Scott. If she’d entered the restricted area and gotten her vehicle stuck in the mud after that gully-washer last night, she was, unfortunately, his problem.
“All right. I’ll drive along the rim and look for her. Take down my mobile phone number. If she walks in, call me.”
“Thanks, man!”
After a call down to his second-in-charge to advise him that he’d be on mobile for the next half hour or so, Reece exchanged his hard hat for a battered straw Stetson, legacy of those rare breaks between jobs which he spent at the Bar-H, helping his brother Jake. A moment later, he left the air-conditioned comfort of the office for the blazing heat of a summer Arizona sun bouncing off concrete.
The administration building perched on the east end of the dam, a massive concrete arch that thrust its arms against the steep Chalo Canyon walls. Some 305 feet below, two fully opened spillways poured tons of rushing water into the lower Chalo. Tipping his hat forward to shade his eyes, Reece paused for a moment to assess the reservoir behind the dam. All traces of the thunderstorm that had lashed the area last night had disappeared. Sunlight sparkled on the water’s surface, already, he noted with grim satisfaction, sunk well below its usual level.
By tomorrow, he should be able to examine from the outside the cracks that had started stressing the dam from the inside. He’d know then how much work he had ahead of him, and how long this Sydney Scott would have to film her documentary before the reservoir started filling again.
Assuming, of course, that she’d intended to make a movie at all. Maybe the rumors were true. Maybe this documentary was just a smoke screen, a convenient cover for her personal intentions. Maybe she’d really come back to Chalo River to make nothing but trouble.
If that was the case, she was off to a helluva good start. When and if Reece located Ms. Scott, she might just realize she’d bitten off more trouble than she could chew this time.
He found her twenty minutes later. Or more correctly, he found the spot where the canyon rim had crumbled, taking half the road with it.
Chapter 2
“H ey! You down there! Are you okay?”
The shout jerked Sydney’s head back. Never in her life had she heard anything as wonderful as that deep, gruff voice. Keeping a tight grip on the twisted piñon tree that had broken her slide into oblivion seven long hours ago, she shouted to the dark-haired cowboy peering cautiously over the edge of the rim.
“I’m okay. No broken bones that I can tell. Have you got a rope?”
“Yes. I’ll be right back. Don’t move!”
Don’t move. Right. As if she planned on releasing her death grip on the rough-barked trunk or shifting her body so much as a centimeter to either side of the narrow toehold she’d found in the canyon wall.
She leaned her forehead against the tree, almost giddy with relief. Then again, this dizzy sensation might have something to do with the fact that she’d just spent seven hours wedged between a tree root and a cliff face hundreds of feet above a narrow river gorge.
She’d been prepared to spend even longer. Sydney hadn’t expected Zack to roll out of bed before ten or eleven, much less organize a rescue for his missing boss. Her assistant was worth his 140 pounds in gold once he revved his motor, but getting him going some mornings could take a half-dozen calls that ran the gamut from wheedling to cajoling to outright threats of death and dismemberment. Thank God this was one of his rare self-starting days!
The thump of a rope hitting against the cliff face above her snapped her attention back to the rim. She looked up just in time to take the shower of small stones and dust dislodged by the rope full in her face. Wincing, Sydney spun her head sideways, which caused the tree to shake and its occupant to let out a small, terrified squeak.
“Dammit, don’t move!” her rescuer snapped. “I’ll work the rope over to you.”
Clinging to the tree trunk with both arms, she blew upward in a vain attempt to get the dust and straggling hair out of her eyes. Her Rams ball cap had gone the way of the Blazer during that three-second slide down the cliff face. Sydney only hoped the sacrifice of a hat and a four-wheel-drive vehicle had satisfied the canyon gods.
Her heart in her throat, she watched the thick rope hump and bump its way closer to her precarious perch. Only after it was within reach did she discover that her arms were numb from the shoulders down. She couldn’t seem to unlock their tight grip on the trunk.
“Take the rope.”
Swiping her tongue along dry lips, she tried again. Her left arm came unwrapped and dangled like over-cooked linguini at her side.
“I need a minute here,” she croaked to her rescuer. “I can’t seem to feel my arms.”
“All right, it’s all right.” The gruff voice above her gentled. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Easy for you to say,” Sydney muttered to the piñon, her eyes on the rope a tantalizing few inches away. Suddenly it jounced up and out of sight.
“Hey!”
“Hang on, I’m coming down.”
He pulled off his hat and looped the rope around his waist. Within moments he was beside her. Black hair ruffled. Blue eyes steady and encouraging in a tanned face. Shoulders roped with reassuringly thick cords of muscle. Altogether he looked big, strong and wonderfully solid.
On second thought, Sydney wasn’t so sure big and solid were desirable characteristics in a man whose only connection to terra firma was a length of twisted hemp. Swallowing, she said a silent prayer for the sureness of his lifeline while he propped his boots against the canyon wall. With a cowboy’s one-handed ease, he shook out a loop in the length of rope he’d left dangling behind him.
“Bend your head. Let me slip this over you.” He spoke slowly, his deep voice calm, confident. “I’m going to lift one of your arms. Got a grip? Okay, now the other. Easy, easy.”
The noose tightened around her waist, cutting off most of her breath. The taut, muscled arm the stranger slid around her cut off the rest.
“I’ve got you. I’m going to swing you in front of me. We’ll walk up the cliff face together. Ready?”
Even with the rope and her rescuer’s muscled arm around her, it took a considerable leap of faith to let go of the sturdy little piñon. Swallowing hard, she let him lift her from the tree.
“I’ve got you. I won’t let go.”
She managed a shaky laugh. “Promise?”
“I’m a man of my word,” he assured her, his breath warm in her ear.
She hoped so. She certainly hoped so.
“Ready?”
She gulped. “Ready.”
They crab-walked up the cliff, her bottom nested against his stomach, his arms caging her ribs. Five steps, seven, eight, then a palm on her rear and a heaving shove.
Sydney went over the rim belly down. Panting, she crawled on hands and knees until the ground felt firm enough for her to turn and try to help her rescuer over the edge. Her arms were still so weak she gave up after the first useless tug.
Not that he appeared to need any assistance. With a smooth coordination of brawn and grace, he hauled himself up. Once safely away from the crumbled rim, he untied his lifeline and strode to the Jeep that had anchored it. Sydney gave a little croak of delight when he hunkered down beside her a moment later, a plastic bottle of spring water in his hand. She downed a half dozen greedy gulps before coming up for air. After another swallow or two, her throat had loosened enough to talk without croaking.
“Thanks…for the water and the rescue.”
“You’re welcome.” He picked up his hat and dusted it against his thigh before settling it on his head. “Sure you’re not hurt?”
“Just a little weak from hanging on to the tree all night. I collected a few dents and scrapes on my way down, but nothing that won’t heal or cover up.”
His blue eyes raked her over from the top of her dusty head to the toes of her dusty boots, performing their own assessment. Evidently he agreed with her diagnosis.
“I saw the wreckage at the bottom of the gorge. What happened?”
“There was a boulder in the road. With the rain, I didn’t see in time and swung too sharply. I got out of the Blazer before it went over, but the rim crumbled beneath me. I thought…I was sure…” She substituted a wobbly smile for the shudder she wanted to let rip. “The piñon broke my fall. How does that poem go, the one about never seeing anything as beautiful as a tree?”
“Beats me.” He studied her from under the brim of that beat-up hat, his expression noticeably less comforting and reassuring now that they were back on solid ground. “You’re a lucky woman.”
She started to point out that not everyone would classify someone who went over a cliff as lucky, but his next comment buried the thought.
“And damned stupid.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Most people would have more sense than to drive along a narrow canyon rim road late at night in the middle of a thunderstorm.”
Sydney had come to the same conclusion herself just before she went bungee jumping without a bungee, but she didn’t particularly enjoy hearing it from someone else. Still, he’d plucked her out of her eagle’s nest. She owed him, big-time.
Ordering her arms and legs to do their thing, she pushed herself to her feet. Her rescuer had to shoot out a hand and catch her before she whumped back down on her rear. Shaking off his hand, she tried to sound grateful.
“Thanks. Again. I’m Sydney Scott, by the way.”
“I know who you are.”
She flushed at the drawled response, feeling even more stupid than he’d implied earlier. If he was part of a search party, of course he’d know who he’d come looking for.
“And you are?”
“Reece Henderson.”
“Oh.” The straw Stetson that shaped his head as if made for it had led her to assume he was a local. “You’re the dam engineer.”
From the way his eyes narrowed, she must have put a little too much emphasis on dam. Either that, or their exchange of terse faxes had annoyed him as much as it had her.
“When you didn’t show for our meeting this morning,” he said curtly, “I called your assistant and woke him up.”
So much for the massive search-and-rescue effort Sydney had assumed Zack set in motion!
“The kid told me you’d driven out to the canyon. He seemed to think you might have fallen into an artistic trance and gotten lost.”
“I don’t fall into artistic trances,” she said with another smile, slightly strained but still trying hard for grateful.
One black brow lifted in patent disbelief.
“All right,” she admitted grudgingly, “I did leave a pot of red beans and rice on the stove a couple of months ago while I was working a treatment, but the fire didn’t do any real damage.”
When he only looked at her through those cool blue eyes, Sydney gave Zack a mental kick in the shins. How much had her assistant told this guy, anyway?
“Maybe I did start out for San Diego last week and didn’t realize I was going in the wrong direction until I passed Santa Barbara,” she said defensively, “but I was outlining a script in my mind and sort of got caught up in it.”
With a little snort that sounded suspiciously like disgust, her rescuer strolled back to the Jeep to untie the rope. “Is that what you were doing last night when you drove off a cliff?”
“I was not in any kind of a trance last night.”
Well, she amended silently, maybe she had let her imagination go for a while, particularly when the wind whistled eerily through the canyon and raised goose bumps all over her body. Henderson didn’t need to know that, though.
“As I told you, there was a boulder in the road, a chunk of sandstone. I swerved to avoid it.”
“If you say so, lady.”
Gratitude was getting harder and harder to hang on to. Sydney folded her arms across her now-scruffy yellow T-shirt.
“I do say so.”
He straightened, the rope half-looped in his hand, his eyes as sharp and slicing as lasers. “Then maybe you’ll also tell me why you were driving around in a restricted area without a permit? A permit that I had intended to issue at our meeting this morning, by the way.”
That “had intended” caught Sydney’s attention and shoved everything else out of her mind. The terror of sliding over a cliff, the long, frightening hours alone with only a piñon tree for company, the crab-walk up a sheer rock wall fell away. All that remained was her absolute determination to capture the magic of the ruins on videotape…for her dad, for herself, for the joys and tears they’d shared.
Every inch a professional now, she cut right to the heart of the issue. “I apologize for going around you, Mr. Henderson. I arrived in Chalo Canyon earlier than planned yesterday afternoon. I tried to contact you for permission to drive out to the site, but you were out of town. At a wedding, or so they told me.”
“So you drove out, anyway.”
“After I talked to one of your engineers. He said he thought it would be okay. I believe his name was Patrick Something.”
It would be Patrick, Reece thought in disgust. Young, breezy, overconfident of his brand-new civil engineering degree that hadn’t yet been tested by thousands of tons of wet concrete and millions of yards of rushing water. Reece finished looping the rope.
“Apology accepted this time, Ms. Scott. Just don’t go around me again. I’m chief engineer on this project. The responsibility for the safety of everyone involved, including you and your crew, rests with me.”
“It’s Sydney,” she returned, seething inside at the undeserved lecture, but determined to hammer out a working relationship with this bullheaded engineer.
“Sydney,” he acknowledged with a little nod. “Now we’d better get you back to town so you can have those scrapes and dents checked out. In the meantime, I’ll get hold of the county sheriff and let him know about the accident.”
“I’d prefer to conduct our planned discussion before I hitch a ride into town. If this sunlight holds and the rest of my crew arrives on time, I want to shoot some exterior footage this afternoon.”
Reece stared at her across the Jeep’s hood. For God’s sake, was she for real? She’d just spent the night perched in a tree. Her baggy fatigue pants and yellow T-shirt looked like they’d been worn by someone on the losing side of the last war. Her tangled, dark brown mane hung in rats’ tails on either side of her face…a face, he admitted reluctantly, made remarkable by wide green eyes, high cheekbones and a mouth a man could weave some pretty lurid fantasies around.
Not Reece. Not after all he’d heard about Sydney Scott. He’d make damned sure he didn’t weave fantasies of any kind about this particular package of trouble. That tug he felt low in his belly was grudging admiration for her sheer guts, nothing more.
“All right. We’ll drive back to the dam and go over schedules.” He reached into the Jeep and tossed her the mobile phone. “Here, you’d better call your assistant and let him know you’re okay while I block the road.”
With the rope looped over one arm, he rooted around in the back of the Jeep for the toolbox he never traveled without. Inside was a thick roll of electrical tape. It wasn’t red, but it would have to do as a hazard warning until he could get a crew out here to erect permanent barriers.
“Zack? It’s Sydney.”
Her voice carried to him at the rear of the Jeep, attractive enough now that most of the croak had disappeared.
“No, I didn’t get lost. I, er, drove off a cliff.”
She caught Reece’s sardonic look and turned her back.
“Yes, I’m fine. Really. Honest. I swear. Just get hold of the insurance company, okay? Make sure our on-location liability coverage extends to rented Blazers that now reside at the bottom of a river gorge. And arrange for another vehicle. I want to do some site shots this afternoon.”
Reece turned away, shaking his head. This was one single-minded female. He’d remember that in future dealings with her.
“It’s a long story,” she told her assistant, scooping her tangled hair back with one hand. “I’ll fill you in on the details later. What have you heard from Tish and the others? Noon? Good! Tell them to be ready to roll as soon as I get back. What time is it now?”
Her little screech of dismay followed Reece to the vertical outcropping a few yards away. Reddish limestone striated with yellow and green pushed upward. Hardened by nature, sculpted by time, it formed a wall of oddly shaped rock. Too often wind and rain toppled smaller segments of these formations and sent them tumbling down, which in turn caused bigger pieces to break off.
Pale gashes showed where the rock had broken loose last night. Reece fingered the marks, frowning, then surveyed what remained of the road at this point. The stone formations butted out, making it almost impossible to see around the curve. A driver couldn’t have chosen a worse point to go head-to-head with a fallen rock.
Edging past the narrow neck, he blocked the road off from the other side. He did the same on the Jeep side. His insides still were tight from the narrowness of her escape when he returned.
Sydney buried a sigh at the scowl on her rescuer’s face as he strode toward her. She had to work with this guy for the next few weeks. They were not, she decided, going to rank up there among the most enjoyable weeks of her life. With any luck, she and Henderson wouldn’t have to see each other again after today.
That hope sustained her during the short, silent ride to the Chalo River Dam. She’d seen the massive structure many times before, of course. During the years her father had served as fish and game warden for the state park that enclosed the reservoir, he’d taken her by boat and by car when he went to check water levels and shoot the breeze with the power plant operators.
And when the reservoir had been emptied ten years ago, leaving the dam naked and glistening in the sun, she’d attempted to capture its utilitarian starkness as well as the Anasazi ruins on film. Of course, she remembered with a wry twist of her lips, that was before her foolish infatuation with Jamie Chavez had blurred both her vision and her purpose.
She didn’t have that problem now. Now she saw the curved structure through an artist’s eye trained to recognize beauty in its most elemental state. The contrast of whitened concrete against reddish-yellow cliffs made her hands itch for a camera. The symmetry of the arch, with its gated spillways flanking each abutment, pleased her sense of proportion.
The air-conditioned chill of the administration building pleased her even more. Sydney took a moment for her eyes to adjust from dazzling sunlight to dim interior before accepting the mug Reece handed her.
“Thanks.”
“You’d better save your thanks until you taste what’s in it,” he commented dryly. “My guys swear they can use this stuff to patch the dam if we run short of concrete.”
The sludgelike coffee carried enough caffeine to make it worth the effort of swallowing.
“Speaking of patching,” Sydney hinted broadly, “when do you plan to start?”
He shot her another of those sardonic looks, and gestured to a government-issue metal chair beside an equally nondescript desk. She carried her coffee over with her, careful to keep it away from the charts and clipboards precisely aligned on the desktop.
Tossing his hat aside, Henderson forked his fingers through his pelt of black hair before pulling out one of the clipboards. The tanned skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled with concentration as he skimmed an acetate status sheet filled with grease-pencil markings.
“The water passed the halfway mark just after 6:00 a.m. this morning.”
Sydney attempted a quick a mental calculation. The village nestled in an opening in the cliff face fifty feet or so above the riverbed. If the waters had receded halfway down the cliff face already, they’d reach the ruins when? Eight tomorrow morning? Nine?
Hell! There was a reason she’d routinely cut her science and math classes in college and now carried a really good calculator in her purse at all times. The problem was that at this particular moment both purse and calculator rested amid the wreckage of the Blazer.
“When can I expect to see the ruins?”
“If we don’t get any more storms like last night’s, the reservoir should empty down to the river level by noon tomorrow. The cave that contains the ruins is some fifty feet above the riverbed. I calculate the village will start to emerge at approximately 9:24.”
“Nine twenty-four? Not 9:23, huh? I could probably use that extra minute.”
He didn’t appear to appreciate her feeble attempt at humor. “I’m an engineer. Precision ranks right up there with timeliness in our book. And safety.” He leveled her a sardonic look. “Try not to drive off any more cliffs, Ms. Scott.”
“Sydney,” she reminded him, shrugging off the sarcasm as her mind whirled. Thinking of the exterior scenes she wanted to shoot this afternoon and the sequencing for tomorrow’s all-important emergence, she only half absorbed Reece’s deep voice.
“We’ve detected a stress fracture on the right lower quadrant of the dam’s interior. Depending on my exterior damage assessment, we may have to blast some of the old section and pour new concrete. Check in with me each morning before you come out to the site, and I’ll let you know the status and whether I want you in the restricted area.”
That got her attention.
“Each morning?” she yelped. “What happened to your engineering precision here? I need a little more notice than that to plan my daily takes.”
“Call me the night before, then. That’s the best I can do until we complete the damage assessment.”
“Okay, okay. Give me your number. My little black book with all my contacts is at the bottom of the gorge right now.”
Along with all her working files. Thank goodness she always kept complete electronic records of her projects on her laptop, which she’d left back at the motel. She patted her pockets, searching for a pencil before borrowing one from the holder on the desk. Like all the others in the round holder, it was sharpened to a razor tip—another engineering quirk, she guessed.
“You can reach me at the office, on my mobile, or at the Lone Eagle Motel.”
Sydney scribbled down the numbers as he reeled them off. “That’s where we’re staying, too.”
“I know.”
The dry response brought her head up.
“Chalo Canyon’s a small town, Ms. Scott…Sydney. That’s the only motel in town.”
She was well aware of that fact. She was also aware, as well, of the slight chill in his voice. She had a good idea what had caused it.
“And?” she asked coolly.
His broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “And people in small towns like to talk, even to strangers. I’ve been hearing about your return to the Chalo Canyon for several weeks now.”
“About my departure from said canyon ten years ago, you mean?”
He leaned back, his long legs sprawled under the desk. The chair squeaked with his weight as he regarded her through eyes framed by ridiculously thick black lashes.
“That, too.”
Sydney had come a long way from the hopelessly romantic nineteen-year-old. She wasn’t running away this time, from Sebastian or Jamie or herself. Nor, she decided grimly, from this chief engineer.
“Listen, Mr. Henderson…”
“Reece.”
“Listen, Reece. What happened ten years ago is, if you’ll excuse the lame pun, water over the dam. Something I’d like very much to forget.”
“Folks around here seem to want to remember it.”
“That’s their problem, not mine.” She leaned forward, jabbing the air with the pencil to emphasize her point. “And even though it’s none of your business, I’ll tell you that the only reason I came back to Chalo Canyon is to capture the ruins on videotape. I started the project a decade ago. This time I intend to finish it.”
He studied her through hooded eyes. “Why is this particular project so important to you that you’d spend ten years planning it?”
Sydney forced down the lump that tried to climb into her throat. Her father’s death was too recent, the scar still too raw, to talk about it with strangers.
“I’m a documentarian,” she said with a tight edge to her voice. “Like you, I take great pride in my work. By themselves, the ruins emerging from their long sleep make a good story. Supplemented with historical background material on the Anasazi and the legend of the Weeping Woman of Chalo Canyon, I can craft a good story into a great one.”
She pushed to her feet.
“Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to hitch a ride back to town. The rest of my crew is supposed to arrive around noon, and I want to be ready to roll as soon as they get here.”
It was, Reece decided as he watched her drive off with one of his underlings, an impressive performance.
He might even have believed her if he hadn’t been sitting front row, center stage when she made her grand entrance at the Lone Eagle Café some eight hours later.
Chapter 3
L ike the clientele it catered to, the Lone Eagle Café made no pretensions to elegance. Most of its business came from locals, the rest from pleasure boaters and fishermen who passed through town on their way to or from excursions on the vast man-made lake behind the dam. Occasionally work crews hunkered in and made the motel and café their headquarters during visits to the hydroelectric plant powered by the Chalo River.
Reece had stayed at the motel during his initial site survey last winter and again during the preplanning phase of the dam’s inspection and repair a few months ago. He’d returned three weeks ago to supervise the project itself. By now he pretty well knew the café’s menu by heart, and had settled on the rib-eye steak and pinto beans as his standard fare.
The beef came from Sebastian Chavez’s spread north of town, or so he’d been told by the friendly, broad-hipped Lula Jenkins, who, along with her sister, Martha, co-owned and operated the Lone Eagle Motel and Café. The pinto beans, Lula had advised, were grown on a local farm irrigated by water from the Chalo River Reservoir.
“And if you want to keep on shoveling in these beans,” she reminded Reece as she plunked his over-flowing plate down in front of him, “you’d better see that you get that reservoir filled in time for the fall planting.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Folks hereabouts depend on that water. Depend on the revenues from boaters and fishermen, too.”
“I know.”
Inviting herself to join him, Lula eased her comfortable bulk into the chair opposite Reece’s. Her heavy-lidded brown eyes, evidence of the Native American heritage shared by so many in this region, drilled him from across the green-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloth.
“How long will it take to restock the reservoir with fish after you boys get done messing with the dam?”
Reece’s nostrils twitched at the tantalizing aroma rising from his steak. He hadn’t eaten since his hurried breakfast of diced-ham-and-egg burritos, wolfed down during the drive out to the dam just after dawn this morning. Despite the rumbling in his stomach, however, he knew his dinner would have to wait a while longer. Lula’s question wasn’t an idle one. It echoed the worries of a small town that depended on the Chalo River Reservoir for its livelihood.
Reece had prepared detailed environmental-and economic-impact assessments as part of his prep work for the repair project. He’d also conducted a series of meetings with local business and property owners to walk concerned parties through the process, step by step. Slides and briefings didn’t carry quite the same impact for the people involved as seeing their water supply disappear before their eyes, though.
As the nation’s fifth-largest electric utility and the second-largest wholesale water supplier, the Bureau of Reclamation’s network of dams and reservoirs generated more than forty billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and delivered over ten trillion gallons of water each year. One out of five farmers in the western states depended on this water for irrigation to produce their crops. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of sports fishermen and recreationists plied the man-made lakes behind the dams, contributing their share to the economic fabric of communities like Chalo Canyon.
Even more important, the dams harnessed rivers like the Salt and the Gila and the mighty Colorado, controlling the floods and the devastation they’d wrought over the centuries. Born and bred to the West, Reece had grown up with a healthy respect for a river’s power. In college he’d double-majored in civil and hydroelectric engineering. After college he’d worked dam projects all over the world. His father’s death and the itch to get back to the vast, rugged West where he’d grown to manhood had led to a position with the Bureau of Reclamation’s Structural Analysis Group in Denver. The Chalo River inspection and repair project had brought him home to Arizona.
Patiently he addressed Lula’s concerns about the project’s impact on the serious business of pleasure boating and sports fishing. “My headquarters in Washington began coordinating this project more than a year ago with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Fish and Game Department. The government facility at Willow Bend has doubled its rainbow trout output to resupply the reservoir. The state hatchery will restock channel catfish, black crappie, perch and striped bass. The take won’t be as plentiful for a year or more after the lake refills, but it should still provide enough catch to bring in the sport fishermen.”
“It better,” Lula grumbled. “Things are lookin’ pretty thin now, I can tell you. Martha said she doesn’t have a single room reserved after your crew and Miss Fancy-Pants Scott’s folks leave.” The waitress shook her head. “Imagine her driving right off a cliff!”
Reece took a long pull on his beer while Lula rambled on about the accident. Fancy-Pants wasn’t exactly how he’d categorize the woman he’d pulled out of a piñon tree this morning. Unless, of course, she wore something decidedly provocative under those baggy U.S. Army rejects.
An image of the leggy, tousle-haired brunette in lacy black bikini briefs flashed into his mind for an instant. Resolutely Reece pushed it out. What she wore or didn’t wear under her fatigues was none of his business. His only concern was the safety of her and her crew during their filming around the dam site.
The same couldn’t be said for everyone else in town. The imminent arrival of the filmmaker and her crew had dominated the conversation at the café and the town’s only bar for weeks. Everyone had an opinion about why she’d come back, and most were only too willing to voice it. Clearly ready for another discourse on the prodigal’s return, Lula flapped a hand at Reece.
“Go on, go on, eat that steak while it’s still sizzlin’. I’m just keepin’ you company while I’m wait-in’ for them Hollywood people. Did you know that boy with the Scott woman has rings through every part of him that moves, and a few that don’t?”
Reece sawed into his steak, not particularly interested in a discussion of Zack Tyree’s body parts. It took more than a disinterested grunt, however, to discourage the garrulous Lula.
“Martha says she sneaked a peek at him when she went in to change the bed linens this morning. Couldn’t hardly miss him, really. He was prowling around buck naked, wearin’ nothing but them rings.”
Thankfully, the sound of the door opening sent his hostess swiveling around. A grin beamed across her broad face.
“Hey, Jamie! You’re lookin’ good, boy, as always.”
Tanned, golden-haired Jamie Chavez ushered his wife into the café and guided her across the room to Reece’s table.
“Hey, Lula. You’re lookin’ beautiful, as always.” His smile shifted to include her customer. “How’s the spill going, Henderson?”
Reece got to his feet, taking the hand Chavez offered in a firm grip.
“It’s going,” he replied easily. “Another hundred and fifty feet to river level. Nice to see you again, Mrs. Chavez.”
The rail-thin redhead at Jamie’s side smiled. “Please, call me Arlene. After all the hours you’ve spent out at the ranch, briefing Jamie and my father-in-law on the dam project, I think we can dispense with formalities.”
She was even thinner than Reece remembered from his last visit. Her feathery auburn hair framed sunken cheekbones and hollowed eyes. Skillful makeup softened the stark angles of her face, and her natural elegance drew attention away from her gauntness, but Reece glimpsed the same desperate unhappiness in her shadowed eyes as he’d seen in his mother’s not long ago.
Both women had learned to live with the fact that the man they loved had cheated on them. His mother found out about her husband’s infidelity after his death. Jamie’s transgression occurred during his engagement to Arlene, if the tales of ten years ago held any truth. Now that long-buried embarrassment had come back to haunt her.
Reece had to admit the green-eyed brunette he’d walked up a canyon wall this morning could certainly give this woman something to worry about. Sympathy for the worried wife tugged at him as Lula heaved herself to her feet.
“Did you two come in for dinner? I’ve got some prime rib-eye in the cooler that was wearin’ the Chavez brand not too long ago. I laid in an extra supply for those Hollywood folks, but they said they’d eat light when they got back tonight, whatever ‘light’ means,” she grumbled.
“Probably tofu and soybean salad,” Jamie teased.
“Ha!” Lula hitched her apron on her ample hips. “If they’re expectin’ tofu and such, they’re sure as hell not gonna find it at the Lone Eagle Café.”
“Where are they?” Jamie asked casually.
Too casually, Reece thought. Arlene evidently thought so, too. She threw her husband a sharp glance.
“Well, they loaded up two vans and took off just after one,” Lula told him. “Said they’d be back after the light went, though, so I expect them anytime. If they aren’t gonna eat those steaks, I gotta do something with them. What do you say I throw two on the grill for you and the missus?”
Arlene shook her head. “No, thanks. We just stopped by to—”
“Sure,” her husband interrupted genially. “Why not? Bring out two more of those beers, too.”
“But, Jamie…”
“We don’t have to get back to the ranch right away, darling. Mind if we join you, Henderson?”
Reece shrugged. “Of course not. Please, be my guest.”
A tight-lipped Arlene slid into the chair he held out for her. She didn’t want a steak. That much was obvious. From the nervous glances she darted at the front door every time it opened, it was also obvious she didn’t want to be sitting at the Lone Eagle Café when the Hollywood folks, as Lula termed them, returned.
Reece reminded himself that neither Jamie Chavez, his wife, nor the woman who’d almost come between them were any of his business, but that didn’t kill the little stab of pity he felt for Arlene when the door swung open twenty minutes later and Sydney trooped in with her crew.
They were certainly a colorful bunch, from the kid with the green hair and the be-ringed nostrils to the statuesque, ebony-skinned six-footer who toted camera bags over each shoulder and sported a turquoise T-shirt with Through a Lens Lightly emblazoned in glittering gold across her magnificent chest. The guy with the earphones draped around his neck like stethoscopes was obviously the soundman. The mousy little female beside him had to be the gofer no crew could operate without, Reece’s included.
But it was the writer-director who drew every eye in the café. Reece’s included.
She was laughing at something one of her crew had said. The sound flowed across the room like rich, hot fudge. Her hair looked like chocolate fudge, too, shining and thick and brushed free of the dust and scraggly tangles that had snarled it this morning.
She still wore her boots and baggy fatigue pants. This time, however, she’d paired them with a short-sleeved black top in some clingy material that showed every line and curve of her upper body. The erotic image Reece had conjured up of her earlier popped instantly into his mind. To his disgust, he couldn’t quash the startlingly erotic picture as easily as he had before.
He wasn’t the only one whose thoughts had focused on Sydney. Arlene Chavez sat with both hands folded into fists in her lap, her lips white at the corners as she took in the director’s laughing vitality. Her husband, too, had his eyes locked on the striking brunette.
“Well, well, little Syd’s all grown-up.”
Jamie’s murmur was almost lost in the boisterous group’s arrival. Reece caught it, though. So did Arlene. Her gaze wrenched away from the newcomers, and her face filled with such anguish that Reece’s heart contracted.
Dammit! Couldn’t Chavez see his wife’s pain and insecurity?
Evidently not. The man’s eyes lit with a gleam that was part predatory and wholly admiring. Tossing his paper napkin onto the table, Jamie rose and strolled forward to intercept the group.
“Sydney?”
“Yes?”
She turned with a look of inquiry that jolted into surprise. Surprise flowed almost instantly into a polite greeting.
“Hello, Jamie.”
He took the hand she offered in both of his. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yes, it has.” She freed her hand, eyeing him with the slanting assessment of a person who made her living in the visual arts. “You haven’t changed much.”
It could have been meant as a compliment or a condemnation. Jamie chose to grin and turn her words back on her.
“You have.”
“I’m glad you recognize that fact.”
“I heard you almost drove off a cliff last night.”
She shook her head, half amused, half exasperated. “Things always did get around fast in this town.”
“I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.” His grin faded. “I also heard your father died. I’m sorry, Syd. He was a good man.”
From where Reece sat, it was impossible to miss the change that came over her. She seemed to soften around the edges. Her green eyes grew luminous, her full mouth curved with a genuine warmth.
“Yes, he was.”
They shared a small silence, two people bound by the memory of someone they’d both known.
Arlene broke the moment. Rising abruptly with a jerky movement that rattled the glasses and cutlery on the table, she crossed the room to slip her hand into the crook of her husband’s arm.
“Is this the famous Sydney Scott I’ve heard so much about? Why don’t you introduce us, darling?”
“This is the one,” Jamie replied with unruffled charm. “Arlene, meet Sydney. Syd, this is my wife, Arlene.”
Reece wondered how the moviemaker would handle the awkward situation. So did everyone else in the café. Lula had both elbows on the service window behind the counter, her brown eyes wide. A few of the other local patrons whispered and nudged and nodded in the direction of the threesome. Even the noisy crew Sydney had come in with picked up on the buzz and turned curious eyes on their boss.
To her credit she gave the other woman an easy smile. “I don’t know about the famous part, but I am Sydney. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Arlene couldn’t let it go there. With her arm still tucked in her husband’s, she knifed right to the heart of the matter. “I understand you and my husband were once, shall we say, close friends.”
A hush fell over the café. Sydney’s ripple of laughter filled the void. “I made a fool of myself over him, you mean. I suppose most girls go through that gawky, hopelessly romantic stage. Thankfully we grow out of it sooner or later.”
“Do we?”
“Well, I did, anyway.” Her gaze flickered to the fingers Arlene had dug into Jamie’s arm. She gentled her voice, as if understanding the woman’s need for reassurance. “A long time ago.”
Reece stiffened. That was exactly the wrong thing to say around a man like Jamie Chavez. Reece had only met the younger Chavez a few times, but he’d worked with enough men to recognize the type. Handsome, wealthy, restless, chafing a little at having to work with and for his father, despite the fact that he would inherit the vast Chavez ranching and timber empire someday.
That much had been apparent to Reece a few months ago, the night Sebastian Chavez had invited him out to the ranch for drinks and a discussion of the pending dam-repair project. Chavez doted on his only son. He’d displayed a wall of glass cases filled with Jamie’s sports trophies and bragged about his keen competitive spirit in both school and business. The bighorn sheep and mountain cat trophies mounted on the den walls, all bagged by Jamie, also indicated someone who loved the thrill of the hunt.
And now a woman who admitted to having made a fool of herself over him laughingly claimed she’d grown out of the infatuation years ago. If Reece had been a betting man, he’d put money on the odds that Jamie would shake loose from his wife’s hold…which he did. And that he’d make a move on Sydney…which he now tried to do.
“Not much changes around Chalo Canyon, Syd, even in ten years, but I’d be glad to take you up in my chopper and let you reacquaint yourself with the area. Maybe you can get some shots of the ruins from the air for your documentary.”
“I don’t think your father would appreciate that, Jamie. He specifically denied me and my crew access to the canyon rim through his land.”
Disgusted, Reece lifted his beer. Nothing like telling the man that his daddy was the one calling the shots around here. Didn’t she realize that was like waving a red flag in front of a young bull?
His arm froze with the bottle halfway to his mouth. Maybe she did. Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing.
Dammit, he’d wanted to believe her this morning when she’d said she’d come back to Chalo Canyon for one reason only. Now…
“I chopper my own aircraft,” Jamie said with a tight smile. “I take up who I want, when I want, where I want.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t need aerial shots. Or access through Chavez land. I’ve made other arrangements.”
The wrenching heartbreak on Arlene’s face as she listened to the byplay between her husband and the moviemaker brought Reece out of his chair. Her expression reminded him so much of his mother’s anguish that dark February night. He was still telling himself he was a fool to get involved when he joined the small group.
“Speaking of arrangements, we agreed to get together tonight, remember?”
He kept the words casual, but the lazy glint in his eyes when he looked down at Sydney implied they’d agreed to get together to talk about more than arrangements. To reinforce the impression, Reece aimed a smile her way.
After the first, startled glance, Sydney picked up on his cue. “So we did. Shall we make it your room or mine?” she purred, sliding an arm around his waist.
Whoa! When the woman threw herself into a role, she pulled out all the stops. Reece had to clear his throat before he could push out an answer.
“Mine. I’ll clean up while you grab something to eat with your crew.”
“I’m not hungry. I just came in with the gang for the company. I’ll go with you now. Arlene, maybe we’ll get a chance to chat some other time. Jamie…”
Watched avidly by everyone in the café, she searched for a dignified exit line. Once again, Reece stepped into the breech.
“See you around, Chavez.”
With a nod to her crew, Sydney preceded Reece out of the café. Neither one of them spoke as they walked through the heat that was rapidly fading to a sweat-cooling seventy or so degrees as dusk turned the sky purple.
Their footsteps crunched on the gravel walkway. Bugs buzzed the glowing yellow bulbs that hung over the row of motel doors. Sydney halted in front of Number Six. Drawing in a long breath, she turned to face him.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I really didn’t need rescuing this time.”
“What makes you think I stepped in to rescue you?”
“Then who…? Oh. Arlene?”
“Right. Arlene. She doesn’t appear to share your confidence that what happened between you and Jamie is, how did you put it? Water over the dam?”
“I can’t help what she believes.” She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her baggy pants, her movements stiff and defensive in the lamplight. “I came here to make a movie, and only to make a movie.”
“A lot of people seem to believe otherwise.”
“Tough. I can’t avoid the past, but I’m certainly not going to let it get in my way.”
“The past being Jamie Chavez, or his wife?”
Her chin angled. “Look, this isn’t really any of your business. Let’s just—”
She broke off, her glance darting past him. Behind him, Reece heard the sound of the café door banging shut.
“Oh, hell!”
It didn’t take an Einstein to guess who had just walked out. After a short, pregnant pause, Sydney shot him a challenge.
“Okay, hotshot,” she muttered, lifting her arms to lock them around his neck. “You scripted this scene. We might as well act it out.”
Reece would have had to be poured from reinforced concrete not to respond to the body pressed so seductively against his. As slender as Sydney was, she fit him perfectly in every spot that mattered…and at this point that was just about everywhere. Little sparks ignited where their knees brushed, their hips met, their chests touched.
“Let’s make it look good,” she whispered, rising up on tiptoe to brush her mouth to his.
Reece held out for all of ten seconds before he lost the short, fierce battle he waged with himself. Her mouth was too soft, too seductive, to ignore. Spanning her waist, he slid his hands around to the small of her back.
She curved inward at the pressure, and the sparks sizzling where their bodies touched burst into flames. Reece shifted, widening his stance, bringing her into the notch between his legs.
She drew back, gasping a little at the intimate contact. The glow from the yellow lightbulb illuminated her startled face. The thrill that zinged through Reece at the sight of her parted lips and flushed face annoyed the hell out of him…and sent a rush of heat straight to his gut.
“Are they still there?” he growled softly.
She dragged her gaze from his to peer around his shoulder. “Yes.”
“Guess we’d better do a retake.”
With a small smile he bent her backward over his arm.
Chapter 4
W hen Sydney came up for air, her coherent first thought was that Reece Henderson had chosen the wrong profession. If he performed like this on stage or film, he’d walk away with a fistful of Oscars and Emmys.
The second, far-more-disconcerting thought was that she’d forgotten he was acting about halfway through their bone-rattling kiss.
The crunch of car tires on gravel brought her thumping back to earth. She pushed out of Reece’s arms, shaken to the toes of her scuffed boots, just in time to see a silver and maroon utility vehicle with the Chavez Ranch logo on the door pull out of the parking lot. Blowing a shaky breath, she turned back to her co-conspirator.
“That was quite a performance, Mr. Henderson. Let’s hope it doesn’t get back to your wife.”
“I’m not married.”
“Engaged? Not that I’m really interested, you understand, but I already have something of a reputation in this town. It would be nice to know what I’m adding to it.”
He shoved a hand through his closely trimmed black hair. Sydney felt a little dart of wholly feminine satisfaction at the red that singed his cheeks. She wasn’t the only one who’d put more than she planned into the kiss…or taken more out of it.
“No fiancée, no significant other, not even a dog,” he replied shortly. “My job keeps me on the road too much for anything that requires a commitment.”
Was that a warning? Sydney wondered. Well, she didn’t need it. She didn’t require anything from Reece Henderson except his cooperation for her documentary.
“Well, that’s a relief,” she replied dryly. “I don’t think I’ve got room on my chest for another scarlet A.”
His deliberate glance at the portion of her anatomy under discussion had Sydney battling the absurd urge to cross her arms. She never wore a bra…one, because she wasn’t well-enough endowed to require support and two, because she didn’t like any unnecessary constriction when she was working. Right now, though, she would gladly have traded a little constriction for the shield of a Maidenform. The tingling at the center of her breasts told her she was showing the effects of that stunning kiss. That, and the way Reece’s gaze lingered on her chest.
How embarrassing! And ridiculous! She hadn’t allowed any man to fluster her like this since—
Since Jamie.
The memory of her idiocy that long-ago summer acted like a bucket of cold water, fizzling out the shivery feeling left by Reece’s mouth and hands and appraising glance. She slanted her head, studying his square chin and faintly disapproving eyes.
“When you stepped into the fray tonight and hinted at something more than a casual acquaintance between us, you obviously wanted to send Jamie Chavez a message. Just out of curiosity, why does it matter to you what either he or his wife thinks?”
His jaw squared. “Maybe I don’t like to see a wife humiliated by her husband’s interest in another woman.”
The barb was directed at her as much as at Jamie. Sydney stiffened, but bit back a sharp reply. She refused to defend herself to him…or anyone else…again.
“And maybe it’s because I’ve got a job to do here,” he continued. “I made several trips to Chalo Canyon earlier this year to lay the groundwork and gain the cooperation of the locals, including the Chavez family.”
“Sebastian Chavez being the most important and influential of those locals?”
“Exactly. Until he learned about your plans to film the ruins, he was willing to work with me to address the worries of the other ranchers and farmers and businessmen. Since then, he’s become a major—”
“Pain in the butt?” Sydney supplied with syrupy sweetness.
“A major opponent of any delay.”
“Then he doesn’t have anything to worry about, does he? I’m as anxious to complete my project as you are yours. Speaking of which, are we still on schedule for 9:24 tomorrow?”
“Nine twenty-three,” he corrected with a disconcerting glint in his blue eyes.
Good Lord! Was that a glimmer of amusement? The idea that Reece Henderson could laugh at himself threw Sydney almost as much as his kiss had. What a contradictory man he was, all disapproving and square-jawed one moment, almost human and too damned attractive for her peace of mind the next.
Good thing her work would keep her occupied from dawn to dusk for the next two weeks. The last thing she needed at this critical juncture was distraction. This project meant too much to her emotionally and financially to jeopardize it with even a mild flirtation.
“I want to position my crew on the east rim just after dawn,” she said crisply. “We’ll probably shoot most of the day and into the evening, if the light holds. Any problems with that?”
“No. Just check in with me when you leave the area.”
Nodding, she swung around to head back to the café. She’d better remind Zack to curtail his night-owl TV watching or it would take a stick of dynamite to roust him before dawn tomorrow.
“Sydney…”
“Yes?”
He hesitated, then curled that wicked, wonderful mouth into a real-live smile.
“Steer clear of falling rocks.”
“I will.”
She’d steer clear of falling rocks and former lovers and too-handsome engineers. In fact, she swore silently as she reached for the café’s screened door, she’d go out of her way to avoid any and all possible distractions until she finished the shoot and shook the dust of Chalo Canyon from her heels forever.
Unfortunately, avoiding distractions and interruptions was easier planned than done.
The predawn sky still wore a mantle of darkness sprinkled with stars when Sydney walked out of her room, laden with one of Tish’s camera bags and a backpack filled with water bottles. She’d taken only a step toward the parked van when bright headlights stabbed through the quiet of the sleeping town.
Sydney glanced curiously at the vehicle as it pulled into the motel parking lot. She caught a brief glimpse of the silver Diamond-C logo on its side door before the utility vehicle squealed to a stop a few yards away. Her stomach knotted when she saw that the man at the wheel wasn’t Jamie Chavez, but his father.
Okay, girl, she told herself bracingly. You knew this confrontation had to come sooner or later.
Yeah, herself answered, but we were hoping for later.
Come on! Get a grip here. You’re not the same easy mark you were the last time you faced Sebastian Chavez.
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