Lone Tree (24 page)

Her head went back onto her arms. “I don’t need a
gun. I’ll use my bare hands.”

“I saw Jackie in town this morning, and she asked me
why I hadn’t taken you camping yet.”

That didn’t sound too bad. Lainie looked up. “That’s
it?”

He grinned. “That’s it. Sounded kind of simple and
straightforward the way she put it. But I think now I can guess what else
you’ve got on your mind.”

She gave him a slow nod. “Yeah, I guess you can.”
Then she shook her head. “A poker player, I’m not.” She glanced down at his
jeans and the tell-tale bulge. “And neither are you.”

“Lainie Sue, so help me...” His fingers gripped her
chin, tilted her head up. “If I wasn’t expecting Miles to walk in here any
minute—”

“Promises, promises.”

He let out a deep chuckle and leaned his hip against
her desk, taking care with his position. “Pay attention for a minute, will you?
If we’re going camping, we’ve got to do it soon while the weather holds. We
need to decide when and where.”

“Seems I’ve heard that before. This time, it’s your
choice.”

“Then it’s the day after tomorrow. Already got a
place in mind.”

“Truck or horses? If we take the truck, I can wear
comfortable shoes.”

His brow wrinkled. “You’ll need boots even if we take
the truck.”

“Why? I won’t be sleeping in them.” Doubt made her
screw up her face. “Will I?”

He chuckled. “Of course not.”

“Then, like I said, take the truck and I can wear my
sneakers.”

He shook his head. “No boots, no camping trip.”

She stared at him.

He straightened and shrugged. “Your choice. Let me
know.” He waited a beat. “I’ve got to go back into town and thought I’d pick up
some prawns for supper if I can find them. I like the way you do them in
garlic. Sound all right?”

When she made no response, he said, “You look like
you want to tell me no camping trip, no prawns. Am I right?”

“No,” she said. Though she’d been close, very close,
to saying exactly that. “Prawns will be fine.”

All afternoon Lainie berated herself for being so
bullheaded about the boots. Reed had more than his share of highhandedness, and
it rubbed her the wrong way every time he used it, but in this instance he was
right. They were going into the outdoors. Snakes lived in the outdoors. It
would be unforgivably stupid not to wear boots.

He entered the kitchen that evening while she was
stirring the prawns. She turned the flame down, went to him and wrapped her
arms around his neck. His eyes narrowed a fraction.

“Hi,” she said. “I’ll make a deal with you. If
you’ll take Glory and me camping the day after tomorrow, I’ll wear my boots and
leave my tennies at home.”

He kissed her. His relief was so evident that she
was struck by how much he’d disliked disappointing her, and a sudden surge of
tenderness threatened to overwhelm her. He drew back, their gazes held and
warmed, then they both looked at the stove and the sizzling skillet of prawns.

She sighed. “We gotta eat.”

*

Her excitement about the camping trip built hourly,
it seemed, but kept running into a brick wall. She wasn’t allowed to share in
the planning, packing, not anything. Reed asked her opinion occasionally, but
that was it. The man took care of everything. He was so detailed, he bordered
on obsessive.

They left at daybreak on a brisk morning, and at
noon stopped at the foot of a hill near a trickling stream to eat cheese
sandwiches and Fritos. Fritos were a staple for Reed, as important as hot
sauce.

As he reclined under a tree, resting his head on the
saddle he’d removed from Irish and munching from the bag of chips on his
stomach, he looked so laid back Lainie was having difficulty resisting the urge
to sprinkle canteen water on him. But the small stream was nearby, its bubbling
adding to the day’s laziness, and she suspected she might get worse than a
sprinkle of water in return.

“No fence,” he said.

Sitting next to him, using Glory’s saddle as a
backrest instead of a pillow, she glanced around at the brush and trees and
then back at him, curious.

“Place reminds me of when I used to ride fence,” he
explained. “It was my favorite job because it wasn’t a job. More like a working
vacation.”

She lifted her shoulders in a quizzical attitude.
“So what do you do when you ride fence? Just go along the side of it?”

“Exactly. You ride until you find a section that
needs fixing. You repair it, then mount up and ride on. When it’s time to eat,
you stop and eat. When it gets dark, you make camp.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“Hard work some days. Hard and hot. But I liked it.
Depending on the problems you run into and the size of the spread, it can take
a couple days to a week to complete. Can’t be gone that long anymore, and I
miss it.”

He stared at the sky through the tree’s leafy shade,
a musing look on his face. “I was fourteen the first time I went out. I’d hired
on summers at a spread over in New Mexico and was with another kid, not much
older than I was. When that place folded, I came this way looking for work. Had
some experience, but I was still just a gawky kid. Miles hired me anyway. No
idea then I’d be around so long. He encouraged me to get my GED, studying
nights, and I was still able to support my grandmother. She was really up in
years by then.” He paused, then added, “And then there was college. Talk about
surprises.”

Reed had grown up a lot faster than she had, Lainie
realized, and he’d grown up strong.

He looked sideways at her. “Got some Indian blood in
me through her. She was a quarter Navajo. Pretty much dwindled down by the time
it reached me, but some people say they can see it. Can you?”

She nodded.

“Reckon I must be a throwback.” His gaze returned to
the sky and his hand returned to the bag of chips. “She was a wise one, loving
and wise. Nelly reminds me of her. Could’ve been cut from the same cloth.”

His fingers groped within the bag and he frowned. He
sat up, crumpled it and gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry about that. None
left.”

“You packed two bags. Next one’s mine.”

“Wanna bet?”

She reconsidered various uses of the water canteen.
She uncapped it, but he must’ve seen her intent and caught her hand. He took
the canteen, sipped from it, then handed it back. His eyes dared her.

“Uh-uh.” She screwed the top back on. “I’ll get you
when you’re not looking for it.”

Once they arrived at a spot he deemed suitable for a
campsite, she gratefully dismounted and rubbed her rump with both hands while
she checked out the place. Level, shady, pebbly stream maybe an inch or two
deep. She thought about going wading, suspected he might not like that, didn’t
want to start an argument so forgot about it. When she saw he was unpacking, she
turned back and lifted the flap of a saddlebag to help.

He stopped and gave her a look that reminded her of
a child guarding his new bike. “Thanks. I got it,” he said.

So the punctilious streak continues. She stepped
back and let him at it. Anyone that fussy needed and deserved to do it all by
himself.

Gear was separated into three piles: cooking ware
and foodstuffs, sleeping paraphernalia, and tools. He cleared a section of
ground with a short hand rake, stamped over it, then spread out sleeping bags
and zippered them together. Flashlights got a place of honor at the head.
Watching him, admiring his economy of movement and amused by his
meticulousness, she halfway expected him to produce throw rugs to complete the
setting.

Next he scraped a depression in the dirt and layered
it with charcoal. While the coals grew hot, he placed a hand shovel and a
plastic bag that contained a roll of toilet paper at the base of a cottonwood.
He glanced at Lainie, then pointed at a cluster of nearby bushes that she
assumed was downwind. “Latrine.”

Okay. That was part of camping out, right?

Reed was an adequate cook, but Lainie was a better
one and generally did the cooking. Tonight, however, he was the chef. She
wasn’t even allowed to slice the cucumber. They’d packed—or rather, he’d
packed—frozen steaks that were now thawed. He fried them in a skillet while
foil-wrapped potatoes baked in the embers. He chopped a fresh jalapeño pepper,
took one steak out for her, sprinkled the pepper over his and let it cook for
another minute, then put it on his plate.

This particular quirk of his had a nice side. Being
catered to was something to which she could easily become accustomed. She
suspected she wasn’t going to be allowed to clean up either, and she was proved
correct. Everything was cleaned and packed away in the same exacting manner
he’d exhibited all day.

She’d given the horses extra attention while he’d
set up camp. While he worked now, she wandered around the site.

“Sight and hearing,” he said.

She stopped. “What?”

He didn’t look up. “Stay where I can see you and
hear you.”

She stared at a tree trunk that had split to produce
two trees. “You couldn’t rephrase that so it doesn’t sound so much like an
order, could you?”

“Lainie,” he started, sounding long-suffering.

“Don’t worry about it. No way city girl is straying
far from country boy.” She climbed up into the cleft between the trees.

“And don’t get out of bed for any reason tonight
without waking me up first.”

She jumped down and gave him a snappy, two-fingered
salute. “Yessir!”

She thought he’d caught the gesture, but he ignored
it.

Daylight still lingered after everything had been
washed and put away. His gaze roamed the site. Apparently satisfied that
everything was in its place, he glanced at her. She sat on the ground, grasping
her knees and leaning her back against a sapling.

She’d been comfortable watching him work, but now
that he was looking at her, she felt—what was it? Disconcerted, in some way.
Her breath quickened, her puzzlement grew, and his gaze softened.

He went to her, giving her his hand to pull her up.
When she stood, he was so close she had to tilt her head to look into his eyes.
Neither said a word. He kissed her forehead, her nose, her mouth. Then he
stepped back, raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. She didn’t have a
thought in her head.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

She blinked. “Walk?”

He grinned, then laughed. “Yes, we’re going for a
walk. We need to savor this. We’ve waited a long time to make love in the wide
open spaces. Almost as long as I had to wait for you to show up on my doorstep
in the first place.”

Again he raised her hand and kissed it. “You
remember that day at the oasis, when you left me on my lonesome?”

With a smile, she lowered her gaze and centered it
on the top button of his shirt, and he tilted her head up with his fist beneath
her chin.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, eyes
dancing. “You got the best of me that time, and you liked doing it.”

“Well, if you remember, I had no choice. If I’d
gotten down off that horse—”

“Uh-huh. No matter who won that race, if you’d
gotten off that horse that would’ve been it, right then and there.” He waited a
beat, then said, “But let’s not put it all on me. You wouldn’t have been able
to resist either, and that’s why you took off in such a hurry.”

With another smile, she nodded.

“But since we’ve waited this long,” he continued,
and she caught a touch of breathlessness in his voice, “we can wait a little
longer. I love this country and want to share it with you while we’ve got
daylight left.”

He kissed her forehead, nose and mouth, taking his
time. Then he damped the fire, grabbed his rifle and led the way out of the
clearing.

The terrain was uneven, wooded and brushy, plenty of
deadwood lying about, and Lainie seemed determined to trip over every bit of
it. At the top of a short incline, she lost her footing and tumbled down the
slope.

“You okay?” He followed, pulled her to her feet, and
chuckled as he helped brush off dry leaves and twigs that clung to her shirt
and jeans. “Good thing we’re almost there. Don’t know how much more of this you
could take.”

A short while later he helped her climb a hillock
then turned her toward the sun and nestled his head next to hers. “There,” he
said. They stood atop a knoll where the terrain dropped into a small valley
before it crested again, allowing a view above the tops of the trees.

“Oh,” she breathed, and his arm around her waist
squeezed her closer as they watched the sun descending behind the next hill.
The sky had turned from blue to glorious golden-red. Brilliant gold and orange
rays spread atop the canopy of trees, making them appear to be on fire.

“Not the same as watching it sink into the ocean,
I’m sure,” Reed whispered. “But still beautiful.”

“Oh.”