Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material (25 page)

Twenty-five

A
S THE DAYS
passed and Hope’s money poured in an unending stream down the drilling hole, softer rock gave way to harder and then to softer again. When Rio took a core of the new layer and opened it, his heart leaped when he felt the gritty texture of the sandstone. It was damp, tantalizing with a whisper of water.

He went back to drilling with renewed energy. The layer of sandstone stayed damp but no more, as though the years had leached all except a shadow of water from the rock.

When he drilled through to a new layer, it was dry.

No matter how many times the engine broke down or how many cores came up dry, Rio said nothing, did nothing except work even harder. His eyes were black and his mouth was bracketed by grim lines of exhaustion and determination.

The teenager who had come from Salt Lake to help him worked with the tireless strength of youth. Mason worked with the unflinching endurance of a man who knew his own limits and hadn’t yet reached them.

Every afternoon Hope came to them, bringing supplies and a smile. Except once. One day she couldn’t smile.

That was the day she watched men load up every last head of stock on the ranch except Storm Walker. She only kept the stallion because she had promised him to Rio as a sire. She had sold the remaining range cattle the first week of January. They had already been trucked off to new pastures, places where water wasn’t more precious than diamonds.

Mason didn’t know about any of the sales. Hope made sure of it. No trucks came or went from the ranch except during the long hours when Mason was at the drill site.

As for Rio finding out . . . Rio was always up in Wind Canyon, always working, always watching with eyes that got darker and grimmer with each day. When he tried to talk about the deadline for the second mortgage, Hope always said,
You worry about the well. I’ll worry about the rest. That was the deal.

Today she had done everything she could to keep her part of the deal.

The door to the expensive black cattle truck shut with a final sound. Inside the trailer, Sweetheart bawled uneasily. Sweet Midnight answered her.

McNally sighed and turned toward Hope. He was a big, ruddy-faced man dressed in jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, and a leather jacket that was worth three thousand dollars. His pale blue eyes could be kind or wintry, depending on his mood. Right now he wanted to bawl like the fine Angus he had just bought back from Hope.

“You sure you won’t think about it?” he pressed. “I could co-sign a note or—”

“No,” she cut in swiftly. “But thank you.” She managed half of a smile. “Don’t look so grim. You’re thrilled to get Sweetheart back and you know it.”

“Hell,” he muttered. “If it was anyone else but you, I’d be laughing like a coyote right now.” He sighed and looked at the relentlessly empty sky. “Damnation. Dry as a ninety-year-old virgin.” He smacked his hat against his hand. “Let me help, honey.”

“You have.” She waited until he looked at her. “You paid what my Angus herd was worth rather than what you thought you could get me to agree to because I was desperate. Thanks to you, I’ll keep the ranch. Your integrity made the difference.”

McNally started to say something but thought better of it. Instead, he tugged his expensive fawn-colored Stetson into place and signaled for his driver to get ready.

“If you change your mind,” McNally began.

“I won’t,” she said quickly.

“Yeah, I can see that.
Hell.
” He stared at the bleak sky for a long moment, then sighed again. “Well, it’s a long drive back. Better be going.”

“Good-bye,” she said. “And thank you. I mean it.”

“Hell, honey. I’m the one should be doing the thanking. You have the finest little herd I’ve ever seen. You ever decide to take on a partner, put me at the top of your list. I could use someone with your eye for bloodlines and calves.”

McNally stepped up into the big cab, ran down the passenger-side window, and called out as the truck moved away. “I transferred the money yesterday. You have any problems with your one-horse bank, let me know. I’ll fix it real quick.”

She managed a smile and a wave as the big black rig moved slowly out of her yard and down the road, leaving behind nothing but sun, dust, and the memory of what it had been like to look in the home pasture and see her beautiful black Angus.

Instead of going to the drilling site as had become her habit, Hope drove her truck to town. Worth was waiting for her at the bank. The expression on his face told her that he expected an unpleasant scene.

The bright pickup in the parking lot told her that Turner was somewhere nearby, waiting to buy the ranch at a bargain price. Waiting to hear her beg.

The second mortgage was due today.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Gardener,” Worth said, closing the door to his office behind her. “I know this is difficult for you, but you’re young yet. There’s plenty of time to—”

“Writing a check isn’t difficult,” she interrupted coldly. “I’ve had lots of practice.”

While he watched in disbelief, she sat down, pulled out her money-market checkbook, and wrote a draft that would pay off the second mortgage to the last penny.

Worth took it without a word. Then he went to his computer and called up the amount in her money-market fund.

“Well, goodness,” he said, staring at the screen. “How did you, uh, manage?”

“The money is there,” she said. “That’s all you and your bank have a right to know.”

“Er, of course. I’ll have one of the girls draw up the paperwork. It will take a few minutes. We weren’t expecting this.”

“I have other errands. I’ll be back in an hour. The paperwork will be ready by then, correct?”

Worth blinked. Hope was wearing faded blue jeans, an equally faded pink work shirt, and boots that were dusty and scarred. Yet her crisp tone would have done credit to a duchess.

“Yes, of course. We’ll be ready,” he said.

With a curt nod, Hope left the bank and went to pay off the rest of her bills and pick up more supplies. More drills. More pipe. More mud. More of everything that she needed for Rio to pursue her dream.

She drove back to an empty ranch. Storm Walker paced the huge horse pasture with endless, wild whinnies, searching for his four mares.

He wouldn’t find them. They had been loaded up and shipped out that morning, before McNally arrived.

As Hope looked out over a pasture empty of black Angus, her own emotions echoed the stallion’s desolate calls. Yet if she had it all to do over again, she wouldn’t have changed one thing. Cattle, even her Angus, could be replaced. A dream could not.

Dry-eyed, she stood and watched the sunset mirrored in the half-full, utterly useless water trough. When she finally turned away, Rio was there.

“The Angus,” he said. “Where are they.”

But there was no question in his voice. He knew what had happened just as surely as he knew the date: January fifteenth.

“McNally in Utah bought them.” She smiled sadly. “He was delighted when I called. Said he’d regretted selling Sweetheart to me ever since he heard about her calves.”

“And Storm Walker’s mares.” Rio’s mouth was a flat line. “Did you sell them, too?”

“Yes. The Angus. The mares. The range cattle. Everything but Storm Walker. I paid off the second mortgage and bought enough supplies to drill for at least a month more.”

“Christ.”

Rio closed his eyes like a man who had seen too much, none of it comforting. His hands became fists that strained the leather of his work gloves.

“My degree in hydrology doesn’t guarantee a well,” he said harshly. “The money from the cattle should have gone for a new life for you somewhere else, not for a goddamned useless hole in the ground!”

“I didn’t sell my cattle because I had faith in your degree.” Hope went to Rio and put her hands on the coiled power of his biceps. Her voice was as strong as the muscles beneath her fingers. “I’ve seen you move over the land. I’ve seen your uncanny communication with it. I’ve seen you feel the presence of water beneath your feet. Your gift is as mysterious, as indescribable, and as
real
as my love for you.”

She watched his eyes slowly open. They were the eyes of a man in torment.

“Rio, listen to me,” Hope said urgently. “I know the water is there. If it’s possible to drill down to it, you will. If it’s possible to pay for the drilling, I will. And if it isn’t possible, then we’ll at least live the rest of our lives knowing that we did everything we could, no bets hedged, nothing held back. There’s no shame or regret in losing that way. There’s only shame and regret in not trying!”

He stared at her with sudden raw intensity. He didn’t know that he made a choked sound as he reached out and crushed her against him. He only knew that no one had understood and accepted so much of what was hidden beneath his rough surface. He tilted her face back and looked into her beautiful hazel eyes.

“I’ll find water for you even if I have to drill down to hell itself.”

First Mason and then his grandnephew gave way to the exhaustion of working around-the-clock. That was when Hope came to Wind Canyon and stayed, working alongside Rio, blistering her hands and scraping herself raw on the unfamiliar equipment.

At night she lay down with him, falling asleep in his arms even as she felt their warmth and strength closing around her. Then she awakened beneath a glittering canopy of stars and felt Rio’s mouth and hands caressing her until she couldn’t breathe for wanting him. She opened for him, cried for him, and he gave himself with an intensity that shook her to her soul.

That was when Hope dreamed that the search for water could go on forever, keeping Rio here with her on the Valley of the Sun. But she knew the dream couldn’t come true.

And she couldn’t stop dreaming.

In the icy chill of desert just before daybreak, Hope stood in front of the board, watching dials as Rio started drilling. The pressure gauge kept stuttering as though it was going to quit. It had happened before, but not with that particular gauge.

“Rio, can you come over here? I’m having trouble with the—”

The rest of her words were drowned out as daylight broke over Wind Canyon with a rumble and a drawn-out, wrenching groan of thunder. Hope made a startled sound and looked around for the source of the noise.

Rio didn’t. He dropped the huge pipe wrench he was holding and sprinted to her. He snatched her from her station by the derrick board, all but yanking her out of her boots.

“Run!” he yelled.

She couldn’t hear him, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t let go of her, so she had to run or fall. When he finally stopped running and half-dragging her along with him, she fought for breath.

“What’s wrong?” she gasped.

“It’s going to rain, beautiful dreamer,” he said, grinning down at her. “It’s going to rain for a thousand years.”

She looked at the dry, cloudless sky and thought that he had gone mad.

Thunder rumbled again and the derrick groaned.

“Rio? Is it?” Abruptly she stopped speaking, almost afraid to believe.

“Yes,” he answered, laughing exultantly. “We did it!”

Water jetted up out of the drill hole like a bright silver spear. It shot above the derrick and fanned out into a jeweled curtain of moisture that glittered with every color of the dawn.

After the initial, almost explosive release, the artesian fountain gradually shrank to half its former height. Slowly, elegantly, it began dancing in graceful spurts and pulses that reflected the massive, hidden rhythms of the earth.

Hand in hand, laughing, Hope and Rio ran back down the canyon. They didn’t stop until the brilliant, transparent drops of water rained down over them. She held up her arms as though she would embrace the dancing fountain, but it was Rio she reached for. She licked cold silver drops from his eyebrows, his cheeks, his lips.

“Sweet,” she said, laughing and crying at once.

He kissed drops from her eyelashes and lips. “Very sweet.”

“I meant the water.” She nuzzled against him. “I was afraid it might be a saltwater well. But it isn’t. It’s sweet.”

“Not as sweet as you,” he whispered.

She threaded her fingers into his straight black hair, feeling the warmth of him welling up beneath the cool veil of artesian water. “Thank you.”

She repeated it again and again and again until the words blended into kisses. Passion raced through her and she arched hungrily up to him.

Rio felt her passion, tasted it, and pain drenched him more deeply than the pulsing water of the well he had drilled. Instead of responding to her searching, shimmering kiss, he gently lowered Hope until her feet were on the ground again.

The dawn wind blew through the canyon, whispering the secrets of the land.

“We should tell Mason,” Rio said.

He dipped his head for a kiss so fiercely yearning that she trembled even as she returned it. He released her quickly, yet his fingers slid down her arms as though he couldn’t bear to end the contact. His eyes were as dark as a night with no stars, as empty as the wind curling through the canyon, calling his name.

“Rio?” she asked, knowing that something was wrong but not knowing what.