Heart Of The Eagle

“Beautiful, dangerous and thrilling,” he admitted, a slow smile pulling at his mouth. He pushed the hat back on his head, studying her. “You were beautiful, he was dangerous and the whole ten minutes were thrilling. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

Dal laughed, running her fingers through her hair to try and tame it back into order. “We’ve played like this ever since he learned to fly. When he was younger, he would ride out here on my arm and I’d cast him off.” She patted her gelding. “Smokey enjoys it, too.”

“I could see that. You wouldn’t find many horses willing to tolerate an eagle attacking them like that.”

“No. Most horses would shy,” she agreed, smiling.

Resting his arm on the saddle horn, Jim said, “You’re at one with nature and the animals.”

Dal pulled her leg across the horn, balancing herself with unconscious ease as she dropped the reins and let Smokey nibble at the grass at his feet. She gazed around her, a soft hint of a smile lingering in her eyes. “Yes, I love the forest and the animals.”

“But not the two-legged variety known as men?”

The joy died in her eyes as she met his probing gaze. “No, never them.”

He gave her a slight smile. “Wish I was an eagle, then. I envy Nar.”

“Why?”

“He’s male and he has your trust.”

His insight was unsettling to her, but she had found out the night before that his intuitive knowledge of her didn’t necessarily mean pain. “Nar gained my trust with long hard hours of working together.”

“But you were willing to give him your time,” Jim countered huskily.

Dal lifted her leg, slipping her foot back into the stirrup and picking up the reins. “What are you trying to say, Jim?”

He straightened up, his gaze holding hers so that he could see the fear and defensiveness reflected in her luminous eyes. “How do you get a man-fearing horse to trust you again?” he countered.

“You work with him, I suppose.”

He gave her a heated look charged with some unknown emotion. “That’s right, you do.”

Dal looked mystified. “Do Navaho always talk in riddles?”

“When it suits them,” he drawled, smiling. Dal was a man-fearing woman right now. And whether she knew it or not, he was going to handle her, force her to work closely with him and regain her trust. If he told her that he knew she would flee from him like the frightened deer she was, and never allow him near her again. But if he could convince Rafe to let him deal with the poaching problem, then Dal would have no choice. “Come on, I’ll race you that two miles to the end of the meadow. Let’s find out what kind of a rider you really are, lady.”

She was thrown off guard by his questions and then his challenge. Gripping the reins, she tossed him a smile. “All right. Let’s go!”

Jim matched her smile, allowing her to leap ahead of him. Flight tugged angrily beneath his hand, wanting to outrace the gelding barely a length in front of him. Jim contented himself with letting Dal lead over the pounding two-mile run. The graceful synchronicity between her and the horse was breathtaking. She was free, if only for those heart-pounding minutes as they flew across the emerald carpet of the valley.

Dal pulled up her gelding, a triumphant smile on her flushed face as they circled to a stop at the end of the meadow. “Why do I get the feeling you didn’t really try to win?” she asked.

Shrugging easily, Jim ran his fingers down Flight’s arched and damp neck. The stallion was still angry at being held in. “There’re other things more important than winning.”

“Such as?”

“Hmm, just things. One of these days I might share them with you.”

Dal gave him a suspicious look. “Has anyone ever accused you of being closemouthed?”

Jim took off his hat, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. “A few people. Does it make you uncomfortable?”

She nodded. “Yes. You’re the kind of man who’s always thinking, and I’d feel safer knowing your thoughts than with you keeping them to yourself.”

Settling the hat back on his black hair, he asked, “Do you want to know out of curiosity or for your comfort level?”

Dal walked beside him as they took a well-beaten path back through the pasture toward the barn. Her eyes glimmered with mirth. “My own comfort level,” she admitted.

“I like your honesty, Dal Kincaid. It becomes you,” he said in a husky tone.

She colored fiercely, feeling as if he had reached out and stroked her as he had done the night before. Dal vividly recalled the firm pressure of his fingers massaging the pain from her shoulders and back. “I don’t play games very well, Jim,” she muttered.

“Neither do I. We have something else in common.”

“Except you won’t tell me what you’re thinking.”

He reined Flight to a stop at the barn and dismounted. “The Navaho believe in peace among people, not dissension or creating fear. If I told you some of my thoughts right now, you’d take flight just like that eagle of yours. I don’t want to cause you any more havoc with what I’m thinking.”

Holding his amused gaze, Dal dismounted. He was gently baiting her and she felt the same kind of safety she had when he had held her. “I get it. You’re being polite and telling me to mind my own business.”

“Not really,” he murmured, taking the reins to the horses while Dal slid open the door. The change in Dal was startling. The previous day she had made a point of keeping her distance from him. This morning, she walked relaxed at his side, their shoulders almost brushing. “There’s a right place and time to say everything,” he told her, holding her expectant gaze.

“Is that another Navaho adage?”

He grinned and brought the horses to a stop in the center aisle, so that they could be cross tied and untacked. “No, just common sense.”

Dal’s laughter pealed through the breezeway, light and silvery. She began to uncinch Smokey’s saddle. “You really are different, Jim Tremain.”

“Just like you. Don’t ever forget that, Dal. We’re both horses of a different color.”

With a wrinkle of her nose, she lifted the saddle from Smokey. “Is that supposed to be bad or good?”

“Why should it be either? It just is,” he said, taking his saddle and following her into the tack room.

Dal nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve never really looked at life that way,” she admitted, sliding the saddle onto the peg. “Everything in my life gets put into the bad or good category. Most of it bad, lately.”

“The Navaho way is to see each event as something to be learned from and accepted,” he said, putting the saddle down and tossing the blanket over a rack.

Picking up the tack box, she handed him a grooming brush and cloth to wipe Flight down with. “So life doesn’t consist of good and bad events?”

“No. I take each event and each person and ask myself, what will I learn today?”

Smokey nickered softly as Dal approached. She smiled and stroked his broad forehead with a brush where the sweat was trickling down and itching where he couldn’t scratch. The gelding leaned gratefully toward her, eyes half-closed in enjoyment. Dal’s mouth puckered. “Then I learned plenty from my ex-husband,” she said, beginning to rub Smokey vigorously.

Jim rested his arms on the stallion’s wide back, gazing over at her. “What was Gordon like?”

Her head snapped up and she met his serious expression. It was a personal question, one that she had never discussed with anyone, not even her parents. Dal could have retorted, it’s none of your business. Only she got the feeling Jim really wanted to know. He didn’t seem the prying type, except with her….

Dal resumed her brushing of the gelding. “I married Jack when I was twenty-three.”

“That’s pretty young.”

“Too young,” she agreed grimly. “I was a green college kid who had played catch-me-if-you-can games with guys my own age until Jack came along. He was ten years my senior, extraordinarily handsome and at home in the most expensive business suits.” She blew a strand of hair from her eyes, her face glistening with the sweat of her exertion. “To make a painful story very short, I married him three months after I met him. I was moon-eyed over him; it was the first time I’d ever fallen in love….”

Jim took the cloth and wiped down the stallion all the while, listening to the edge of pain in her voice. “And then what happened?”

“He painted a wonderful future for both of us. I was one of the three people at the university majoring in ornithology. I had a straight 4.0 average and was Professor Jacob Warner’s assistant. I had trained under one of the most widely recognized ornithologists in the world for four years. Rare and exotic species were my specialty. That and predatory birds.” She halted, looking over at Jim, her face flushed. “Jack said we’d make a wonderful team. He wanted to import and export birds from the jungles and sell them to zoos around the world. He lacked the expertise but had the managerial knowledge.”

“Are you saying he married you for that?”

She managed a pained smile. “No…I know he loved me in the beginning. At first, we were both excited about the possibility of tramping the jungles of the world with each other, looking for exotic birds.”

“It sounds pretty good so far,” he said quietly.

“The rose-colored glasses were definitely on,” Dal agreed tightly. “We spent the first two years in the Amazon and the Far East chasing birds; I identified them and watched Jack crate them up and send them to zoos. At first, I thought his enthusiasm for the birds was okay. After the third year he got more excited about a blue-crowned hanging parrot from Malaya than about our marriage. He got caught up in the desire to make more and more money. The last two years was a total sham. Somehow, we let our relationship falter and we just grew further and further apart.”

Jim continued to brush Flight down, saying little, though his mind worked furiously. Gordon had used her idealism and trust to manipulate her to get what he wanted. Anger rushed through him as he stole a look over at Dal. She appeared distraught over her admission as she worked on the horse. An overwhelming sense of helplessness rushed through him; no wonder she had looked fatigued three years ago when he first met her. Gordon had taken everything from Dal, including her own sense of self, for his own end.

“What about you?”

“Me?” Jim echoed, rising and resting a hand across Flight’s wither.

She gave him a slight smile. “Here I am dumping the story of my life on you and I know so little about you. Are you happily married with a bunch of kids?”

It was his turn to smile. “Is that how you see me?”

Dal thoughtfully ran the comb through Smokey’s silky mane. “Yes. You look married.” And then she gave a self-conscious shrug. “Some men just give you that impression of being happily married.”

“I see….”

“Are you?”

He shook his head, brushing Flight’s back. The stallion groaned and lifted his head in utter pleasure. “Not yet. I just never met the right woman.”

Mustering a smile, Dal murmured, “The woman that gets you will be very lucky.”

“Thank you. And I think the man who’s able to reach out and get beyond your past experience with your marriage, will also be lucky.”

Dal untied Smokey, leading him back to his roomy stall. “I’m staying single,” she promised him. “Marriage isn’t for me.”

Sliding the box stall door shut on Flight, Jim turned and walked down to where Dal was standing. An enigmatic smile shadowed his well-shaped mouth as he approached her. “Let time heal your outlook on marriage,” he said, coming to a halt. God, she looked so enticing with her hair in delicious disarray about her flushed features. Jim wanted to reach out and lightly touch her cheek, just to feel the velvet pliancy of it. There was so much he wanted to do—could have done if Dal wasn’t running so scared from him….

Dal lowered her lashes, unable to stand the tenderness burning in his honey-colored eyes. Suddenly, she felt shy and unsure of herself in his presence. “Listen,” she began, her voice barely above a whisper, “about last night…”

“It was special,” Jim returned huskily.

She lifted her chin, her sapphire eyes luminous with tears as she held his gaze. Whatever had made her think she couldn’t trust Jim Tremain? He stood inches from her, his hands thrown languidly on the hips of his well-worn jeans, looking incredibly self-assured and handsome in her eyes. The notion that she even had a shred of trust left in her shook Dal completely. But whatever was left of her pulverized emotions was reaching out like tendrils of new life toward him. This time, Dal didn’t fight those feelings as she held his searching gaze.

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