He’d liked living almost alone at times, when he was on an assignment. Other times he’d appreciated the camaraderie and brotherhood of his platoon. It had been a close bond, reminiscent of his tribe. “Chief, I don’t know how to be anything different than what I am.”
His grandfather looked at him. “You will learn.”
Then he left the stone crevasse, disappearing without a sound. Tighe leaned back against the rough wall with a sigh. He looked out over the canyons from his grandfather’s aerie, and wondered if he would ever get River to kiss him again. She seemed to think he needed to change somehow, too.
He was pretty resistant to that. “Twenty-seven years of being the opposite of Dante wasn’t so bad,” he muttered. “I’d rather be me than him.”
He liked being wild and free. What exactly was wrong with that?
Even River wouldn’t want him to change that much. She had to have liked him the way he was or she wouldn’t have allowed him to make love to her.
Then again, he could consider changing just a little if she’d open her arms to him again. Problem was, he didn’t know what he was supposed to change. Tighe closed his eyes, willed himself to meditate.
“Every journey changes your soul. Each journey is a path to self-knowledge,” Running Bear said. “There is no life without this.”
“I know, Grandfather, I know. I remember your teachings.” Tighe opened his eyes, glanced around. Running Bear was nowhere to be seen. But his words remained in Tighe’s mind, delicate as air.
Closing his eyes again, he allowed the mysticism he knew so well to envelop him, something he hadn’t done in a long, long time.
* * *
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Ash asked River, who was looking out a window in the main house, toward the barn. River had specifically chosen this room for her project.
“I’m spying on your brothers. And Sawyer. There’s something strange about her. I don’t believe for a second that she’s had real training as a bodyguard. Not like Ana and I had.”
“The little twins seem to like her.”
“Isaiah and Carlos like her because they’re Callahan males. They’re predisposed to like pretty girls from the moment they’re conceived. That doesn’t make her a bodyguard. It makes her a decent nanny. Maybe.”
Ash flopped into a chair. “When I asked Kendall why she’d hired Storm Cash’s niece, she said Sawyer had the right training, and that she’d spent time in the desert honing her skills. Kendall said she checked her background, and Sawyer and Storm hadn’t been close during Sawyer’s childhood. So in Kendall’s maternal opinion, there was no reason to eliminate a perfectly good bodyguard just because of some stinky family relations. And Kendall said sometimes it was best to keep your enemies tucked tight to one’s bosom.”
“I like my bosom enemy-free. I’m not leaving until I know the twins are in capable hands,” River stated.
Ash watched Sawyer below, chatting up Jace, as little Isaiah and Carlos happily sat in their double stroller. “I didn’t know you were planning on leaving. And yet, I guess I did know. I was just hoping my hunch was wrong.” Ash sighed. “You’re going to find Tighe, aren’t you?”
“It’s time someone does.” It had been three weeks since she’d driven Tighe to the stone fire ring. She had no idea what he was eating or drinking, or if he was miserable from his leg injury. None of the Callahans, including the protective aunt Fiona, seemed all that worried. When River had mentioned to Fiona that maybe her husband, Burke, might need to go check on Tighe, she had shaken her head and said she didn’t have time for such monkeyshines.
“Oh, Tighe’s fine. Don’t worry about him. When he was a boy—”
River glanced at Ash, who seemed to suddenly have swallowed her words. “When he was a boy, what?”
“I was just going to say that once when we were young, Tighe went off for a while. I was six,” Ash said, “so I remember it well.” She smiled at River. “It’s all right. We’re used to him being independent.”
“If you were six, Tighe was eight when he went on this adventure. How long was he gone?” River was curious as to how he had fared in his childhood. “Five, six hours?”
“Two months,” Ash said softly. “He was gone two months, in the coldest part of the year. Most of us wanted to stay close to the fire at night. Tighe wanted to find out if he could build his own fire and survive on what he found and caught.”
River sucked in her breath. “No parent would allow that.”
“Oh.” Ash shook her head, got up. “No worries about that. Tighe was never really alone, though he doesn’t know that, so don’t tell him. It would totally crush him and blow his wild man conception of himself. But there were always scouts watching him. Not that the scouts would have interfered, unless there’d been severe danger. A test is a test, and Tighe wanted the chance to test himself.” Ash fluffed her silvery-blond, shoulder-length hair, not concerned in the least. “Grandfather said Tighe had the soul of a tiger, and that he would make many kills when he left the tribe. And he did. He was a pretty good sniper. Don’t worry about my pinheaded brother,” she said. “He’s more wolf than man. Tighe’s problem is that is he’s scared, maybe for the first time in his life.”
“Scared of what? Not rattlesnakes, or becoming a dried-out skeleton, with no food or water in the canyons.”
“My guess is,” Ash said, “he’s been a little scared ever since you came here.”
“Me?”
“Maybe. Tighe’s always seen himself as the uncatchable male. Also, I think it’s come to his mind that he might be the hunted one.”
“You know,” River said, looking back out the window, “it could be you, Ash.”
She shook her head. “Not me. But if it is, I hope someone shoots me and puts me out of my misery.”
“Shoots you?” River was horrified. “Who would do that?”
“I’m hoping you,” Ash said softly, looking at her. “You’ve always got your Beretta strapped to your thigh, don’t you?”
“I would never shoot you,” River snapped. “And how do you know about my gun?”
“I know everything,” Ash said, wandering out the door.
“I see,” River muttered, watching Sawyer stretch up to kiss Jace on the cheek on the ground below her second-story window. “Really nice to know I’ve fallen for some kind of hard-core survivalist wolf-man. And that woman is working an angle,” she said of Sawyer, watching her slink off, leaving a seemingly stunned Jace behind. “Don’t fall for it, handsome.”
Jace would probably fall like a ton of bricks. She watched Jace almost strut, all peacocklike, his gaze fastened on Sawyer’s backside. River sighed and got up from her perch. Ash’s wealth of information had unsettled her to some degree. Tighe wasn’t afraid of her—not in the least. That could be ruled out. He was stubborn and opinionated, but not afraid of a woman.
Now the other business...was he the hunted one? Ash was crazy if she thought River was going to shoot her, if it turned out to be her. “The only shooting I’m doing is at bad guys, and there may not be any of those,” River said, watching Jace rub his cheek where Sawyer had pecked him. “Just gullible ones.”
She went to hunt up Tighe, the resident wolf on the loose.
* * *
THE STONE CIRCLE showed few signs of anyone living there, though a small fire flickered, the embers glowing. There were no signs of foul play, but River felt uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. A man with a sore groin and a fractured leg should be right here where she’d left him.
“Hello, beautiful,”