Holding back her fury took more gumption than Tess had left just then. "I suppose you're one of those chauvinistic pigs who think a woman's place is in the home! That we're just not as smart as men! That we shouldn't be paid as much, because we just don't do as much work as men!"

  He grabbed his hat from the ground and slapped it against his leg to knock off the dust. Then he plopped it on his head and tipped it back an inch, staring at her from under the brim.

  "Well, I don't guess I've ever been called a pig before, and I don't have any idea what breed of pig you're talking about. But I'm darned well aware that Flower works just as hard as me at the ranch, so you can take that uncalled-for opinion of my character and stuff..."

  He shook his head. "Look," he said in a more reasonable tone of voice, "all I want to do is help you. Neighbors out here do that for each other."

  Tess's indignation diffused in a whoosh. Good grief, she was really going to have to watch what she said. But just how much was she going to have to say to explain how in the world she had shown up here?

  She glanced at the Marlboro Man to see him studying the ground behind her. "What...?" But she knew immediately what he was looking for. Her horse's hoof prints, which he wasn't going to see.

  "What's your name?" she quickly amended.

  "Rain told you his sister's name. Didn't he tell you mine?"

  "Oh. Yes, yes, he did. It's Stone, right? Stone Chisum."

  "What's yours?" Flower asked. She moved over and squatted beside Tess, holding out her hand in an offer of friendship.

  "Tess." She gripped the girl's smaller hand and gave it a slight shake. "Tess Foster."

  "That's pretty," Flower said. "Tess," she repeated.

  "Before you ask, it's not short for anything." She laughed. "It's just plain old Tess."

  "How old are you?" Flower asked.

  "Thirty," she admitted wryly.

  "Gee, you're almost as old as Pa, but you sure don't look that old. Are you married?"

  "No. Not even engaged." Anymore, her mind added.

  "You sure don't look like a spinster," the girl said as she rose to her feet. "One of the books I read said anyone who isn't married by the time she's twenty gets called a spinster. But I always imagined a spinster would be all dried up and ugly. You're awfully pretty, like your name."

  Tess stared at her in dismay. How in the world could she respond to that comment?

  Luckily, Stone intervened. "You'll have plenty of time to ask Miss Foster all the questions you want after we get her down to the cabin and make her more comfortable, Flower. Where did you say that horse of yours went, Miss Foster?"

  "I... I've no idea," she replied. She wasn't lying. Sateen was back in a stall—somewhere back there.

  "Hey, Pa! Am I glad you're here. You can give me a hand lifting the deer onto Smoky."

  "Sure, son," Stone called toward Rain, who was trudging in their direction. "Just let me get Miss Foster taken care of first. It's mighty hot to just leave her sitting here."

  "Her foot's hurt pretty bad, Pa," the boy said, glancing down at Tess with a smile of concern as he halted beside his father. "She must have hurt it before she got here."

  "Before she got here? What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Stone frowned.

  Tess took the only recourse she had when he glared at her. She screwed up her face in pain and even managed to squeeze out a tear that trickled down her cheek.

  Rubbing her leg, she said with a sob, "Please. Can't we talk after we do something for my ankle? I've been lying here over half an hour, and I don't think I can stand the pain much longer."

  When Stone dissolved into helpless confusion, she bit back a stab of guilt, as well as a smirk of satisfaction at how well her ploy to divert his thoughts had worked. He reached toward her face, then jerked his hand back and grabbed his handkerchief from his back pocket instead. Thrusting the handkerchief into her free hand, he somewhat gruffly ordered Flower to bring her horse closer.

  Stone bent and gently lifted her into his arms, carefully shifting her against his chest as she wrapped her arm around his neck.

  "I'll try not to hurt you," he muttered distractedly. "Please, don't cry anymore. We'll get you down to the cabin. I think I've got some laudanum there. If not, there's some whiskey."

  Tess closed her eyes against the pain, but she couldn't shut out the flare of sensation his holding her stirred up. Darn it, she'd been held by men before. Well, maybe nobody as blatantly masculine as this Marlboro Man, but she'd never chosen her men by whether they were hunks or not.

  Her breasts were crushed against his chest, and she could tell he was looking down at her when she felt a feathery hint of breath on her face. With her eyes closed, her other senses were heightened, and she allowed them free rein.

  He even smelled deliciously masculine. A faint hint of soap and sweat and—she took a deeper breath—a little horse odor. The size of the corded muscles in his arms beneath her knees and around her waist assured her that she was safe in his hold.

  Why wasn't he carrying her on over to the horse, though? She slit her eyes just a little. Good lord, he was studying her face, and his lips were awfully close to her own. No wonder she could feel his breath.

  "Pa, what about the deer?" Rain asked.

  Tess felt him give a slight start as he jerked his head up.

  "We'll get the deer in a little while, son," Stone said rather harshly.

  "I'm sorry to be such a bother," Tess said in a soft voice, smiling at Rain. "I'll be out of the way just as soon as your father gets me on one of the horses."

  The little boy's face lost its pout and he gave her a shy smile in return. "Aw, the deer's not gonna spoil that fast. It's more important to get your ankle fixed."

  "We need to get her off this hill first," Stone growled. "Where's...?"

  "Uh... Pa," Flower broke in, clearing her throat to get his attention. "Here's the horse. I've had it here since right after you asked for it."

  Stone turned, and Flower stood right behind them, holding the horse's reins. Tess stifled a giggle as an actual flush of embarrassment flooded Stone's cheeks. How long had he stood with her in his arms without moving? The children probably thought their father had forgotten that he had called for the horse.

  Had he been feeling a little of the sensations flowing through her as he held her? Had he wondered how well their lips would match?

  "Think you could help me out here a bit, Miss Foster?" Stone asked in a gruff voice.

  She jerked her head back, her neck popping with the strain. Tearing her eyes away from his face, she glanced at the horse standing beside them.

  "Sure. S... sorry," she sputtered.

  Bracing herself on his shoulder, she threw one leg over the saddle and reached for the saddle horn. A very capable pair of broad hands cupped her rear and steadied her, pushing her upward. She almost went over the other side of the horse before she caught herself.

  "Thought you said you could ride," he said as he rubbed his hands against his denim-clad legs.

  "I can," she almost snarled at him. To prove her point, she neck-reined the horse around and started down the trail.

  "Damn it! Wait for Flower!" he shouted.

  Tess pulled the gelding up but refused to turn the horse around. Extremely aware of every movement Stone made, despite keeping her eyes faced resolutely forward, she waited until he hefted Flower up behind the saddle.

  She lifted the reins, but Stone caught the horse's bridle before it could move.

  "Wait for Rain and me, too. You'll need some help getting into the cabin," he said, his eyes sliding away from her brief downward glance.

  "But, Pa! Like you said, it's awful hot," Rain said in a peevish voice. "I don't want that deer meat to spoil."

  "Flower and I can make it alone," Tess assured Stone. "I've been riding all my life, and Flower can get me something to lean on so I can make it into your cabin."

  "Well, if you're sure. Flower was counting on that meat for dinner tomorrow."

  "We'll be fine. Really."

  To emphasize her words, Tess picked up the reins again and quirked a questioning glance at Stone's hand on the bridle.

  He held the bridle strap a moment longer. "Is there someone around here we ought to notify about you getting hurt? Your family will probably wonder where you are when you don't show up."

  "No," she denied, then frantically tried to think how to explain that to him—or at least divert the new questions she saw forming on his craggy face. "I... oh, my ankle hurts." She blinked her eyes a time or two, as though fighting tears of pain, which wasn't too far from the truth. Her ankle was beginning to throb again as it hung down beside the stirrup.

  Stone quickly dropped his hand and stepped back, and she kneed the horse forward. She paused at the bend in the trail where Stone had first appeared only long enough to give a nonchalant wave back, to indicate that she was having no problem riding. No, she told herself as she moved out again, she did not want to see if the Marlboro Man was watching her—seeing how well she handled the strange horse.

  As soon as the horse carrying Tess and Stone's daughter disappeared, Angela watched him kneel in front of Rain and place his hands on the boy's shoulders.

  "Now, what the heck is going on here, son?" she heard Stone say. "Where did Miss Foster come from? And what did you mean about her being hurt before she got here?"

  Angela clapped her hands in approval. So Tess's attempt to divert Stone's questions hadn't worked. It had only delayed them. Not a dumb man, this one!

  "What? You think we men can't see through all those wiles you women use, just because we let you get your way most of the time?"

  "Michael! Welcome back," Angela said. "Shhhh. Let's listen. I really want to know what's going to happen next."

  "Well, fill me in on what's happened so far. All I saw was that poor man getting flustered because Tess blinked those big green eyes at him like she was going to cry."

  "Not now, Michael. You should have been watching all along, if you wanted to know the story. You'll have to wait for a commercial."

  "A commercial! Dash nab it, Angela, we're not watching television!"

  "Shhhh. Listen!"

  "...and I really don't know where she came from, Pa," Rain said. "Like I told you, one minute there was a wild turkey there, and next thing I knew the turkey was hightailing it over the top of the hill, gobbling like I'd shot it in the rear with buckshot. Then there she was."

  Stone could tell his son was holding something back, and the boy's evasiveness was a new trait he didn't care for much. Rain kept glancing beyond Stone with a look of wonder in his eyes. Yet when Stone turned, he saw nothing but empty land and sky.

  He felt Rain's forehead. "Did you bring a canteen with you? I've told you not to hunt in the summer heat without taking water with you."

  "I'm not sick. Gee, you don't think I'm lying, do you? I've never told you a lie."

  "No," he hastily assured his son. "But, Rain, sometimes we see things that aren't really there. Or maybe overlook things at first. You were concentrating on the turkey. You just didn't notice Miss Foster."

  "Uh-uh, Pa. She wasn't there when I first aimed my gun. How could I have missed seeing someone that pretty lying right where the turkey was standing? Especially with that red shirt she's got on. And, look, you can see the turkey's tracks. It was standing right here—right beside where Miss Foster was."

  Stone shook his head.

  "And I was aiming my rifle, like I said! Do you think I would have pointed my rifle at a turkey that had a person laying right beside it? I know better than that. I'm a pretty good shot, but there's always a chance... I wouldn't ever try to make a shot like that unless I had to save someone's life."

  "Rain, people can't just appear and disappear into thin air."

  "They sure can't, can they? I don't know then, Pa." Rain shrugged. "Where did she come from? She's real, not a spirit."

  "She's real, all right," Stone said, rubbing two fingers across the slight hump on his chest.

  "She smells pretty, too, doesn't she? Kind of like the wildflowers in the spring."

  Stone rose to his feet, nodding his head. He'd had ample time to contemplate that sensuous smell when he'd held her, caught up in some feeling he wasn't prepared to try to rationalize. For a minute there, he'd thought of kissing her.

  The pack near his feet caught his eye and diverted his thoughts. He didn't dare. That belonged to her, and he had no business invading her privacy—going through her things.

  Besides, they'd better get that deer or it wouldn't be worth hauling home. He'd take her pack with him on the horse, after they loaded the deer. He'd give it back to her. Probably she had her extra clothing in there and all those feminine necessities women seemed to need.

  He'd give it straight back to her.

  "Come on, Rain. Let's get the deer."

  "Boy, is he going to be surprised when he goes through that pack." Michael chuckled.

  "He wouldn't," Angela denied. "You can read his thoughts as well as I can. He's decided he'll give it back to her without looking in it."

  Michael grinned at her. "Those are just his surface thoughts. Humans have a vast amount of curiosity, remember? We'll have to see how long his sense of not violating Tess's privacy can hold that curiosity at bay."

  Five

  Gingerly, Tess shifted in the saddle and glanced at the ground as Flower dismounted. It had never looked that far away when she had two good legs with which to climb out of the saddle. Would Flower's horse prove as stoic as the mountain ponies she had learned to ride almost before she could walk? Those ponies allowed mounting or dismounting from either side, but most horses tolerated it only on the left—the side on which they had been trained. No way would her left ankle support her in the stirrup.

  She tentatively leaned her weight into the right stirrup. The horse tossed its head and shied a step away from the hitching rail.

  "Wait, Miss Foster. Let me hold him."

  Flower grabbed the bridle and soothingly stroked the horse's muzzle. She nodded at Tess, and Tess eased her left leg over the horse's rump, then laid her stomach on the saddle and slid to the ground. Reaching for the hitching rail, she hopped a step, making sure her injured ankle didn't touch the ground.

  "I'm going to need something to help support me in order to make it into the house," she reminded Flower.

  The girl dropped the reins to ground tie the horse. "Do you think you could lean against me?"

  "You probably couldn't hold me if I started to fall, honey. How about getting a kitchen chair?"

  "We've only got benches around the table." Flower frowned. "I know. There's a stool I use when I churn."

  The girl lightly ran up the steps, and Tess settled her bottom more comfortably on the hitching rail to wait. Taking a deep breath of the pure air, her eyes wandered over the yard.

  It was really a beautiful place. The valley stretched out on either side of the small log cabin. The heat didn't seem quite as stifling down here, since a slight breeze wafted along the valley floor. She lifted her hair from the back of her neck and allowed the breeze to play across the dampness.

  A small barn was off to the right, surrounded on three sides by a much larger corral. She had noticed a mare and a half-grown colt in the corral as they rode into the yard.

  In the eastern end of the valley, she thought she could make out some reddish shapes against the dark, velvet green. Probably some cattle, she realized.

  She inhaled deeply again. How untainted and clean it smelled. Sometimes, even on the mountain-tops where she backpacked, she could still smell the faint odor of civilization. And how many times had she found signs of other, less ecologically conscious hikers in the remote, pristine wilderness she loved? An empty candy wrapper skittering along the trail in a breeze—a crumpled aluminum can.

  Once, with Freddy's assistance, she had even rescued a loon in a mountain lake. The poor thing had become entangled in a plastic six-pack holder someone had tossed negligently into the water. Probably the loon had been diving for food, Freddy had told her. Tess unconsciously rubbed the small scar on the back of her hand, the reminder of how sharp a frightened bird's beak could be.

  "Here we go, Miss Foster."

  She murmured her thanks to Flower. Somewhat awkwardly, she managed the two steps up to the porch, silently blessing the fact that her jogging and hiking kept her legs in good shape. She hobbled into the cabin as the girl held open the door and gratefully sank onto one of the benches beside the wooden table.

  "I took a minute and stoked up the stove, Miss Foster," Flower said as she reached for a tin basin on the sink. "Soon as the water in the teakettle gets hot, you can soak your ankle."

  "Ice might be better, Flower—so we can get some of this swelling down and try to decide how bad my ankle's hurt."

  "Oh, I don't think there's any left," Flower said in an apologetic voice. "Would you rather have some cold well water?"

  How stupid, Tess told herself. Of course there wouldn't be any ice. She hadn't seen any power lines stretching across the valley.

  "That'll be fine.” Flower.

  "Sometimes we have ice up into the spring," Flower started to explain. "If we have a real cold winter, Pa cuts the ice from one of the lakes and stores it in sawdust in our root cellar. But there was only a pile of sawdust there the other day. Our well's real deep, though, and the water's nice and cold."

  "Can you manage by yourself?"

  "Oh, sure. I carry water in all the time. I'll be right back."

  After Flower left, Tess stared around the kitchen. The cabin must be larger than it appeared from the outside. The kitchen was fairly spacious. Here and there she noted little touches that had to have come from Flower—a vase of almost wilted black-eyed Susans—a pair of curtains with wobbly seams hanging over the dry sink. She couldn't imagine either Stone or Rain caring much about curtains or flowers.

  The table and stove were sparkling clean. But overhead in the rafters, where strings of peppers and corn—popcorn, maybe—hung, she saw a few dust-covered spiderwebs. And the corners of the pine flooring could stand a good scrubbing.