The Traveling Kind (9 page)

Slowing the truck, he turned into the entrance of the Craters of the Moon National Monument. The jagged rockscape flanked the road on either side of them. The colors varied from near black to a purplish gray. Shad stopped the truck in a small parking area along the side of the road.

“Come on,” he said as he opened his own door. “Let’s get out and walk.”

Charley pushed her own door open and joined him by the front hood of the truck. Almost casually, he reached out and took hold of her hand to lead her onto the rough terrain. Charley didn’t resist the warm grip of his hand as she followed him onto the uneven ground.

When the road disappeared behind them, an eerie silence seemed to descend, darkly lonely and mysterious. Shad paused in the center of this harsh, dangerous landscape and Charley lifted her face to the whispering breeze, pushing the hair back from her face and holding it there.

They were surrounded by cones and craters of volcanic rock. Long ago, massive underground explosions had created these weird formations and sent out the lava flows to create an island of rock crags in a land of grass and trees and earth. Its resemblance to photographs of the moon’s surface was uncanny, so empty and lifeless.

Charley glanced over her shoulder at the mountain range on the horizon, needing the reassurance that this desolate landscape did not go on forever. When her gaze swung to Shad, his mouth curved in a smile of silent understanding.

“If a person ever wondered what it is like to walk on the moon, he’d have his answer here,” he said.

“It’s eerie, isn’t it? So quiet and so lonely.” She looked around, seeing nothing but more sharp rock formations.

“There’s the moon.” With a nod of his head he indicated the pale white orb in the daytime sky, its shadowy face barely discernible.

She moved closer to Shad, their arms brushing against each other as she lifted her gaze to the orbiting object. When he released her hand, she missed the warmth of his touch, but his arm curved itself around the back of her waist, replacing one sensation with another.

“It makes you feel isolated, doesn’t it?” He turned his head to look at her and Charley felt the first tremor of desire quiver through her at how close they stood. “As if we are the only two people left, marooned here alone.”

“Yes.” It was a low answer, concealing the disturbance his remark provoked. It was a heady thought to be marooned with him—with no possibility that he could ever leave her.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to make love on the moon?” His question robbed her of speech. At the negative movement of her head, Shad turned slightly to more squarely face her. His dark head blocked out her view of the moon as he slowly gathered her into his arms, fitting her soft curves to his male shape. He rubbed his mouth across her forehead. “I have,” he murmured against her skin, the warmth of his breath stimulating her nerve ends as he dragged his mouth to a temple. “It must be a very unique experience.”

With soft kisses he closed her eyes to sentence her to a world of sensation. Her fingers curled into the hard muscles of his arms, clinging to him as she felt a strange weightlessness envelop her. While he explored the curve of her cheek and the corner of her lips, his hands roamed in exciting caresses over her shoulders and hips. He seemed to deliberately torment her with the promise of his kiss, but did not offer it.

The aching need that was building in her eventually forced a soft moan from her throat. In answer to her .wordless plea, his hard lips covered her mouth with bruising possession. The circle of his arms tightened, crushing her breasts, taut with desire, against the unyielding wall of his chest. Yet not even this closeness brought satisfaction and she strained to cross the physical limits of their embrace, to become part of him.

His mouth broke away from hers, his breathing labored and heavy. She could feel the pounding of his heart, thudding as loudly as her own. His eyes were half-closed with the weight of desire as they ran over her face. He loosened his hold, bringing his hands up to curve them under the hair along her neck while Charley continued to lean against him, her legs too weak to stand without his support. His hands were restless with their caresses, his fingers exploring the curve of her jaw and the pulsing vein in her neck.

“Your body feels so good against mine,” he murmured on a husky pitch and lowered one hand to cup it to her breast. It swelled beneath his touch. “I want to make love to you, Charley. You know that.”

His statement pulled away the veil she’d been hiding behind and she could see clearly. The one thing she had been so determined to avoid had happened despite her better judgment. She had fallen irrevocably in love with him.

“It isn’t fair,” she protested in a faint sob. “I want you so much, Shad.”

“Charley.” Her name was a caress on his lips as he brought them down hard on her own, stealing what little vestige of control she had left.

The embrace would have ended in her total surrender if it hadn’t been for the clatter of a pair of feet on the rocky ground. The approach of the intruder stopped the kiss before it reached the point where they both would have been beyond hearing a bomb explode. Shad lifted his head at almost the same moment that the sound ceased. As his arms loosened to let Charley go his frown turned into a lazy smile.

“Who are you?” he asked, and Charley wondered how anyone could resist his smile. Still a little shaky, she turned to see who Shad was talking to. A little boy, no more than six years old, stood poised in the shadow of a volcanic cone. His rounded blue eyes were studying them uncertainly. “I’ll bet I know who you are,” Shad stated. “You’re the man in the moon, aren’t you?”

The little boy laughed and nodded vigorously that he was. Shad crouched down, sitting on his heels, to bring himself to eye level with the youngster.

“I’ve always wanted to meet the man in the moon,” he remarked and looked him over. “I thought you’d be taller.”

“I only look small,” the boy said, his child’s imagination liking this game. “I’m really bigger.”

Charley could see that Shad was enjoying himself, too. He had a natural affinity with children, she realized. He would make a good father, she decided and caught herself wondering whether his son would inherit those blue eyes and black hair. She was treading in dangerous waters.

“I haven’t had lunch yet and I’m starting to get hungry.” Shad tipped his head at an inquiring angle. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me where you keep the green cheese.”

“The moon isn’t made of cheese,” the boy scoffed at him for believing such nonsense.

“It isn’t?” Shad looked surprised. . . .

At just about that same moment, a woman’s voice called anxiously, “Billy! Billy, where are you?”

The boy turned with a reluctant sigh and answered, “Here, mom!”

A young woman in shorts and a knit top appeared a second later behind the cone where the boy waited. Her worried expression faded to exasperation as she found him unharmed. “You shouldn’t go running away from your father and me like that. Don’t you realize that you could have got lost?”

“But I didn’t,” he replied in a perfectly reasonable tone and turned to point to Shad and Charley. ‘‘They found me.”

“You mean you aren’t really the man in the moon?” Shad feigned a look of disappointment as he sent a brief smile at the boy’s mother and straightened to his feet.

“No. I fooled you, didn’t I?” the boy laughed.

‘‘You certainly did,’’ Shad agreed.

“I hope he wasn’t a nuisance,” the woman apologized and caught hold of her son’s hand.

“Not at all,” he assured her and sent a glance at Charley that contradicted his statement.

But the interruption had given Charley time to regain her senses. Shad’s recognition of that fact flickered across his expression. Once they were alone, there wouldn’t be a resumption of that embrace. The moment had passed when desire reigned supreme. Falling in love with him hadn’t changed the reality that he would leave her someday. It had now become a question of how much she would be hurt, and not a question of whether she’d be hurt.

When the boy’s father had joined his wife and son, Shad lightly took hold of Charley’s hand. By mutual consent they retraced their route to the parking area where they’d left the truck. After helping her into the cab, Shad walked around the hood to climb behind the wheel.

“Have you seen enough of the park?” He sent her a questioning glance as he started the engine.

“Yes.” She made a show of glancing at her watch. “It’s getting late. We’d better head back for the ranch before Gary starts wondering what happened to us.”

Stepping on the accelerator, he turned onto the road and headed back toward the highway. “Do you want to stop somewhere for lunch?”

“I’m not hungry,” she said, answering him with a negative shake of her head. “Are you?”

His gaze touched her, then swept to the jutting curves of her breasts. “Not for food,” he replied and didn’t need to add more. Her heart had already started fluttering against her ribs, guessing his hunger.

As they neared the highway she forced her attention to concentrate on the cross traffic. As soon as there was a break in the vehicles Shad accelerated onto the highway.

During the next twenty or so miles they didn’t speak at all. Gradually her tension left Charley and she began to relax once again in Shad’s company, her guard lowering. He seemed to sense the very moment it occurred, because he glanced over at her and smiled.

“Did you enjoy your excursion to the Craters of the Moon?” he asked. There was nothing in his tone to make Charley suspect she should read more into his question than what he had said.

“Very much.” Which was true—in many ways, but she didn’t let her thoughts dwell on that. Combing her fingers through her hair, she looked out the window and sighed contentedly.

“What was that for?” His glance was curious.

“I guess it was an expression of pride in my home state,” she shrugged because she wasn’t entirely sure what it had been. “Idaho has everything.”

“Is that right?” His tone was faintly mocking.

“It’s true,” Charley insisted. “On the road toward Salmon, we have the Grand Canyon in miniature. East of here, there are sand dunes. And Shoshone Falls outside of Twin Falls, Idaho. The water there falls farther than the waters at Niagara Falls. There’s the Snake River Canyon and the Salmon ‘River of No Return.’ I could go on and on.”

“I noticed,” he chuckled in a way that gently teased her.

“Well, it does have everything.” She laughed at her own enthusiasm.

“I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you,” he replied and reached out to link his fingers with hers. A warm tingle of pleasure ran up her arm at his gesture of affection and closeness. “Is there a reason why there has to be so much room on the seat between us?” Shad asked with a coaxing smile.

Charley hesitated but the temptation to be close to him was too strong to resist. Besides, as long as he was driving, it seemed relatively safe. And there wouldn’t be many chances to be near him.

“I suppose not,” she admitted and shifted over to sit beside him.

Unlinking their hands, he put his arm around her so that she was snuggling in the crook of his shoulder with his hand on her waist. It was a natural, comfortable position with the warmth of his body pressed alongside hers.

“What’s the longest you’ve ever stayed in one place?” Charley wondered aloud.

“Two years,” he replied without any hesitation.

“Haven’t you ever considered settling down?” There was a wistful quality to her question as she indulged herself in the ridiculous dream that she might be the one to persuade him to put down roots.

“Yes,” Shad admitted. “I spent two years trying. That was five years ago when I was twenty-nine. I decided it was time I stayed in one place and build myself a home. So I bought a small ranch over on the Idaho side of the Bitterroot Mountains.”

“You did?” Charley was surprised by his answer.

“Yes.” And he went on to explain, “In the beginning, it was a challenge to fix the place up and bring the ranch up to its potential. I worked day and night at it, running new fence during the daytime and repairing the buildings at night.”

“If you liked it, why didn’t you stay?” She was confused.

“It’s like having a new toy. When you first get it, you don’t want to play with anything else. Later on, the newness wears off and you become bored with it. That’s what happened to me with the ranch. Once it was running smoothly and on the verge of showing a profit, the old urge to travel came back. There wasn’t anything to keep me there.”

“So you sold it and moved on,” Charley concluded, depression settling onto her shoulders.

“I moved on but I didn’t sell it,” Shad corrected her on that point. “A widower and his son manage it for me on a share basis. I have a small but steady income from it, which allows me to do pretty much what I please. It’s a place I can go to when I’m too old to travel.”

“Have you ever been back to the ranch since you left it?” she asked.

“No. I was headed there when you walked into that café that day,” he said with a downward glance that sparkled over her face. “I can’t say for sure what made me change my plans that morning. I didn’t need the money then so I guess it was the idea of having a honey-haired boss.” His gaze made one sweep of the highway in front of them before Shad turned and bent his head to steal a kiss.