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As with everything about Jefferson Cade, his hands were intriguing. Weathered, callused, the hands of a working man, an artist. A mix of rugged elegance and gentle strength. One of the times he’d been in town and stayed late to walk her home after closing, she’d teased him about his hands. He’d only laughed when she’d called them fascinating, saying it was natural that any living, breathing female would wonder about his touch.
He’d asked what female? For in the four years since he’d returned to Arizona to work for Jake Benedict at the Rafter B, then Steve Cody at the Broken Spur, he’d done no more than speak a few pleasantries to any woman. Beyond the routine associations of ranching, he was happiest living his reclusive life.
“Do I think so? Yes,” she murmured to his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “It must be one helluva horse.”
Her use of the rare profanity recalled a late-night talk when she’d ventured another startling opinion.
It must’ve been one helluva woman who spoiled all the rest of womankind for you, Jefferson Cade. She’d made the statement, then never mentioned it again. But he knew she was remembering the night and her words as her eyes probed his.
Jefferson held her gaze for a long moment, then turned his face away. A virile face maturity had made more attractive, and the new touch of silver in his dark blond hair only complemented. His mouth was solemn now. Beneath the brim of the Stetson, his downswept lashes shielded his eyes. But if his head had lifted and if his lips tilted in a smile that touched his eyes, it would still make an attractive man startlingly handsome.
He was immune, not a fool. He knew he’d caught the attention of a number of the female population of Silverton in the early days of his return. But he never acknowledged the most blatant flirtation with more than a courtly smile and a pleasant greeting. He became a master at making the most brazen feel he was flattered and perplexed by the advances, a gallantry that, at first, had an opposite effect than the one he wanted. But through the years, as even the most determined found him ever elusive, his would-be lovers became friendly acquaintances, if not friends.
Though she teased about his charm, Cristal’s interest was platonic. As he recognized her honesty and wisdom, she became a close friend. A rare and trusted confidante.
“If not for a particular horse, you wouldn’t be here, would you, Jefferson? There’s nothing else in your life. You won’t let there be, because of a woman.” Cristal voiced a long-standing concern, exercising the privilege of friendship.
Only the narrowing of his eyes signaled this subject was off-limits. For once, Cristal wasn’t to be deterred. “Do you ever get her out of your mind or your heart? This woman you loved and lost…do you ever stop thinking about her? Can you stop? Or do you spend each waking moment remembering how she looked, how she smiled, the way she walked? The fragrance of her hair?”
Jefferson didn’t respond. Then, pushing away from the bar, his expression unreadable, he looked down at her. “What I’m thinking and remembering,” he said as courteously as if she weren’t prying, “is that it’s time to see a man about a horse.”
Fingers at his hat brim, a charming smile, a low, “Miss Cristal,” and she was left to watch him walk away. Long after he stepped through the door and disappeared into the crowd, no less concerned she stared at the space where he’d been.
“Cristal,” a raucous voice called. “How about a song?”
“Sure, Hal.” She didn’t need to look around to recognize a regular customer. “What would you like to hear?”
“No preference, honey,” he answered. “Just sing.”
With a last glance at the empty doorway, Cristal crossed the room. Despite the tightening in her throat, leaning over the piano player, aptly named Sam, she whispered in his ear. When he nodded, she looked over the room, her smile touched with sadness for a lonely man. “How about this one? An oldie for a friend.”
As the melancholy chords of the introduction ended, wondering what intuition dictated the old tune, she sang of a lady’s choice to leave the man who loved her.
“Easy girl. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Not anymore.” In a soothing singsong, Jefferson coaxed the nervous mare from the trailer. As she stepped down the ramp, ears flicking in suspicion, he didn’t blame her. Even for a high-strung filly who hadn’t been mishandled, the unfamiliar surroundings and the noise of the stock show would’ve been excuse enough for being skittish.
When she’d come on the market as a difficult horse offered at a nominal fee, the most uninformed judge of horses could see promise. Which, given the bargain price, sent up a red flag that warned labeling her difficult was an understatement. Jefferson had driven to her home stable for a preliminary look, taking Sandy Gannon, foreman of the Rafter B and an expert judge of horses, with him for a second opinion. Both agreed the filly was of a bloodline and a quality Steve Cody would approve.
When the seller questioned who could tame the filly, Sandy replied that if Jeff Cade couldn’t, then it couldn’t be done.
“Let’s hope Sandy knows what he’s talking about,” Jefferson crooned to the filly when she finally stood on the ground. The truth was, Sandy knew exactly what he was saying when he praised the Southerner. Before assuming duties at the Broken Spur, Jefferson had spent the last two of three years at the Rafter B as second in command. Though he’d made a show of grumbling over losing a good horseman, Sandy had backed Steve and his wife Savannah’s choice.
Now, Jefferson had lived and worked in Sunrise Canyon for more than a year, loving each solitary day. “So will you, girl,” he promised as he led the filly to a stall. “Some folks think it’s lonely in the canyon, but it isn’t. You’ll see.”
Realizing he was talking to a horse that would run with Steve’s small herd, he laughed. A sound too rare in his life. “A stranger would think the loneliness has driven me bonkers. When it’s driven me a little saner, instead.”
His string of chatter elicited a low whinny and a nudge, and he knew his faith in the filly hadn’t been misplaced. Stroking her, he murmured, “You’ll be happy here, girl. One day soon, when we know what fits, we’ll choose a name for you.”
Slipping a bar over the stall door, he made a quick check of the other horses and stepped outside. After a long day and a four-hour drive across the surrounding Benedict land, it was good to steal a minute to watch the moon rise.
In daylight or darkness, the canyon was beautiful. When he’d come to Arizona as a teenage runaway he’d been too young and his life too chaotic to appreciate the stark magnificence of the land. Ten years later, when he’d left the lowcountry again—running away as an adult—he hadn’t expected to find anything to equal the lovely land he left behind.
He was wrong. As an adult with an artist’s eye, he recognized the different degrees of beauty, the different kinds.
The desert was his home now. Though he knew he could never go back, the lowcountry had been in his mind recently. Perhaps because, after years of neglect, he’d taken out his sketches and in the long winter darkness, he’d begun to paint again.
A painting waited now on the easel. The light wasn’t so good in the renovated cabin, but it didn’t matter. Painting was something he did for himself. A final healing, an exorcism.
Abandoning the soothing sight of the canyon in moonlight, he returned to the truck to retrieve his mail. No one wrote to him but family. Though he treasured the snapshots and letters, days could pass before he made a mail run. Given the size of the packet the postmaster’d had waiting for him, the time had been even longer.
Jefferson cared deeply for his brothers, and he was never truly out of touch. The family knew to contact the Rafter B in emergencies. Sandy would relay any messages by telephone or rider. No phone calls, no rider meant everyone was well and safe.
Tucking the packet under his arm, as the door of the truck closed, he whistled. Two clear notes sounded in the failing light, answered by a bark and the pad of racing feet. As he braced himself, a dark shape launched itself like a bullet at his chest.
Letters scattered in the dust as Jefferson went down. A massive creature blacker than the night stood over him. Gleaming teeth bared in a grin, a long, pink tongue lapped at his face.
Laughing, pushing the great dog aside, Jefferson muttered, “If that means you’re glad to see me, Satan, I hope you won’t be quite so glad next time.”
Satan barked and danced away. Normally with his sentry duty done, he was ready to play. This night, as if he would hurry his master to abandon the game by helping him to stand, the dog grabbed his hand between his teeth. The slightest pressure could have caused injury but, as with all creatures trained by Jefferson, despite his fierce look Satan was as gentle as his master.
The mock attack was a game, begun when Jefferson was new to the canyon and Satan a puppy with too much energy. Soon the dog should be taught the game was too dangerous. “Someone could misunderstand and put a bullet in your head.” Jefferson cuffed him gently in a signal to let go. “Might bend the bullet.”
Satan trotted away again in the prance common to Doberman pinschers everywhere. Stopping short, his dark eyes on his master’s face, he made a sound Jefferson interpreted as canine impatience.
“Not funny?” Rising, the human side of the conversation dusted off his clothes. Gathering the mail, he declared in an understatement, “Considering that I would miss you, tonight’s a good time to stop the game. As you obviously have.”
In the gloom settling over the canyon, he almost missed one piece of mail. Satan’s pawing interest, combined with the dull glint of its metal clasp caught his attention. Without both, the brown envelope would have blended with the shadowed Arizona dust. Perhaps to be discovered in morning light. Perhaps not.
Hefting it, he judged its weight. More than a letter, with only a blurred postmark. No return address. “What could this be?”
Satan barked and paced toward the cabin. “You’re right,” Jefferson agreed. “I should go inside and have a look.”
Normally the Doberman refused to come inside. Tonight, he slipped past Jefferson when the door opened. Rather than stretching out on the hearth as usual in his rare sorties in the cabin, he streaked through the main room to the bedroom.
“Come away, Satan,” Jefferson scolded as the dog scratched at the bedside table. “There’s nothing here.”
Nothing but a keepsake from his past, Jefferson amended as he herded the dog from the room. “Lie by the hearth,” he directed. “After I check the mail, we’ll have supper.”
Satan obeyed, instantly. Containing his agitation, he tucked his nose beneath his paws. His dark eyes were white-rimmed beneath the pupils as he tracked each move his master made.
Jefferson sat at the table. Spreading mail over it, he plucked the brown envelope from the jumble. Satan whimpered. “Hey.” Jefferson moved it left, then right. Only Satan’s eyes turned, never leaving the letter. “What about this worries you?”
Jefferson believed animals possessed unique senses, perceiving more than the human mind could begin to conceive. Some would laugh, others would scoff at the idea, but he’d seen this anticipation too often in the wilderness to not believe it.
He’d seen it before in Satan when a rattler had crawled into a stall, striking a colt. Though little more than a pup, the dog had clawed at the cabin door, waking Jefferson, demanding his attention. Then he’d torn a pair of jeans as he’d dragged his master to the barn. Because of Satan, the colt was alive. Because of Satan, Jefferson opened the envelope with trepidation.
“What the devil?” he tore open another envelope.
When he moved past the surprise of discovering one unmarked envelope inside another, he almost pitched the whole package in the trash as a joke. Recalling Satan’s reaction, he continued.
The next envelope, the last, bore a name. His name, written in a hand he knew. For one stunned moment he thought it was a cruel hoax. Next he questioned how it could be. When he drew out two sheets of paper, he knew it wasn’t. The first was newspaper. The second a plain, white sheet torn raggedly from a tablet. One line was written across the sheet in the same familiar hand.
His own hand shaking, for longer than he knew, Jefferson stared down at it, tracing each letter, each word, with his startled gaze. Catching an unsteady breath, an unforgettable fragrance filling his lungs, touching his heart, he read the written words out loud. His own words, spoken just once, long ago.
If ever you need me…
A promise made. A promise to keep. But how?
The answer lay in the second sheet. A month-old newspaper article. “‘The search for the plane of Paulo Rei has been terminated,’” he read, then read again. “‘On board were Señor Rei, his wife, the former Marissa Claire Alexandre, and her parents.’”
There was more, a detailed description of the Reis and their lives. But Jefferson’s voice stumbled to a halt. Papers fluttered to the floor. As his gaze lifted to the portrait over the mantel, he recited the only line that mattered in a lifeless voice, “‘It has been determined there could be no survivors.’”
No survivors. The words were a cry in his mind. Words that made no sense. Trying to find sanity in it, he read his own words again. A promise only Marissa would know.
But a part of him couldn’t comprehend or separate truth from fiction. Was it a charade? A ghoulish trick? Or was it real?
If it was real, why was it assumed Marissa had been on the plane? If it wasn’t she who had sent the letter, then who?
His thoughts were a whirligig, going ’round and ’round, always ending in the same place, the same thought, the same denial. No one but Marissa could have sent the letter. It had to be. It must be. For, if she hadn’t, it would mean she was dead.
“No!” Jefferson refused to believe. “I would know. The world wouldn’t feel right without Marissa.”
But how could he be sure? How could he know he wasn’t persuading himself to believe what he needed to believe?
“Satan!” The name was spoken without thought or conscious volition. But as he heard it, Jefferson knew it was the way. Rigid as stone, the dog had watched. Now he came to attention, awaiting the command that always followed his name spoken in that tone. Jefferson smiled, a humorless tilt of his lips. Recognizing the stance, he gave the expected command. “Stay.”
Certain Satan would obey, he returned to his bedroom. Opening the drawer by the bedside table, he drew out a scarf. A square of silk filled with memories.
Marissa’s scarf. A memento of a day never forgotten.
How many times had he seen her wear it? How often had he thought how pretty the bright color was lying against her nape, holding back her dark hair? Why, when he wanted to so badly, had he never dared fling it away to wrap himself in the spill of silken locks?
How could her perfume linger so long, a reminder of the day he’d lived the dream he hadn’t dared?
“The day I made love to Marissa.”
As the floodgates opened, memories he’d never allowed himself to dwell on came rushing in wistful vignettes….
Marissa riding as only Marissa could, her body moving in perfect harmony with the horse.
Marissa with a rifle in her hand, the dedicated hunter who could track anything, but could never pull the trigger.
Marissa picking an orchid to celebrate sighting an eagle.
Marissa that last day. Sad, solemn, walking through sunlight and shadow to come to him. The wistful woman he’d loved for longer than he would admit, wanting him, as he’d wanted her.
Marissa, the innocent, teaching him what love should be. Wishing he couldn’t forget her, and that they would meet again. Leaving with a wish unspoken, a secret he would never know.
Marissa, her hand raised in farewell, disappearing in the blinding furor of a storm.
“Dear God.” Jefferson clutched the scarf. Every moment he’d locked away in the back of his mind was as fresh, as real as the day it happened. Though he truly couldn’t forget on a subconscious level, he’d thought time had eased the bittersweet ache of mingled pain and joy. Proof in point, the portrait of Marissa hanging over the cabin’s single fireplace.
The painting had been a satisfying exercise, one he believed had leeched away regrets, pain, longing.
“Fool.” It would never end. Cristal’s shot in the dark was more intuitive than he’d let himself admit. No matter the games he played, no matter how deeply he hid his head in the sand, what he felt for Marissa was too vibrant to tame into memory.
As the guilt that plagued him for his part in sending his brother Adams to prison, never truly eased. Guilt that ruled and changed his life. Because of his teenage folly and what it had taken from Adams, he was never quite at home with his own family. His peace and refuge was the swamp. Then came the hurt of losing Marissa, and even the swamp was no longer a place of peace.
“Losing her made it all too…” Jefferson didn’t have the right word. Nothing was quite enough. Lashes drifting briefly to his cheeks, he stood remembering regret, helplessness. Pain.
“Too much,” he whispered, understanding at last. He’d never analyzed the truth of why he’d fled the lowcountry the second time. He knew now it had been because of a morass of unresolved guilt and loss and grief. Arizona offered solitude, a different sort of peace. Here there was no one to hurt. No one to lose. No one he might fail. “Until now,” he said softly. “If this is Marissa.”
It was. He knew it in his very soul. But an expert second opinion wouldn’t hurt. “Come, Satan.”
With a surge of impatience, he barely waited for the dog to stand obediently by his side. Bending down, he held the scarf before the sensitive black nose. “Fetch.”
The Doberman bounded away. Jefferson had barely moved to the doorway, when Satan returned. The page from a tablet was clasped in his mouth. Taking it from the sharp teeth, praising the dog with a stroking touch, Jefferson knew Satan’s instincts, and his, had been vindicated. The scent that lingered on the scarf and the message was the same.
Marissa was alive.
Stunned, his mind a morass of grief and relief—relief that she was alive, grief for all she’d been through, all she’d lost—he couldn’t think. Like a sleepwalker, he returned to the table and sat down. How long he sat there, staring up at Marissa’s portrait, he would never know. Time had no meaning. Nothing mattered but that Marissa was alive.
“Why contact me, sweetheart? Why in such troubled times?” The sound of his own voice was a wake-up call. Suddenly, as with a man who lived by his wits, his mind was keen, perceptive, and considering each point and question. The most important was answered by his own promise. This was more than the call of grief.
If ever you need me… “I’ll come for you,” he finished. A promise recalled, but deliberately left unsaid.
Marissa was alive. Given the subterfuge of the message, she was in danger. She needed help. She needed Jefferson Cade. “But where are you, sweetheart? What clue did you…” His voice stumbled as he remembered the scrap of newspaper falling to the floor. Instinct told him he would find the answers there.
Minutes later, Jefferson was on the telephone that had gathered dust during his tenure at the Broken Spur. In rare impatience, he paced back and forth as far as the cord would allow while he waited for his call to be put through.
When Jericho Rivers, sheriff of Belle Terre, responded, Jefferson spoke tersely. “I’m coming to the lowcountry, to Belle Terre. I need to meet with you and Yancey Hamilton.”
Jericho was known for his instincts and Jefferson was grateful for them now. Perhaps it was his tone, that he had called the sheriff rather than his own brothers, or simply that he was returning to Belle Terre, but for whatever reason, the sheriff only asked the particulars—when, where, how soon—and no more.
One step had been taken, leaving two more in the form of local calls. One to Sandy Gannon that would elicit no more questions than the call to Jericho. Jefferson trusted both men to do what was needed, when, and for however long.
The final call was to the airlines. The first stage of his arrangements was complete when he sat before a fireplace without fire. A letter had changed his brother Lincoln’s life. Now a letter had done the same for his. Laying a hand on the Doberman’s dark head, he muttered, “Sandy’s sending someone to look after the ranch and you. But I’ll be back, Satan. I don’t know when, or what will have changed, but I’ll be back.”
On a windswept plain, a solitary woman walked through a waking world. Wind tore at her clothes and tangled in her hair, but she didn’t notice. Had she noticed, she wouldn’t care.
Once she’d been at home and happy in this sparsely populated land. A place of towering mountains and endless deserts, of sprawling plains and rocky coastlines. Once she’d loved the still beauty of wild places sheltered from the wind. Once she’d waited in wonder for that moment when birdsong heralded the incipient day, then fell silent in the breathless trembling time when the sun lifted above distant, wind-scoured hills and bathed the world in a shower of light.
Once she’d loved so many things about this land. Now as she walked, cloaked in a mantle of solitude, waiting for another day that would be no more to her than simply another day, her sense of aloneness intensified. There was no beauty for her grief-stricken eyes. No serenity in a serene world. Not for her.
Never again for Marissa Claire Alexandre Rei in this land called Silver by the first conquistadores.
“Argentina,” she whispered as she paused in this sleepless hour, to stare at an untamed plain that in the half light had no beginning, no end. “A land of grief and loss.”
A hand closed over her shoulder, its warmth driving away the chill of the wind. “Are you all right, little Rissa?”
His voice was deep and quiet, his English excellent and only a little accented by the speech patterns of Spanish, his first language. His touch hadn’t startled her. Before he’d spoken, she’d known he had come to join her. “I’m fine, Juan.” Her brown eyes, turned black in the paling of dawn, met eyes as black. “Fine.”
“Who do you convince, querida?” he asked gently as his hand moved from her shoulder. “Yourself, or me?”
She laughed, a bleak sound. “Obviously no one.”
“You walk now because you don’t sleep,” Juan suggested, moving with her as she began to walk again. “Not because you love the land at dawn as you once did.”
Marissa didn’t speak. She didn’t look at this man she’d known all her life. The first to take her up on a horse, when he was in his teens and she was five. He was the first to instill in her a love of horses and riding. Juan Elia was a modern-day gaucho. A true descendant of Argentina’s famed, wandering horsemen. With the coming of the estancias, the ranches, the wandering had ceased. Gauchos had settled down to work for the families of the estancias, as the Elia family had worked for countless years for her father’s family. The life of the gaucho had changed, but the indomitable spirit hadn’t been lost, nor the horsemanship.
Nor the loyalty that kept him here in a secret camp on the plain, rather than at home with his wife and three-year-old son.
“It isn’t the same,” she answered at last. “Nothing is as it was in the days when you brought me here as a young girl. When we rode like Cossacks over the plain.”
“In the days when you wanted to be a real gaucho and wander the land?” Juan chuckled. “Before your mother and father sent you to the United States to become a Southern lady.”
“Does growing up tarnish everything, Juan?”
He stopped her then. A touch at her cheek turned her to him. The sun was just lifting over the crest of a hill, in the sudden sliver of light his Native American heritage was visible in a face that had gown more handsome with time. “Death and guilt have tarnished this land for you. Deaths you couldn’t prevent. Guilt you shouldn’t bear.”