A man who could deal with the elements, and not just survive but be made stronger by them, even more able to face the challenges of a world as wild and rugged as he was.
Her gaze went to his face. It was a face of raw, rugged and uncompromising strength. His cheekbones were high, his nose straight, his jaw square. He had the faintest hint of a cleft in his chin. He could have been utterly gorgeous if not for a hardness that lingered in the turn of his mouth. His hair was neat and short, but sweat-darkened, and she suspected it was a shade lighter than the dark chocolate it looked to be. His skin had the weathered look of a man who spent a great deal of time outdoors, and the coppery tones of it made the gray of his eyes seem deep and cool, like the gray of icy mountain creeks.
His eyes were watchful, wary and weary.
Beyond weary. The man was exhausted.
Then a movement over his left shoulder drew her gaze from his. She could feel her eyes widen and her mouth drop open.
Peeking over his shoulder was a baby. A baby! With one tuft of shiny black hair sticking straight out from its head, and with black button eyes and fat red cheeks with grimy tear stains running down them.
“Are you alone?” the man asked.
The exhaustion she saw in his eyes was echoed in that voice—a deep voice, raw as silk.
Still, it was not a good question to be asked by a complete stranger. A man who had watched for a long time before he had made his presence known. Who might never have made his presence known if she had not flushed him out with a shotgun blast. The question was not asked out of any kind of friendliness.
“No,” she lied, instinctively, “I’m not alone.”
Some tension leaped in him, coiled along his muscles. A man ready for anything, including a fight. With a baby on his back.
“Who’s with you?” he asked, his eyes scanning the cabin behind her.
“None of your business.”
“Who’s with you?” he asked again, quietly, but with some unmistakable iron in his voice.
“My friend Sam,” she said defiantly. A nice name. Sturdy sounding. Strong. Loyal. Which is why she had given it to the big bay gelding she used for her saddle horse.
“Why didn’t Sam come out when you fired off that shotgun?” he asked. Something in him relaxed. The faintest hint of amusement lit those eyes before the weariness and caution drowned it.
“Why didn’t you?” she snapped back.
“I thought you might shoot me.”
“I still might.”
“You’re not a very neighborly kind of person,” he pointed out, mildly.
“Me and Sam aren’t much used to neighbors.”
“But you’re used to shotguns.” Something, not quite a smile, lifted a corner of that firm mouth. “You and Sam.”
He had obviously figured out Sam was fiction, but she tried again, anyway. “That’s why he didn’t come out. He’s used to me blasting off that old shotgun at varmints.”
The stranger’s smile, thankfully, died before it was ever completely born, and cool eyes scanned her face, then the clearing and then the cabin, before returning to her. “You’re alone,” he decided.
She wanted to insist she wasn’t, but knew it was pointless. She suspected this man’s intuition was as fine-honed as her own was. Maybe more so. Despite the weariness, there was an alertness about him that reminded her of wild animals poised on the edge of danger, getting ready to flee. Or fight.
He’s in trouble, Storm thought, bad trouble.
She wondered why she did not sense imminent danger, then realized that her intuition had been known to let her down in this one critical area. Men.
“Are you lost?” Her eyes drifted to the baby. It was pounding one chubby fist against the man’s shoulder and had another tangled in the dark silk of his hair. A lesser man might have winced or tried to unlock the baby’s determined grip, but his attention remained totally focused on her. As if she might make a dash for that shotgun. People who were lost were usually not quite so on guard.
Still, she wished he was lost. That his presence here was uncomplicated—that he had become separated from his wife on a Sunday hike.
But he did not seem to be the kind of man who would get lost. Or be on a family hike, either. Her eyes went to that telltale finger. No gold band. And no little white line where one might have been a short while ago. She considered herself a quick learner.
“I need a place to stay.”
She stared at him.
“I was up here years ago. I remembered the cabin.”
He could be anybody. He’d probably kidnapped that baby. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would find taking a baby on a hiking trip a whole lot of fun.
“A place to stay? Here?”
“Only for a couple of days.”
Oh, great. Now he was appealing to her softer side. A man by himself, she could say no to easily, firmly. But a man with a baby?
He pitched forward a step, and she saw with sudden horror that there was a small pool of blood where he had stood before.
“You’re hurt!”
“It’s just a scratch.”
She could see a red stain now spreading around the side of his shirt, just above the waistline of his jeans, from his back.
She went forward. Suddenly she didn’t have to think at all. She went behind him. She could tell he didn’t like that one little bit. Like an old-time gunslinger, he didn’t like having his back exposed.
The baby was in the top part of a backpack not designed for babies. Bungee straps secured the unusual cargo. She stretched up, unstrapped the cords deftly and took the wriggling little bundle down. If she was taller, she might have been able to see what else was in the pack, and it might have answered some questions for her. But she was not taller, and the next five seconds did not hold much promise of her growing.
The man smelled faintly of soap, overlaid with woodsy aromas of sunshine and sweat. And blood. She glanced down and saw the dark-red stain just above his right hip.
She hoped to hell he wasn’t gun shot. They were a hard ride from the trailhead and a half hour to the tiny hamlet of Thunder Lake after that, if she could get her cranky truck to start right away.
Why did she think he had been shot?
He could have caught himself on a branch. Or fallen on a rock.
The baby gurgled at her and tried to insert pudgy fingers in her nose. It diverted her attention from the man’s presence, though even not looking at him, she could feel him. It was as if electricity hummed and hissed in the air around him, and made her quiet clearing vibrate with tension.
