Under The Western Sky

“Kiss me,”

Julianne demanded. “Kiss me and don’t stop until…until…”

“We turn blue?” Tony said, feeling laughter and being surprised by it. Inside, he was serious, very serious.

“Until there’s no more hunger,” she whispered.

“If the hunger is satisfied, then we’ll be lovers in every sense of the word,” he warned her. “I’d kiss you until we both went crazy. If we were lovers.”

“Yes,” she cried softly. “Yes.”

“Would you melt in my arms? Would you yield to me? Give me anything I want?”

She forced her weighted eyelids to open, to meet his challenging stare. “What we both want,” she reminded him.

“If we were lovers,” he said roughly.

“If we were lovers,” she echoed in agreement.

Dear Reader,

I found out how effective a coyote fence was the hard way—I backed into one while trying to get the best picture of an impressive rock formation. The fence was made from cactus canes nailed side by side on a wooden structure. My hostess, who had a lovely flower and vegetable garden, said it also kept rabbits and other critters from sneaking in and eating the plants. I asked how she got the cactus nailed up without getting stickers. Her answer: “Very carefully.” I’m not saying this incident was the sole inspiration for Tony and Julianne’s story, but it certainly seemed to fit into their investigative efforts!

Best,

Laurie Paige

Under the Western Sky

Laurie Paige

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LAURIE PAIGE

“One of the nicest things about writing romances is researching locales, careers and ideas. In the interest of authenticity, most writers will try anything…once.” Along with her writing adventures, Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America, a mother and a grandmother. She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist for Best Traditional Romance and has won awards from Romantic Times BOOKclub for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette in addition to appearing on the USA TODAY bestseller list. Recently resettled in Northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will send her on.

This story is for Ali, Becka, Susan, Kris and Merry, who

wanted to know what happened to the three orphans.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter One

Julianne Martin matched the address on the store-front to the label printed in block letters on the box of pottery she was to deliver. Yes, this was the place.

Something about the building—probably its rundown state—induced a definite sense of caution in her.

This wasn’t the most practical part of town to try to sell tourist goods. The Chaco Trading Company out on I-40 was a better location, with plenty of travelers heading west to the Grand Canyon and other national parks, and West Coast residents heading east for family reunions or a tour of the Four Corners and Mesa Verde areas.

Well, it was none of her business. She was just the delivery service…in more ways than one.

She smiled at the thought. As a midwife-nurse-practitioner, she’d been delivering babies on her own for three years. Happy years, she mused in satisfaction, filled with work that she loved.

Two days ago, out near Hosta Butte, she’d helped deliver a darling little boy to a Native American couple. The delighted father had asked her to bring his pottery into town and leave it at this store, which was located on a side street of Gallup, New Mexico. Since she lived only a couple of miles from town, she’d readily agreed.

In this part of the country, with its vast distances people helped each other when they could. Today was Saturday, the first day of October, and the earliest moment she’d had enough free time to keep her promise. She peered in through the open door of the shop.

“Hello?” she called, going inside and pausing while her eyes adjusted to the dim light.

The place was crammed with Indian blankets, baskets and carvings depicting Western themes, all in a helter-skelter fashion. A good dusting and some organization would help sales, in her opinion.

She grinned to herself. Her bossy ways were showing themselves, her brothers would have said. True, she admitted. She liked things to be in good order.

“Whew,” she said when she had the heavy box safely on the floor. “Anyone here?”

“Sure.”

A man appeared in the doorway behind the cluttered counter. He looked to be close to her own age, which was twenty-six.

No, older, she decided upon inspecting him more closely when he came forward and stopped beside the cash register. He had hair that was almost black and eyes to match. His face was lean and angular. So was his body—tall and wiry and muscular—definitely a man who kept himself in shape. He was perhaps an inch over six feet. He wore faded jeans, a T-shirt with a logo of Ship Rock on it and a billed cap advertising a local bar.

“Can I help you?” he asked, his voice a rich baritone with a gravelly roughness that was oddly pleasing.

His eyes took in everything about her—from her white cotton blouse and khaki cargo shorts to the woven leather huaraches on her feet. He lingered for the briefest second on her legs, which were nicely shaped, if she did say so, then his gaze returned to hers.

The impact of that probing stare did a couple of strange things to her. One, her sense of wariness increased. Two, so did her heartbeat. He made her nervous for no reason that she could pinpoint, but there it was—a hard beating of the heart, tension in every nerve, a quickening deep inside.

Then he smiled.

Awesome was the description that came to mind. His teeth were very white in his tanned face. The smile did nice things for him, relaxing the stern set in the line of his jaw and the frown line between his eyebrows, adding friendly creases at the corners of his eyes.

The dark eyebrows rose slightly in question as he glanced from the box to her.

She stated her business. “I have a box of pottery for you. From Josiah Pareo?” she added when he didn’t respond.

“I see.”

She sensed something in his tone or a subtle change in manner—she didn’t know what, but she felt a sharpening of his attention. Her own sense of caution caused her to quickly survey their surroundings. She saw nothing out of place. When he came around the counter and frowned at the box, she instinctively stepped back.

“Uh, you were expecting the delivery, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s take it to the office. We can inventory it there, then I’ll pay you.”

She nodded and followed when he lifted the heavy box as if it weighed no more than a pound cake. She glanced at her watch. Past noon. She was tired and ready for a nap since she’d been called out on a delivery at five that morning.

Babies always chose the most inconvenient times to arrive, but all had gone well with the birth. Now she wanted to go home. Food and sleep. She needed both, she admitted, unable to suppress a huge yawn.

“Have a seat,” he said, interrupting the yawn and giving her a speculative once-over.

She wondered what he was speculating about. Maybe her eligibility? She almost grinned at the ridiculous idea. The handsome shopkeeper was all business as he set the box on the floor. Ah, well.

“Sorry, I was up early this morning,” she said when he caught her yawning again.

His cocoa-dark eyes slid over her once more, then returned to his task. He opened the cardboard flaps and began placing the pots and vases on a table next to the desk in the messy, crowded office.

Watching his hands, Julianne was reminded of an artist she knew in her hometown of Albuquerque. His fingers were lean, too, the backs of his hands sinewy. Strong hands. Capable. Confident.

This man’s were the same. There was also sensitivity in his touch as if he was aware that, in this pottery, he handled the creation of someone’s mind and heart. He therefore treated it with great care.

The proprietor’s air of concentration surprised her. He examined each piece of pottery as if it were a rare and precious find. There were six pieces in all.

She looked more closely at the wares. They were black glazed, a type that was popular with tourists, with an allover pattern intricately detailed in a way that few potters did nowadays since it was time-consuming.

“How much do you want for these?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She’d assumed that was all taken care of. Josiah hadn’t mentioned a price. “How much do you think they’re worth?”

“A thousand.”

At the quick, flat statement, she was totally taken aback. “Really? That seems like a lot. But I actually don’t know,” she added, not wanting to cast doubts on Josiah’s abilities.

She’d had no idea he could get prices like that, especially in a place like this. She glanced around the dusty, cluttered office and shrugged. The tourist trade must be more lucrative than she’d thought.

“Cash or check?” he asked.

She considered. She was pretty sure the couple didn’t have a bank account. They’d paid her twenty-five dollars a month for eight months for the delivery of the baby. “Cash.”

He counted out ten crisp one hundred-dollar bills and held them out to her. When she reached for the money, his other hand shot out and he snapped a handcuff on her wrist.

She froze in terror. Like images from a horror movie, scenes hurtled through her mind—broken glass from a patio door, a pool of blood, death, the bewilderment of the child who stared at the horrible sight.

In the next instant, the training from years of self-defense courses kicked in, overriding the fear. Instead of struggling to get away, she crashed into the man, using her head to butt him under the chin, since she wasn’t tall enough to reach his nose.

She twisted her captured hand, turning his wrist back so he had to let go of the other end of the cuffs. With the heel of her left hand, she slammed into his nose and felt a satisfying crunch of cartilage.

“Ow,” he yelled, dropping the cash.

When he tried to recapture her hand, she kicked him in the shin as hard as she could, ignored a sharp pain in her big toe as a result and stomped on his instep as she brought her foot down. Then she ran.

Tony Aquilon cursed a blue streak, but that didn’t stanch the blood pouring from his nose. Ignoring his wounds—not the least of which was to his pride—he started after her at a dead run. He could hear the fugitive shrieking as she ran down the street.

“Fire!” she shouted. “Fire!”

A mechanic, wiping his hands on a grease rag, appeared at the door of the garage next door. A couple peered out from the used-furniture store across the street. Two beer-drinking, taco-munching patrons at an outside table of a tiny cantina hardly bothered to look up.

Tony grimaced at this new ploy by the damn sneaky female. He went after her as fast as his limp would allow.

“Call 911,” she yelled.

Nobody did anything. Live and Let Live was the motto of the folks in this neighborhood, he could have told her.

“Stop. That’s an order,” he bellowed, feeling like a fool with his damn nose bleeding all over the place.

She flashed a calculating glance over her shoulder and slowed down a bit.

He caught her halfway down the block just before she scrambled into a car, managing to wedge his arm and body in the opening without getting his fingers or other important parts mangled in the process.

“Got ya,” he murmured.

Again she didn’t fight fair. Instead of pulling away, she threw herself at him, trying to break his hold.

“Man, you’re just full of tricks, aren’t you?” he muttered. Holding her was like grasping a maddened wildcat.

While he enjoyed wrestling around with a woman, this wasn’t exactly the situation he’d envisioned, he thought with fleeting humor. He had a second to appreciate the strength in her slender curves before she tried to pound his head against the car. He grabbed her hands, spun her around so her back was to him and got her under control. Sort of.

He barely had time to note the tight little butt that nestled into the groove where his lower body joined his legs before she lifted her arms over her head and tried to choke him with the handcuffs across his throat.

His defensive move was easy due to his much greater upper-body strength. He grabbed her wrists and forced her arms down, trapping her hands across her waist, his arms wrapped around her. Now he simply held her while she squirmed against him like the proverbial worm on a hot rock.

They stayed there panting, their minds busy with plans, hers obviously on escape, his on holding her without further injury to his nose, pride and other vulnerable parts.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to ease up. No tricks,” he warned and stepped away from her, acutely aware of her well-toned body, her feminine shape and her heaving bosom that had lightly touched his upper arm with each breath. He astutely kept her trapped in the triangle of the car, its open door and his body.

She pivoted toward him and tried to poke his eyes out with two fingers.

“That isn’t ladylike,” he informed her, grabbing the cuffs and managing to get both her hands secured at last.

“Please, call the police,” she called to the men at the cantina where the cook had joined the two diners.

“For God’s sake,” Tony snapped. “I am the police.”

“You think I’d believe that for a minute?”

He ignored her sarcasm. “You’re under arrest.”

“What for?”

“Resisting arrest for one. Passing stolen goods for another. Assaulting an officer. Leaving the scene of a crime.” He gave her a grin, starting to feel good about the situation now that he had her subdued. Somewhat subdued, he added to himself, wary of another attack from her. “You’re good for twenty years to life, honey.”

She then gave one of the best performances of shocked outrage he’d ever witnessed. “Resisting…stolen goods…assaulting an officer,” she spluttered incredulously. “You were the one doing the assaulting. I was merely defending myself. Besides, you don’t look like any policeman I ever saw.”

Using one hand and keeping the other on her, he got out his badge and flipped the cover open.

“Anthony Aquilon, Special Investigator, National Park Service,” she read aloud. “We’re not in a national park. You don’t have the authority to arrest anyone.”

“Guess again. Those were very old, very rare Native American artifacts stolen from the new dig site up in Chaco Canyon.” He gave her another grin as he put his badge away, then pressed a handkerchief to his nose. Most of the bleeding had stopped in spite of the chase and the fact that adrenaline was kicking through his veins at mach speed.

Using his cell phone, he called in reinforcements in the form of his counterpart with the state cops, Chuck Diaz.

Chuck was one of the good guys. Forty-six. Overweight by fifty pounds. Sneaked smokes when he thought no one was looking. Worried about his wife leaving him and his teenage daughter getting in with the wrong crowd. He was also conscientious about doing his job.

Tony heaved a sigh. With this perp he might need the cavalry to assist in the arrest. Where was John Wayne when a guy needed him?

After making the call, he glanced up and down the street. Now that the threat of danger was past, interested citizens watched the action from every doorway.

Gingerly wiping the remains of the blood on the hankie, he sighed again. It was Saturday. He had a date that night with an attractive woman introduced to him by a friend. He would have to cancel it or else he was going to make a great impression with a swollen nose and blackened eyes.

He tossed a glare at the perp. She tossed it right back.

The sound of sirens interrupted the sensual awareness of the lithe, very feminine body trapped between him and the modest compact vehicle she’d tried to escape in. Warmth radiated from both of them. Sweat dripped from their faces, soaking his T-shirt and her blouse. He kept a hand in the middle of her back in case she pulled a sudden move.

Intensified by their combined heat, his aftershave mingled with the heady aroma of the floral perfume she wore. The scent filled his nostrils as he took a slow, deep breath. Reinforcements arrived before his senses were completely swamped by images that were definitely not appropriate to the circumstances.

“Thank goodness,” his prisoner muttered. “The real police. Now we’ll get this straightened out.”

“Hey, what’s happening?” Chuck asked, getting out of the state-supplied SUV after a dramatic halt in front of her car to block any escape attempt.

This time her act was one of self-righteous indignation. “This mule-headed investigator with the park service has gotten things totally confused. He thinks I tried to sell stolen goods. He’s wrong, but he won’t listen.”

Chuck’s blue eyes widened in surprise at her heated announcement and turned to him.

Tony shrugged and heaved an exasperated breath. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she managed to outfox all of them and take off in the police cruiser. He clamped a hand firmly on her upper arm and shot his partner a questioning glance when two young state patrolmen pulled up behind her vehicle.

“The way it sounded when you called, I thought we could use some backup,” Chuck explained. “I, uh, see you have the suspect apprehended, though.”

“I am not a suspect! I haven’t done anything wrong,” she stated with great dignity. “I want to speak to whoever’s in charge of this…this person.”

Tony ignored the diatribe, sucked in another breath and backed away slowly, never relaxing his vigil for an instant. “Watch it,” he said. “She’s deadly.”

The cops looked him and the prisoner over.

“Yeah. Deadly,” Chuck agreed with a suppressed chortle.

While the two state cops remained to guard the store, Julianne was informed of her Miranda rights, put in the back of the cruiser and taken to the nearest state police office. No one paid the slightest attention to her protests.

“Save it for the judge,” her captor told her.

She was led inside the squat concrete block structure, still handcuffed like some kind of dangerous lunatic. She couldn’t believe she was under arrest for doing a favor for someone.

A tiny trickle of fright shivered along her spine as she stood inside the cool lobby of the building. She quickly suppressed it. As soon as Josiah came and verified her story, all would be resolved and she could go home.

Another thought came to her. She probably should inform the tribal chairman of her predicament. “I need to call my boss,” she informed the National Park detective, who kept a hand on her arm.

“In a minute,” he told her.

She first had to answer a lot of questions about herself—name, age, date of birth, address, occupation—then be fingerprinted like a common thief. She just barely held her indignation in check.

“This is stupid,” she said to the handsome bully who’d arrested her and who was apparently well-known to the local officials.

Aquilon. The name was familiar, but she couldn’t say why. The other police officers acted as if he had done something heroic. Their glances at her were sort of smirky, she thought.

“It’s all a mistake,” she added.

“That’s what they all say, kid.” The detail sergeant handed her a paper towel to wipe her fingers. He was also in charge of evidence. He inventoried the box of pots, numbered it and gave the arresting detective a receipt. He bagged her purse, watch and sterling silver earrings and handed the receipt to her.

“Good job,” he said to Aquilon, much to Julianne’s dismay.

The sergeant led the way down a short hallway and into an interrogation room. She’d been in one of these before but for pro bono work in dealing with a young culprit who’d stolen food for his sick mother. As the home-health nurse on the case, she’d testified in his defense.

“The charges will be dropped as soon as my boss gets here,” she informed her captor, who leaned against the door frame and observed her with no expression in his dark eyes. Unease flittered through her again. There was no way those silly charges would stick, she assured her sinking spirits, not for doing a good deed. She needed only to remain calm until the situation was cleared up.

“Who’s your boss?” the superhero asked.

“Chief Windover. He can vouch for me. He’s head of the tribal council. I have a contract to provide health services for the people,” she explained, using the name the tribe preferred in referring to themselves. She sat at the table and scrubbed at the black residue on her fingers.

“Are you Hopi?” Aquilon demanded. He and the desk sergeant exchanged glances.

She realized if she answered in the affirmative she would probably be turned over to the tribe for them to deal with the crime. However, while she was one-eighth Native American on her maternal side, she didn’t belong to the local tribe.

“No, but as a nurse-midwife, I do prenatal and delivery care for the tribe. I also run a clinic three days a week and do home visits in special cases.”

After her explanation, the sergeant nodded to the investigator and left the room. The inquisition continued.

“Why were you transporting and selling artifacts?”

“I wasn’t. Those were Josiah’s pots, not artifacts.”

“Guess again. All six are priceless antiques stolen from the new dig down in the canyon.”

“Chaco Canyon, yes, you said that earlier. But I’m sure you’re mistaken. Josiah wouldn’t—”

“What was your cut?” he demanded, startling her by suddenly leaning across the table and getting right in her face while he gave her a really mean stare.

“Nothing. Didn’t you hear me? This is some kind of misunderstanding. Those pots aren’t priceless.” She tossed the paper towel on the table and crossed her arms. “Get an expert in here. Dr. Jones from the museum will set you straight.”

The older detective came in. He set a cup of coffee in front of her and kept one for himself. “Here. Sorry, we’re out of cream and sugar.”

“Thank you.” She took a sip of the coffee that tasted as if it had been made a week ago and left on the burner ever since. Nonetheless, she didn’t complain.

“Tony, here, is an expert on Native American art, including the ancient stuff,” the older man continued, pulling up a chair and sitting across from her.

“Him?” she said skeptically.

“That’s right,” the man called Chuck assured her. “He’s practically a professor.”

They both looked at the younger man, who leaned against the dingy wall. “Not quite,” he said with an irritated glance at the other man, as if Chuck had given away secrets he didn’t want to share. “I still have the dissertation to complete.”

“For your Ph.D.?” she questioned in open disbelief.

“Yeah.” His steady stare dared her to make something of it.

“I’m impressed,” she said, but with a sardonic edge she couldn’t quite conceal.

She tried to picture him as a staid professor of antiquities. The image was too stiff and formal to associate with the dynamic man who’d wrestled with her, arrested her and now observed her in an impassive manner as if her protests of innocence made no impression on him at all.