at age twenty-one. He had thought he was embarking on a career of high romance and adventure.
Instead the road had been a lonely one that had turned him hard and cold. Much too hard and cold to be entrusted with something so fragile as a baby.
Or this woman.
Still, here he was, and if there was one thing he had learned—and learned swiftly—it was that it was very rare for a man in his line of work to ever be handed circumstances that were to his liking. He learned to make do with what he was dealt.
This time the cards had turned up a baby whose family was dead and who needed his protection. And a woman with far too many questions making her eyes burn brilliant.
He spent ten years living by the military adage, “Need to know.” What you didn’t need to know, you weren’t told. And what others didn’t need to know, you didn’t tell them.
And this woman in front of him wanted to know everything. For her own safety, and that of the baby, he would tell her nothing for as long as he could.
Oddly, the way her eyes were resting on him, he suspected she already knew things about him that he did not know about himself.
And it scared the living daylights out of him.
He thrust the baby at her. “Maybe you could try and shovel some of that green stuff into him.”
She looked awkward with the baby, and yet her face softened with tenderness when she looked at him.
And for a blinding moment a renegade yearning shot out from under the steel trap of Ben’s hard-earned control—a yearning to walk away from this life of loneliness and be a part of a circle of love.
It occurred to him he’d given Storm his real name, evidence that his thinking was already being clouded by her presence, by that restlessness within himself that had made him take the job with Rocky’s father on pure whimsy, instead of reason. He’d liked the man. And look where that had gotten him. He should know by now that forming attachments was something he should guard against.
Cursing inwardly, he turned away from her and the baby and went outside.
He listened. The forest was dark and silent. He listened inside himself. His heart told him he had not been followed. And that he was in danger of a different kind.
A kind he had never faced before, and was not trained to defend against.
Storm spooned the green stuff into Rocky, who slurped it back with relish. He waved his hands wildly in the air in between bites.
Ben had gone outside. She was glad. His presence did things to her. Made her aware of something deep, dark and dangerous inside herself.
Something that had never been tapped or touched.
Not even by her infatuation with Dorian.
The baby finished eating, and she dampened a cloth and wiped his face. She took him and rested his head against her shoulder and rocked him, and he went to sleep almost instantly. She liked the puddled warmth of him in her arms. Only after he had started to feel heavy did she lay him carefully back on the sleeping bag on the floor.
The night was turning chilly as it would do in the mountains in the spring, and even in the summer.
Ben came back in, the load of firewood he carried effortlessly showing the corded muscles of his arms to distinct advantage. “It’s cold out,” he said briefly.
He put down the wood carefully, so as not to wake the baby, then went and gazed down at him for a moment, unaware of how his hard features softened with momentary tenderness.
And certainly unaware of what that softening of those features did to her.
Filled her with something.
Yearning.
“I guess we should eat,” she said abruptly. “I’ve got plenty of grub in my pack boxes. I’ll go get them.”
She didn’t know if he accompanied her out of a sense of chivalry or because he was guarding her, but they went together to where she had left the pack boxes by the corral. He went unhesitatingly and held out his hand to her old horse.
“That’s Sam,” she said, disarmed by the look on his face. What was it? Wistfulness?
He turned and gave her a look, the wistfulness replaced by a look of dry amusement. “So this is Sam.”
She shrugged, watching how he stroked the horse’s forehead, scratched along his mane. “You like horses,” she said. “You’ve been around them a bit, too.”
“We used to raise quarter horses when I was a kid. I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming.”
“I should have known.”
“What?”
“Cowboy. You can take off the boots and the hats, and you can put years between you and the range, but it’s still there.”
“What’s still there?”
She was sorry she had blurted out the thought, sorrier still he was pursuing it into her private thoughts about him. “Arrogance,” she said. But she thought mystique, strength, self-reliance. The way they held themselves. The pride in their eyes.
A slight frown creased his forehead. “You’re an expert on cowboys?”
“I was raised by two of them.”
“I should have known.”
“What?”
“Cowgirl.”
“And you’re an expert on cowgirls?”
“No. We were pretty isolated where we were. I don’t know the first thing about cowgirls. But if I had to pick one to put on a poster, I’d pick you.”
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not.”
“I think it is.”
“Why would you pick me?” She knew she was treading a fine line here between getting his guard down and letting hers down.
“Because you look like you could rope and ride as easily and effortlessly as most women could sew a button on a shirt.”
“Sew a button on a shirt? Are your views of women that archaic?”
“Beautiful but slightly prickly,” he went on, as if she hadn’t interrupted.
“I am not.” She meant beautiful.
“Believe me prickly is not nearly as deep a character flaw as arrogance.”
“That’s true.”
“You look like you could shoot a bear without blinking—”
“I did so blink. My eyes were shut tight when I pulled the trigger.”
He
