Part 5 (1/2)
”It will get easier,” he promised early on their third day at the motel. ”Just do the best you can with it. When we get back to Albany, I'll commandeer someone from the typing pool to help you. It's been like this ever since Mary quit. She'd been with me for ten years, and she knew every facet of the business. It would be difficult for anyone to step into her shoes immediately, so don't feel threatened. Okay?”
She smiled with pure relief. ”Okay. I was beginning to feel a little inadequate.”
”You're not. Your typing is above average, and your shorthand is admirable, if unorthodox.” He chuckled. ”We'll get by. Want to go out and see a ghost town tomorrow?”
”Could we?” she exclaimed. ”Will we have time?”
”As hard as you've worked, we'll make time.” He checked his watch and grimaced. ”G.o.d, I forgot, I've got a meeting at the bank. I'll have to rush. Have room service send something up for you, and stay by the phone. I've got a call in to a colleague in London. Take a message if he calls.”
”I'll do that.” She watched him leave, fascinated by his seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. He left her breathless with his pace. All the same, it was an exciting, challenging job, and she knew she wouldn't tire of it soon.
The next afternoon, after lunch, he packed her and a cooler of soft drinks into the car and set off toward the north. Both of them were dressed in jeans and boots, and he'd insisted that she take a hat along because of the heat, even at this time of year. She sat next to him in the four-wheel-drive vehicle and smiled at the way they matched, he in his chambray s.h.i.+rt and she in hers, both pale blue. But she had a jaunty red scarf around her neck, and he'd forgone that touch of Western Americana. It was much too warm for jackets, and she knew that the long-sleeved s.h.i.+rts were to protect them from sunburn rather than cold.
”Where are we going?” she asked.
”Off the beaten path,” he replied. ”You won't find this place on any of the tourist maps. It's an old silver mine that belonged to one of Hank's ancestors. I told him that I was going to tour you through a few ghost towns, and he suggested I bring you here. He gave me the key to the gate.”
”That was nice of him,” she said, smiling.
”Hank's not immune to women,” he remarked, glancing at her with a faint chuckle. ”You charmed him.”
Her dark eyes widened. ”But, I hardly spoke to him,” she protested.
”You don't know how potent you are, do you?” he asked, a faint edge on his deep voice. ”I've never known a woman so unaware of her own gifts.”
She could have told him that Ben had made her that way, finding fault eventually with everything about her. But she didn't say it.
”There were lots of mines in Arizona, weren't there?” she asked.
”Were, and still are,” he agreed. ”One of the most famous old ones is the Silver King near Superior.”
”Wasn't Tombstone originally the site of a silver strike?”
He laughed. ”That's right.”
”I started reading up on Arizona when you said we were going to come here,” she confessed. ”But nothing I read prepared me for what I saw. It's like another world out here.”
He followed her rapt gaze to the jagged mountains in the distance. ”I felt the same way the first time I saw it,” he said. ”It's an unexpected country. Nothing like back East.”
”But so beautiful,” she said fervently.
”And deadly. When we get there, make sure you stick to me like glue. You can fall into a mine shaft out here so quickly it isn't funny.”
Her eyes mirrored her fear. ”You're joking, aren't you?”
”I am not. There are towns around here with buildings that have s.h.i.+fted over the years because of the number of tunnels under them. They have a habit of collapsing. And, yes, people have fallen into abandoned mine shafts.”
She s.h.i.+vered, wrapping her thin arms around her body. ”What a horrible fate.”
”You'll be fine as long as you don't wander around indiscriminately.” He glanced her way and smiled. ”I'll take care of you, little one.”
Her heart jumped. He sounded protective and tender all at once, and she felt herself melting inside. She had to be careful not to give in, not to show how she felt. But it wasn't going to be easy. Just sitting next to him made her tingle all over.
”There are rattlers around, too, so watch where you put your feet.”
”Just like back home,” she reminded him, tongue-in-cheek.
”Point taken.”
A few miles down the highway, he pulled off onto a dirt road and drove to a locked gate. The key Hank had given him unlocked a big padlock that held together the ends of a heavy chain. He refastened it before he continued down the rutted road to a valley that fronted the site of a mine. Tunnels in the mountains told their own stories. There was a stone foundation and a few adobe walls, attesting to the former site of the main office, and the remnants of houses and a smelter.
The wind seemed to blow constantly. She walked beside Ryder, feeling somehow insignificant in this vast nothingness. The ruins were like a reminder that nothing really lasted, least of all people. She took a deep breath of the air and closed her eyes. She could almost hear voices.
”Daydreaming?” he teased.
She shrugged, opening her eyes with a smile. ”Just listening to the ghosts. I'll bet they could tell some stories.”
”I don't doubt that.”
”All those people who worked here, who lived here,” she began, bypa.s.sing a row of unconnected stone steps to stare up at the mines, ”they're dead now. It seems so useless somehow, Ryder. What was it all for?”
”They were prospecting for dreams, I imagine,” he said, and for a moment, his eyes were dark with hunger as he looked at her profile. ”G.o.d knows, some dreams are worth any price.”
”Are they?” she murmured absently. She stretched lazily. ”I'm starved!”
He chuckled. ”That's my line. I'll get the basket.”
He went back to the four-wheel-drive, and, minutes later, they were feasting on cold cuts and salad off of paper plates, was.h.i.+ng it all down with cold soft drinks from the cooler.
”Paradise,” she sighed, smiling across at him. They were sitting on the stone steps, using a wall of the foundation for a makes.h.i.+ft table. Around them, the sun shone brightly and the wind blew. ”I'll bet people had picnics here back when the mine was worked. Children probably played on those big boulders,” she gestured toward them, ”and women walked up from the settlement to shop at the store.”
”Store?” he asked, frowning.
”Oh, they had to have one,” she said with conviction. ”This far from any settlement, with the men at work in the mines, there had to be a store where women could buy cloth and flour and coffee and sugar. There were probably other kinds of places, too. Didn't Jerome have a brothel and several bars?” she added with a shy glance.
He laughed with pure delight. It had been so long since he'd felt so lighthearted, so at peace with himself and the world. Watching Ivy made him feel whole again. She was beautiful, he thought, from her long black hair to her gentle heart. He'd never wanted anything as much as he wanted her.
”Yes, Jerome had its entertainments,” he agreed. ”But a small settlement like this with close family ties probably wouldn't have tolerated a brothel.”
”You mean, the wives wouldn't,” she said, grinning at him.
”Absolutely.” He pushed his hat back on his head and studied her blatantly. ”You look more relaxed than I've seen you in months.”
”You haven't seen me in months,” she reminded him with gentle humor. She toyed with a long strand of her hair. ”I think getting away from home has helped more than anything,” she said, smiling at him. ”You've been so good to me, Ryder....”
”I don't want grat.i.tude,” he said tersely, looking away toward the cliffs. ”I needed an a.s.sistant, you needed a job. It was business.”
Her heart fell. She'd hoped for something more than that, but she didn't dare let her disappointment show. What had she expected, anyway, she wondered, when the past had killed any hope of a future between them? Besides, there was Ben and her guilt still standing in the way.
She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them. ”It was still kind of you,” she said doggedly. ”Mama said I was wasting away. Maybe I was. After...after Ben died, I lost interest in everything.”