At Close Range (8 page)

Pedro made some sound, and before Mack could reach over the seat, the woman in the back had adjusted the blanket and was patting the boy's shoulder. The child sighed deeply and went back to sleep.

Corrie fought the shiver that worked its way over her. She risked a glance at Mack. He was sitting cantilevered in his seat, one arm over the back, and she knew the pose rendered him swift to protect Pedro.

They drove some ten miles in unnatural silence, then the woman tapped on Mack's shoulder and pointed to her door.

“What? You want us to stop?”

Corrie complied without having to be asked.

The woman reached for the door.

“Wait,” Mack said. “You can't get out here. There's nothing but empty field out there.”

The woman shook her head and pointed to what amounted to a dirt track off the main ranch road.

“That's just a feeding station road,” Corrie said. “It doesn't go anywhere.” But she shuddered. The road actually did go past the crumbling ruins of an adobe dwelling. She'd seen it while out riding with Pablo one afternoon.

The woman pointed at the road again, with greater determination. She pulled the handle and the Bronco door swung open, letting in a blast of cold air.

“Wait,
señora,
” Corrie called. “You'll freeze to death out there. Come with us to the ranch. You'll be safe there.” But would the ranch be safe with her?

The woman ignored her, stepping down from the car. She turned and looked squarely at Corrie. Her eyes conveyed a plea and an apology of sorts. She pointed down the dirt track at a right angle to the ranch road, then adjusted her long shawl, lifting it over her hair and tossing one end over her shoulder.

She shut the door gently and turned her back on the car. She'd walked maybe four or five steps before Corrie threw the Bronco into Park and hurled herself from the vehicle.

“Wait!”

The woman stopped and half turned. She held herself perfectly still as Corrie rushed up to her.

“Take these,” Corrie said, thrusting her gloves at the woman. “And this.” She shrugged out of her duster and handed it to the stranger. The woman shook her head, but Corrie was insistent. Finally, ghostly pale hands reached for the proffered items.

The woman slung the coat around her shoulders like a cape and slowly pulled on the leather, fur-lined gloves. She nodded and turned her back on the car. Within seconds, the inky-black desert swallowed up her equally dark figure.

Stung by cold, worried about the woman, confused by the night, Corrie ran back to the car and climbed back up. She shut the door, cranked the heat a notch higher and put the car in reverse. She backed up and positioned the car so the headlights would shine down the dirt track. The lights easily picked out the steady walk of the woman in black.

“I don't feel right about this,” Corrie said.

“She wanted out. Who knows what's going on, but she was pretty adamant about getting out at this track.”

“But there's nothing out there.”

“Nothing we know about.”

“What does that mean?” Corrie asked, afraid she knew exactly.

Mack ran a hand through his short hair. “I don't know. Nothing, probably. Maybe somebody's waiting down the road for her. A husband. A lover. Who knows?”

“At least she has gloves and a coat.”

“You're a Good Samaritan.”

“Or I just gave Leeza's three-hundred-dollar gift to a ghost.”

“And the rest of the food.”

“The food? She stole it?”

“All that was left.”

“At least Rita won't have hurt feelings.”

“At least.”

“Mack…do you suppose…?”

“No. At least, no, I don't think she's La Dolorosa, if that's what you were going to ask.”

Corrie looked at him.

“Let's go,” he said. “We've done all we can. Pablo and the crew can come look for her tomorrow. For now we have Pedro to think about.”

“You're right,” she said, but she didn't put the car in first gear yet. “But you have to admit it's weird.”

“Oh, it's way beyond weird.”

Corrie giggled. “I really thought she was a ghost.”

“You weren't the only one. I was making the sign against the evil eye the whole time she was in the car.”

Corrie laughed outright at that image and used young José's favorite line. “I almost screamed like a
girl.
”

“Me, too,” Mack said, and to her delight, he began to laugh. It shook free of him like an avalanche, rumbling and deep, forceful and strong.

After a moment of sheer wonder, she laughed with him, leaning forward, resting her forehead on his shoulder. And suddenly she was aware he wasn't laughing anymore. She raised her eyes to his and her own slightly hysterical giggles cut off as abruptly as they had started.

She read too many conflicting messages in his eyes, but as he lifted a hand to her face, she understood one meaning with crystal clarity. Her heart beat like a timpani in her chest. She tilted her head and felt her lips parting of their own volition.

The groan that escaped him sounded as if it came from some tortured part of him, but she answered it with a whispered and inchoate plea.

He pulled her closer, his hands roughly drawing her to him, his lips capturing hers with rough and almost desperate passion.

Whatever fear she'd felt upon seeing the figure in black coalesced into a fear of another sort, a fear and an almost inexplicable sense of rightness. It seemed her lips recognized his, her body remembered his. And the sensation, instead of reducing her reaction to him, only served to increase it. She felt as though she'd always been hungry and had now been given a taste of some perfect, heretofore unknowable food. And it made her crave another taste and then another.

After a few eons of time, he raised his head and pulled at the warm air inside the Bronco as if he'd never drawn oxygen before. His hand against her cheek shook and he stared at her as if she'd burst into flames in his arms.

It wasn't far from the truth. Until the night before, and only with him, had she ever experienced such turbulent passion. The ardor felt simultaneously hot and cold, painful and healing, and left her the impression that it was something forbidden, something that Mack risked now but might never attempt again. It carried the seeds of promise and was spiced with the already bitter herbs of goodbye.

He pulled back, and though she would have given anything to continue to feel his embrace, she was too confused by it herself, too easily bruised afterward to plead with him for more, and too aware of the sleeping child in the back seat. She slowly straightened, dazed nearly witless and completely forgetful of the woman in black.

Almost instinctively, she held her hands out in front of her. They weren't trembling. As they hadn't after Mack had kissed her the night before. When his lips had pressed to hers, her heart had never beat quite as irregularly, her breath had never been threadier, and yet her hands were rock steady, as calm as a surgeon's.

As far as she knew, her hands had started shaking when she was in grade school. The doctors her various foster parents had taken her to had shaken their heads and claimed genetics as the source, and named the strange phenomenon “familial tremors.” But no tests had ever been done. And if they had, would the cure have included Mack Dorsey's kisses?

Numbly, she once again put the car in gear and resumed their journey to the ranch. When they saw the lights of the ranch in the far distance, still some two miles from their present location, Mack cleared his throat. “Corrie.”

“Yes?” Was her voice really as breathless as it sounded in her own ears?

“I'm sorry. I—”

“Don't apologize,” she murmured. “Please.” How could he apologize for something so incredible?

“I don't want—”

Tears stung her eyes. Only a couple of hours earlier, she would have given almost anything if only he
would speak. Now she felt any words he might say would crush her completely. “Please,” she asked again. “Let's just get inside.”

He acceded to her wishes, and after a few seconds she glanced over at him. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw rigid. She jerked her eyes forward.

His gravelly voice ground out, “The hell of it is, I've been wanting to kiss you for years.”

“Years?” she asked, truly startled.

“Ever since I first heard you on the radio.”

“Oh.” He'd succeeded in confusing her even further.

“It can't happen again,” he said. “It would be unfair to you.”

Corrie didn't say anything. She didn't know how to ask why not, the way Leeza would have, or assure him that she understood, as Jeannie might have done. She didn't understand and didn't have the courage to demand an explanation. As she often did, she cursed her own lack of courage. It had driven her from the only career she'd ever known, countless opportunities, and now prevented her from asking a man who had just kissed her as if there were no tomorrow why he said it couldn't happen again. When she knew he wanted it as badly as she did.

She negotiated the turn into Rancho Milagro's large open gates, numbed to the joy she usually felt upon arriving at her new home. She punched the gate lock's automatic button with a now shaking finger.

“You said you were looking for a miracle,” he said.

She couldn't remember saying that. She remembered agreeing with him when he said
he
wanted to
be a part of what Milagro was about. She stilled herself for more.

“Believe me when I tell you that I'm about the furthest thing from a damned miracle.”

She gripped her hands on the steering wheel, wanting to rail at him, wanting to throw the car into Park and turn on him, demanding where he got off making such assumptions about her—about himself. But she wasn't made that way. She was the person who always sat on the sidelines, reporting the incidents, never taking a place in them. She was the one who never made waves, never fought, because words could change a life in a heartbeat and change it for the worse.

She pulled the car up to the front door of the hacienda and slowly put the car into Park. She drew the emergency brake almost idly.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

She turned to look at him then, unaccustomed anger fanning through her. “Not one little bit,” she said curtly, and secretly relished the astonishment on his chiseled features. So he would find out what no one else ever had before, that sweet little Corrie Stratton, who never argued, never grumbled, and never, ever fought, had a bite lurking somewhere inside her.

“Will you help me with Pedro?”

“I—sure,” he said, exiting the car as if she might strike out at him.

Corrie yanked the back door open, drew a deep breath, then much more gently unbuckled the seat belt holding Pedro inside. She nudged the boy's shoulder to wake him. He didn't stir.

“Let me,” Mack said.

Corrie stepped back without a word.

“Come on, little guy, let's get you inside.” He hefted the boy to his shoulder and cradled him against his broad chest.

Corrie thought about how it had felt to lay her head against that same chest, how she'd heard his heart beating so rapidly, how it seemed to thunder in her ear. She thought about how right it had felt to be enveloped in his arms.

The door to the hacienda opened and Jeannie stepped out on the veranda. “Good. We were just getting worried. Where's your coat, honey? Did something happen?”

Corrie stepped around Mack. “I gave my coat to a ghost and kissed Mack. He can tell you the rest.”

C
orrie tried escaping to her room as Pedro was installed in one of the many bedrooms, but Mack grabbed her arm. “Wait just a minute,” he said. His eyes were shards of ice.

“No, thanks,” she said, pulling her arm free of his grasp. She was dimly aware that had he been determined to hold her; nothing short of dynamite could have freed her. She refused to meet his gaze though she felt him silently compelling her to do so.

Jeannie stepped into the living room and, after a strangely cautious glance at Corrie and a speculative one at Mack, went to the side table and asked Rita to pour out two mugs of chocolate. “Mack, would you build up the fire?”

A tight-lipped Mack complied as Jeannie handed a mug to Corrie. With his back turned, he couldn't have seen the sharp question in Jeannie's eyes.

Corrie took it gratefully, her fingers cold after being outside without gloves, her heart even colder still. She shook her head at her friend.

Jeannie sat down on one of the large sofas. “What's this about your coat?”

Corrie turned her back to the room. Her brief but heartfelt spurt of anger was fading too rapidly. Already, guilt and the horror of being rude were overtaking it. She couldn't have spoken if her life depended on it.

Mack rescued her, saying, “On the way back from Carlsbad, we came across a woman walking alone on the ranch road.”

“Dios mio,”
Rita said. Corrie pictured the tiny woman crossing herself. “La Dolorosa. I knew it! She's here.”

Corrie shook her head and looked at the ceiling. She couldn't help but recall the way Mack's laughter had rumbled in the car, had felt against her cheek.

He gave a jagged chuckle. “That's what we thought, too, at first. I have to admit, it wasn't hard to think it. She was dressed all in black, complete with a black shawl over her head. But she was real enough. We gave her a ride.”

Rita moaned. “The bad luck comes. You should never have given her a ride. Don't tell me, she wasn't there when you got out of the car.”

Corrie took a sip of her chocolate and winced as the hot liquid burned her mouth.

Behind her, Jeannie asked, “Where is she now?”

“She wanted off on what Corrie said was a feeding-station track.”

Corrie could almost hear Jeannie's frown. “Did she say what she was doing out this way?”

“She didn't say anything at all,” Corrie said, turning around, looking anywhere but at Mack. “She only nodded or shook her head. Or tapped Mack on the shoulder when she wanted to stop. Then she pointed at the feeding-station track.”

Rita crossed herself. “The ruins…”

“She wasn't a ghost,” Mack repeated. “She stole the food Pedro didn't eat.”

“A hungry ghost. I haven't heard too many stories about those,” Jeannie said mildly. “But I think I'd better call Chance and have him look for her on his way home.” She consulted her watch. “That'll be in about a half an hour.”

“I gave her my coat and gloves,” Corrie offered. “I felt terrible just leaving her out there. But short of wrestling her back into the car, we didn't have much choice.”

“I suppose Chance could arrest her for trespassing on private property. But you're right, shy of kidnapping her, if she doesn't want to come, we don't have much power to force her into coming in where it's warm,” Mack said.

“I don't want to think about some poor woman dying of exposure out on the ranch somewhere,” Jeannie said.

“She has Corrie's coat and gloves. And it's not even going to frost tonight, even though the windchill is mean as hell,” Mack said. “I'll go out in the morning before lessons.”

“Or Chance can—no, he can't. We're heading out tomorrow.”

“Pablo and I can go,” Corrie suggested.

“No, he can't. He and Clovis are scheduled to round up the strays in the Guadalupes,” Jeannie said. She didn't look at Corrie as she concluded, “Looks like it will have to be the two of you again.”

Corrie could have cheerfully shot her dearest friend.

“Unless Chance finds her tonight and persuades her to come in.”

“And you won't look until the daylight,” Rita said.

“In the daylight,” Jeannie agreed.

“Fine, then,” Mack said tersely. “For now, I'd better get some sleep.” He handed his mug back to Jeannie. “Thanks for the cocoa.”

He leveled an inscrutable look at Corrie on his way by. She met it impassively, fighting the urge to apologize, warring with the need to erase her reckless comment to Jeannie about his kissing her, knowing she couldn't do either.

“Sleep well,” she said, then felt bad about saying it, knowing he wouldn't, that he never did. She managed to get to her bedroom and put her head beneath her pillow before the front door even closed behind him.

She'd learned early that temper only created chaos. She'd had it hammered into her that an angry person was the only one with cause to apologize. Keeping one's temper in check meant one possessed a clear mind and a kind heart. And all those adages had proved true throughout her adolescent years.

The quieter she was, the less difficulty she had anywhere she was placed.
She's a quiet little thing. She's a good, biddable little girl. I'll say this for her, she
never argued with us. She never caused us any embarrassment.

Not ten minutes later, still groaning into her pillow, she heard Jeannie's knock and the creak of the door opening. “I called Chance. He's going to drive out that way and see if he can find her.”

“Good,” Corrie said from beneath her protective pillow.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Liar,” Jeannie said, coming into the room and closing the door behind her. Less than a minute later, Leeza did the same. They both sat on Corrie's bed, just as they'd done a thousand times in college and off and on during the years after. Had Jeannie consulted Leeza or had the astute woman just known something was up?

“So, what's this I hear about you kissing Mack Dorsey?” Leeza asked.

Corrie moaned.

“That's what I like,” Leeza said mildly, “the short version, no gory details.”

Corrie couldn't help but chuckle. However, she didn't remove the pillow.

“How did he make you mad?” Jeannie asked.

“By telling me it wouldn't happen again,” Corrie said, and had to repeat herself after lifting the pillow. She felt every kind of a fool.

“And I take it you want it to happen again?”

“No. Yes. I don't know.”

Corrie sensed her friends' exchange of glances. She felt Jeannie's gentle hand on her back. “Don't worry about it.”

“I'm so embarrassed.”

“About what? That Corrie Stratton actually kissed a man?” Leeza asked.

“No. Well, a little. But mainly because I got mad at him because he hurt my feelings. And then I snapped at him.”

“Guess what, Corrie, it's about damned time you snapped at something. You're years behind in that department,” Leeza said mildly. “You've always been so busy trying to be a wallflower that you never even noticed that you're the belle of the ball.”

When Corrie didn't say anything, Leeza added, “Of course, we can't fire him now.”

Corrie twisted around and sat up, shoving her hair off her face. “Who said anything about firing him?”

“I'm glad you agree. That would smack of sexual harassment. We are his employers, you know. It's not really kosher to go around kissing the hired help and then firing them.”

“For heaven's sake,” Corrie sputtered. “He's not hired help. He's—he's already indispensable around here. The kids would fall apart if he left.”

Leeza chuckled and flicked her cheek with a long, tapered finger. “So make him eat his words…and make him stay. And, whatever you do, don't apologize for getting angry at him. If anything, thank him. It's a Corrie Stratton first.”

 

Mack woke as he always did, with the screams of children echoing in his ears.

His first night on the ranch, Corrie had warned him about ghosts. And just that night they'd both thought they'd seen one. But Mack knew Corrie thought in
terms of wraiths, ghostly figures on lonely roads, a wailing woman seeking her lost children.

She didn't know the first thing about real ghosts. He'd lived with them daily for the past two years. They haunted his every step, his every breath, and screamed when and if he finally managed to fall asleep.

He washed down a couple of aspirin with a gulp of the mineral-heavy liquid that passed for water on Rancho Milagro. Slowly the agonized sound of children's cries faded from his mind, not disappearing but recessing into the background, ready to come forward again anytime he closed his eyes or let his thoughts drift for a while.

Luckily, he had these children at Rancho Milagro to think about now, living children to concentrate on. And Corrie to try ignoring. The trouble was, if he thought about these new children for any length of time, the faces of the other children would steal in, looking at him with accusation and hurt. Betrayal.

The bigger trouble was that thinking about Corrie seemed to keep thoughts of those doomed children at bay, but thoughts about her were every bit as torturous as the ones he had of the lost children. Without any need to focus his attention on her, he could still taste her, smell her fresh scent and drown in her giving touch.

What would be the harm of just taking what she seemed to so readily offer? She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He knew that with every fiber of his being. But it would be like plucking a rare flower and leaving it without water. He could sense the depth of
the woman-child within her and refused to be a party to hurting her. And hurt her he would.

The magic of holding her first stiff, then compliant body against his was just what the doctor ordered. But he couldn't bear it if she knew what he'd done. He didn't know which would be worse, if she, like so many other misguided souls, would consider him a hero, or if—as he did—she might damn him for the lost lives.

And yet, after having tasted her, felt what a marvel it was to hold her in his arms, he physically hurt from the longing to repeat it, to just tell her about his past and have her understanding. If her voice was like the sound of paradise, her touch was a healing hand to soothe his brow and her kiss a promise of hope.

But he didn't believe in promises. God knew, he'd made too many two years ago and had lied to every single child he'd lost. If he continued the path he'd been unable to resist with Corrie, she would soon learn about the scars she couldn't see, the wounds imperfectly healed.

He'd seen her light burning late into the night. He'd seen the shadows beneath her eyes the following day. And he'd heard the puzzled pain in her voice when she'd asked him not to apologize when he'd tried telling her they couldn't repeat a kiss that seemed to strike at the very center of his soul.

And he couldn't offer her the reasons why it had to be that way. He could tell her about himself, his past, and the horror that lingered inside him, but it wouldn't explain the nightmares, wouldn't begin to cover the deep well of guilt that dogged him every single day, and would only partially let her glimpse the face of
the man he'd been before. Or, making him feel more uncomfortable, the man she almost made him want to be again.

He turned off his light and sat for a while in the darkness, staring across the expanse of grounds at the brightly lit window that separated her from him. Why did she sleep with the light on? And if she wasn't sleeping, what kept such peace at bay?

And what about that unexpected flare of temper? She'd been right to be angry, and right to call him on it. It had just surprised him. He hadn't heard an angry note in her voice the entire time he'd been on the ranch.
When Corrie Stratton says it's true, it's a fact.

And how could he sit in a car with her the next morning and not drag her into his arms again and kiss her as senseless as she made him?

Nevertheless, shortly after dawn, after a hurried conversation with Chance and hearing that the marshal hadn't seen so much as a sign of the woman in black, he joined Corrie at the Bronco.

Her eyes skittered to his, only to veer off to his shoulder. She was wearing a thick woolen poncho and tall leather boots that somehow made her look like a kid dressed up in her mother's clothes, instead of the strong ranch woman the clothing implied. Her glorious hair was caught up in its usual twist-cum-ponytail and her darkened eyes told the story of a night as restless as his own.

“Would you mind driving this time?” she asked. “I want to watch out for her.”

He refrained from pointing out that she was a lot more familiar with the ranch roads, merely holding the passenger door open for her. She shied away from his
proffered hand and he pulled it back as if she'd slapped him.

Once behind the wheel, he all but ground the gears, forcing the car to do his frustrated bidding.

“This shouldn't take long. We'll either find her and talk her into coming back to the ranch, or have to send someone out to take her into town.” she said.

He was vaguely surprised she was talking to him at all and was grateful that she'd picked an utterly neutral topic. “Unless she was a ghost,” he said with a slight smile. “Chance didn't find her and he wasn't too far behind us.”

When she merely responded with a faint and wholly distant smile of her own, he asked, “Is there really an abandoned place there?”

“Really.”

“A ranch house?”

“Or something. It's mostly ruined walls and an old fireplace now, adobe, what's left of a couple of mud walls.”

Mack felt like grinding his teeth. He'd wanted neutral, had hoped for it. Now that he had it, he wanted to shatter it, break through her reserve and talk about the night before. He had to bite back an apology for his words following the kiss. He'd been speaking nothing but the truth, and yet, because he wanted her so badly it hurt, he'd done the one thing he hadn't wanted to and caused her pain.