She checked the level of the sun, judging her time from it the way others would consult a watch. “Yes—for a little while yet.”
She turned to leave. Again Luke wanted to keep her with him, but he had no reason to, at least no logical reason. He was merely passing through and their paths had crossed.
He watched her go, tripping off down the trail in her soft moccasins. He wondered what—or who—might be waiting for her at home.
A husband?
A child?
But that, he knew, was none of his business.
At least for a little while she’d made him forget his pain. And that was something no one had been able to do for him these past dark, empty months.
A few hours later Mariah’s basket was full to overflowing. Indian fig, wild licorice, comfrey root. Mariah was pleased to have found them all. It had been a good day. She now had enough herbs to last for a while.
She turned and started back toward the ancient truck she’d parked down by the stream that flowed briskly in the spring, fed by the snowmelt from the high mountains.
When summer came, it would dry up to dust and rock, but for now there was enough cool water to splash over her face and arms before she began her drive home.
She’d strayed farther than she’d intended today, but the hope of finding more plants had lured her on. Many of the herbs she needed were scarce in this high-desert region, but Mariah would search until she found that one lone plant. And when she couldn’t find what she needed, she’d substitute.
Una Roanhorse had taught her well. The old Hopi woman’s eyes were failing now—she could no longer gather roots and plants for herself, so Mariah shared what she had with her. In return, Una looked after Callie. It was a good arrangement. Callie loved the older woman, loved the Hopi tales Una often told her, the same tales Mariah had heard as a child growing up on the land of her people.
Mariah’s father had been a bahana, a white man. She didn’t remember him, though. He hadn’t bothered to stay around. Her mother had died many years before, and Mariah had strayed from the native ways—not feeling like a bahana, not feeling entirely Hopi, either.
She’d known very little about the plants and herbs the earth gave, or how beneficial they could be. Not until she’d needed them—for Callie.
Mariah was grateful to Una for sharing her knowledge. The herbals helped Callie as nothing else had been able to do.
Certainly not the doctors’ medicines.
Una had become a friend when Mariah moved here two years ago. Mariah’s marriage to Will Cade had ended, probably even before he’d left for California and the new life he wanted for himself.
A life without the responsibilities of a wife or child.
A sick child.
She’d been frightened then—and alone. Except for Callie. Una had made her feel welcome, even taken her under her wing until Mariah was able to recover her pride and put her life on a steady footing.
She seldom thought of the past now, her marriage, or the man who’d abandoned them with so little regard for their welfare.
The herbs that she gathered for Callie soon became a source of livelihood for her, a way to support herself and her daughter. She began by preparing and packaging the extras she collected and selling them to the local people. Last year she started her own mail-order business, reaching even more people with her natural medicines.
It wasn’t a lot of money—her only large account was a health-food store in Phoenix—but it was enough to provide a modest living for them. And even a few extras now and then.
Just then she neared the place where she’d encountered the man on the mesa, the man with the golden body and the storm-blue eyes.
Luke.
She wasn’t sure why he intrigued her, but he had. She wondered where he’d come from—and where he was headed on that big cycle of his. Not many people strayed this far from the interstate. She might have asked him, but she’d needed to get on with what she was doing. She didn’t like to be away from Callie too long.
She glanced down the road, shading her eyes, curious to see if his cycle was still parked where it had been, but it was gone. She denied the quick pang of disappointment she felt, calling herself foolish for the weakness. She was no longer a schoolgirl with silly ideas in her head, but a woman, a mother—with a child who needed her.
She shifted the basket to her other hip and continued on, but Luke Phillips wasn’t easily dispelled from her mind. Sunrise was a town that had been forgotten by time, passed over by the tourist trade, though it could well boast of some of Arizona’s most breathtaking scenery. They didn’t get very many strangers passing through—but that was no reason this man should have such a hold on her.
Perhaps it had been that indefinable look she’d glimpsed in his eyes, as if he, too, carried a pain he found difficult to bear, a pain that tore at his heart.
The way Callie did hers.
Then over the next rise Mariah stopped in her tracks. There’d been an accident. The shiny silver of a motorcycle glinted back at her, looking like a fallen warrior as it lay on its side in the center of the road.
Where was Luke?
Was he hurt?
She swiftly scanned both sides of the road, then spotted him sitting under a lone cottonwood a few yards away. “Luke,” she called out to him. “What happened? Are you all right?”
He turned at the sound of her voice and she approached warily. The right side of his face was dirty and bloody. The denim of his right pant leg was ripped and he’d stripped off his black T-shirt and tied it around his thigh to stop the bleeding that was already beginning to soak through the fabric.
Her gaze slid over his bare, muscled torso, not missing the scrape across his right shoulder and the ugly purple color already starting to darken the skin.
“Damned armadillo,” he cursed.
She met his scowl. “Armadillo?”
“Yeah.” His scowl deepened. “I swerved to miss it and the bike went spinning out of control. Know what’s the worst of the deal? It just lumbered on past me without a glance, off into the damned sagebrush.”
“And left you in a mess, it seems.”
“And the bike unridable,” he added. “Don’t happen to know a good mechanic around here, do you?”
Mariah’s gaze swept over him. “Right now I think it’s more important to get you seen to. Some of those cuts and scrapes look serious.”
Luke didn’t agree. He was a doctor—at least enough of one to know that the wounds were mostly superficial. But what he’d done for the last ten years of his life was not something he wanted to reveal to this woman. It would only bring on the inevitable questions, questions he didn’t want to answer.
“Look,
