Page 91 of Bad Rio

“I’ll be back to work soon. Just be gone two weeks or so.”

“Okay, no problem, then,” Paxton said, relieved. “We can do without you for that long. When you’re up there in all that fresh air, maybe you can get your thick head cleared out.”

“No worries,” Rio said. “I’ll get everything locked down. See you soon.”

****

That very evening,Rio managed to catch a flight and by midnight was in Billings. Renting a truck, he drove to the ranch and let himself quietly into the house. Because he’d phoned his dad ahead, he didn’t worry that Big Jim or even Sarah would greet him in the dark from behind the business end of a pointed rifle. Any fool planning to rob that particular home would find himself very unhappily surprised. Recognizing his scent, the dogs stayed in their beds, their tails thumping. The house was still.

At last, Rio was able to lie down on his patchwork quilt and prop his hands beneath his head. His eyes now used to the dark, he stared at the open beam ceiling and wasn’t quite sure why he’d felt it necessary to come home. He only knew that while he’d finally found a great job perfectly suited to him, in the past two months a great restlessness had gripped him. When he’d told Paxton he’d tired of the constant danger and various treacheries on both sides of the law, he’d meant it.

So, why this edginess? This disquiet?

It was difficult, but he had to admit a singular truth to himself: he missed Becca. On first acknowledgement of the unavoidable fact, he didn’t like it. It felt like weakness.

After all, he was a loner by nature and preference, a lone wolf, footloose, free.

Somehow, Becca had ensnared him. But how? When he’d left her, she hadn’t thrown a rope over his head. Instead she’d challenged him to look inside, to understand that all these years while he’d thought himself indifferent and untouched by anyone, she’d gotten past his barriers.She’dtouched him.

Rolling onto his side, he closed his eyes. He recalled the brave way she’d followed him into the Rio Grande, and at the moment of their greatest danger, the deviltry in her eyes. Somehow that moment had become symbolic to him—of her courage, her pluck. He remembered how quickly they’d formed a team, working side-by-side to solve the gun-drug-and-girl smuggling mystery. He appreciated her bright mind, how she’d used something she found in her purse to help save them from certain death at Harrison’s hand.

With no effort, he summoned her beautiful smile, her velvet brown eyes smiling into his. Upending his long-held belief that he was mostly unconnected to the human race, Becca had looked at him as though he was the best man in the world. She’d seen value in him. She’d wanted him. She’d made him feel good. It wasn’t weakness she engendered in him, after all.

It was strength.

A long while later, he fell asleep, and in the morning when he woke, he reached across the bed for the warm body, the one that should be curled next to him. When he found only the old quilt, he groaned. Becca wasn’t there. Each and every day since walking out of her life, he’d woken to reach for her.

And each and every day, the bed was empty.

****

At breakfast, it becameimmediately apparent that Sarah was furious with him. He took a seat at the kitchen table next to Big Jim, who was already eating from a filled plate. The dogs patrolled the floor, hoping for crumbs.

She set Rio’s plate of bacon and eggs on the kitchen table and shoved it at him so hard that if he hadn’t caught it at the edge of the table, one of the dogs would have been obliged to rescue it off the floor. Sarah went to the sink, and then threw a glare at him over her shoulder.

“Hey, what’s your problem?” Rio spread his hands.

“I don’t have a problem, Rio. But you sure seem to.”

“Mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

Tossing her long braid over her shoulder, she stomped to the stove and flipped four hot pancakes. When she refused to answer, Rio looked at the pancakes with longing. Nobody made them better than Sarah. “Can I have a couple?”

With a spatula, she lifted a thick pancake off the heat, waved it in the air to cool, and tossed it to a dog, who caught it deftly in mid-air. She turned her back on him.

Mystified, Rio sought his father’s gaze. Jim was smirking. He said nothing, and continued to shovel in food. Rio guessed he wasn’t getting any pancakes that day. He shrugged.Women.

Facing his dad, Rio asked, “Want to restring that stretch of broken barbed wire fence today? I’ll get the posthole digger and sink some new posts.”

“Gotta do that,” Jim agreed, his mouth full, “and clear out a couple of water holes. Also, it’s time to move the mother cows to the far meadow. Fresh graze there.”

And so Rio’s day began. When he was home, working the land with Jim, it felt right and good, and the outside world seemed far away.

Only the physical labor left him more time to brood about Becca. No woman had ever before burrowed her way into his mind like this. No woman had ever captured his imagination like she did, both in and out of bed. No woman had ever seemed as perfectly suited for him ... as Rebecca De Monte.

Try as he might, he couldn’t exorcise her pretty face and velvety brown eyes from his mind. Nothing stopped the flashbacks of her bright smile, or the gratification he’d felt when at last she’d begun to trust him. When they were midway through their treacherous Rio Grande swim, crossing into the States, how well he recalled the exhilarated look in her eyes.She’s like me, he’d thought. No woman before had ever made him feel such simpatico. Beneath her ghillie hat, she’d audaciously winked back at him. He’d known she was frightened, but she’d pushed by those fears to join him in the adventure.

Nor could he forget the generous, wildly sexy way she made love to him. In bed, the woman was delightfully uninhibited, generous, and sensual as hell.

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