A Warrior's Vow

Children scarcely out of diapers, angry teenagers and kids like sad-eyed little Enrique had been deposited at Rancho Milagro, the last stop in a string of broken homes and hearts. Each one seemed to weigh on Leeza’s soul, though she’d never admitted it before now. And little Enrique with his questing mind, that oddly shaped scar on his forehead—a permanent reminder that man’s inhumanity to children persisted no matter how many laws were changed—his quirky sense of humor and those too-old eyes, had gotten under her skin more than the others.

Was that the reason she’d ridden him harder, pushed him with greater determination? So much so that she’d driven him away from the ranch of miracles?

Exhaustion and fear had brought unfamiliar tears earlier that night. Luckily, the rock-hard Daggert hadn’t seen them, or if he had, he’d pretended otherwise. Now her worry over the little runaway had driven her grief deep inside again, to a lonely place of roiling emotions, with no relief or release.

She would find him. She had to. That’s all there was to it.

She reviewed the situation with a cold dispassion. Mentally evaluating any given situation was an exercise she’d learned early in childhood, and had been drilled into her by her adoptive parents. Mental precision kept fear at bay.

Bracingly, she told herself that a day’s absence was not so long on a very big ranch. And Enrique had a coat, a blanket and a horse named Dandelion.

And though he couldn’t know it, he had her, a really smart dog and a master tracker named James Daggert going after him.

“Damn it, lady, go to sleep.” Daggert’s voice was strangely soft. “You’re doing the best you can.”

She closed her eyes against the weight of the stars, her fears for Enrique and the closeness of the man lying not two feet from her. Her last conscious thought was to wonder how Daggert had known she was awake. And how he’d known to say the one thing that would allow her to relax enough to sleep.

She woke what seemed seconds later to the sound of something creeping around the camp. Even as fear made her breath catch in her throat, hope that it might be Enrique flooded through her. But on the very real chance it was a bear, she opened her eyes the merest bit.

At first she couldn’t see anything in the darkness, then she made out James Daggert’s silhouette against a wall of dimming stars. She thought he might be praying, he stood so still, facing the thinnest slice of predawn light on the horizon. He drew a deep breath and expelled it slowly. His exhalation hung in the air, and for some reason, it was a lonely sight—man, stars and cloud of warm breath against a black sky.

The chill of the September morning nipped at her cheeks, and she huddled in her sleeping bag, realizing she’d actually slept all night. As the sky lightened, she watched Daggert move about the camp.

He packed his things neatly and with considerable skill. He studied the camp with the eyes of a drill sergeant inspecting a parade troop. She’d seen his attention to detail the day before, but watching him when he was unaware of her gave her the opportunity to see that nothing about his movements was wasted. He was, in his way, an efficiency expert.

She wondered if the precision was a matter of survival. It certainly was in her world. Lack of attention to every nuance of a venture was the ruination of a venture capitalist, and she was one of the very best.

Leeza suspected Daggert left nothing to chance because lack of forethought on his part might mean certain death for him or the person he sought.

His horse nickered at him and he whispered for Stone to be quiet.

Leeza, buried in her warm sleeping bag, smiled beneath the covers.

She’d never taken the time to watch a man prepare for his day. Any encounters she’d had in the past had ended with a yawn, a polite good-night and the firm shutting of her door as her companion departed. Waking up with a man seemed too great an intimacy, too close to an emotional entanglement.

Not that she was technically waking up with James Daggert. She stopped smiling.

The horse nickered again and Daggert moved toward him, running his broad palm over the large, rangy sorrel. He murmured something and the animal rumbled in appreciation.

“Soon, old man,” Daggert said softly.

Leeza could hear true affection in his voice, as if he and the horse had been through many rough times together and the dangers they’d faced had forged an unbreakable bond between them. Watching them, she tried imagining feeling the powerful muscles rippling beneath her palm. Instead, her mind substituted Daggert’s bare shoulders. She closed her eyes.

“Good morning, Belle, you beauty, you.”

Her eyes flew open. And she blushed, realizing that velvet voice hadn’t been addressing her, but rather her horse.

The renamed Belle pawed the ground, as if answering him.

Leeza sighed as Daggert hefted the thick saddle pad, then the hated saddle, onto Belle’s back and cinched it securely. He packed her saddle as carefully as he had his own. When all was aboard the horse, with the exception of Leeza and her sleeping bag, he gave Belle a slice of apple.

The setter, apparently knowing Daggert’s ritual, came up, wagging his tail and whining at his master.

Daggert ran his hand down the dog’s soft neck. Leeza thought she’d never seen a man so completely comfortable around animals. It was as if he shared a telepathic communication with them.

“No use hurrying, Sancho. We have a half hour before full daylight, and if I know women—and contrary to your experience of me, I’ve known a few in my time—the lady won’t be ready, anyway.”

Leeza could have sworn the dog grinned as his feathered tail swept the earth. James ran his hands down the full length of the dog’s back, and Leeza wriggled even as the animal did.

Sancho barked.

Leeza groaned.

“She’s awake,” Daggert said. “Close your eyes now or her red pajamas will blind you.”

Daggert firmly believed that a good ninety-nine percent of the human population looked a bit worse for wear after a night out in the open. Not Leeza Nelson.

She looked as if she’d just stepped from a penthouse apartment, freshly showered, powdered and having had a manicure following a massage. Instead, she’d come around a scraggly mesquite bush and used towelettes for a bath. The only telltale sign that she’d been horseback riding most of the day before was her slightly stiff walk as she approached the campfire.

He pointed to the coffeepot, then poured some for her before she reached for it without a pot holder. She gave him a dazzling smile that made him wish he’d packed a Kevlar vest.

Not trusting her friendliness—she hadn’t struck him as a hail-fellow-well-met sort of person—he busied himself unrolling a chamois cloth and spreading out the items Sancho had collected the day before. He sat studying them.

“What’s all this?” Leeza asked brightly.

“Clues,” he said.

“Explain, please,” she said. Not a question, but a command, even if she had softened it. That do-it-my-way attitude again.

“Sancho brought them in last night.” He held up the branch of scrub oak the dog had carried in his jaws. He pointed to the thistles that had been embedded in his silky coat. “Russian thistle and tumble-weed. Broken, but still fresh, see? And these? Bits of chamisa. Another gum wrapper.”

“His path,” she said, a note of wonder in her voice. “That’s the path Sancho took—following Enrique?”

Daggert couldn’t help but look at her. Her logic wasn’t what snared him; it was the honest note of awe in her voice. Luckily, she wasn’t gazing back at him. She was beaming at his Sancho.

“You’re a good dog,” she said. “A very, very good dog.”

Sancho rose and came to her, tail beating against Daggert’s back.

Daggert was stunned. He’d never seen Sancho approach anyone other than himself. The mutt always seemed to maintain a purely business relationship on their mission, eschewing fraternization with the clients, just like his master.

Daggert found he preferred things that way. He pushed Sancho’s tail aside, but instead of moving away, the dog merely gave Daggert a happy grin and sat down beside the woman.

She looped an arm around his back, scratched at his ears and asked the dog, “So you know which way we’ll be going then?”

Daggert felt unreasonably irritated with Sancho’s defection, and the fact that she was talking to the dog instead of him.

“Thanks for saddling Lulubelle.”

“Call her Belle. That other name is stupid for a horse.”

“Noted,” she said. “And I guess we won’t talk about the fact that Enrique’s riding Dandelion.”

James tossed his cold coffee on the fire. “You’d better eat,” he said, handing her a plate of eggs and grilled toast he’d kept warm for her.

“Please. I’m barely to the coffee stage.”

“Give it to the dog, then,” he said.

“You want some of these eggs, boy?”

He did. She scraped the contents of her plate on to a flat rock.

“His name is Sancho.”

Sancho inhaled the food she’d set out for him, and wagged his tail at her.

“Apt,” she said. “Every Don Quixote needs a Sancho, right, boy?”

Daggert didn’t know which he disliked more, the ice queen with her barbed tongue or this falsely smiling tourist. And the damnable truth was he wanted to kiss her either way.

“I think we’re going to have to set a couple of ground rules,” she said, making his hackles rise. “I realize that I know nothing about tracking and that’s why you’re here. At the same time, you know nothing about Enrique, and that’s why I’m here. I see no reason we can’t work together harmoniously.”

Daggert stood up. He’d known the pretty smiles and the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth routine was a sham, but darned if he hadn’t fallen for it, anyway.

He quickly rubbed their plates with sand, wiped them with paper napkins, which he tossed into the dying flames, and stowed them in one of his saddlebags. He poured the remaining coffee on the fire and folded the pot in a heat-resistant cloth, shoving it in with the plates.

He rerolled her sleeping bag into a tight bolster—the woman had obviously never camped a day in her pampered life—and secured it to the back of Belle’s saddle. He tossed handfuls of sand on to the remaining coals and scuffed more on to them with his boot.

She rose and dusted her jeans.

“We’re heading north,” he said, bending over and cupping his hands to give her a leg up.

“That’s the spirit,” she said, stepping into his hand. She put all her weight into it, instead of using it as a hoist. He tossed her upward, and she landed in the saddle with a low “Oof.”

“Thank you,” she said, as if he’d merely given her a boost. “It’s good to know we have a meeting of the minds here.” Though she spoke cheerfully enough, he didn’t meet her gaze.

He reached for her stirrups to lower them.

She shoved her boots into the footholds and pressed down. “I don’t think so, Mr. Daggert. I may be forced to ride on a western monstrosity, but I refuse the full discomfort.”

He decided that icy tone of voice fit her long, elegant body to a T.

“Suit yourself.” She’d be singing a different tune by midday.

“All the children at Rancho Milagro keep a journal. It was one of my partner’s ideas—a chance for the kids to download. I read Enrique’s before we set out,” she said. Her falsely cheerful note was back. Why did Daggert think her more dangerous when she used it?

He swung his leg over Stone’s broad back.

“Have you ever heard of a place called Cima La Luz?”

“In the mountains,” he said.

“Light Peak, right?”

He grunted an assent.

“I’m beginning to suspect you’re not a morning person.” When he didn’t answer, she continued, “I believe Enrique might be heading there.”

Daggert stared at her coldly. “You didn’t think it important to tell me that yesterday?” he asked finally.

Her smile faltered but she didn’t flinch. “You didn’t exactly give me a chance,” she said. Her eyes dared him to deny this.

“Lady, if you don’t kill yourself riding like that, I might just do it for you. Good thing we’re heading toward Cima La Luz or I’d flay you right now just for the sheer hell of it. But just out of curiosity, why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

The flush that stained her cheeks gave him all the answer he needed. She’d been testing him.

He spurred his horse forward while giving Sancho a go-ahead whistle.

“I’m sorry,” she called from behind him.

Daggert ground his teeth.

By the time the sun was directly overhead, the last thought on Leeza’s mind was cheerful needling. Her fears for Enrique were escalating with each passing hour. Her guilt was on the rise, as well. And her irritation with one noncommunicative tracker was boiling like mercury in a burning thermometer.

She’d tried giving him the same silent treatment he’d accorded her. Unfortunately, that seemed to work perfectly for him. She’d babbled at him and he’d ridden ahead. She’d hidden her exhausted tears from him the night before, and blinked them back now, but doubted he’d care even if he did see them.

He didn’t seem the slightest bit affected by the elements, the cruel sun, the cold morning or the fact that Enrique had been missing for at least thirty-nine hours now. In fact, Daggert seemed so indifferent to his surroundings he might as well have been made from bedrock, as she’d first imagined him to be.

And why she found herself attracted to him, she couldn’t even begin to fathom. It must be a by-product of the worry she felt for Enrique, and the unfamiliarity of searching for a child who didn’t want to be found.

It was the hostage syndrome, she thought, where a captive transferred feelings of faith to her abductor. Patty Hearst had done it; so had countless others.

Except Leeza wasn’t a hostage, she’d come on this mission against the tracker’s express wishes. She’d demanded to be included.

She was forced to admit he would have made better time without her. Any discomfort she felt was her own fault entirely.

Given her nature, this did not make her feel remotely better.

“He can use that chip on his shoulder to light a forest fire,” she told Belle. She grinned, feeling a little giddy. “Okay, wait, I have another one. There once was a man named Daggert…that’s too hard. There once was a man named James, who never would talk to the dames.”

“Enjoying yourself?”

She blushed as she never had before. It wasn’t a gentle rise of color; it was a raging conflagration of embarrassment. She hadn’t seen him halt his horse, and had caught up with him, literally unaware. But she lifted her chin, met his eyes directly and said, “Immensely.”

“We’ll stop here for lunch,” he said, and dismounted.

“Fine. Good.” Her stomach growled at the mere thought of food. She’d been foolish to give her eggs to Sancho. But she wasn’t about to admit it. “Belle could use a break.”

“Right,” he said. “Want a hand down?”

“No, thank you. I’m perfectly capable.”

“Just keep hold of the saddle horn.”

It took her about five minutes to dismount and another five before she could let go of the saddle horn. “I’d kill him,” she murmured to Belle, “but then how would we find Enrique? And I’m not sure I could find my way back alone.”

She gratefully accepted the moist towelettes he handed her, and leaned against the large boulder he’d selected as a shady picnic spot. She’d been too tired—and too busy making up nasty Daggert limericks—to notice the terrain while riding. It had changed considerably since dawn.

Low foothills, sparsely covered with scrub pine and liberally dotted with cholla cactus and chamisa, gave way to taller mountains in the distance. She’d read somewhere, probably in the material that came when they were first considering buying Rancho Milagro, that the Guadalupe Mountains weren’t technically part of the Rocky Mountains proper. They belonged to an older range, from the Devonian Period, and were more similar in nature to the Appalachians than to the Rockies, filled with caves, such as the Carlsbad Caverns, and pocketed with numerous sinkholes. Beneath the Guadalupes, oil awaited recovery, and within them somewhere, a little nine-year-old boy needed rescue.

Daggert whistled for Sancho and set out a bowl of water for him.

Leeza waited for a cup this time and accepted the warmish liquid with as much gratitude as she had the towelettes. She remained standing as she drank this time; however, her bottom being so sore she’d have cried out at contact with the solid ground.

Apparently unfazed by the long ride, Daggert sat down Indian-style and used a long, curved knife to pry apart something in a deep pouch. A moment later he pulled out a long strip of beef jerky. Using the blade of the knife, he handed the piece up to her.

While she was a personal fan of beef, believing recent medical findings declaring red meat to be rich in iron and calcium, she couldn’t say she was remotely fond of it salted, dried and rendered into strips of peppered leather. Add jalapeños to it and it was pure torture.

She spat her bite into her used towelette.

Daggert used his knife to tear off another piece of jerky and tossed it to an eager Sancho.

Sancho caught the bit of beef with alacrity and gulped it down after slashing it only a couple of times with his white teeth. He sat on the pebbled sand and whined.

Daggert tossed him another piece, which the dog caught but set down. He whined again.

“What is it, boy?” Daggert asked.

The dog lifted his right paw as if wanting to shake hands, or as if he’d acquired a thorn.

Daggert checked the raised paw, apparently found nothing amiss and ruffled the dog’s neck. “Go ahead,” he said.

The dog looked from the beef to his master and whined as he again lifted his paw.

“What are you telling me, Sancho-dog?” Daggert asked.

Sancho barked in answer before finally eating the piece of jerky he’d set aside.

Daggert watched him, frowning, then tore another piece free and passed it up to Leeza.

She held up her hand. “Please. No.”

“Too hot?” he asked. “So you’re as tender mouthed as you are a tenderfoot.”

“I think I have this figured out,” she said. “In your mind, I’m the ‘disliked one,’ the one who caused Enrique to run away.”

Daggert looked at the dog nearby. He gave Sancho a nod and the setter answered with a swift bark before tearing away from the picnic site.

“You don’t even want your dog to hear this,” Leeza said.

Daggert sighed, and the patronizing patience on his face fanned her fury. “You’ve decided the whole subject is taboo—at least you won’t talk to me about it. You don’t care to know the reasons why he may have decided to dislike me. Not you. Oh, you asked me last night, but you didn’t make any comment on my answer. Because you don’t care. Your mind is made up. It’s as obvious as the nose on your chiseled face that you’re making me a whipping boy. The more discomfort I feel, the more you like it. And you think the harder you push me, the more I’ll fall apart right in front of your golden eyes. Do you want to know why?”

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes had narrowed.

“I do,” she said, ignoring the sign of his growing anger. “I’ve had hours to study the question. And I think I have the answer. I think your whipping-boy complex stems from a deep-rooted fury at yourself because you didn’t manage to find someone. That you failed in your big search once. I don’t know who or what they meant to you, but it was—”

Leeza didn’t see Daggert move. She heard a low growl and a whoosh and then felt the wind being knocked out of her. For a full two seconds, she wasn’t even aware he’d lunged at her.

She focused on several things simultaneously: his muscled body pressing her against the boulder behind her. The knife he’d been using to tear the beef jerky being held against the hollow of her throat. And the tawny eyes she’d stupidly thought unreadable glaring into hers, filled with rage.

“Never talk about my son again,” he said. How had she thought his voice was like velvet? It was a razor, sharp and deadly.

She tried to nod, but his hand against her chin prevented movement.

So slowly it made her tremble, he lowered the knife’s point from her throat. But he didn’t release her. His eyes still burned with fury, but no longer, thankfully, with murderous intent. His knife hand trailed down her arm in a slow, strangely electrifying sensation. It was the very opposite of sensual, yet every nerve ending she possessed seemed attuned to his touch.

“Tell me you’re listening to me,” he growled.

“I—I’m listening.”

“Tell me you won’t do it again.”

“I won’t. Of course I won’t.” She could feel the heat of his body covering hers and sharp edges of the boulder digging into her shoulder blades. She registered the corded muscles in his legs against hers and, most of all, his arousal. “Please,” she murmured, not sure what she was asking him for.

“Please?” he whispered.

Her breath felt trapped inside her and she was fairly sure he could feel her heart thundering against his chest. He looked from her eyes to her lips, and something twisted on his face. His eyes closed and she had to bite back a whimper as she felt the anger draining from him.

When he opened his eyes again, she realized that while the anger might be ebbing, the tension in him hadn’t. But it was tension of another kind. A sort that met her head-on, man to woman.

“You have a smart mouth,” he said.

As if answering for her, her lips parted of their own volition.

She knew he was going to kiss her, and knew she should protest. Wanted to protest. Ached to find the means to tell him that he should back off and leave her alone. Instead, she leaned into his lips, meeting him halfway.

His mouth was as hot as his anger had been, and every bit as ruthless. He plundered her lips with determined purpose, a roughly banked passion. His tongue warred with hers, demanding capitulation. He was liquid and solid all at the same time.

She heard the knife clatter to the base of the boulder, then felt his hands strafing her body. He’d used those same hands to gentle the horses, but on her, he incited a riot.

She’d imagined running her hands across his broad shoulders, down the rippling muscles of his back, and didn’t know when she began doing so in reality. One moment she’d literally been as afraid as she’d ever been in her life, and the next she was matching his passion touch for touch, kiss for kiss.

His lips gentled and he uttered a low, pained groan. His hands on her body slowed, still exploring her curves, and somehow the new tenderness in his touch made her feel inexplicably confused. Passion she understood, at least to some degree. Tenderness she didn’t understand at all; it had never been a part of her life.

Daggert raised a hand to her face and molded it gently as he kissed her. And she could taste his withdrawal.

He pulled back from her, his eyes once again unreadable, his emotions masked. He straightened and ever so slowly ran the back of his hand over his moistened lips, still gazing at her.

She remained sprawled against the rock, a discarded rag doll with heaving breasts and glassy blue eyes. And she knew desire was written all over her.

He bent and picked up his knife. He pressed a button and slowly folded the blade back into the handle. It seemed a metaphor, and perhaps was.

Chapter 4

Leeza Nelson, former boardroom wizard, watched James Daggert stomp away from the lunch campsite and disappear around a huge boulder much like the one she sprawled against.

She lifted a shaking hand to her lips, half expecting them to be different somehow.

They were. They seemed fuller, more sensitive. Stunned.

Her lips felt stunned.