Promise Canyon (Virgin River #13)(88)

"Once we get you home." He took off his jacket and draped it around her.

"I don't need your jacket," she said with an unmistakable shiver. She tried to wiggle out of it.

"Niwe!" he said in Navajo. Stop! He pulled the jacket tighter around her. He reached for one of her hands, then the other, examining the palms. "Trying to break your fall?"

"It didn't work exactly the way I wanted it to."

He lifted his dark brows and couldn't help but smile at her. "I think you're in a very bitchy mood for someone who's just been rescued."

"I guess getting tossed down a hill made me cranky. Sue me."

He pulled a bottle of water out of his saddlebag, a handkerchief out of his back pocket, and cleaned her palms. He closed up the water and stuffed the bottle in his front shirt pocket. "Isn't it amazing how there's always a bright side? Now we're going to get some things out in the open."

"Well, if you were looking for a captive audience, you managed that. But this isn't how I planned it," she said.

He wrapped the damp handkerchief around the hand that had suffered the most. "I'm sure you didn't. I bet it's been years since you've been tossed. I'm going to get on the horse and pull you up. I'll try not to hurt your hand. When I'm astride, put your boot on my foot for leverage. I have to get you back--Annie and Nathaniel are out on the quads, in the dark, looking for you. The sooner we can call them in, the better. Try to be as little trouble as possible."

She made an insulted sound and looked away. "And you try to be nicer. This may not be ideal circumstances, but I did come out to the clinic to talk to you. And to listen to you." She couldn't deny she felt good in the folds of his coat. Good and warm, and the scent of him rising to her nose was beginning to intoxicate her, just as it always had. "Does my grandfather know people were looking for me?"

"I didn't call him," Clay said. "I was anxious to find you. Now I'm anxious to get you back and call him to be sure there were no injuries at the feed store. That was a big earthquake." He put a foot in the stirrup, pulled himself up into the saddle and reached out a hand to her.

She didn't move.

"Come on," he said. "We need to get back and be sure Yaz is all right."

She sighed and put her hand into his. "Careful, please," she said.

He wrapped his hand around her wrist to avoid the cuts and scrapes on her palm. "Foot on my foot," he said.

She did so and he effortlessly lifted her onto the horse in front of him. He settled her around the horn, sitting sideways.

"There have been aftershocks," she pointed out. "How's Streak handling this?"

"He's a little jittery, but solid. Good, for Streak. I think we're safe along the road." He turned the horse and went back toward the clinic. "Now, here's what I want to explain...

"Isabel and her family were so alien to me when I met them, I had no idea how complex they were. I mean, we have plenty of ordinary old dysfunction in the Tahoma family, but nothing that could prepare me for the Sorensons. I took the job for the exposure to other breeders and for the money, which was excellent. And she seemed a sweet woman with a cruel and domineering father, an absent mother who didn't care about her.... I had been a very long time without a woman in my life and it was natural for me to be attracted to her, to be willing to protect her. She's ten years older than I am, Lilly, and about a hundred times more screwed up. And that's comical--with my history, I should be the one messed up."

"You really don't have to make excuses for falling for her," Lilly said. "I saw her. I saw that horse trailer."

Clay smiled. Dane had suggested that the horse trailer had filled Lilly with envy. Well, small wonder--he had loved that horse trailer himself. He could live in that trailer for the rest of his life and be happy, as long as there wasn't horseshit in it. He laughed at his thought.

"Funny?" Lilly asked.

"Not at all. Damn fine trailer, isn't it? The Sorenson family wipe their asses with hundred dollar bills."

"How delightful," she said.

"Her looks and possessions haven't brought her much comfort. She...Isabel...was always at odds with her parents, especially her father. She was either in ecstasy because he praised her or in a deep depression because he was disappointed in her. This had nothing to do with me for a long time. She liked me, she seduced me, I was pretty easy prey--I was lonely and I worked hard. She asked me to live with her and I wouldn't without her father's permission, which came grudgingly. She was the one who wanted to be married, though she wouldn't visit my family on the reservation or have them at our private wedding. She wouldn't take my name. There was a long history of terrible relationships in her past and I stupidly thought that was the reason she didn't want to make a big deal out of our marriage, but it went deeper. I slowly realized that marrying a Navajo challenged her father. That was the only way she could stand up to him or get his attention. When she wanted a divorce two years later I wasn't surprised at all. But she couldn't let go."

"Ah! And was she the only one who couldn't let go?" Lilly asked.

"Yes," he answered. "Yes, she sought me out sometimes, but I never went to her. That's one of the reasons this job and this move appealed to me so much--I really couldn't deal with Isabel's controlling nature, her sick relationship with her father, her manipulation of me. Lilly, I don't know what has made her the way she is--abuse, certainly. I can't explain why I was so involved with her--sucked right into the craziness, maybe. But I don't love Isabel. Now I'm not sure I ever did."