Crave the Moon Page 5

  She checked her equipment. Even if Isaac or Jase had helped her out—and who else would have?—she still knew better than to get on a horse and ride into the wilderness without inspecting things.

  Gina glanced over, thrilled to discover Teo examining his saddle and pack also. The more she knew of the man, the more impressed she became.

  “You good?” she asked.

  He lifted his gaze. When they’d stood in the sun his eyes had hovered between green and brown—the shade of drying moss or the new bark of a tree. Now, in the shadow of the barn, they had deepened almost to black—kind of eerie. Strange, since Teo struck her as one of the least eerie, most honest people she knew. Maybe the lenses in his glasses changed shade with the absence of or increase in light. That would explain it.

  “I’m good.”

  He led Spike into the yard, then swung onto the horse’s back with an easy, fluid movement that could only have come with practice, making Gina wonder—not for the first time—where he’d learned to ride.

  Horses were expensive—both to rent and to own. Lessons cost money; heck, so did a dude ranch. So how could a schoolteacher afford enough horse time to ride so well?

  Gina followed him outside, mounted Lady Belle, then urged her past the others to take the lead.

  She’d have plenty of time to ask that question, and quite a few others, over the next few days.

  She was looking forward to it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Matt had figured he’d find a burr under Spike’s saddle or the girth uncinched or some other cowboy trick that could have knocked Matt out of the group, if not into the hospital.

  But there’d been nothing.

  Of course a major injury to a guest would not only throw a wrench into the festivities but also put a crimp into their whole operation if someone was hurt badly enough.

  Jase might be a lot of things—vulgar, macho, rude—but stupid wasn’t one of them.

  Matt on the other hand …

  “Moron,” he murmured. The man had warned him not to “eye-fuck” his girl. Yet Matt couldn’t seem to stop doing it. There was just something about Gina that mesmerized him.

  His gaze strayed to the front, where she rode her horse with the ease of one born to it. With each step her mount took, the curve of Gina’s hip lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered as if she were riding something much different from a horse.

  Matt groaned.

  “What was that, Teo, honey?”

  Amberleigh hadn’t strayed more than three yards ahead of or behind him all day. And so he wouldn’t get lonely, when she was ahead Ashleigh was behind, and vice versa. Matt was beginning to feel decidedly squished.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Talking to myself.”

  “Oh, my grandpappy did that.” She turned in her saddle, pulled down her Christian Dior sunglasses, and studied him. “You aren’t losin’ your little ole marbles now, are you? You can’t be that old.”

  Matt didn’t bother to answer as Amberleigh—true to form—launched into a monologue on her grandpappy’s senility that neither asked for nor required a response.

  They’d ridden through gorgeous country—plains dotted with just-sprung flowers, woods full of new leaves—heading inexorably for the distant hills.

  The San Juan Mountains were part of the Rocky Mountains and had, once upon a time, been covered in prospectors. But ore of any type had long ago run out, and now they were covered in tourists.

  The mountains were steep and not exactly small—hence the moniker mountain—they were also the home of two national forests. Nevertheless, the place boasted ski resorts, ghost-town hotels, abandoned-mine tours, hiking, mountain climbing, and jeeping—whatever that was. Wikipedia had failed to elaborate. There was even an old narrow-gauge train that ran between Durango and Silverton and offered all sorts of touristy tours.

  However, from where Matt stood, the hills were not alive but deserted. And nothing, anywhere, looked like the place he was hoping to find.

  They came to an extended plain where they could all walk their horses in a line. This was unfortunate, since that gave the As an audience. Something that had been sadly lacking in Matt.

  “I don’t know why y’all have to ride all day like yer Billy the Boy or somethin’,” Ashleigh announced.

  “It hasn’t been all day,” Gina said. “We stopped at noon.”

  “For sandwiches and chips.” Ashleigh’s nose wrinkled. “Outside.”

  “It’s called a picnic. Part of the ambiance.”

  “Part of the what?”

  Lady Belle sidestepped, throwing her big ass into Ashleigh’s horse. The girl fell blessedly silent while she righted her mount. Then Ashleigh opened her mouth, no doubt to complain about something else, but thankfully Derek jumped in.

  “Who’s Billy the Boy?”

  “Oh, that outlaw.” Ashleigh flipped her manicured fingers toward the just-beginning-to-darken sky. “You know. The brother of that guy on Two and a Half Men played him in the movie.”

  “Jon Cryer has a brother?” Derek appeared as confused as Matt. Who was Jon Cryer and how on earth did one come up with two and a half men?

  “No! The other guy. He tried to shoot his wife. Drinks a lot, just like his character on the TV.”

  Derek glanced at Matt, who shrugged.

  “Not shoot, dumbass.” In this instance, Matt had to agree with Melda’s assessment, and the expression on Ashleigh’s face at her new nickname was priceless. “I think it was stab. Maybe strangle. You’re talkin’ about Charlie Sheen, whose bro is Emilio Estevez.”

  “How can they be brothers if they don’t even have the same last name?” Amberleigh wondered.

  “Shit happens,” Mel said. “And he didn’t play Billy the Boy. It was Billy the Kid.”

  “Oh!” Derek straightened in the saddle, wincing a little at the movement, which made Matt feel a whole helluva lot better about his own sore ass. “Young Guns. Got it.”

  “You really wanna see a great horse chase,” Mel continued, “you gotta watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Now they rode all day, all night, all the fucking time.” He glanced at his wife and together they announced: “Who are those guys?”

  Now Matt was even more confused. “You just said they were Butch and Sundance.”

  Mel and Melda stared at him in shock. “You’ve never seen the damn movie?” Mel asked.

  “I … uh…” Hell. Matt rarely watched movies. He was too immersed in the past.

  “I’ve never seen the damn movie,” Gina said.

  “But … but…” Mel’s Santa face crumpled as if the last known reindeer had just fallen off a roof and died. “It’s a western.”

  “The best damn western of all time,” Melda agreed.

  “This…”—Gina spread her hand, palm extended, fingers splayed, then swooshed her arm in a half circle, indicating the panorama before them—“is the best western of all time.”

  For several minutes everyone observed the view. Purple mountains still capped with white, the grass gone evergreen in the dusk, the sky divided into bands of azure, gold, fuchsia, and burnt umber. The first bird they’d seen since morning—thanks to the As—even flew across the landscape just for them.

  Matt glanced over to find Gina watching him instead of the horizon. When their eyes met, he experienced another moment of camaraderie that brought home to him again how much he missed his mommy. No one had understood him like Nora. He’d begun to believe that no one ever could.

  “Just ’cause outlaws rode all night doesn’t mean we can.” Derek’s voice had taken on the distinct tenor of a tired three-year-old. From the panic on his dad’s face, Matt figured the kid would be pounding his head on the ground and wailing if he didn’t get some food and a nap real soon.

  “We aren’t going to ride all night,” Gina said. “Just until we reach that ridge.” She pointed to a bump in the landscape that Matt knew from experience looked closer than it was. They’d be making camp at twilight. Nothing Matt hadn’t d
one before.

  Still, having something to focus on perked everyone right up. By the time they reached the ridge and stared down at the rising moon reflected in the lake below, people were singing along with Mel, who knew more funny ditties than anyone Matt had ever met. Half a dozen voices lifted in a rousing rendition of:

  “On mules we find two legs behind

  And two we find before;

  We stand behind before we find

  What the two behind be for.

  “When we’re behind the two behind

  We find what these be for;

  So stand before the two behind

  And behind the two before.”

  The song seemed very apropos. Even Derek joined in. What the boy lacked in tune-carrying ability he more than made up for in volume.

  “Where’d you learn all these songs?” Derek asked.

  “I was a boys’ school guard.”

  Translation: Peewee Prison.

  Mel’s vocabulary suddenly made a lot more sense.

  As they set up camp, Mel proved adept not only at amusing everyone but also at pitching a tent and starting a campfire. Gina slipped Derek an energy bar, which caused Derek to peer after her like a devoted pet. If the kid didn’t watch it Jase would want him dead, too.

  Dinner consisted of premade foil-wrapped packets of beef, carrots, and potatoes stuck into the hot coals and left to bake for a half hour. Matt sighed remembering Fanny’s exquisite fare.

  However, when he took a bite he was pleasantly surprised. Though the meal resembled regurgitated dog food combined with something Spike had dribbled on Matt’s shoes, it tasted amazing.

  “Is that basil?” Melda asked around a mouthful.

  “Cayenne, too,” Mel said, his mouth equally stuffed.

  The As were busy picking out the vegetables and leaving the meat behind.

  “Dead cow?” Ashleigh tossed a piece into the fire, where it hissed and sizzled and burned. “Seriously?”

  “I’m seriously gonna break your fingers if you do that again,” Gina said.

  Ashleigh’s eyes widened. “Do what?”

  Gina reached for the thick, heavy stick Mel had used to poke up the fire. Her patience had finally snapped. Matt was surprised it had taken this long.

  He laid a hand over hers, and she stilled. “Why don’t you give what you don’t care for to Derek?” he suggested.

  The boy’s gaze was focused on the lumps of meat in the two girls’ laps. Or maybe on the impressive lumps of meat on the two girls’ chests; Matt couldn’t tell.

  “Thanks!” Derek leaped to his feet and collected the unwanted food.

  “Aw, sweetie.” Amberleigh patted Derek’s arm, causing him to blush so deeply it was even noticeable in the flickering firelight. “I could have thrown it out myself.”

  Derek’s embarrassment turned to confusion. Gina sighed and drove the big stick deep into the coals. “Here.” She unearthed two more foil packets. “Take these.”

  Derek dumped the girls’ discarded meat on top, then began to inhale the lot as if he hadn’t eaten since Cleveland.

  The As started to make gagging noises. Thankfully, one glare from Gina was all it took to make them stop. They weren’t as dumb as they pretended.

  They just couldn’t be.

  “How can he eat so much and still have no gut and no butt?” Amberleigh ran a palm over her own skinny butt.

  “He’s fourteen,” Tim said. “He could eat the whole cow and beg for dessert.”

  Amberleigh made a face, then turned to Derek. “Do you run?”

  Derek glanced up, swallowed, considered taking another bite before answering, and refrained. “Sometimes.”

  Amberleigh flipped her palms up. “Well, that explains it.”

  “V-Rex chases you,” Derek shrugged, “you run.”

  Amberleigh froze with her hands in the air. Her gaze went to the suddenly still night that surrounded them. “T. rex?”

  Someone smothered a laugh. Matt thought it was Gina.

  “No, V-Rex,” the boy said slowly, emphasis on the V. “Vastatorsaurus rex.”

  Amberleigh lowered her arms, wrapping them around herself and hunching over as she tried to get small.

  “Descendant of T. rex,” Derek continued. “Just bigger.”

  “B-b-bigger?” Amberleigh’s gaze returned to the tree line and when the leaves stirred she scrambled behind Matt, talon-like fingertips pressed into his biceps and breasts pressed into his back.

  This suddenly wasn’t funny anymore. Should he tell her now, or never, that a V-Rex was just make-believe?

  “What’s wrong with her?” Derek asked. “It’s not like the moonspiders are here.”

  “S-s-s-spiders!”

  Her shriek scared away whatever had been rustling in the trees. From the sound of it, a really big bird.

  “That could have been a Terapusmordax,” Derek muttered. “They look like giant skinned rats with wings and their teeth…” He shuddered. “Gave me nightmares the first couple times I played.”

  Silence settled over the campfire. Amberleigh was still shaking, her breasts jiggling against Matt’s back like two large, firm, warm Jell-O molds, even as her fingernails bit into his arms like Terapusmordax teeth.

  “Played?” Ashleigh repeated.

  “King Kong,” Tim said wearily. “You don’t think the kid was actually chased by a V-Rex do you?”

  From Ashleigh’s scowl, she had.

  Amberleigh began to stroke Matt’s arm and breathe—make that blow—in his ear. Matt got up so fast she tumbled forward without support and landed on her face. Or she would have, if her balloon-like breasts hadn’t broken her fall.

  Matt felt kind of bad, until the crescent-moon holes in his arms began to burn.

  She cast him a glare that would have blistered paint off a Camaro, before climbing to her feet and flouncing off.

  Gina appeared at his side. “She isn’t going to talk to you for at least a whole day.”

  “Promise?” Matt murmured, and she laughed.

  * * *

  What was it about this man that made her behave so differently from her usual self?

  Gina was not a smiler or even much of a laugher. But ever since Teo Jones had shown up—had that been only yesterday?—she’d discovered herself doing quite a bit of both.

  Was it because of the way he looked at her, as if she knew things he wanted to and he would be happy to spend hours, days, a lifetime, uncovering them?

  Or maybe the way he spoke to her, as if everything she said was brilliant. He’d been to college; he was a teacher. She’d barely gotten out of high school.

  Not because she couldn’t handle the classes. What she hadn’t been able to handle was the physical work of the ranch combined with the mental work of school and the emotional drain of dealing with customers. Something had to give and it had been her grades. Oh, she’d finished. But she’d always been a little embarrassed by how poorly she’d done.

  Her parents would have been disappointed. Of course if her parents had been alive to disappoint, she wouldn’t have had the issue in the first place.

  Someone cleared their throat, and Gina realized she’d been staring into Teo’s eyes—darkened by the night, as well as lit by the fire now reflected in his glasses, causing them to glow a lovely shade of sienna—and he’d been staring into hers while the rest of the world kept spinning on without them.

  She didn’t understand what was wrong with her. She never got dopey over men. Probably because men never got dopey over her.

  “Everyone should get to bed.” Gina turned and addressed the others. “The sun will be shining in your tent before you know it.”

  No one argued. They all had to be tired enough to fall asleep on their feet. The first day on the trail was always exhausting, but they needed to make it to the lake, as there was no water for the horses between the ranch and here.

  The group began to drift away, but not before Mel and Melda cast Gina and Teo identical smirks. Comb
ined with a scorching glare from Ashleigh, or maybe Amberleigh, Gina concluded everyone in the group—except maybe Derek, who was still shoveling food—thought she was sending them to bed so she could jump Teo’s bones.

  Right before everyone disappeared into the darkness, she caught a flash of the firelight off something sparkly tucked beneath Derek’s arm.

  “Whoa, kid!” Gina hurried after him. “You can’t take that with you.” She held out her hand for the last foil packet of food.

  “But I get hungry in the night.”

  “So do bears.” She curled her fingers inward. “Gimme.”

  “Bears!” shrieked one of the As. “There are bears out here?”

  Gina put her finger into her ear and jiggled. “Not anymore.”

  Teo snorted, though bears were no laughing matter.

  “Didn’t everyone read the ‘Safety Tips’ we left on your beds last night?” Gina asked.

  Usually she went over them at the campfire, because she’d learned the hard way that no one read anything you gave them, but tonight she’d been distracted by the singing, King Kong, and Teo.

  She motioned for them all to come back. They stood in a semi-circle around the fading flames. “Black bears are common in the area. Most of the time they’ll run off as soon as they hear us.”

  “And they’re gonna hear us real good.” Derek glowered at the As. The kid obviously had his heart set on seeing a bear. Who knows what his dad had promised just to get him out here?

  “Their noses are even better than their ears,” Gina continued, “and if you leave any food out for them to smell, they’re gonna come searching. We like to avoid that.”

  “What do you do with the food?” Melda asked.

  “Wrap it up, then—” Gina pointed at a nearby tree. “Hang it up.”

  Mel leaned back so far to see into the tree he nearly toppled over and had to be rebalanced by his wife. “Can’t bears climb trees?”

  “Sure. But they can’t fly.” Gina indicated the pulley system rigged to the end of a long branch—too flimsy to support a bear but stout enough to protect their food.