“If your mother had run away with some cowhand while you were still a little kid, would you have spent a lot of time worrying about her?”
“I guess it would depend on why she ran.” Echo gasped as the gelding made a small but jarring leap across a gully. “Understanding that very basic thing seems important to me.”
“Not to me.”
“My stepfather mentioned your mother sent a postcard after she left. From Canada, I think he said. Did anyone track it down? Why don’t you try to find out where she went or if she’s dead or alive?”
Reaching the top of the ridge, he once again waited for the gelding to catch up. When Echo was beside him, he met and held her gaze. “Get this straight. My mother died for me a long, long time ago. She chose life with a guy named David Lassiter over a family who loved and needed her. Now, if you want to ride with me, I think we should change the subject, don’t you?”
Her black eyes flashed irritation. The gelding, apparently sensing her mood, pawed at the ground and snorted again. “I’m beginning to remember what you were like, Adam Westin. We always had to do everything your way, you always had to be the boss.”
“I was older than you.” The horse was turning in a circle now, making ominous guttural sounds in his throat. “Echo, be careful—”
“If your whole family is as sanctimonious about your mother as you are, no wonder she ran away!”
“Forget my mother for a minute. Calm down. Your horse—”
“I will not calm down. Maybe the two or three years between us was a big difference when we were little kids, but it’s nothing now,” she continued. “I have half a mind—”
The horse had had enough. He bolted. Going fast.
And in the wrong direction.
Chapter Two
“Whoa,” Echo shouted. She yanked on the reins automatically but all that seemed to do was make the horse toss his head. She looked down at the ground and wished she hadn’t. A blur of flying hooves, rocks and grass made her dizzy. Any half-baked idea she’d had of abandoning the saddle went away.
Thank goodness the horse had the good sense to stay in the open. At least so far…
Think. No way did she want Adam to save her although it probably beat plunging off a cliff.
Should she try pulling on the reins again? Both reins at the same time? One harder than the other? Help!
She couldn’t think straight. Her insides were bouncing around like ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. She was lost in panic mode just like the horse…?.
So calm him down….
Snatches of long-ago lessons finally fought their way through the electrical flash points in her brain. She needed to center herself in the saddle or she was going to go right over the gelding’s head the next time he tossed it. She managed to thread her fingers through a handful of mane down by his withers. Gulping with fear and effort, she attempted what seemed impossible, working to find a rhythm to the horse’s thundering gait and adapt herself to it, to stop fighting him. Give him time. All she had to do was stay on his back until he decided he’d had enough.
Gradually it seemed the horse’s surges decreased. She gently but firmly squeezed her knees, concentrating like crazy on relaxing into his stride. She was suddenly aware of Adam riding the big red-gold horse alongside her and had no idea how long he’d been there. He didn’t try to grab anything, just little by little began backing his horse off and that, too, seemed to reassure the gelding.
At last the gallop became a trot and the trot petered away to a nervous, staccato walk. Echo gently patted the gelding’s hot neck and made soothing sounds until he came to a full stop.
Adam slowly got off his horse and took the gelding’s reins. She slid out of the saddle. Her knees buckled when her feet hit the ground. Adam caught her and for a few seconds, she leaned against him and breathed heavy.
“Are you okay?” he muttered against her hair.
No voice yet to answer.
“I had no idea Bagels would respond to rider inexperience like that,” he said. “You did good, I mean for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”
“The compliments just keep rolling off your tongue,” she muttered. Now that it was over, she’d turned into a jellyfish. Eventually it occurred to her that Adam Westin was not stiff like his father or her stepfather, not at all. He was firm and lean, yes, but he was also incredibly tender and his arms supporting her were strong. Warm. Sexy.
She pushed herself away, embarrassed to have such thoughts about him.
He tipped up her chin and smiled down at her. The leap her heart took into her throat was so disconcerting she twisted her head away.
He released her at once. “Take the reins. We’ll walk the horses for a while to cool them off.” He smoothed the gelding’s long nose. “You okay now, Bagels? Got it all out of your system?”
He started leading his horse up the path and she followed with Bagels, relieved her legs were working again. “I wish I’d known what to call him when he was running off with me,” she said.
“I don’t think it would have helped.”
“Probably not.”
They continued on in silence. Bagels pressed his muzzle against her neck every once and a while as though trying to make up and she patted him. The sound of the horses’ hooves against the rocks and the birds overhead began to meld together.
The adrenaline rush was gone and now she felt woozy, her feet like granite. “Tell me about this cave we’re going to,” she called, hoping for a diversion. “For starters, how much farther?”
“Well, you and Bagels very cleverly took us by a different route than the one I had planned,” he said, glancing at her over his shoulder, his gray eyes amused. “We’ll be coming in the back way now. I guess we’ll walk a half hour or so and then ride an hour.”
“It’s a distance, isn’t it?”
“I tried to warn you.”
“And when we get there?”
“We check the lock I put on the entrance.”
“What exactly was taken?”
“There’s no way to know for sure because the contents have never been documented. Apparently, the tribe that used the cave summered here in the high valley. When one of them died, their body was wrapped in blankets and laid to rest inside the cave where there are dozens of fissures. Sometimes amulets or relics of one kind or another were buried with them. My great-grandfather came across the cavern a long time ago and since then, we’ve all been caretaking it. About thirty years ago, my father made it clear we were all to stay away from it.”
“Did you?”
“Not
