CHAPTER 6

As the others melted away, leaving only Gina and Teo behind, Teo stared after the Gordons with a bemused expression.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

His gaze flicked to hers; then he shrugged as if embarrassed. “Is that normal for a dad and a son?”

“That?”

“The shoving and the teasing, the knocking on the head.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Gina answered. “I’m not a boy.”

“Mmm,” he said, the comment sounding both agreeable and slightly sexy. But then everything about him was slightly sexy.

And Gina was losing her mind.

“You didn’t shove and tease your dad?”

“I didn’t have a dad.”

“Everyone has a dad.”

“Right.” He shuffled his feet, peered at the ground. “I never knew my dad. Not even his name.”

“Well, that would suck.” She might have lost her parents, but at least she’d known them.

“Can we get some quiet?” The shout of an A—which one Gina had no idea and didn’t care—split the night. Gina opened her mouth to point out that shouting wasn’t quiet, then snapped it shut again.

“The customer is always right,” she muttered, and Teo laughed, then winced as the sound carried across the chill darkness.

“Sheesh!” the other A shouted.

“Sorry,” Teo called, then lowered his voice. “I guess I’d better—”

“You want to come to my tent?”

Teo’s eyes, nearly black in the moonlight, widened. Her question had sounded like an invitation for more than conversation.

“I meant walk to my tent. So a bear doesn’t get me.”

“Of course.” He spread his hand in an “after you” gesture better suited to someone twice their age. Why she found it charming Gina couldn’t say. Maybe because she found everything about him charming.

And sexy.

Hell.

No bopping the customers, she reminded herself. It didn’t do much good.

They reached her tent, pitched on the outskirts of the circle, several yards from the others. Far enough away that any low-voiced conversation shouldn’t carry.

Gina liked to be nearer the trees, away from the guests—especially after a day like today. Or guests like the As.

“Is this…” Teo indicated the two of them, “going to get you in trouble with McCord?”

Gina frowned. “I’m not following.” She felt like she’d missed an entire conversation somewhere. When Teo continued, she understood that she had.

“If I were your boyfriend I wouldn’t like you spending time alone in the dark with another guy.”

“Boyfriend? Jase?” Gina laughed. “He’s like my brother.”

“No.” Teo’s eyes met hers. “He’s not.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Or he is,” Teo muttered. “He told me that he’d end me if I touched you.”

“He what?” Gina’s voice was full of laughter, but as she continued to watch Teo’s face the laughter died.

He was telling the truth.

“I don’t know why he’d say that,” Gina murmured. “I’m embarrassed.”

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“That he’d assume you were interested in me.” She glanced at her hands. “Guys aren’t usually.” Teo snorted, and she lifted her gaze. “Really. I’m not…”

She tried to find a word that would explain the situation without making her appear the incredible loser she must be, since few men had ever wanted to see her more than once. All she could come up with was—

“Right.”

His exquisite eyes widened behind his glasses, and Gina heard what she’d said. She’d just admitted her most secret fear—that losing her parents as she had, combined with those hours she and Jase had been buried beneath the earth, had broken her in some indefinable way. Obviously men sensed this and turned away from her as quickly as they could.

So … what was wrong with Teo? Why did he continue to hang around? Why did he stare at her as if he thought she was fascinating? Why did he listen to her as if he thought she had something to say?

“You think there’s something wrong with you?” he asked.

“Never mind.” She’d never told anyone that, not even Jase. She’d wanted to seem like less of a loser, but instead she only looked like more of one.

“I do mind.” Teo’s eyes flashed. “How can you think such a thing?”

“I’m not feminine or witty. I can’t carry on a conversation like the As.”

“Neither one of them has ever carried on a conversation with anyone but themselves.”

“I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she blurted. “First dates, yes. Second?” She shook her head.

“Probably because McCord tells everyone he’ll end them.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

Teo’s lips tightened, as if he wanted to argue; then he sighed. “He was right to be worried.”

“Worried?” she echoed.

For an instant she thought Teo might kiss her and oh, how she wanted him to. To hell with the no-bopping-the-customers rule.

Suddenly he looked down and stepped back. “I’ll let you get some rest.”

He headed for his tent, leaving Gina to stare after him and wonder, yet again, what she had done.

*   *   *

He had to tell Gina the truth. About who he was, why he was here. Before he did something stupid like kiss her, touch her, take her. If he did that, how would he ever be able to explain who he was afterward?

Matt ducked into his tent, kicked off his boots, and crawled into his bedroll. He figured he’d lie awake, thinking of her; instead, he’d barely closed his eyes and he was dreaming.

Another tent, one of many he and his mother had shared. There Nora pored over her papers, scribbling notes, talking to herself. Matt, perhaps eight, maybe ten, lay on the cot in the corner, pretending to study math but in reality studying her as she translated Aztec to English. He did that so often that by the time she’d decided to teach him the language he already knew.

“Time for bed, mi hijo.”

His mother shut her books, put away her papers, and joined him on the cot. As she did every night, she told Matt the story she’d uncovered, the one that kept them searching long past the point when most others would have given up.

“One great army marched farther north than any other. And though the People of the Sun were the greatest warriors ever known, they met strong resistance, and they lost more of their own than ever before.”

Matt snuggled under the covers. He might hear this tale every single night, but it was always exciting. Because it was her story and had, through the constant telling of it, become theirs. He wondered if he could even sleep if he didn’t first become drowsy listening to the familiar cadence of the words.

“However,” his mother continued in the slightly hoarse voice that was a mark of the Mecates, “the Aztecs, being Aztecs, weren’t going to just turn around and go home.”

“No,” Matt said, his voice very much like hers even then. “They wouldn’t run; they’d never hide.”

She ran her hand over his overly long, tousled dark hair that was but a shade lighter than hers. “That’s right, Teo de mio. Instead, they brought forth their most powerful warrior—a sorcerer who struck fear into the hearts he would soon devour—and he mowed through the natives like a cuetlachtli.”

“A ravenous wolf!” Matt translated.

As if in answer to Nora’s tale, or perhaps Matt’s words, a distant, triumphant howl pierced the night. However, neither the youthful Teo nor the yet youthful and alive Nora reacted to the call, which made the watching, dreaming Matt stir. Where was that sound coming from?

Here or there? Then or now?

“But something went wrong.” Dream Teo sat up on his cot, excited over this part of the story. Because it was a mystery and he loved a good mystery as much as his mother.

“Yes, something went wrong. Because even though this…” She searched for the perfect word.

“Superwarrior!” Matt announced.

She smiled at him with such love the adult Matt swallowed the lump that formed in his throat, even in his sleep. No one had ever loved him like that since.

“Yes. But even though this superwarrior had powers beyond imagination, in the end he was buried there.” She pushed Matt gently back onto his bed. “And where will we find him, mi hijo?”

“‘Where the tree of life springs from a land awash with the blood of the sun,’” he recited.

One of several phrases she had translated from the Aztec writings of the Mecates. Gibberish until you saw a photo of a place where it just might make sense.

There’d been other translations. Other places. Other pictures, legends, rumors. But none of them had ever seemed as right as that one.

They’d searched. Years upon years. Miles upon miles. Nora wasn’t easily dissuaded. She read travel magazines, collected tales of the weird, haunted libraries and secondhand bookstores. She combed through everything she could find that held photos or drawings of the Southwest. She’d found two sites that way. But the true boon to her research had been the Internet.

There she’d been able to discover the next three sites that matched her translations by searching through travelogues and touristy vacation photos. Unfortunately, those pictures, some no better than fading Polaroids of trips taken by families in DeSotos, did not help to silence her naysayers when site after site produced only more dirt.

But Nora remained determined. She had believed in that superwarrior, and her son had believed, too.

Until he didn’t.

Her voice whispered out of the darkness: Find the truth. For me, Teo de mio.

My Teo. Teo mine. The translation was actually Teo of mine, but his mother translated Spanish as creatively as the academic world believed she translated Aztec.

Assholes.

Matt jerked awake. Had he said that out loud? Perhaps. Remembering how Nora’s so-called colleagues had treated her could still make him furious. Probably because they treated him the same way.

And there was the added guilt of how he had treated her. Refusing to go along on that final dig. Telling her she needed to grow up and face facts instead of continuing to believe in a fantasy long past the point of sanity.

Matt pushed on his forehead, wishing he could make the echo of his words go away. The only way he could atone for his lack of faith was to prove his mother’s theory. He needed to remember that. But, right now, it was so difficult for him to remember anything but Gina.

Matt sat up, gathering his dream-damp hair into a tidier queue. He’d been distracted by Gina, this place, the others, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted anymore. He had to find that tree that seemed to erupt from the earth. The one that turned as red as blood beneath the rays of the sun.

He dug through his pack, then pulled out the photo that had brought him to Nahua Springs Ranch. It was better than most. No Polaroid this time, not even an Instamatic. Whoever had taken it had known what they were doing, and since coming here Matt knew just who that someone was.

He’d go to her now, tell her the truth, make this journey theirs instead of his. Excitement flowed through Matt at the thought. He got dressed, shoved the copy into his pocket, then stepped into the chilly darkness that would soon give way to the dawn.

The sky had just begun to lighten. Not a hint of color yet, only that fuzzy blue-gray haze that seemed to buzz with the approach of the sun.

The fire was banked, the camp completely silent. Even the horses seemed to hold their breath. Matt knew he was.

A tent flap burst open just as the first rays of pink split the blue. A shadow trod softly in the smoky morn, moving past the horses, which now breathed and stomped and snorted again, and paused about fifty yards away, face tilted to greet the coming dawn.

*   *   *

Every morning on the trail, Gina rose before everyone else. It wasn’t hard. In all her years of leading tours at Nahua Springs Ranch, she’d never once gotten up later than a single guest.

Gina enjoyed watching the sun rise. It centered her for the day, made her remember why she was here, why she worked so hard.

The only thing that mattered was this place.

“Am I interrupting?”

Gina tensed, but when she recognized the voice she relaxed. Even though she’d thought she’d come out here to be alone, she realized now that she’d come to be with him.

“No.” She turned, smiling at the sight of Teo, still sleepy and tousled. He’d tried to tame his hair by tying it back, but it was still kind of a mess. He’d obviously spent a very rough night. She wondered if he’d spent it thinking of her.

“Wanna watch the sun come up?” she asked.

When he didn’t move she offered her hand, and as if he’d been doing it all his life he took it. He seemed to understand the need for silence. He seemed to share her awe of the almost mystical beauty in this daily birth of the sun.

People could fail you—parents, friends, lovers, employers, employees. Hell, you could fail yourself.

Banks failed. Crops failed. Marriages failed.

But the sun … that never failed. Even if the sky was shrouded in cobalt-colored clouds, the sun was always there, just beneath, waiting to burst free. The least Gina could do was greet it.

Together they stood—hands clasped, reverent silence shared—until the show ended. Gina drew a breath as Teo released one.

“Thank you,” he said, the wonder in his voice revealing that she hadn’t been mistaken. He’d understood exactly what this was.

The sharing of a part of her few others ever saw.

She nodded, acknowledging his thanks, for a moment unable to speak. They still held hands. She didn’t want to let go. There was just something about him that called to her.

“The sun,” she finally managed, “it’s—”

“Magic,” he finished. “Brilliant and beautiful, different but always the same. A mystery and an anchor.”

Could he read her mind, her heart and soul? No wonder she couldn’t let go of him.

Teo squeezed her hand, lips curving, eyes behind the lenses of his glasses almost catlike in the morning light. “You know the Aztecs worshiped the sun.” He turned his face back to its glow. “I can see why.”

Aztecs. What was it about the Aztecs that made her kind of squirrelly?

A howl split the morning stillness, pulling their attention from both the sky and each other. Any question about long-dead sun-worshiping Indians fled Gina’s mind as she tilted her head and listened.

Giiiiiiii-naaaaaaa!

“I thought wolves stopped howling at dawn,” Teo murmured.

She started, removing her hand from his, then shaking her head in an attempt to make her ears stop hearing what it was not possible to hear. If that howl had actually sounded like her name, Teo would have said so.

“They … uh…” She paused, took a breath, pleased when it didn’t quiver, then continued. “They howl to find one another, announce a kill, freak people out. The time has little to do with it.”

“What about howling at the moon?”

“Myth. Since they’re nocturnal hunters, most of their howling’s done at night, under that moon, which is probably where the idea came from. Sure, you hear them less in the daylight, but you see them less, too. They gotta sleep sometime.”

“You got a big wolf problem here?”

Gina glanced at him. There was no reason not to tell the truth.

“There aren’t any wolves here at all,” she said.

He laughed. “Sure there aren’t. Wink.” He winked. “Wink. Don’t worry, Gina; I won’t go running back to Arizona if I see a wolf, or even a bear.”

“You won’t see a wolf.” She glanced over her shoulder at the camp. “No one ever has.”

“But—” His eyes clouded with confusion, darkening them to the shade of last year’s moss. “I just heard them.”

“Those howls are some weird phenomenon. The wind through the rocks, the mountains, the trees. No one knows. We’ve looked for wolves; we’ve never found them.”

“Maybe you just … haven’t found them?”

He obviously knew very little about wolves. “If there were wolves, we’d see spoor. Traces of kills. We’d lose a horse once in a while. They’re predators. There’s a reason the ranchers hate them.”

“Why haven’t I heard about this?”

Gina tilted her head. “Why would you?”

“No reason,” he said quickly. “It’s just odd. Isn’t it?”

Very. But she wasn’t going to admit that, for the same reason she hadn’t advertised the fact. The whole thing was a little creepy. Not the best PR. If you wanted to pay top dollar for a relaxing trip to a ranch, you didn’t want to go to one with spooky un–wolf howls that couldn’t be explained.

Isaac had even had some friend of his from the war—the Big One, WW 2—who supposedly knew everything there was to know about wolves of all kinds come and study the place. And then that guy had called in his granddaughter, some hotshot “ologist.” Zoologist? Biologist? Gina couldn’t remember. Neither one of them had any explanation for why the wolves gave Nahua Springs such a wide berth.

“The ranchers around here are thrilled,” Gina continued. “Haven’t lost a foal to a wolf in forever.”

Literally.

“Hmm,” Teo murmured, his gaze on the trees.

“You like wolves or something?” she asked.

People did. Usually city people. Those who lived in the West and dealt with wolves loathed them. Try to discuss the success of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone with a rancher from the area and you’d be lucky to come away with only one black eye.

“Sure,” Teo said. “They’re pretty.”

Gina wouldn’t know. She’d only seen them in movies. Where they tended to be toothy, shape-shifting, monster-type wolves and not the noble beasts of a Robert Bateman painting.

“I’ll find you a bear.” She patted his hand. “You’ll love it.”

He tangled their fingers together before she could pull away, then rubbed his thumb over the base of hers, causing a now-familiar shimmy in her stomach. “I’m sure I will.”

She lifted her gaze from their joined hands to his face. His eyes, now the shade of corroded copper, captured hers. She could look into them for years and never have them appear the same shade twice. It was fascinating. He was fascinating.

“Love it,” he said.

She blinked, trying to remember what they were discussing.

Oh yeah. Bears.

Whoopee.

No wonder no man had ever asked her on a second date if bears were the extent of her conversation. Her mind groped for something clever to say, but she came up empty. She knew horses, the ranch. That was it. She couldn’t help it.

“Maybe—” Gina began, but she never finished the sentence, and later, after all that happened next, she wouldn’t want to.

“You smell like…” He lifted his free hand to her hair, not yet braided and still trailing down her back to her waist. “Trees.”

“That’s probably just the trees,” she murmured, captured forever by those eyes.

“Nah,” he said, and kissed her.

She’d been kissed before; she was certain she had. But the instant Teo’s mouth touched hers she couldn’t recall a single one because she knew in that instant that this was the one.

The kiss. The moment. The man. How could that be?

She only knew that it was.

He tasted of mint—toothpaste no doubt, yet exotic nevertheless. He was warmth amid the chill. Solid in a world that just wasn’t.

His tongue traced her lips. What should have tickled instead electrified. Her heart thundered—a rapid, steady rhythm with the cadence of hoofbeats—and her ears buzzed, almost like the ground was shaking or the air had filled with bees.

The world tilted; everything changed. She had to reach for something that might steady it, steady her.

Her fingers curled around his biceps. They flexed at the touch, bulging against her palms.

She wanted to lick his skin, see if it tasted of the oranges she smelled. Instead, she licked his teeth, his lip, his tongue, and his biceps flexed again as he grasped her hips and held on.

Her heart beat louder but slower, which made no sense; she felt it fluttering so fast and so hard it threatened to burst from her chest, yet that sound in her ears—buzzzzzz—had not only slowed but seemed to come closer. And how could it be any closer than this?

She became distracted by something else that pulsed. Lower, against her stomach, hard and full, with a beat that called to her own—bump-bump—definitely a heart and not hooves.

Gina’s ears sharpened. The buzzing had stopped.

Was she dead?

She lifted her lips. His eyes behind the slightly askew glasses—had she done that? She couldn’t recall—had gone the shade of those trees he insisted she smelled like. He smiled—a goofy, happy smile that made her smile, too. She was lifting her mouth for another kiss—it seemed a shame to waste one more second of her life not kissing him—and someone cleared his throat.

Gina closed her eyes. Hell. Were the others awake? Were they even now watching her and Teo, waiting to ruin magic more dazzling than the sun?

Except Gina still felt as if she were floating. Even the As weren’t going to be able to bring her down. She didn’t think anyone could.

She was wrong.

“Dr. Mecate.” Jase’s voice ruptured the once-perfect morning. “You sure do work fast.”