Heart Of The Eagle

“It’s stuffy in here. I want to go outside.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

The April sun was weak but welcome on her face as they crossed the muddy yard between the horse and cow barns. Dal led Jim to a pipe-fenced paddock and placed both elbows on the pipe. The breeze was inconstant, occasionally lifting strands of her hair across her jacketed shoulders. For no identifiable reason, Dal felt an island of momentary peace when Jim Tremain hitched up his foot onto the lowest pipe of the fence. Their elbows almost touched.

“I love coming out here,” she confided softly. The paddock contained four brood mares and their newborn foals.

Jim glanced at her. “The babies?”

She nodded, a tremulous smile lifting the corners of her mouth. “The babies,” she agreed. “When Rafe took over the operation of the Triple K eight years ago, he replaced the quarter horses with Arabians. They’re smaller, but they have more endurance and are as tough as the mustangs that cross our land.”

“They’re like you, then, doctor.”

Dal turned, perplexed by the intimate tone of his voice. She trembled beneath the smile that reached his clear brown eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re as beautiful as they are and you have an inner core of endurance that will see you through.”

She laughed, but it was a hollow sound filled with pain. “Oh? And just where did you gain such insight, Mr. Tremain?”

His smile broadened as he held her confused gaze. “My mother. She was a full-blooded Navaho. She was the one who taught me to listen to my heart and not my head. Call it a sixth sense. I just feel that when the going gets rough, you’re there with commensurate strength to survive and become stronger because of the experience.”

Warmth flowed through Dal, dissolving the icy cold fist in the pit of her stomach. She stood beneath Jim’s gentle inspection, lost in the smoldering gold of his eyes, seeing much and unable to decipher all that he said with them. Dal felt breathless and tore her gaze from his, staring at the brood mares instead.

“Right now, Jim,” she said in a whisper, “I’m at the end of my rope emotionally. I won’t bore you with the travesty of my marriage to Jack Gordon. The past two years of hell have worn me down. I once thought I had a backbone of steel like the rest of the Kincaids, but I don’t. Not anymore. I’m raw. I can’t take too much emotionally or I’ll crack and I know it.”

She removed her elbows from the pipe and stood, hands buried deep in the pockets of her jacket as she looked up at him. The brim of his hat shaded his eyes and hid his reaction to her admission. “That’s why I’m here at the family ranch, Jim. I’m trying to patch myself together so I can go back out in the world and live again.”

Jim raised his hand, taking a strand of hair from her cheek and easing it behind her delicate ear. His voice was thick with emotion when he finally spoke. “If I told you I’d take care of you through this problem we’ve got with Gordon, would you believe me?”

Chapter Two

Hot scalding tears pricked the backs of Dal’s eyes as she stood looking up at Jim. His image blurred and she turned away, walking a few paces, her back to him.

Jim stared at her back, noting the way her shoulders were tensed and drawn up. He had watched her vulnerable eyes darken with a torture known only to herself and had seen her full, generous mouth draw into a line of anguish. What had happened in her marriage to tear her apart like this? Swallowing hard, he waited, his senses cautioning him that if he were to approach her too soon or try in some way to comfort her, she would turn on him. Trust, his senses screamed at him; she trusts no one. No man. He searched his memory for facts regarding Jack Gordon: he was an entrepreneur in the business of birds, capturing rare or colorful species from jungles around the world and selling them to zoos or private patrons. In those six years of marriage, had Gordon used Dal to sharpen his own education and utilized her knowledge to enhance his lucrative, international business?

Dal struggled to force down the lid on the caldrons of emotion that Jim Tremain had torn lose with his one touch. He had shaken her to the core. He wanted to use her just as Jack had at the end of their once happy marriage. Jim was even more dangerous because he knew how to read her and get what he wanted. Jack’s methods were always obvious once he had allowed material goods and stature become the center of importance to him. Jim knew that a simple gesture, such as placing a strand of hair behind her ear, would catch her off guard and place her in a more vulnerable position. Anger warred with a heart that said: he did it out of care, not because he wanted to use you. Pressing her fingers to her temples, Dal shut her eyes tightly for a moment, willing all her anger, frustration and pain back into a tightly lidded place in her heart.

She turned, her shoulders sagging as she stared at Jim. As much as she tried, Dal could not find one shred of selfishness in his face. If anything, she was screamingly aware of the tender light that burned in his golden eyes, the laugh lines at their corners and the way his mouth was pursed. Oh God, no! she cried inwardly. She had learned to take a secondary role to Jack’s aims. But she had no defense against a man who showed her kindness. It’s all a sham, her mind screamed. He wants something from you, just like Jack did. Only he’s going to take it from you a different way. Jack wanted your knowledge. Jim wants the same thing.

Dal had not realized that two paths of tears had streaked down her cheeks as she stood staring at him. It was only when she saw his eyes darken and his mouth part in protest that she became aware of why he was reacting. Quickly wiping the telltale signs away, Dal lifted her head, her azure eyes darkened with confusion.

“No, I wouldn’t believe that you or anyone could protect me from Jack. Not now. Not ever,” she forced out in a low, quavering tone.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Dal looked blindly toward the paddock, unable to hold his understanding gaze. Jim was dangerous to her and she wanted to run. Run and hide. “I told you, I’m in no shape to help anyone. Not even myself.”

Jim moved closer, but not close enough to frighten her into fleeing. She reminded him vividly of a hunted deer standing tautly before him, an almost imperceptible quiver surrounding her. “My mother always told me tears were healing. I see nothing wrong with them.”

She snapped her head to the left, glaring at him. “Part of your half-breed heritage, no doubt.”

Jim’s mouth thinned as he studied her in that glacial moment. Half-breed. The word made his mouth go bitter with the taste of his past. He struggled with his anger toward her and then surmounted it. She had hurled the insult at him to get him to stop pressuring her. He drew the cowboy hat down a little lower on his brow, forcing a one-cornered smile. “My half-breed status has gotten me out of more trouble than in,” he countered mildly.

“How? By pushing papers in an office for the government!”

Jim leaned languidly against the pipe railing, studying the foals, who were now frolicking around their mothers after their recent meal. “My boss complains I’m not there enough to push those papers around. Usually, I’m in the field with my people.” His gaze moved to her. “I’d rather have the sky for a ceiling and a good horse under me instead of sitting at a desk. How about you? Which do you prefer?”

Dal frowned and licked her lips in a nervous gesture. He was cunning. He had diffused her attack and managed to steer the entire matter into an innocuous but important investigation of her as a person. “I’m sure you have a file on me in your office, Mr. Tremain. There’s little I care to add to that.”

“We’re not the FBI, doctor. The file I have on you is about your educational background, not your personal life.” He scowled. “But if you don’t allow me to enlist your help on this project, the FBI will come in. I don’t think you or your family will want that. It’s my opinion that because I and my people know the mountains and habitats, we stand a much better chance of netting the poachers than the FBI will.”

Dal clamped her lips together, refusing to be drawn into his soft banter. She liked his voice. It reminded her of a cat’s roughened tongue licking her hand, and sent delicious prickles of pleasure through her. She tried to squash all those feelings. “I’ll let my brother Rafe decide what’s going to happen, Mr. Tremain. It’s his ranch. I’m only a guest here.”

“All right,” he said slowly. “It will be necessary to talk to him, anyway. He’s as much a part of this plan as you are.”

“Rafe will be back tomorrow morning. He had business in Denver.”

“Maybe you can tell me where there might be a motel around here?”

Dal gave him a brief glance. He looked more like a wrangler than a government official. Cowboys had their own code and could be trusted. Jack was a civilian. An outsider. But Jim Tremain wasn’t. “There isn’t a motel within sixty miles of our ranch.”

“I see….”

Guilt twinged in her and Dal was unable to maintain that barrier of anger toward him. She could see his mind working beyond those lion-like eyes, and she watched as he rested his long, tapered fingers on his slender hips. She could discern the Indian blood in him by the sharp planed features of his face and his sun-darkened flesh. Another shaft of guilt struck her: she had called him a half-breed. God, what was wrong with her? She never threw prejudiced comments like that at anyone.

“There’s no sense in you driving all the way back to Denver just to come here again tomorrow morning,” she heard herself say. “I’ll get Millie to fix up one of the spare bedrooms and you can stay here tonight.”

Jim’s eyes glimmered with some undefined emotion as he met and held her nervous gaze. “That’s more than kind of you, doctor. Thank you.” So, he thought, there was ground for them to work on after all; he hadn’t totally destroyed the possibility of their combining their expertise on the poaching problem.

Shoving her hands in the pockets of her jacket, Dal stared down at the muddy earth. “It’s nothing,” she muttered, walking past him. “Let me tell Millie you’ll be staying.”

He watched her walk between the barns and knit his black brows. She was scared of him. As a man? Or as a government emissary? The Kincaids had a sterling reputation of having worked closely with conservation officials in the past on a number of wildlife projects. As Jim ambled around the paddocks, eyeing the horseflesh in each, he narrowed down Dal’s reaction to her distrust of him as a man. That cut down the chances of her agreeing to help him.

Sunlight bathed the valley as the clouds parted, slats shining across the lush land of the Triple K. Jim watched as a group of wranglers coaxed a herd of about a hundred Herefords out of a paddock, heading them in the direction of some upper pasture. He inhaled the crisp spring air, glad to be out of the office and in the field again. And then a rueful smile split his harsh features. Would “guard dog” Millie allow him to stay at the ranch overnight?

* * *

“What do you mean he’s stayin’, Dal?” Millie lifted her head, her chin jutting out stubbornly.

Dal walked farther into the spacious kitchen that was Millie’s territory. The red-tiled floor gleamed from a recent waxing, giving the cedar walls even more warmth. She poured herself a glass of water and leaned against the counter. Millie resumed folding the bread dough on the table, flour spotting her plump arms.

“He wants to talk to Rafe about poachers. I didn’t have the heart to make him drive sixty miles to a motel and then come all the way back tomorrow morning.”

“You know Rafe doesn’t like strangers about,” Millie chided gruffly.

“I know….”

Millie straightened, put the dough into a bread pan and then transferred it to the countertop. “Still,” she muttered, moving back to the table to begin folding another batch of dough, “he doesn’t seem all that bad.”