Lone Star Survivor

“But I just—” Andrea started, more concerned about the swift dismissal than she was the omission of the “Dr.” before her name.

“He’s been through enough. We mustn’t upset him.”

Jessie looked down at the small, frail woman, the impatience in her expression melting into compassion. “You want him to get better, don’t you?”

“I do, more than anything.”

“Then can’t you stick with the plan we made, you and Zach and me?”

The older woman hesitated. “I only want to be a better mother. I swear I do, but...she confuses him.” With this pronouncement, she pinned Andrea with an accusatory gaze. “He thinks she’s still his fiancée.”

This time, however, Andrea heard the fear behind the woman’s words, the terror of losing her son all over again. “He knows the truth now, and if he forgets it, I’ll remind him...gently, carefully. I promise you that. Believe me, I don’t want to hurt him any more than you do. But I also don’t want to leave him in pain the way he is.”

She knew the grim statistics too well, had seen up close in her work how many returning soldiers suffering untreated PTSD chose to end their lives. Or to obliterate their pain with drugs and alcohol, which often amounted to a slower form of suicide.

Ian’s mother hesitated, but for Jessie, this was apparently good enough.

“Let me show you to your room,” she said. “Then, if you want, you can ride along with me to pick up Eden from her playdate, and I’ll fill you in on everything you’ll need to know about this family.”

Andrea didn’t miss the panic that flashed through Nancy Rayford’s blue eyes. But for the moment, Andrea pretended not to see it as she took up Jessie on her offer and followed her to the wing that housed the mansion’s guest quarters.

Still, she couldn’t help but wonder, What is it Ian’s mother is so afraid I’ll find out about the Rayfords? And how can I enlist this frightened woman’s help to save her son?

* * *

When he couldn’t convince his brother, Jessie or even his pushover of a mother to send the shrink packing, Ian decided instead to ignore Andrea’s presence. It was a hell of a lot easier said than done, though, since his mind kept replaying the warmth of her curves when he had pulled her into his arms and the strength of the connection he’d felt coursing through him that moment their lips met. The only way he could manage, could keep his eyes from locking on to every move she made, was by avoiding her as much as possible.

Over the past two days she hadn’t made it any easier, “happening” upon him whenever he came inside and pretending to be no more than a concerned friend. But he’d brushed her off in a hurry and retreated to his room each time, not giving a damn about the look of disappointment on her gorgeous face.

What difference did it make anyway? Whether or not he ever spoke to her, she was sure to get paid for her efforts. He was a job to her, or at best some pet project, a screwed-up loser she’d dumped so she could ride off into the sunset with a guy whose brains weren’t scrambled eggs.

This morning, it was the sunrise that he planned to ride off into after leaving a note in the ranch office, a space more like a studio apartment, with its own seating area, kitchenette and a small bath where Zach could wash up after getting dirty with the livestock. His brother had taken the opportunity to expand the office, which had been built into a corner of the barn after an arsonist had burned down the entire structure last year. Ian knew his family had gone through a rough stretch, a time of grief compounded by intense fear and worry, but at least some good had come of it, if his brother’s relationship with Jessie was anywhere near as solid as it looked to Ian. Though yesterday he’d overheard them squabbling over Jessie’s “scaring the liver out of him,” as Zach had put it, with her refusal to share details of the new exposé she was working on, it was clear they loved each other deeply, and they had fun together, too.

Seeing how they worked as a team with Eden and how much joy the little girl, who’d started school just last week, brought them struck Ian with a sense of loss—and anger, sometimes, creeping up on him when he didn’t expect it—for the life he’d been missing out on, a life centered on a family he’d never even known he wanted. Or maybe that wasn’t true. He couldn’t say for certain these days. Along with his memory, he’d lost so much more, including a true sense of who he was.

He left a brief note on his brother’s desk, grateful that Zach would be running later than usual this morning since it was his turn to drive Eden into town for school. If he were here, Ian knew, there’d be another lecture and maybe an argument like yesterday’s, when Ian had told his brother what he could do with his advice to quit acting like a stubborn jerk and give Andrea a chance.

He did miss his brother’s coffee though, he thought as he eyed the fancy espresso machine longingly. But no way was he taking a chance on messing with Zach’s prize possession, which had enough buttons and levers to rival the fighter jets he’d once piloted.

Ian thought of heading back inside to cadge a quick mug of Althea’s simpler brew—and maybe a couple of his favorite raspberry thumbprint cookies—before he rode out, but that would bring the risk of running into Andrea since she’d been getting up earlier each day in an attempt to catch him alone. He felt idiotic sneaking around his own home—and more aggravated than ever with her for forcing him into it.

Which is why he swore under his breath when he saw her standing by the hitching post, next to his saddled palomino. She held two insulated travel mugs, one of which she offered with that gorgeous smile of hers, so white it competed with the glorious September dawn. Sleek and straight, her dark brown hair had been brushed back, with a clip keeping the front sections out of those long-lashed hazel eyes he’d always loved.

“Peace offering,” she said, looking more casual today in a pair of jeans that drew his eye to other favorite parts of her anatomy. Places he’d awakened hot and hard from dreams of touching, tasting and claiming as his own again.

When he reached for the mug, she didn’t let go, locking in on him with a take-no-prisoners gaze instead.

“Didn’t realize there’d be strings attached,” he said, looking at her almost straight on, since she wore a pair of riding boots that brought her to within a couple of inches of his own six-four.

“Life is a series of negotiations, Ian. The question is, what will you bring to the table?”

He lowered his hand and shook his head. “Thanks for bringing out the coffee, but I prefer mine black, not tarted up with a bunch of shrink talk. Or any talk at all, as far as that goes.”

“Then how ’bout if we ride instead? Just ride and see how that goes?”

He chuckled to himself, getting the point now of the boots and jeans. “You really think you’re up to riding fences with me all day?”

“I want to try.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to play nursemaid to some greenhorn. Or ride back for a ladies’ room when we’re a couple hours out.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he felt a stab of regret. He was being a jerk, he realized, punishing her for... Had she broken up with him, or was he the one who’d left her? When he reached back for the memory, he found only a black fog of loss and pain—that, and the nameless anxiety that stalked him day and night.

There’s something important you’re forgetting. Something so big, the weight of it will crush you flat when it finally comes.

“You don’t know what you want, Ian. That’s the problem. But I might be able to help you with that.”

“I want to be left to my work, alone. And that’s not gonna change, not even if you start staying up all night to try to catch me before I ride out.”

“I’m coming with you,” she insisted.

“Do you even know how to saddle a horse? Or where we keep the tack?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Well, no. I was hoping you could help with that part.”

“But you’ve ridden before? I see you’ve got the boots for it.”

Her cheeks reddened. “Well, actually, Jessie was nice enough to lend me these. Turns out we wear the same shoe size. And she’s tied up doing some research for a story she’s been working on, so she told me I could take her horse, too. Um, Princess, I think her name is?”

He felt a tug at the corner of his mouth. “My five-year-old niece named her, which means she could’ve done a lot worse, considering that Eden calls the barn cat Fizzy Fuzzbutt.”

“So you do still smile,” Andrea said. “In a nice way, I mean. Haven’t seen that for a long while.” Emotion rippled through her words, real emotion as the mask of compassionate professionalism slipped a little. “I’ve really missed that, Ian. Missed the man I knew.”

“That man’s gone forever.”

She nodded, her eyes somber. “You’re right, I’m afraid. Experience changes people. Even experiences you’re not ready to remember.”

“I’m ready. More than ready. I just— It’s gone, no matter what I do. No matter how hard I try.” He shook his head, his sore fist curling—the same fist that had punched through the wall of his bedroom in frustration. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

“I don’t think anyone has all the answers. In a lot of ways the mind’s still the same uncharted wilderness it was in Freud’s day. But I may have a few insights for you...if you’d like to hear them.”

His knee-jerk reaction was to shut her down, to say hell, no. But something in the way she’d looked at him in that single, honest moment had touched off a yearning to see more of the real Andrea, the same woman who still lived in his dreams.

Besides that, he was getting sick of himself, of the way he had been acting. And if she knew something that might change that...would it really hurt so much to try?

He reached out for the coffee, their fingers brushing as he took it. Her skin felt so soft and tender beneath his calluses. So warm.

Taking a sip of the dark brew, he was relieved to find it black and bitter.

When he murmured his thanks, she shrugged. “I remembered how you took it.”

“As opposed to yours...right?” he asked, as an image of her pouring cream into a porcelain mug came out of nowhere. She’d been wearing a loose white robe, her hair a jumble around her shoulders. Her lips were puffy and her smile warm, her eyes misted with a contentment that told him they’d just made love that morning.

A sense of loss sent a pang through the hollow of his chest. Of all the people the government could have sent to see him—and he felt sure they were behind this, somehow—why did they have to torture him with her?

“You’re right,” she confirmed, smiling sheepishly. “Two sugars and real cream whenever I can get it. I still eat pretty healthy, but I’m hopeless on that front.”

“I’ll saddle your horse, Andie—”

“Please, call me Andrea. All right?”

Ignoring her, he finished. “If you’ll agree to wear a riding helmet. Horses can be dangerous enough when a person knows her way around ’em.”

“So if I agree, you’ll take me?”

“Only because I want to get my brother off my back about it. Well, that and to see how you walk tomorrow morning.” Ian smiled, figuring it would be no hardship to watch the sway of her hips under any circumstances.

She winced and said, “Oh, boy. I haven’t ridden very much, but I do remember that part.”

“It only lasts a few days. Then you’ll get used to it. Or die.”

“You are teasing about that last part. Aren’t you?”

He snorted. “Right. You’ll only feel like dying.”

He left her with a smile and went to retrieve Jessie’s mare.

Chapter 3

The pinto was pretty enough to lead a parade, with bold black patches over brilliant white and a full and flowing mane and tail. But she seemed to have a mind of her own, a quality she demonstrated when Andrea tried to hold her back after she had mounted.

“You don’t need to haul on the reins like that,” Ian told Andrea, amusement written on his face. His own mount’s golden hide gleamed in the early-morning sunlight, the well-muscled animal as handsome as his rider. “Her mouth is sensitive.”

“Oh, am I hurting her? Should I— What do I do to keep her from running off with me?”

“Loosen your fingers, for starters, and grip her body with your knees, not your hands.”

Embarrassed to be caught holding on to the saddle horn, she gave the reins a few inches of slack. But inside, her muscles quivered, ready to bail if Princess took a notion to gallop away.

Instead, the pinto exhaled, sounding more relieved than about to race away, and Andrea found the courage to tuck an irksome stray lock back up beneath the riding helmet and out of her eyes.

“That’s a little better,” said Ian. “Now breathe deeply, from way down in the bottom of your belly. And ease up on the reins a little more. Like that, yes. Now move them both to one hand. All you’ll need to do is lay the reins on her neck, to the right to turn right, to the left for left, just like I’m doing here. See?”

She was grateful when he demonstrated, his amusement giving way to patience as he took her through the nudges, clicks and reining that he claimed would be enough to get her started.

As he expertly guided his mount and closed the paddock gate behind them, he eyed her critically. “We’ll still have to work on your seat.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” Her breath caught as she reminded herself that the light teasing, the innuendo, was no longer appropriate between them.

When he laughed, though, she decided it was worth it. Worth easing her professional demeanor to help him relax around her.

“Hardly,” he answered as they headed for the range, riding side by side, “but mostly because the only girls I see around here are married, five years old or my mother.”

“What about Miss Althea? And there must be maids, I’m guessing?” Judging from the size of the house, it would take a team to clean it.

“Miss Althea’d crack me upside the head with a wooden spoon if she ever caught wind I was thinking about her or the maids’ seats. And you’re the first visitor we’ve had staying here since...” The spark in his blue eyes dimmed. “Since I...”

“Since you’ve been back?” she prompted.

She saw his throat work as he swallowed, caught his haunted look as he nodded in answer.

They rode in silence for a while, the creaking of the saddles and the clopping of the horses’ hooves the only conversation. She fought back her impatience to get started with her counseling, to finish this job and head back to Warriors-4-Life, where the lines between the past and present didn’t blur like hoofprints in the wind. But she reminded herself that Ian’s healing was what mattered and that pushing him too quickly would only shut him down again. So instead, she took a deep breath, forcing herself to enjoy the mildness of the morning sunshine and reminding herself that the ability to wait and to listen was worth twice as much as anything a mental health professional could ever say.

She was lost in thought when Ian told her, “We’ll pick up and catch the fence line I’ve been checking about a half mile up ahead.”

“How can you know where anything is? It’s like the surface of an ocean. I don’t see anything but grass.”

“That’s because you haven’t learned to really look yet, to see it like the horses or the deer or the coyotes. A lot of what’s out here lies beneath the surface. There are gullies and old streambeds, hidden groves of trees and cow paths.”

She looked around, still seeing nothing, then turned in the saddle and realized with a start that she’d lost track of the mansion and the ranch outbuildings, too. How was that even possible, if the land was as flat and featureless as her senses tried to tell her? “Guess you have to be born to this land. I’m so turned around, I have no idea of the way back.”

“I can teach you,” he assured her. “Show you, so you can always find your way back home again.”

“Like you did...” she said quietly, so quietly that she wasn’t certain he had heard her until she marked the way his shoulders stiffened.

“There,” he said, pointing to two tufts that were a brighter green than the mostly golden grasses. “Those are the upper limbs of cottonwoods we’re heading toward. They’re actually good-size trees—and you see the notch between them where the creek’s eroded a ravine?”

“So you go by the color of the treetops?”

He nodded. “And the time of year. Whenever you see that shade this late in the season, you know you’re close to flowing water—cottonwoods usually crowd the creek beds, and the cattle like to lie in the shade beneath them.”

“Sounds like an oasis.”

“Oasis...” he echoed, frowning over the word as if it had stirred some dark association. Before she could decide whether to follow up with a question, he added, “It can be until a storm rips through and sends a flash flood roaring though that ravine. Then it’s a damned death trap, those high walls hemming you in, heaven only knows who looking down on your location.”

Andrea’s stomach tensed as instinct warned her he was referring to a harsher territory. Did he himself even know what he was doing, or was she hearing from that part of him still wandering through foreign lands among those who meant to kill him, a part of him still desperate to get home?

“Thank goodness it doesn’t look like rain, then.” She gestured toward the thin silvery wisps painted over the blue sky, her need to reassure him stronger than her desire to draw him out. “And no one for miles around.”

“No one,” he repeated, his blue eyes unfocused until he shook off whatever reverie had gripped him. “Right. Of course, you’re right. Our nearest neighbor’s a half-day’s ride, and I always check the forecast. Every single day before I ride out.”

“You used to like surprises,” she said, remembering how she’d always been the one who’d wanted things locked down and certain. Remembering how she hadn’t been able to deal with it when he couldn’t give the security she craved.

“Not anymore, I don’t.”

Something in his tone had her feeling a little skittish as they rode single file down into the ravine. The narrow, crumbling walls seemed to close in on her, even after Ian stopped and pointed out a low rock outcrop behind them that marked the way back to the mansion.

Soon, however, Ian eased her worry, straightening in his saddle and leading the way with the natural air of confidence she had been drawn to from the first time she’d met him. Her faith in his leadership was soon rewarded when the ravine opened to a green and grassy hollow bisected by a swift but shallow creek splashing over rocks. The air cooled as they continued downhill, riding beneath the spreading arms of the cottonwoods and provoking a symphony of morning birdsong.

Mooing to protest the invasion, cattle rose from the hollow they’d claimed as a resting place and trotted along the barbed-wire fence line on the other side of the creek.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, marveling at the hidden world he’d shown her.

“Beautiful and a pain, too, sometimes. Cows are always using those fence posts to scratch whatever itches—if they’re not pushing ’em over, it’s some thunderstorm that’s washed them out. Look, there’s one now that needs attention.” Dismounting in one smooth motion, he used rock from the creek bottom to brace a tilted post.

“Want some help there?” she asked, though she wasn’t entirely sure she could get back on her horse without a mounting block.

“I’ve got it covered. Just relax and enjoy the view.”

She didn’t have to be told twice, her gaze seeking out one singer and then following the progress of a pair of bright red wings flitting among branches. She tracked the movement until she was distracted by what looked like the metallic glint of something moving above them on the hillside. Something that didn’t belong.

She stood in the stirrups and leaned to the right, trying to see it through the branches. “What’s that? I saw something move. There.” Though she’d lost sight of the movement, she pointed in the direction she’d last seen it.

He looked up from the strand of barbed wire he’d been tightening, a pair of pliers in hand. “What? You mean a bird?” he asked. “Or maybe a—”

She shook her head. “Something man-made, I think. A windshield, maybe, or something metal. Could someone be—”

He swore and rushed at her, his movement so abrupt the pinto shied away from his reach.

“Get down!” He closed in, grabbing at her leg. “Off the horse now. Gun!”

“No, Ian,” she said, recognizing the panic ripping through his voice, the glazed eyes seeing a time and place she knew was as real to him as this one. Clearly, he had tipped into a flashback, something she had witnessed so many times in clients. “It was only a reflection, I’ll bet, maybe some piece of trash blowing in the—”

“Gun, damn it!” This time when he lunged, he caught her belt from behind, and she screamed as he pulled her down. Her terror echoed with the horses’ whinnies as they bolted for the ravine’s entrance, the clatter of their hoofbeats followed by a shattering boom.

Lightning strike, she thought as Ian caught her in his strong arms and started dragging her toward the shaded hollow where the cattle had lain. She’d heard of bolts from the blue, even on the clearest days.

The second blast convinced her she was wrong, the loud plunk as the post Ian had been working on exploded. Someone was really shooting, firing on them here and now and not in Ian’s imagination. Had some out-of-season hunter mistaken them for game?

“No!” she shouted. “Don’t shoot at us! We’re down here!”

Ian clapped a hand over her mouth and ordered, “Quiet. Now,” through clenched teeth. One arm around her waist, he hauled her forward. Already knocked askew, her riding helmet fell as another shot echoed through the creek bottom. Grit spattered the back of her leg from where another bullet drilled the ground behind them, right where she’d been standing a half second earlier.

As her survival instincts kicked in, Andrea quit fighting Ian. Because whether or not this nightmare was rooted in his missing year inside the war zone, there was no denying it could kill them in the here and now.

* * *

His heart thundered in his chest, but Ian’s mind dropped into mission mode as he guided the civilian with him under branches and around rocks. Because the civilian was the mission, her safety paramount in his mind, no matter how confused he was to have Andrea here with him.

Hadn’t he left her behind in the peace and safety of Southern California? And hadn’t she left him, too, a memory slicing through the darkness like a shard of broken glass, saying that she wanted another kind of life, a life without his secrets? So it made no sense that he was half leading and half dragging her here across this shallow creek, in a place where he used to hide out when his old man got that dangerous look in his eyes. But with no time to stop and think it through, Ian accepted this bizarre tangle of the half-remembered like another of his convoluted nightmares.

He searched the deepest shadows, focused on finding the one spot where he knew Andrea would be safe. A few steps beyond the water, he pointed out a horizontal shelf of weathered rock that had been undercut by past flooding. Partly filled in by damp pebbles, it would be a tight squeeze on her hands and knees, but if she could wedge herself in that space, she would be well hidden from the person up top with what sounded like a rifle.

“Crawl under there, where he won’t see you.”

“Down there? In that hole, you mean?” Her eyes were huge with disbelief.

He nodded. “Back yourself in, and don’t come out, no matter what you hear or see.”

“What about you? There’s no room for both of—”

“Just do it, Andrea, and I’ll come back for you. I swear to you, I will.”

Their gazes locked, his blue with her hazel. And in that fraction of a second, some understanding passed between them. Face pale with terror, she blew out a shaky breath.