Crave the Moon Page 6

  “What if we see one?” Tim asked.

  “Most of the time, bears really are more scared of us than we are of them. They’ll hear you and head the other way. You won’t even know they were anywhere close. But if you do see one, clap, talk, sing. You don’t want to startle it.”

  “What if we do?” Derek asked. “Accidentally.”

  “They might slap the ground, huff, blow, or bluff charge; then you want to—”

  “What’s a bluff charge?” Tim interrupted. He seemed a little tense.

  “The bear runs forward, then stops. It’s trying to make you move a safe distance away.”

  “I’ll move all right,” Tim muttered. “I’ll run my ass off.”

  “No,” Teo said. “You shouldn’t run.”

  Gina glanced at him in surprise, but he had said he’d been camping and riding in remote areas. This was common knowledge to those who had.

  “What should we do?” Derek’s eyes were wide, but unlike his father, he appeared more interested than scared, which was good. That thing about animals smelling fear? Completely true.

  “Maintain eye contact, talk quietly, back away. You don’t want the bear to be any more threatened than it already is, but you can’t behave like prey, either. You run, it’ll chase you. Then…” She paused, letting her gaze meet that of every person around the fire before she continued. “It’ll catch you. A bear can outrun, outclimb…” Gina searched for another example and came up blank. “Pretty much out-anything you.”

  “Maybe we should go back,” Tim began.

  “No.” That was all she’d need. Everyone begging to return to the ranch in the middle of the night, wanting refunds she couldn’t afford, from money she probably no longer had because Jase had already used it to pay off the most obnoxious of their creditors. “Bears aren’t aggressive. The last person killed in the wild by a Colorado black bear was in 1993.”

  “What do you mean ‘in the wild’?” Tim’s voice was getting steadily higher and louder, encroaching into the range of the As’. “Bears have killed people in their houses? Their hotels? The candy shop on Main Street?”

  “No,” Gina said, keeping her own voice low, steady, and calm. “‘In the wild’ means out here, like this, not a so-called tame bear that’s a pet or a performance or a zoo animal. Those tend to flip out and attack their trainers more often than any bears in the wild jump the tourists.”

  She wished she hadn’t had to tell them this now, before bed, which might lead to bear-induced nightmares or her needing to accompany them to the “facilities,” slapping the brush with a stick to prove there was nothing hiding there in the dark. But better they knew what to do, what to expect, than that she got any sleep.

  “So.” Gina clapped her hands and Tim jumped, then laughed at himself for doing it. He was going to be all right. “Off to bed. I’ll be right here.” She pointed at her tent, which she’d pitched nearest the trees. “If you need anything don’t hesitate.”

  “To scream,” Derek said as he followed his dad toward their tent.

  Tim hooked his arm around his son’s neck and proceeded to give him noogies as Derek pretended to hate it but laughed nonetheless.

  Gina’s lips curved as they disappeared into their tent.

  Let the bonding begin.

  CHAPTER 6

  As the others melted away, leaving only Gina and Teo behind, Teo stared after the Gordons with a bemused expression.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  His gaze flicked to hers; then he shrugged as if embarrassed. “Is that normal for a dad and a son?”

  “That?”

  “The shoving and the teasing, the knocking on the head.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Gina answered. “I’m not a boy.”

  “Mmm,” he said, the comment sounding both agreeable and slightly sexy. But then everything about him was slightly sexy.

  And Gina was losing her mind.

  “You didn’t shove and tease your dad?”

  “I didn’t have a dad.”

  “Everyone has a dad.”

  “Right.” He shuffled his feet, peered at the ground. “I never knew my dad. Not even his name.”

  “Well, that would suck.” She might have lost her parents, but at least she’d known them.

  “Can we get some quiet?” The shout of an A—which one Gina had no idea and didn’t care—split the night. Gina opened her mouth to point out that shouting wasn’t quiet, then snapped it shut again.

  “The customer is always right,” she muttered, and Teo laughed, then winced as the sound carried across the chill darkness.

  “Sheesh!” the other A shouted.

  “Sorry,” Teo called, then lowered his voice. “I guess I’d better—”

  “You want to come to my tent?”

  Teo’s eyes, nearly black in the moonlight, widened. Her question had sounded like an invitation for more than conversation.

  “I meant walk to my tent. So a bear doesn’t get me.”

  “Of course.” He spread his hand in an “after you” gesture better suited to someone twice their age. Why she found it charming Gina couldn’t say. Maybe because she found everything about him charming.

  And sexy.

  Hell.

  No bopping the customers, she reminded herself. It didn’t do much good.

  They reached her tent, pitched on the outskirts of the circle, several yards from the others. Far enough away that any low-voiced conversation shouldn’t carry.

  Gina liked to be nearer the trees, away from the guests—especially after a day like today. Or guests like the As.

  “Is this…” Teo indicated the two of them, “going to get you in trouble with McCord?”

  Gina frowned. “I’m not following.” She felt like she’d missed an entire conversation somewhere. When Teo continued, she understood that she had.

  “If I were your boyfriend I wouldn’t like you spending time alone in the dark with another guy.”

  “Boyfriend? Jase?” Gina laughed. “He’s like my brother.”

  “No.” Teo’s eyes met hers. “He’s not.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Or he is,” Teo muttered. “He told me that he’d end me if I touched you.”

  “He what?” Gina’s voice was full of laughter, but as she continued to watch Teo’s face the laughter died.

  He was telling the truth.

  “I don’t know why he’d say that,” Gina murmured. “I’m embarrassed.”

  “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  “That he’d assume you were interested in me.” She glanced at her hands. “Guys aren’t usually.” Teo snorted, and she lifted her gaze. “Really. I’m not…”

  She tried to find a word that would explain the situation without making her appear the incredible loser she must be, since few men had ever wanted to see her more than once. All she could come up with was—

  “Right.”

  His exquisite eyes widened behind his glasses, and Gina heard what she’d said. She’d just admitted her most secret fear—that losing her parents as she had, combined with those hours she and Jase had been buried beneath the earth, had broken her in some indefinable way. Obviously men sensed this and turned away from her as quickly as they could.

  So … what was wrong with Teo? Why did he continue to hang around? Why did he stare at her as if he thought she was fascinating? Why did he listen to her as if he thought she had something to say?

  “You think there’s something wrong with you?” he asked.

  “Never mind.” She’d never told anyone that, not even Jase. She’d wanted to seem like less of a loser, but instead she only looked like more of one.

  “I do mind.” Teo’s eyes flashed. “How can you think such a thing?”

  “I’m not feminine or witty. I can’t carry on a conversation like the As.”

  “Neither one of them has ever carried on a conversation with anyone but themselves.”

  “I’ve never
had a boyfriend,” she blurted. “First dates, yes. Second?” She shook her head.

  “Probably because McCord tells everyone he’ll end them.”

  “He wouldn’t do that.”

  Teo’s lips tightened, as if he wanted to argue; then he sighed. “He was right to be worried.”

  “Worried?” she echoed.

  For an instant she thought Teo might kiss her and oh, how she wanted him to. To hell with the no-bopping-the-customers rule.

  Suddenly he looked down and stepped back. “I’ll let you get some rest.”

  He headed for his tent, leaving Gina to stare after him and wonder, yet again, what she had done.

  * * *

  He had to tell Gina the truth. About who he was, why he was here. Before he did something stupid like kiss her, touch her, take her. If he did that, how would he ever be able to explain who he was afterward?

  Matt ducked into his tent, kicked off his boots, and crawled into his bedroll. He figured he’d lie awake, thinking of her; instead, he’d barely closed his eyes and he was dreaming.

  Another tent, one of many he and his mother had shared. There Nora pored over her papers, scribbling notes, talking to herself. Matt, perhaps eight, maybe ten, lay on the cot in the corner, pretending to study math but in reality studying her as she translated Aztec to English. He did that so often that by the time she’d decided to teach him the language he already knew.

  “Time for bed, mi hijo.”

  His mother shut her books, put away her papers, and joined him on the cot. As she did every night, she told Matt the story she’d uncovered, the one that kept them searching long past the point when most others would have given up.

  “One great army marched farther north than any other. And though the People of the Sun were the greatest warriors ever known, they met strong resistance, and they lost more of their own than ever before.”

  Matt snuggled under the covers. He might hear this tale every single night, but it was always exciting. Because it was her story and had, through the constant telling of it, become theirs. He wondered if he could even sleep if he didn’t first become drowsy listening to the familiar cadence of the words.

  “However,” his mother continued in the slightly hoarse voice that was a mark of the Mecates, “the Aztecs, being Aztecs, weren’t going to just turn around and go home.”

  “No,” Matt said, his voice very much like hers even then. “They wouldn’t run; they’d never hide.”

  She ran her hand over his overly long, tousled dark hair that was but a shade lighter than hers. “That’s right, Teo de mio. Instead, they brought forth their most powerful warrior—a sorcerer who struck fear into the hearts he would soon devour—and he mowed through the natives like a cuetlachtli.”

  “A ravenous wolf!” Matt translated.

  As if in answer to Nora’s tale, or perhaps Matt’s words, a distant, triumphant howl pierced the night. However, neither the youthful Teo nor the yet youthful and alive Nora reacted to the call, which made the watching, dreaming Matt stir. Where was that sound coming from?

  Here or there? Then or now?

  “But something went wrong.” Dream Teo sat up on his cot, excited over this part of the story. Because it was a mystery and he loved a good mystery as much as his mother.

  “Yes, something went wrong. Because even though this…” She searched for the perfect word.

  “Superwarrior!” Matt announced.

  She smiled at him with such love the adult Matt swallowed the lump that formed in his throat, even in his sleep. No one had ever loved him like that since.

  “Yes. But even though this superwarrior had powers beyond imagination, in the end he was buried there.” She pushed Matt gently back onto his bed. “And where will we find him, mi hijo?”

  “‘Where the tree of life springs from a land awash with the blood of the sun,’” he recited.

  One of several phrases she had translated from the Aztec writings of the Mecates. Gibberish until you saw a photo of a place where it just might make sense.

  There’d been other translations. Other places. Other pictures, legends, rumors. But none of them had ever seemed as right as that one.

  They’d searched. Years upon years. Miles upon miles. Nora wasn’t easily dissuaded. She read travel magazines, collected tales of the weird, haunted libraries and secondhand bookstores. She combed through everything she could find that held photos or drawings of the Southwest. She’d found two sites that way. But the true boon to her research had been the Internet.

  There she’d been able to discover the next three sites that matched her translations by searching through travelogues and touristy vacation photos. Unfortunately, those pictures, some no better than fading Polaroids of trips taken by families in DeSotos, did not help to silence her naysayers when site after site produced only more dirt.

  But Nora remained determined. She had believed in that superwarrior, and her son had believed, too.

  Until he didn’t.

  Her voice whispered out of the darkness: Find the truth. For me, Teo de mio.

  My Teo. Teo mine. The translation was actually Teo of mine, but his mother translated Spanish as creatively as the academic world believed she translated Aztec.

  Assholes.

  Matt jerked awake. Had he said that out loud? Perhaps. Remembering how Nora’s so-called colleagues had treated her could still make him furious. Probably because they treated him the same way.

  And there was the added guilt of how he had treated her. Refusing to go along on that final dig. Telling her she needed to grow up and face facts instead of continuing to believe in a fantasy long past the point of sanity.

  Matt pushed on his forehead, wishing he could make the echo of his words go away. The only way he could atone for his lack of faith was to prove his mother’s theory. He needed to remember that. But, right now, it was so difficult for him to remember anything but Gina.

  Matt sat up, gathering his dream-damp hair into a tidier queue. He’d been distracted by Gina, this place, the others, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted anymore. He had to find that tree that seemed to erupt from the earth. The one that turned as red as blood beneath the rays of the sun.

  He dug through his pack, then pulled out the photo that had brought him to Nahua Springs Ranch. It was better than most. No Polaroid this time, not even an Instamatic. Whoever had taken it had known what they were doing, and since coming here Matt knew just who that someone was.

  He’d go to her now, tell her the truth, make this journey theirs instead of his. Excitement flowed through Matt at the thought. He got dressed, shoved the copy into his pocket, then stepped into the chilly darkness that would soon give way to the dawn.

  The sky had just begun to lighten. Not a hint of color yet, only that fuzzy blue-gray haze that seemed to buzz with the approach of the sun.

  The fire was banked, the camp completely silent. Even the horses seemed to hold their breath. Matt knew he was.

  A tent flap burst open just as the first rays of pink split the blue. A shadow trod softly in the smoky morn, moving past the horses, which now breathed and stomped and snorted again, and paused about fifty yards away, face tilted to greet the coming dawn.

  * * *

  Every morning on the trail, Gina rose before everyone else. It wasn’t hard. In all her years of leading tours at Nahua Springs Ranch, she’d never once gotten up later than a single guest.

  Gina enjoyed watching the sun rise. It centered her for the day, made her remember why she was here, why she worked so hard.

  The only thing that mattered was this place.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  Gina tensed, but when she recognized the voice she relaxed. Even though she’d thought she’d come out here to be alone, she realized now that she’d come to be with him.

  “No.” She turned, smiling at the sight of Teo, still sleepy and tousled. He’d tried to tame his hair by tying it back, but it was still kind of a mess. He’d obviously spent a ve
ry rough night. She wondered if he’d spent it thinking of her.

  “Wanna watch the sun come up?” she asked.

  When he didn’t move she offered her hand, and as if he’d been doing it all his life he took it. He seemed to understand the need for silence. He seemed to share her awe of the almost mystical beauty in this daily birth of the sun.

  People could fail you—parents, friends, lovers, employers, employees. Hell, you could fail yourself.

  Banks failed. Crops failed. Marriages failed.

  But the sun … that never failed. Even if the sky was shrouded in cobalt-colored clouds, the sun was always there, just beneath, waiting to burst free. The least Gina could do was greet it.

  Together they stood—hands clasped, reverent silence shared—until the show ended. Gina drew a breath as Teo released one.

  “Thank you,” he said, the wonder in his voice revealing that she hadn’t been mistaken. He’d understood exactly what this was.

  The sharing of a part of her few others ever saw.

  She nodded, acknowledging his thanks, for a moment unable to speak. They still held hands. She didn’t want to let go. There was just something about him that called to her.

  “The sun,” she finally managed, “it’s—”

  “Magic,” he finished. “Brilliant and beautiful, different but always the same. A mystery and an anchor.”

  Could he read her mind, her heart and soul? No wonder she couldn’t let go of him.

  Teo squeezed her hand, lips curving, eyes behind the lenses of his glasses almost catlike in the morning light. “You know the Aztecs worshiped the sun.” He turned his face back to its glow. “I can see why.”

  Aztecs. What was it about the Aztecs that made her kind of squirrelly?

  A howl split the morning stillness, pulling their attention from both the sky and each other. Any question about long-dead sun-worshiping Indians fled Gina’s mind as she tilted her head and listened.

  Giiiiiiii-naaaaaaa!

  “I thought wolves stopped howling at dawn,” Teo murmured.

  She started, removing her hand from his, then shaking her head in an attempt to make her ears stop hearing what it was not possible to hear. If that howl had actually sounded like her name, Teo would have said so.