The Accidental Cowboy. Heidi Hormel
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for a man in a kilt or out of it—whoa! He was a colleague and temporary lodger. She had to stop remembering brushing against him and the charge of something a little dark and a lot exciting. It had been a long time since she’d felt anything like that. Maybe never.
“Come on. You’ll probably want to spend a while looking around, and I need to write up my report.” She led Reese up the incline toward the drawings that decorated the wall just to the left of an overhang of red and dusty beige rock.
“Report?”
“I might be a ‘civilian’ but I am more than capable of providing the college with my assessment of the area.”
He nodded, then asked, “Are there multiple locations with drawings and obvious signs of habitation?”
“This one is the closest to the ranch. There are more extensive ones a day’s walk away. Others aren’t in restricted areas, so I get to those in the ranch pickup or on horseback.”
He looked away before he said, with a return to clinical stiffness, “My research focuses on the diet of late Bronze Age man—”
“And woman,” she added because his tone hit her “annoy” button again—she’d thought she’d disconnected it after years in the corporate world. She needed to work on that, especially if she planned to return to a corporate job...eventually.
“And woman. Technically the Americas did not have a Bronze Age. There was no bronze until after the colonial period. I’m specifically interested in how legumes entered the diet here.”
Jeez! Just when she’d thought he wasn’t a pompous professor. “Hmm,” she said, a noise that could mean anything.
“Pardon me. You’re not a student and you probably know more about the area and its early inhabitants than I do.”
Whoa, Nellie! Down, girl. Sure he’d just said she had intelligence and had apologized, but her only job was to act as hostess and not a hostess with benefits. If he wanted that, then he could drive himself to Nevada. Still in his utilitarian khakis—and she knew exactly what they were hiding—he had a certain charm.
* * *
JONES LOOKED UP the incline, not paying much attention to the flora, fauna or prehistoric graffiti. All he noticed was the very fine swing of the pixie’s hips as she led her pixie-sized donkey. He should feel awkward, like a giant in her miniature world. Her car—a Mini Cooper—matched her undersize lifestyle. Instead, he got that same low-in-the-gut heat that had stirred when she’d brushed up against him that day with the scorpion. Randy came to mind to describe his state. He shook his head as he moved again. His brain certainly wasn’t working at full capacity if he was coming up with Victorian descriptions of his state of...interest. He watched her more closely. Was that a natural swing? Or did she know that he was watching?
“Which group does the department at the university attribute these drawings to?” he asked as he drew close to her and the overhang that created a shallow cave-like space.
“They don’t have a specific group but have dated the area’s settlement to around 400 CE.”
“Hmm.” She proved to him again that she was more than a cute pixie-sized cowgirl. She was a woman with intelligence.
“The college recently received the property and hasn’t funded any formal explorations, although the sites have been documented over the years.” She dropped the donkey’s lead rope. She pointed and said, “Right there, see?”
He moved up beside her, close enough to touch. The hairs on his arms stood at attention. He looked over her head to faint white markings just to the left of the shaded overhang, stepping around her and forward so his back was to her. He stared at the drawings, mentally going through the list of British kings, starting with Alfred the Great. By the time he got to Ethelred the Unready, he had everything under control and could look at her again. “What do they symbolize?” He pointed to a zigzag pattern.
She shrugged. “There’s been a lot of speculation. Water or maybe wind or the deity for one of those elements. There are researchers who think that the glyphs are astrological, like Stonehenge.”
He snorted. Stonehenge. He’d not get started on that. “Are there more?”
She nodded and moved into the shallow cave and the deep shadows. “It’s cooler here, too. This is where I planned to stop for lunch. You explore. I’ll get the packs from Reese.”
Lavonda turned from him and wiped her palms down the sides of her jeans. Was she nervous? She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who was squeamish about bugs or animals that might be hiding in dark places. She nearly tripped on the uneven rocks on her way to the animal. Then she stopped, straightened her back and easily took off the smaller cooler tied to the burro’s saddle. That didn’t seem very Wild West, as he’d imagined it when he was a boy. Maybe because they weren’t in the Wild West. They had mobiles, satnav and sunscreen.
He turned back to the wall with its faint but still-visible drawings. He moved farther to the right and closer to the end of the overhang where a shallow indentation had been made by someone. How old was it and what had this been used for? His archaeologist’s interest was piqued. He heard Lavonda talking to Reese. He walked slowly, not disturbing anything. Then he caught dull silver, glinting in the sunlight that barely reached under the overhang. A twenty-first-century drink can—or something older? He reached into his pocket for his mobile and the flashlight app. He shone it into the cave’s dark corners.
“What did you find?” Lavonda’s hushed voice whispered over his skin.
“Probably nothing, but I saw... Ah, just there.” He pointed a little to the right and up on the wall.
Lavonda moved closer and a shiver of awareness skittered through him. Distracted for a moment, the flashlight beam swung wildly.
“Did you see something?” She touched his forearm briefly, her small fingers leaving a heated impression.
“Not yet,” he said calmly, as if he was in a lecture hall and not standing next to an enchanted pixie, maybe a leannán sí who’d taken possession of his body like a succubus out of a Scottish fairy tale. He concentrated on the beam of light and what had caught his eye.
“There it is.” Her arm shot out to point. She leaned in farther. Her breasts brushed against the outside of his arm.
It took all of his concentration to keep the light steady. “Yes.” He made himself move closer to the glint and away from her warmth, carefully moving his feet to minimize any disturbance of the site. Habit. He needed that habit to keep his brain working. Otherwise, all he would think about was the pixie hovering by him, her darkly sweet scent of molasses and...oats? He looked over his shoulder and noticed the little donkey, his ears standing up and watching the two of them. “Your animal. Is he loose?”
“What?”
He gestured with his head, savoring again the brush of her light touch on his arm as she turned to deal with the animal. As he got closer to what he’d glimpsed, he saw exactly what had been reflecting the light. Another niche, this one definitely enlarged by a tool. He ran his fingers over the surface, noting the notches in the stone. The mica and pyrite in the stone had created the flashes of light. The blackened spots made it clear a candle or other light source had occupied the niche. That made sense with the reflective—
“Oh, that’s amazing,” Lavonda said, once again close.
“This cave has been used before.”
“Oh, yeah. Any place that gives you shelter from the sun has been used. If not by the Tohono O’odham or Pascua Yaqui, then by ranchers, missionaries or animals. It’s important to have shelter in the desert, even the high desert.”
He nodded, lost in the crackling heat that surrounded her like the auras around the saint statues that filled every Arizona mission. Is that what the artists had been trying to portray? What was he thinking? This was not a divine feeling. This was the basest of urges. He stepped away