IRONHEART Page 7

  Chapter 4

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  The whole damn county was going to hear about this, Sara thought unhappily as she waited for Gideon that evening. Being a deputy had brought her into contact with nearly everyone in the county, and there wasn't a restaurant or a diner for a hundred and fifty miles in any direction where she could be sure she wouldn't be recognized. By this time tomorrow, everyone would know that Sara Yates, who hadn't dated since George Cumberland had left her standing at the altar, had been seen dining in the company of a stranger.

  She could just imagine the curious looks, the speculation, the outright smirks she would get from some of the lowlife she had to deal with in her job. And come Sunday, the Bible Study Group would probably give her the third degree. Oh, Lord, why hadn't she refused to go out with him?

  This close to the mountains, the sun vanished early, leaving the ground in twilight while the sky remained bright overhead. There was still plenty of light to see by when Gideon's truck pulled into the yard, returning from his second trip to town that day, but the shadows that gave depth were gone.

  Taking Gideon at his word, she had dressed in fresh jeans, a chambray shirt and her denim jacket. Stubbornly she had refused to use even a dab of makeup, and she had plaited her hair into two braids that fell to her breasts. Nobody was ever going to say that she had gussied herself up for a man.

  Gideon climbed out of his truck and walked toward her across the hard-packed earth with surefooted ease and grace. Watching him, Sara suddenly imagined him walking along one of those incredibly narrow beams at those incredible heights. His every movement was controlled, she realized. Fine-tuned and accurate. Ready to deal with any unexpected obstacle or change of terrain. She had never seen a man move that way before, so fluidly and precisely.

  He reached the porch and stayed at the bottom of the two steps, looking up at her. "I really didn't think you'd be here," he said.

  Sara caught her breath as she unexpectedly saw all this from his point of view. She had been looking at it from her own perspective as a possibility for him to humiliate her, but she had utterly failed to consider just how much he had exposed himself to embarrassment. He had laid himself open by asking her out in the first place, then had done it again by coming to get her when he thought she might have fled.

  "It's just a date, Sara," he said quietly. Reaching out, he caught her cold fingers in his warm hand and tugged gently. "We'll eat and we'll talk, and maybe we'll start to become friends."

  Why? The question was there in her eyes as she looked at him and hesitated.

  Why? Damn it, he thought, it was too early for questions like that, all those complicating questions he'd managed to avoid for nearly twenty years. What he wanted, all he wanted, was a simple, uncomplicated evening in the presence of a woman who somehow turned him on. Maybe he would steal a kiss or two and get himself really hot and bothered, but that was as far as it would go. Ever. A woman her age ought to be able to handle that, surely. But, as he looked up into her uncertain gaze, he knew she was no ordinary woman, and her age had nothing to do with anything.

  "Okay," he said, and let go of her hand. Turning, he headed back to his truck. "Tell Zeke I'll see him in the morning."

  Sara felt again that painful splintering sensation, as if somewhere deep inside she knew she was making a mistake, even though her mind told her she was avoiding one. Watching Gideon walk away, she suddenly saw the long years stretching in front of her, years that would grow increasingly empty unless she filled them with friends.

  "Gideon?"

  He paused and looked back over his shoulder. "Ma'am?"

  "I thought we had a date."

  He turned to face her then, settling his hands on his hips and cocking his pelvis to one side. Sara felt her breath catch, and her hand suddenly tingled with the memory of his warm, dry touch.

  "We do," he said, "as long as you understand that I don't put out. One good-night kiss is as far as I'll go, Sara Yates."

  The laugh rose from the pit of her nervous stomach and popped from her lips like a bubble breaking the surface of a still pool. His remark had been outrageously absurd, so absurd she couldn't prevent the laughter. But she had also taken his point. She was leaping to conclusions, crossing bridges they might never reach. Taking too seriously what was only meant to be a little bit of fun.

  This time when he held out his hand, she stepped down from the porch and joined him.

  "It's a beautiful evening," he remarked as he handed her up into his truck. "Is that jacket going to be warm enough against the chill later?"

  "It'll be fine. It's lined."

  "How's Joey handling his incarceration?" he asked as he guided the truck down the rough, rutted private road.

  "Not well. He hasn't spoken a word to anyone since Zeke brought him in."

  Gideon glanced at her, giving her a slight smile. "That's a good sign, Sara. He's thinking, not shooting his mouth off. Give it time."

  "Is that how you acted when your grandfather got your attention?"

  He shook his head. "I think I was a lot further gone than Joey probably is."

  "Why?"

  "Well, from what I see, your brother comes from a pretty good home. I grew up in an orphanage until I was twelve, and I had a serious attitude problem."

  Sara turned on the seat to better see him. "Were you adopted finally?"

  "With that attitude? Not likely. About the time I turned eleven, Sister Mary Paul came to the orphanage. She was one of these energetic types who could hardly hold still and could never leave well enough alone. She was looking through old files one day and saw my birth certificate, which showed that my mother had been born in Oklahoma. She was off and running with that, and finally, more than a year later, tracked down my uncle, William Lightfoot. He came for me before the week was out."

  "Why—" Sara bit back the question before it fully emerged. It was none of her business, and he would tell her what he wanted her to know.

  "Why did it take him so damn long? You know, I used to ask myself that question. It was all explained to me, but at that age I didn't listen very well. I'm a hell of a lot older now, and I understand some things a hell of a lot better. My mother was disowned by my grandfather when she insisted on marrying my father, who was Anglo. The old man told her she was dead to her family, and she believed him."

  "How awful!"

  "Oh, it gets better yet. The marriage didn't work. When they split, my mother didn't go home to Oklahoma but took me to Atlanta instead. No one knew where she was, and I guess my grandfather was still insisting she was dead. By the time he got over that, she and I had both vanished into smoke."

  Sara had the worst urge to reach out and touch him. "What about your father?"

  Gideon's hands tightened around the wheel. This was the part of the subject he didn't want to discuss. Still couldn't discuss fairly. Too many years of hurt, anger and bitterness lay there. "Who knows?" he managed to say finally. "Who knows?"

  He turned them onto the county road and headed away from town.

  "Where are we going?"

  He glanced at her and smiled. "That's a surprise. It took a lot of ingenuity, I want you to know, to come up with someplace we could go where the whole county wouldn't be discussing the lady deputy's date."

  A laugh escaped her. "You've figured this place out."

  "I lived in a place like this once." Years ago, miles ago, when he'd been cocky and too angry to recognize the good things that he did have.

  The road wound higher into the mountains, and the air grew chillier as day faded even more. Sara knew there was nothing up this way for fifty or more miles, but she was content suddenly to let the evening unfold as it would.

  "You must have been so angry," she remarked.

  "I spent a lot of years being angry. Too many. My grandfather lived to regret what he'd done, and he made it up to me by straightening me out when everybody else gave up. My uncle loved me like a son. Still does. But I'll admit, understanding has been a lo
ng time in coming."

  He pulled off the highway on a narrow track Sara recognized well. It led to a small glade through which a mountain brook tumbled and where, at this time of year, wildflowers made a thick carpet.

  "It's your land," he remarked. "I guess you can throw us off if you want to."

  "Why would I want to? This is my favorite place. How did you ever find it?"

  He flashed her a smile. "An old Shoshone whispered in my ear."

  Gideon Ironheart was a truly exceptional man, Sara thought as he parked the truck. He just kept right on shattering all her expectations.

  Since he wouldn't let her help him, she wandered in the glade, admiring the Indian paintbrush blooms that seemed to glow in the twilight like tiny fires. The brook tumbled wildly over rocks, hissing and splashing with spring vigor, still icy cold from the snowfields that had given it birth.

  "Ready for supper?" He had to raise his voice a little to be heard over the noisy rush of the water.

  Sara turned to him with a smile. "I'm famished." And she was. Her nerves had settled down finally, probably because he had gone to the trouble of bringing her to her favorite spot on earth.

  And then she looked beyond him and gasped with pleasure. The darkening glade had become a fairy-tale setting. He had lit a campfire, and beside it dinner had been laid out on a colorful blanket. She had expected paper plates, but not champagne served in plastic goblets. She hadn't expected to see fresh strawberries heaped in a bowl, or that he would actually be planning to cook over the fire. She had anticipated sandwiches, or cold chicken from Maude's, not T-bones freshly cooked and foil-wrapped potatoes baking in the fire.

  Gideon liked the expression on her face as she surveyed his efforts. She looked … enchanted. Until this very moment he would have sworn the expression could have appeared only on the face of a five-year-old on Christmas morning. And it was the first time in all his forty-one years that he had ever brought that look to someone's face.

  Uncomfortable suddenly, he cleared his throat. "Grab a seat," he said roughly. Damn, what was so special about a stupid picnic? "Eat some strawberries. It'll be a while before those potatoes are done."

  A little startled by his sudden gruffness, Sara glanced at him but couldn't tell what had disturbed him. Forcing herself to shrug it away, she sat cross-legged on the blanket and reached for a strawberry. "This is fabulous," she told him sincerely.

  "It's nothing." He squatted and poked at the potatoes. "I travel a lot, because I have to go where the work is, and when I'm on the road, if the weather's good, I like to camp out and cook over an open fire."

  "I would have thought there would be enough work to keep you in one major city."

  He shook his head. "It comes and goes. And when you top off a job, there may not be another one ready to start just then. Guys with families pretty much stay put, but a lot of us travel like Gypsies. There's always another job, another thrill, another big one over the horizon." He sent her an almost amused look. "You can finish a skyscraper one day and the next start building a bridge. Or maybe you can work on a nuclear power plant. Or you can work on a radio telescope, or the launch tower at Cape Kennedy, or a missile silo … just all kinds of opportunity out there if you know how to walk the iron."

  Sara popped the last of a strawberry into her mouth and then drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. "You must have seen all kinds of things."

  "I've seen a lot of the country," he agreed easily. "And a lot of interstate highway."

  "I've never even left Wyoming," Sara admitted.

  "I don't see any reason to leave. Seems like you've got everything that matters right here, and I don't recommend city life. When I was a lot younger, I thought it was exciting, but these days…" He shrugged. "It just irritates the hell out of me."

  He lay back on the blanket, propping himself up on one elbow to keep an eye on the fire. From time to time he glanced at Sara and smiled, but she was grateful that he didn't look steadily at her. She was far more comfortable with the feeling that he was only casually aware of her.

  Because she was not casually aware of him. There was nothing at all casual about the way her gaze kept returning to his long powerful limbs, his broad chest, his long dark hair. Something about him kept pricking her with a sense of familiarity, but there was nothing familiar about the heat he stirred in her. Her blood felt as if it were turning to warm molasses, and she was developing a pulsebeat in the most unusual place.

  Frightened, she tried to look away, to calm herself and her own treasonous body, but her eyes just wouldn't behave. He was a harsh, hard-looking man. His flowing black hair only added to the warriorlike power of him. It didn't matter that he might never have fought in a battle. He had been born to be a warrior, and while modern times had made him into something else, there was no doubt he had everything he needed to be one.

  So why, Sara asked herself uncertainly, had this hard, harsh, experienced man, who was at least a decade older than she, asked her to spend this evening with him? Because she turned him on? That was what he had said, and it was probably the last thing she could really believe.

  He looked so utterly relaxed lying there, sipping champagne from a plastic goblet too small for his large hand. The strawberries were huge, but he popped them whole into his mouth as he ate them. He couldn't possibly lie there eating and drinking if he felt one-tenth of the arousal he elicited in her just by being there.

  And thinking about those things was making her condition worse. Desperately, she forced herself to speak.

  "You told Jeff you're on vacation."

  He glanced at her. "Yep. A long vacation. I'm … getting too old to connect anymore."

  "Too old? You?" The thought was stunning. She had never seen a man more in his prime.

  "Most connectors change to something easier by the time they hit thirty. It's a young man's job, and I've lasted longer than most by far."

  "How old are you?"

  "Forty-one."

  Forty-one. Thirteen years her senior. He couldn't possibly be interested in someone her age. Lord, he must look at her and see a child. He was up to something, but she couldn't imagine what in the world it could possibly be. "What's so hard about connecting? I mean, what exactly do you do?"

  He gave her a half smile. "Well, on an average morning I'll shinny up a few columns, guide a few ten- or twenty-ton beams or headers into place, line them up by levering them with a two-foot-long connecting rod or hammering with a sixteen-pound hammer, and drive a bunch of bolts home. In between I'll do my tightrope walk along the headers and beams with fifty pounds of tools strapped to my waist. It's physical, it's wearing, and you need to be absolutely sure in everything you do. Finally…" His voice trailed off, and he looked away briefly. "Finally you realize you're not as fast as you used to be. Not as sure. Not quite as strong or enduring. A smart man comes down then. Before he falls down."

  Sara was troubled by some indefinable sadness in his expression. "I suppose," she said softly, "that people do fall."

  "Oh, yeah," he said quietly. "People fall."

  He sat up suddenly and reached for a long-handled fork. Prodding the potatoes baking in the fire, he tested their doneness. "Soon," he said a moment later. "More champagne?"

  Sara shook her head. "Thanks, but I don't have any head for alcohol."

  He smiled then, an expression that creased the corners of his hard eyes in the most attractive way. "Time to break out the soft drinks, huh?"

  He had an ice chest full of them, and a selection nearly as good as the supermarket's. Sara felt an urge to laugh again. Really, he was the most surprising man!

  He took other things from the ice chest: a lettuce salad in a clear plastic bowl that was chock-full of good stuff like cucumbers and tomatoes. Two different bottled dressings. Another foil-wrapped package that he set near the fire.

  From his truck he brought a rack on legs and set it directly over the fire, turning it into a barbecue. Then he put the steaks on to cook, and the m
ost delicious aromas filled the glade.

  "You're prepared for just about everything," Sara remarked.

  "I just do this a lot, mainly by myself."

  They dined on perfectly cooked T-bones, broccoli that had been steamed in foil, baked potatoes with sour cream, and the crispy salad that he admitted he'd coaxed Maude Bleaker, of Maude's diner, into preparing for him. When they finished, he burned what trash would burn and stuffed the rest into a garbage bag for later disposal.

  And then there was no longer the excuse of a meal to eat to keep them lingering by the fire. Gideon showed no sign of wanting to leave, and Sara grew quietly anxious, wondering what came next. Her entire experience of dating had been with George, when they had both been little more than children. Never had George gotten any more forward with her than a few careful kisses. Gideon Ironheart, however, was a man, and she was sure he didn't play children's games.

  "You're getting tense, Sara," he said. The low rumble of his voice held a teasing note. "I told you, I don't put out, so quit thinking about pouncing."

  But this time she couldn't laugh. This time she could only feel embarrassed and achy, and certain that he must see every humiliating longing she'd ever tried to hide from herself.

  "C'mere, Mouse," he said suddenly, his voice a rough whisper.

  Before she knew what was happening, he had her stretched out on her side facing the fire and he was pressed warmly to her back. One arm settled around her waist, and the other pillowed her head. Her heart started beating double time as nervousness battled with need. She ought to get up right now, she thought, but it felt so incredibly good to be held like this. Surely this couldn't hurt?

  She had totally forgotten these sensations, she realized. Had forgotten the tentative, nervous thrill of wondering what would happen next. Had forgotten the warm, edgy satisfaction that came from being held. Had forgotten that the brush of old denim against skin could be so pleasant, or that the subtle scents of a man could be so good.

  "There," he said. "It's a beautiful campfire and a beautiful night, and they deserve to be enjoyed. That's all we're here for—the fire and the night."