Jonah glanced quickly at Boone. “Do me a favor and get lost for a few minutes.”
“Fine,” Boone said, and snorted. “I’ll go see what other bad memories I can stir up.”
Her wild-eyed gaze flew to Boone and more tears dribbled down her flushed cheeks.
“Thanks a lot, Boone,” Jonah muttered sardonically. “You’ve been a tremendous help. Now go away.”
Jonah sidestepped down the steep slope, starting an avalanche of sand and pebbles. “You about done crying?” he asked as he came to stand over her.
“No,” she said, then hiccuped as she tried—in vain—to stem the flow of tears down her cheeks.
Jonah squatted in front of her, curled his forefinger beneath her quivering chin and forced her to meet his gaze. She could barely see him through the burning tears.
“Now tell me how you’ve made your sister suffer needlessly,” he insisted softly.
“I could have married one of the two men who have asked for my hand. They offered to provide the ransom if I agreed to a wedding.”
“And you’re exceptionally fond of one or both of these men?” Jonah questioned as he rerouted the trail of tears on her cheeks.
“No, but I could have tolerated a marriage to one of them.
Should have,
” Maddie said on a seesaw breath. “But I wasn’t thinking about my sister. I was thinking of
myself!
I might never see Christina again because I was too mule-headed to agree to a liaison I didn’t want.”
Maddie further disgraced herself by flinging herself at Jonah and holding on to him for dear life. Here was yet another of her weaknesses exposed, she realized too late. She had vowed not to depend on him for comfort or consolation when the going got tough. Yet here she was, clinging to him like ivy for physical and moral support. To her everlasting disgrace, she soaked the shoulder of Jonah’s shirt with her tears and buried her head beneath his chin. Arms locked tightly around his neck, she succumbed to the tidal wave of emotion that crested within her.
“Shh-shh,” Jonah whispered as he sank down on the ground to cradle Maddie in his lap. “You did nothing wrong, sweetheart.”
“Yes, I did,” she mumbled against his chest. “I defied a commitment that might have spared Chrissy several days of anguish!”
“You told me that you had a week to gather the ransom money,” he reminded her as he gently
stroked her back and her arms. “You’ll return home in time. I promise.”
“You don’t even believe I have a sister,” she sniffled. “You think I’m a conniving thief and you despise me for dragging you and Boone where you didn’t want to go. I don’t blame you. I hate myself more than you can possibly imagine!”
Jonah couldn’t name another moment in his life when he’d felt so utterly useless. He was lousy at offering compassion. He had very little practice at it. Nor was he the kind of man people usually turned to for solace. But watching Maddie bleed tears and beat herself black-and-blue over what-ifs and should-haves tormented him to the extreme. She was questioning her decisions and actions. She was too emotionally distraught to give herself the slightest credit or cut herself any slack.
Feeling inadequate, Jonah simply held her to him until she finally cried herself out and there was nothing left but shuddering sobs of misery. He finally raised her blotchy, tear-stained face to his and placed a featherlight kiss on her quaking lips.
“Everything is going to be okay,” he assured her softly.
“No, it isn’t,” she said, taking a ragged breath. “It’s becoming apparent that I’m the curse of your’s and Boone’s lives. My sister’s, too.”
Jonah applied the same technique he’d used a few days earlier to snap Maddie back to her senses: he kissed her breathless. But this time she didn’t respond to him the way she had previously. She just sat there on his lap, dispirited, defeated, devoid of emotion.
The Maddie he had come to know was suddenly
an empty shell who had cut herself off from the world that caused her pain and anguish. She reminded him so much of the man he had become the past few years that he wanted to shake her.
He
had forgotten how to hope, how to dream. But
she
was usually vital and animated and defiant. He wanted the old Maddie back and he wasn’t sure how to retrieve her from the desolate place she’d withdrawn to.
“Enough of this,” he said gruffly as he pushed her to her feet, then bounded up beside her. He scooped her up and set her atop her horse. “You’ve mewled and whined long enough, princess,” he said, purposely goading her. “I’ve seen enough of your self-pity. The whole world, and everyone in it, has troubles galore. Just because you’ve led a pampered life until recently doesn’t grant you special privileges. So what are you gonna do? Throw up your hands and give up on rescuing your sister? I never figured you for a quitter—until now.”
Sure enough, the harsh criticism fueled her temper, as he’d hoped it would. Her chin snapped up and those amber eyes blazed down at him like molten fire. Her spine stiffened as she grabbed the reins in her fist.
“You can go straight to hell, Jonah Danhill,” she snapped before she dug in her heels and sent the mare scrambling up the steep incline.
“Been there at least a dozen times. Don’t recommend it,” Jonah murmured as he climbed the ridge to retrieve his own horse.
Well, at least by inciting Maddie’s indignation he had stiffened her resolve to get up and get moving. Whatever worked. He’d rather face her anger than
deal with the tears that dribbled into the cracks and crevices of his shriveled heart and tugged at his emotions.
Every time he turned around she was getting to him, somehow or another, and he couldn’t back away from her.
After witnessing that unsettling scene, Jonah was starting to believe that Maddie had been telling him the truth. No one was such an extraordinary actress that she could pull off the convincing performance Jonah had witnessed a few minutes earlier. But for the life of him he couldn’t understand her connection to the two men who had called her by name in Coyote Springs. There was definitely something going on here that Jonah had yet to figure out.
“Feeling better?” Boone asked as Maddie trotted her horse past him.
She didn’t glance in his direction, just galloped off as if the devil were nipping at her heels.
Boone glanced over his shoulder when he heard Jonah thundering toward him. “Charmed her into pulling herself together, I see. You
do
have a way with women, Danhill.”
“Of course I do. That’s why women have lined up to share my company all these years,” Jonah said sardonically.
He watched Maddie ride ahead of them, following the narrow ledge that led to a higher plateau.
Boone chuckled as he trotted his roan gelding alongside Jonah. “Right. I’ve been fighting off women with a stick for years myself.” He shifted awkwardly in the saddle. “Sorry about that thought
less remark I made earlier. I didn’t help the situation when you were trying to console Maddie.”
Jonah shrugged off the apology. “I think she was being too hard on herself to notice your comment. Now she’s questioning all of the hard choices she’s had to make and she feels enormously guilty for putting us back in touch with our past when she knows it’s the last thing we wanted.”
They rode in silence for several hours, allowing Maddie her privacy. Jonah looked out across the rough terrain and felt hundreds of charged memories condense around him. Boone, it seemed, was fighting the same silent battle as his gaze drifted, then settled on one looming bluff and twisting gully after another.
Jonah noticed that Maddie had veered west to follow a winding ravine. She couldn’t possibly know where she was going, which made him wonder again if a higher power was indeed guiding her. She was headed for an obscure spring nestled deep in the chasm. She had given her mare her head, and it had picked up the scent of fresh water, trotting eagerly forward.
Jonah and Boone urged their horses into a canter. Here was yet another favorite haunt that Jonah recalled from childhood. At least this one provoked pleasant, soothing memories. It was as if Maddie had led them from the jaws of hell into this piece of heaven on earth.
“It is here that the Great Spirit looked down and decided to create man.” Jonah recited the legend passed down by his father. “The Spirit took the body from Mother Earth, the bones from the stones and his blood from the morning dew.”
“His eyes were born from the depths of clear water,” Boone interjected as his gaze followed Jonah’s uplifted eyes to the towering peak that jutted out like an eagle’s beak. “He took the light from the sun for eyes and his thoughts from the endless waterfalls.”
Jonah smiled as he continued where Boone left off. “Man’s breath came from the stirring winds and his strength was born from powerful storms. The Great Spirit created man from all that was admirable and mighty in this world.”
“And the Great Spirit ordered all the inhabitants of the spirit world to bow in recognition that man was the most superb creation on the earth,” Boone recited.
“All obeyed the command except one,” Jonah murmured as he drank in the welcome sight of the sacred landmark of his people. “The defiant demon was cast from the world of guardian spirits and took refuge in the fang of the serpent, the spider, the centipede and other poisonous creatures that sought to torment and harm man.”
Maddie listened, fascinated by the Indian legend of creation. She stared at the sparkling spring that bubbled from the base of the towering precipice. A sense of peace and resolution stole over her as she dismounted, then walked into the shallow stream that spilled from the glittering silver pool.
Jonah was right, she decided as she immersed herself in the waters beneath Eagle’s Peak. She could waste precious time regretting her decisions and cursing her selfish motivations, or she could take control of her life. Sulking and brooding wouldn’t bring back her father and it wouldn’t spare Christina. Maddie
couldn’t give up hope, not while she still had breath left in her and an unwavering will to fight.
She purged herself of her shortcomings and resolved to do whatever was humanly possible to save her sister and their ranch. This wild country was not the place for the faint of heart. If she had learned nothing else from the time spent with Jonah it was that it took courage and determination just to get from one day to the next. The obstacles she encountered were the building blocks of her character, and she would not permit her weaknesses to control her.
Maddie sank into the depths of the pool to cleanse her mind and body of doubts and misgivings. If there truly were guardian spirits that endowed man with omnipotent talents, then she eagerly awaited a vision and empowerment.
Drawing her feet beneath her, she surged from the water—and met Jonah’s intense green eyes head-on. Realization hit her with such impact that she staggered backward, and tripped over an oversize rock in the pool. With a shriek she fell on her backside and took another dousing.
Sweet mercy, she thought as she scrambled back to her feet. If she hadn’t been aware that Jonah Danhill was her guardian angel, and the man she tried to emulate, she knew it now.
He
was the one who gave her strength and encouragement when despair threatened to destroy her. If she had been too stubborn to admit it before, she couldn’t deny now that she was falling in love with this remarkable, complicated man.
She had alternately idolized and despised him. She’d discovered that she craved him in ways she’d
never wanted to share her entire being with another man.
Love might not be known for its perfect timing or sensible logic, but it seized control of the heart nonetheless. Love simply
happened,
and it was staring directly at her when she finally stood up again.
Jonah frowned warily when he dragged his lusty gaze off the clinging blouse that outlined the full swells of Maddie’s breasts. There was an odd expression on her face, as if she had seen a supernatural vision, or experienced an epiphany. She looked stupefied, astonished. She stared at him as if he were some strange and curious creature that had materialized from the spirit world.
“Maddie!” he barked sharply, hoping to jostle her from her trance. “What’s wrong with you?”
He was off his horse, striding hurriedly forward to snatch her from the pool. He looked down, wondering if she might have been bitten by a snake. But he saw nothing but the rock bed beneath his feet.
He carried her ashore and grabbed her by the arms to study her carefully. “Maddie?” he murmured, searching her face—and getting lost in the depths of those luminous eyes.
She threw back her head, and laughter bubbled unexpectedly from her lips, totally baffling Jonah.
“Not a good idea to let a paleface submerge in the spirit springs, I guess,” Boone remarked as he walked cautiously toward Maddie. “She’s gone crazy.”
“I swear that even if I live to be one hundred I’ll never figure out what makes a woman tick,” Jonah said, exasperated. “First she gushes tears, then spouts in temper and now howls with laughter.” He gave
her a shake, hoping to bring her back to her senses. “Maddie, snap out of it!”
Maddie just kept giggling. She
had
gone a little crazy, she decided. She was in love with someone who was not going to be a part of her future. He would be gone by nightfall, and she would be left with the knowledge that the man she could have loved forever—the man who could be her soul mate—was going to turn his back and walk out of her life. If she ever decided to wed she’d have to settle for second best and spend the rest of her days comparing her husband to the mate she truly wanted.
She had seen Jonah at his best, his worst and every mood in between, and she still loved him. But she wouldn’t be able to share his life and she would never have his love, respect or trust. Considering the various stages of hell Jonah had endured in his life, he might not even be capable of love, she reminded herself. He certainly wasn’t
in love
with her. He didn’t even want her in his life. He’d simply gotten stuck with her temporarily.