Rescue My Heart Read online

  He slid her a look.

  Right. Dumb question. Everyone behaved for Adam. It was his voice, low and utterly authoritative. He rarely raised it, he didn’t have to. “What if there’s a cat?” she asked. “Or better yet, a sexy two-year-old Lab strutting her stuff right in front of him? He can resist a distraction, just for you?”

  Her attempt at brevity was met with a barely there smile as Adam hit the gas. “A dog is either trained and obedient, or not,” he said. “I don’t know how to half train a dog.” He glanced at her. “So what’s your plan here, Holly? How were you planning on getting to Diamond Ridge?”

  “Up Pyramid Hills and then through Shirley Canyon,” she said, and wrapped her arms around herself. The ATV was open to the wind and icy air. She was wearing several layers, including her down parka, but she was still cold.

  “Shirley Canyon’s got rock slides,” he said. “And by noon we’re going to possibly have snow.” He reached behind her seat and then something warm and thick was tossed over her.

  A jacket. “Pyramid Hills is suicide at this time of year,” he said.

  She gratefully wrapped herself in the thick down jacket. “What’s a better way, then?”

  “Old Crestmont Road.”

  “I’ve never gone that way. Isn’t it longer?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s also the only doable route in this weather. Mostly.”

  Gulp. Well, at least she wouldn’t be alone. She’d have the best tracker and climber she knew right at her side. “Old Crestmont Road it is, then.”

  He glanced at her. “Say the word and I’ll take you back.”

  She had to wonder, was he so against her company because it was going to be rough-going and potentially dangerous? After all, even Lewis and Clark had nearly met their end here in these mountains.

  Or was it that he didn’t want to spend time with her?

  Both, she decided. “I’m not going back, Adam.”

  He let out a long, slow breath, and looking resigned, he kept driving.

  Six

  They didn’t speak, which worked for Holly. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to get this done, find her dad, and go back to pretending she wasn’t attracted to Adam in any shape or form.

  Since he was quiet, she assumed he felt the same. Except probably he didn’t have to pretend anything. Hard to tell with his hat and hoodie up and no expression revealed as he handled the road like a pro. As she had multiple times a day, she tried calling her dad again. Still nothing.

  Dawn arrived, a rose stripe where the sky met the purple outline of the majestic peaks. Burgeoning, tumultuous clouds pressed down, muting daylight, warning of the weather still to come. The land was vast and rambling, open but not flat, not by a long shot, and as they gained in altitude with each minute, the wind beat at them.

  Holly hunkered into herself. Adam had already cranked up the heater, but after a glance her way, he turned the vents all in her direction. Grateful, she smiled at him, but he was already concentrating on the road again.

  She did the same. The rose stripe in the sky widened as day broke over them, and she took in the landscape. This area was the largest expanse of continuous pristine wilderness in the lower forty-eight states. Much of its beauty came in the form of heavily glaciated, rugged, not easily approached peaks. The glaciers had formed steep canyons that opened onto a wilderness valley floor, all of it roamed by small and big game.

  Simple beauty. Another world away from New York. Pristine. Pure. She had no idea what it said about her being out here, in the open ATV with Adam, with the wind beating at her and her nose nearly frozen off, with her father missing, with Adam not exactly thrilled to have her along, that she was still enjoying herself more than she had for far too long.

  It didn’t say anything good, she decided. Especially since Adam didn’t appear to be moved one way or the other. He’d let you come…

  The old Holly would have been satisfied with that, with whatever he offered. But the new Holly wanted acknowledgment from him, wanted his undivided attention, things that she wasn’t sure he could give any woman.

  As if he could read her thoughts, he turned his head toward her. In the morning light, he’d slid on dark, reflective shades so she couldn’t see his eyes, but then he fried a few of her brain cells when he pulled off the sunglasses to meet her gaze, his own heated and swirling with emotion.

  Huh, she thought weakly. So he was somewhat moved. She faced forward again because it turned out that looking right into his eyes was like looking into the eye of the tiger. If you weren’t equally strong, you were going down. She’d already been down.

  She was now up.

  Up, up, up.

  She tried to occupy herself with their incredibly beautiful surroundings, but damned if her gaze didn’t keep straying back to the man next to her handling the ATV like he’d been born to it. This, of course, was extremely counterproductive to her resolve to stay immune to his charms.

  Milo was happy. Behind them, he had his head in the wind, tongue lolling out. Doggy heaven.

  Old Crestmont Road was a fifty-year-old, rarely used fire road, narrow, windy, and rutted. And truth be told, “road” was a bit of an exaggeration. The going got rough, but Adam continued to navigate with the single-minded ease of one who’d taken much rougher routes than this.

  Which she knew to be true.

  He’d had it rough as a kid, too, real rough. She knew that he and Dell had lived with their mom on an Indian reservation for a while but that it hadn’t worked out. With their biological father dead, they’d had been bounced around before finally landing in a good, solid foster home. But by then, the wild, restless, badass Adam Connelly hadn’t been easy to wrangle in, and he certainly didn’t like to play nicely with things like rules and expectations.

  To a teenage girl who’d never openly rebelled against anything, this had drawn her in like a moth to the flame.

  A few years older than she, Adam had been dark and mysterious in every possible way. He and Grif had been good friends and had hung out together. Holly had been forbidden from doing the same, but once she’d been told that, her fate had been sealed. She’d wanted him.

  Needed him.

  Loved him.

  She’d really believed they were the real deal, that she could tame him, that they’d get married and have babies and a ranch of their own.

  Looking back, it was embarrassing to think about how naïve she’d been.

  Halfway up Old Crestmont Road, Adam stopped. He gestured to Milo, and the dog leapt out and immediately lifted a leg, anointing the closest tree.

  It was late morning now, and with the low lighting, the view was spectacular. So far this winter, the Bitterroot snowpack was trailing badly behind the average depth, but what there was of it was incredibly dangerous. Holly got out and took in the three-hundred-foot drop-off. Far below, the dry valley floor and lower foothills were awash in an arid-lands mix of grasslands, scrublands, and ponderosa pine lining rivers and streams. At the midelevation where she stood, there were stands of Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, and western larch. She took in the faraway glimpses of reservoirs and fast-running streams and drew a deep breath of cool, fresh air. “It’s not quite cold enough to snow.”

  “No,” Adam said. “But that will change.”

  She looked up at the sky. The sun was losing its fight against burgeoning, threatening clouds.

  Adam kicked a fallen log closer, gestured her to it, then handed her a bottle of water, an apple, and a string cheese.

  “Breakfast of champions?” she asked.

  He remained standing, relaxed but definitely taking in their surroundings with the diligence of lifelong habit. She had no idea if it was the soldier in him or just the man, but he was always ready. Prepared. Battle-weary. “That picture on the mantel at the loft,” she said softly. “The one of you in your military gear. Was that your unit?”

  His expression didn’t change. Actually, nothing about his posture changed, but there was a we