Real Men Do It Better (12 page)

“That’s right.”

Archie was about to continue with the inquisition when he suddenly squinted and cocked his head. “Here comes the rain again, like I said. You better go bring that lady in while I head home to Joan.”

“I think she’s trying to walk down to Route Fifty-two,” Jorey said with a sigh, grabbing his cowboy hat off the peg near the door and tugging it down on his head.

“Might take her a couple days at that pace.” Archie’s chuckle faded away once they got out on the porch. The rain was coming hard. “She knows to stay clear of the arroyos though, right?”

A sharp jolt of fear sliced through Jorey’s gut. His head snapped around and he stared at Archie. “No.”

“No?”
The old man’s forehead crinkled up like an accordion. “Take the horse.”

Heart pounding, Jorey raced down the steps and onto the dirt plaza, running through the rain to the horse. He unlooped the reins, jumped on, and galloped down into the gully. Briefly, it occurred to him that he was not the most qualified of men to be sent on this mission. Up until five years ago, he’d known close to nothing about horses.

That concern evaporated the instant he rode up over the rise and saw Kate Dreyfuss standing in the exact spot he’d prayed she wouldn’t be. He’d be rescuing her, all right. There was no option.

“Kate!” His voice seemed to stop dead in the air, never making it the couple hundred feet to where she stood, heels dug into the dirt, smack in the middle of a wash. She had her back to the mountains, pulling on the handle of her suitcase. The woman had no idea that her little episode of stubbornness had put her in harm’s way.

Something made Jorey glance to the east. Through the curtain of rain falling off the brim of his hat he could barely make it out: A fresh surge of angry brown water was churning down the path of least resistance and racing right toward Kate. In his estimation, he had ten seconds—tops.

He turned the horse and pressed his heels into the animal’s sides. “Kate!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, but with the beat of the rain and the cover of her poncho she till didn’t hear. “Kate! Get out of the ditch!”

Jorey urged the horse on, trying to figure exactly how he was going to do what needed to be done. There was no time for planning and no time for prayer. He was going to have to wing this. So he closed his eyes for an instant, summoned the power and spirit of this place—
his place
—and made it happen. The horse knew what they were attempting was just plain foolish, and balked, but Jorey forced him on.

“Kate! Grab my arm!”

Her head popped up, and her eyes went wide with shock at the sight of him racing toward her like a crazy man, his arm stretched down and out. Kate began to back away, but she must have felt a rumble. She looked to her left, up toward the mountains, and her eyes filled with terror. She let go of the suitcase handle, screamed, and snagged Jorey’s forearm the exact second the horse thundered through the ditch, its hoofs splashing through the first kiss of water.

Kate leaped into the air just as Jorey pulled, and the saddle girth began to slip sideways from the tug of their combined body weight. With all his might, Jorey pressed his leg down into the opposite stirrup, and for a split second everything was happening at once—Kate was flying, the horse was carrying them up and out of the raging water, the saddle was sliding, and Jorey was once again thinking that he was thoroughly unqualified to be handling this situation.

But Kate helped tremendously by throwing her leg up and over the horse’s back, causing the saddle to right, just as she landed with a thud tight against Jorey’s back.

“Oh, my God!” Kate screeched, clutching onto his waist so tight the air whooshed out of his lungs.

Jorey tried to slow the now-panicking horse. The animal not only realized that water rushed behind them, but the ditch in front of them was swollen as well.

“Hold on tight!” Jorey screamed through the rain. “The horse is frightened!”

“No shit!” Kate yelled into his ear. “My suitcase! My suitcase! Everything’s in there—my Blackberry! My Jimmy Choos! My … my …
everything!
”

Jorey was marveling at how she could still be attached to material things at a time like this, when he felt her body heave against him. She was sobbing. She continued to sob as the horse bucked and complained, and the rain began to beat down even harder.

They were alive. They were, at least temporarily, still in the saddle. And the rain would stop, of that he was sure. Jorey knew he needed to stay focused in the moment, the one in which he was living right then. He breathed deep, felt the blood return to his limbs, felt his lungs expand with wet air. He focused on sending his own calm into the animal and the woman connected to his body.

As the horse continued to buck and whinny, Jorey began to whisper a stanza from one of his favorite Native American prayers, a Zuni night chant:

“Breathing in—I am alive

Breathing out—I am alive

In this precious moment

In this sacred place

In the Abundance of Love

I dwell.”

He whispered the chant over and over and over, until he felt the horse’s legs quiet and Kate’s shaking sobs lessen and eventually stop. Within minutes, the rain ceased as abruptly as it had started. The sky began to clear. Jorey thought they must look odd—a man and a woman and a horse perched on a bit of dry land no bigger than a throw rug, nature swirling around them. He felt Kate’s cheek press harder into his back, her breath steady. He felt her heat—even through the layers of wet clothing and the plastic rain poncho—he still felt the life force burst from that small female body.

“Are you all right, Kate?”

The poncho crinkled as she adjusted her position. “I think so.” Her voice sounded small and far away. “Are you?”

Jorey needed to touch her, but found his fingers nearly paralyzed around the reins. He pried them free and cupped his palm over the back of Kate’s small hand, still gripped tight around his middle. “I’m okay. We’re all going to be just fine, Princess.”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “Just because you saved my life doesn’t mean you can call me Princess.” Then she squeezed him tighter still.

*   *   *

Kate could not stop shaking and she could not stop crying. It didn’t matter that six hours had passed since Jorey had saved her and they’d made it back to the lodge with body and soul intact. It didn’t matter that she’d had a long, comforting chat with Jorey’s neighbor, an older lady named Joan. It didn’t matter that she’d taken a hot shower, eaten two servings of Joan’s oven-baked rice pudding, and that she was safe and warm and dry.

Kate knew that something had thoroughly and finally broken apart inside her that day. It was a dramatic finish to the crumbling that began three months ago, with the Brad fiasco, and just kept going, one mishap after another. For a while now, Kate had sensed that something she’d carefully constructed was coming unglued, and there was no way she’d ever get the pieces to fit together the same way again. Maybe she didn’t want it to. Maybe she was now forced to find another way to be in the world, a way that required less of a fight. But what that would look like—and how she’d get there—was a mystery.

She sighed, letting her head fall back against the rocker, staring out at the gloomy mountain range. She felt raw in her soul. She felt hollowed out. Strangely disconnected.

Probably because her Blackberry was somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico by now.

“You look better in that robe than I ever did.” Jorey closed the sliding glass door to the back porch and walked up behind her. “Feel like some company?”

Kate nodded, gesturing to the empty rocking chair to her right, a little self-conscious that she was in nothing but Jorey’s blue-and-white striped cotton bathrobe. She fiddled with the sash and made sure the lapels crossed high on her chest.

“Why, thank you ma’am,” Jorey said, sinking back into the seat and stretching out his long legs, resting his sock-covered feet on the railing. Kate glanced in his direction and noticed immediately that he’d shaved, leaving his face looking serene and younger. He was once again wearing those forest-green lounge pants she loved so much. Thank God he’d been kind enough to wear a white T-shirt. She didn’t think she was strong enough to resist him otherwise.

Because right that instant, nothing sounded better to Kate than a little skin-to-skin comfort, and there wasn’t anyone in the world she’d rather have it with than Jorey.

He was quiet. He rocked back and forth with slight presses of his heels against the railing, looking out at the view. Jorey’s entire demeanor seemed peaceful, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day.

Kate cleared her throat. “Is it pretty here when it’s not overcast?”

Jorey grinned. “This is a fluke. You usually can’t spend a whole day in New Mexico without seeing the blue sky we’re so famous for. And the light here … it’s amazing.”

“Then why is it raining so much?”

“November and December make up the rainy season. Some years, that amounts to a quarter inch. Other years, it’s like this—a real mess.”

Kate said nothing for a while, just listened to the squeak of the rocking chairs and the rhythm of their breathing. “What was that poem you said out there today? It was beautiful.”

“Yeah, it is.” Jorey nodded. “It’s part of a chant the Zuni people use to pray under the night sky. I’ve always loved it. It’s so simple, but it says it all.”

It took her several long moments, but eventually Kate said what she’d been leading up to this whole conversation. “I am a complete idiot. What I did was stupid, and I’m sorry!”

Jorey shrugged, never interrupting his steady rock. “Nothing is stupid if you learn something from it.”

Kate laughed at the kindness in his voice. Jorey almost sounded like he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

“It was a stupid, stupid,
stupid
thing to do and you know it. Sometimes I amaze myself at how bullheaded I can be.” She truly didn’t want this, but the tears started again, and Kate used the baggy sleeve of the robe to wipe her cheeks. “I didn’t even know where I was going, for God’s sake! Where was I headed? What was I thinking? Now I don’t even have a change of underwear!”

“Underwear is overrated,” Jorey said, trying unsuccessfully to hide his amusement—she’d already gotten a glimpse of the skin crinkling around his eye and the arrival of that dimple. “Besides—” Jorey turned to her, then reached out to tuck a piece of hair behind Kate’s ear. “My damsel-in-distress technique was getting a little rusty. I haven’t had to snatch a babe from the jaws of death for weeks now.”

She let go with a little snort of a laugh and continued to wipe her cheeks, trying not to feel too much of anything about the fact that Jorey hadn’t stopped with that single touch of her hair. He was caressing her—his fingertips stroked her from the top of her head to where her hair fell on her shoulders. And she loved it. It felt wonderful—even though it was completely inappropriate. It felt too intimate. She hadn’t given him permission to touch her like that. She cried some more, and the more she cried, the more Jorey’s hand soothed her, permission or no.

Kate never cried. She couldn’t stomach it in others and especially herself. The idea that she was crying in front of Jorey made her cringe. She’d spent her whole life proving to people that she wasn’t a wimp, that for a woman her size she packed a wallop. She had brains, guts, beauty, savviness. She’d never needed anyone. Brad was a nice addition, but he hadn’t been key to her satisfaction. She knew better than to give a man that much power over her happiness. It had always been her goal to be at the helm of her own ship.

So why did she suddenly feel like she was the captain of the
Titanic
? Why had she grieved so when Brad left her? Was she aching for what she’d never had instead of what she she’d lost? Was she crying because she was beginning to understand the depth of her emptiness—an emptiness she had with or without Brad?

“Maybe there was a reason you came here when you did, Kate.” Jorey took his hand from her hair and placed it on her forearm, where she could feel the heat of his touch through the thin cotton fabric of the robe.

Kate sniffled. “The reason I’m here is that I never even looked at the dates on the brochure, and our office assistant—Monica’s nephew—was in charge of my itinerary. Spencer is always sleep deprived from playing with his punk rock band in seedy L.A. bars, so details tend to slip through the cracks.”

“Actually, Kate,” Jorey said, the amusement clear in his voice. “What I was getting at was that it was destiny that you came when you did.”

His words made her slightly uncomfortable. Was he hitting on her? Sure, the comments about her nipples and the flirty way he’d been teasing her—calling her Princess—that could possibly be considered hitting. But this? This was definitely hitting. Kate changed the subject. “Anyway, who is Monica to tell me I need to repair my spirituality? It’s none of her business what’s going on inside me.”

“Unless it affects her bottom line. Then it’s her business—literally.”

Kate dragged her gaze from the dramatic landscape to Jorey’s face. His eyes were kind, but the slight smile on his lips indicated he knew exactly what he was doing. He was prodding her, egging her on. It seemed to be a good-natured prodding, affectionate even, but he sure was enjoying himself.

“Maybe I was sent here to entertain Jorey Matheny, the lonely, vegetarian innkeeper.”

Jorey’s smile spread wide across his face. “I really like you, Kate,” he said matter-of-factly.

Oh, what the hell,
Kate thought to herself.
I can be just as direct as he can.
“I like you, too, Jorey.”

“Then talk to me. Tell me about you.”

“Uh…” Kate tucked her feet under her bottom and the rocker moved as she did. She fought the trembling she felt in her chin. She didn’t want to cry anymore. She felt like such a wimp. “Things are kind of a mess for me right now.”

“In what way?”

She took a big breath. “About three months ago, I completely spaced on a meeting and lost Monica’s biggest client,” she whispered.