the hand that was hooked into his belt loop slightly, deliberately drawing her attention to it. Reminding her. But given his level of discomfort yesterday when he’d had to ask for her help, that reminder also seemed a little strange.
“I guess she must have believed you could, since she gave you Harry.”
He looked almost sheepish, but he answered her.
“I was out and saddled before they woke up.”
“Afraid they’d try to stop you?” she teased.
“Something like that,” he admitted. Again his mouth twitched, and she realized that really had been his reason. He’d been afraid they’d try to convince him not to try to ride the stallion.
“You’re the one who chose Harry.”
“He looked like the best of the lot.”
“He looked like the one most likely to throw you off if you weren’t up to snuff,” she suggested.
She hadn’t expected him to laugh in response to her assessment of his motives, and she was caught off guard by the undeniable spontaneity of that shout of laughter. And a little surprised by the pleasure hearing it gave her.
“You seem to be a pretty good judge of character, Mrs. McCullar.”
“I am,” she said. “But it’s funny. You don’t look like that big a fool.”
It had been a damn fool thing to do. It was just like a man, she thought. Pick out the most spirited horse in the stable to prove to yourself that, despite whatever had happened to you, you could still ride. She couldn’t have explained how she knew that had been his intent, but there was no doubt in her mind about that, either.
“Well,” he said, “looks can be deceiving. At least that’s what they say.”
“Can they?” she asked softly. There had been more to that than appeared on the surface. Something else underlay the quiet humor of his comment. “Are they deceiving?” she clarified.
“Most of the time,” he said, his voice as low as hers. Again their eyes held until Jenny determinedly pulled hers away to look down at her gloved fingers, the reins threaded loosely between them.
“You should have brought a hat,” he said. She glanced up to find his gaze still on her face.
“I didn’t intend to be out here long enough that I’d need one.”
“Then don’t let me keep you, ma’am,” he said. “I’d hate for you to get burned.”
“My skin’s pretty tough.”
He examined her skin, his dark eye moving slowly over the smoothly tanned oval of her face and then down the slender column of her throat into the deep V-neck of the shirt she wore. She could almost feel it, trailing hotly over the skin of her throat. She waited for him to make some response to the inadvertent opening she’d given him, some innuendo, some suggestive remark.
Instead, he met her eyes again. There was silence for too long, and she felt the heat of a blush pushing into her neck and cheeks, the rush of blood following the exact sequence his gaze had followed back up to her eyes. She wasn’t a blusher, and she couldn’t imagine what had prompted that sweep of color, but she knew he had to be aware of it. “Don’t let me keep you,” Jenny suggested.
“You’re not keeping me, ma’am,” he said politely.
She felt her own mouth twitch at his tone. “Did you find it?” she asked.
“Ma’am?”
“Whatever you were looking for when I rode up.”
“I’m not looking for anything, Mrs. McCullar,” he said, but his tone said something else, and he had deliberately made her aware of that. If he hadn’t intended her to know she had guessed right, then she wouldn’t have. He probably was an excellent poker player.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Whatever you say, Mr….?”
She did what he had done yesterday—deliberately left the blank for him to fill in. If he wanted to be mysterious about why he was out here, about whatever he had been looking at when she rode up, he could at least provide her with his name so she could check him out with Chase.
“My name’s Matt Dawson,” he said.
And that, too, is a lie, Jenny thought. Suddenly, it made her angry. She wasn’t certain whether she was angrier at Chase for bringing this stranger here and not telling her what he was up to, or angry at this man for doing nothing but lying to her.
“Think you can ride Harry back?” she asked. “I can follow you if you like. Just to make sure you get there safely.”
That remark was beyond the pale, she knew, and totally uncharacteristic. But he had goaded her to make it. It didn’t have quite the effect she had expected, however. He mounted Harry, swinging up suddenly into the saddle and then turning the horse to face her.
But there had been something undeniably awkward about the motion. She couldn’t decide whether whatever was wrong had occurred when he lifted his left foot to find the stirrup or when he swung his right leg across the stallion’s broad back.
The remarkable thing was that Lighthorse Harry hadn’t reacted. Despite the obvious awkwardness of his rider’s movements, Harry apparently had every confidence that the man who was mounting him knew exactly what he was doing.
“Nice to have seen you again, ma’am,” Harry’s rider said, tugging his hat down a little to shade his face. “Would you like for me to follow you home? Just to make sure you get there safe and sound?”
There was a quiet satisfaction in the question, and she knew then that he hadn’t been completely certain he could pull that remount off as well as he had. For his sake, she was glad he had succeeded.
“Oh, I think I’ll be able to make it home. Maybe I’ll see you later at Chase and Samantha’s. Are you making a prolonged visit?” she asked, matching his feigned politeness.
“Looks that way,” he said softly. “It certainly looks that way.”
He turned Harry toward Chase’s house. When they had gone a few feet, he touched his heels to the stallion, and Harry broke into a run, kicking up the dry dirt. Jenny watched until they disappeared over the small rise that led down to the river.
She realized that she was smiling, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She was a little disconcerted that she’d ended up enjoying this encounter. Her second encounter with the intriguing stranger with the unusual face. And again she was conscious, as she had been last night, that she was now alone.
Annoyed with herself, she decided not to head back to the ranch. Instead, she directed Spooner to the area where the man had been looking at the ground when she’d first spotted him. There seemed to be nothing there, nothing but the same hardy grasses that were ubiquitous here. Just to be sure, she dismounted, as close to the spot where she thought he’d been kneeling as she could and began walking in a widening circle.
When she found the duct-tape-covered plastic bag, she realized it was no wonder she hadn’t seen it from horseback. The empty sack was half buried, and it was almost the same color as the surrounding desert. That was deliberate, she imagined. The sack itself was certainly innocent enough, the kind of debris that dotted landscapes all over this nation.
Except here. She knew exactly what this had been used for here. And what the three others she found in the next ten minutes had been used for. No matter what Buck Elkins had told Chase, somebody was bringing drugs across this river. Or had brought them across. Given the half-life of plastic bags, it would be hard to judge how long these had been here. Since yesterday or…five years ago?
Her eyes lifted, scanning the familiar barrenness of the landscape while she fought the burn of tears behind them. You weren’t wrong, Mac, she thought. No matter what they say, you damn well weren’t wrong about any