Sweet Wind, Wild Wind Read online

  ISBN 1-55.166-288-4

  SWEET WIND, WILD WIND

  Copyright © 1987 by Ann Maxwell.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225

  Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all in den ci

  ts are pure invention.

  MIRA and the star colophon are trademarks of MIRA Books.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Chapter One

  Relax, Lara Chandler told herself silently. Carson has never set foot on the Chandler homestead – and he never will. He hates even the thought of it. You’re safe here.

  As Lara heard her own thoughts, she smiled ruefully. She really didn’t need to worry about running into Carson Blackridge, on or off the small piece of land that was surrounded by the Rocking B’s lush range. Carson had made it very plain the last time he was with Lara that he had seen more than enough of her. Even years afterward the memory of the moment when she had offered herself and he had turned away made her blush and then pale. She had tried to exorcise the memory, but she had failed. Every time a man had done more than hold her hand or kiss her gently, the memory rose, freezing her. Lara forced herself to take one deep breath, then another, trying to shake off the tension that had come over her ever since she had agreed to return to the Rocking B to write an informal history of a century of life on a Montana cattle ranch. With hands that trembled, she turned toward her suitcase, opened it and began to unpack with the efficient motions of someone accustomed to shuttling between two homes. At least, normally Lara was efficient. Today her fingers seemed numb. The third time she dropped the mascara applicator that she rarely used on her thick black eyelashes, she made an exasperated sound. It had been four years since that humiliating incident with Carson. She should have gotten over it by now. But she hadn’t. Four years wasn’t long enough. She came from a long line of people for whom the past was very much a part of the present. Nor was there a safe place in the future for her to hide from the past. Whether she liked it or not, the past would always be there, all around her, inside her. She had grown up listening to her grandfather’s tales of the Rocking B as it had been a century before. As a child, the years separating her from the past had seemed insurmountable, a barrier as high as the glacier-carved mountains that surrounded and defined the ranch itself. As she grew up, the years shrank until they became as understandable, and almost as tangible, as the progression of the seasons.

  Finally Lara had come to love the turning and returning of the years, grandparents seeing the faces of the past reborn in their grandchildren, the family stories told and retold until they became an informal history. She loved the larger human history as well, history written across the land itself, the extended family of mankind with its own rituals, its own unique patterns of disappointments and dreams passed from generation to generation.

  History was a living part of Lara’s personal life, and the Blackridges’ Rocking B ranch was the center of it. She hadn’t “agreed” to come back to do research so much as she had been compelled by her own needs.

  Lara stood with her hands full of brightly colored underwear and looked around the room that her greatgrandfather had built for the birth of his first child. To Jedediah Chandler, a free hundred-year lease must have seemed like a permanent grant. A homestead, not a leasehold. Yet in the end the land was only leased from the Black ridge family, not owned by the Chandlers, and the lease had expired two years ago. Larry Blackridge had extended the lease for the lifetime of Cheyenne Chandler, Lara’s grandfather.

  But Cheyenne was gone, and the homestead had passed into Blackridge hands. No more Chandlers would live in the expanded, often-repaired and much-loved family home that lay in the center of the Blackridges’ Rocking B ranch. The name of the little valley would go on, however, passed from generation to generation as stories were told about the past. It had been called the Chandler homestead for the past century. It would be called that in a hundred years. The names of Blackridge and Chandler had become part of the Montana landscape itself.

  Which meant that Carson Blackridge was very much a part of Lara Chandler, no matter how hard she tried to ignore him, especially there in the midst of the Rocking B. Every time she turned around, she would think of him, remember him, remember what he had done to her. He was part of her personal history – in many ways, the most important part.

  “Fine,” Lara muttered to herself. “So write a paper about Carson and file it under M for Mistake. Or Miserable. Misogynist, how about that?”

  She sighed and gave up trying to characterize Carson in a single polite word. It would have been easier to forget him if he had made her unhappy while they were together. He hadn’t. Having him close, seeing his rare smiles come more frequently while he was with her, talking with him, touching him, laughing with him… Miserable?

  Hardly. For a few short months she had lived in the center of rainbows, and sunlight had been a river of gold pouring into her outstretched hands.

  “Sure,” said Lara in a clipped tone. “Pigs flew then, too. Remember?”

  Swiftly she emptied the suitcase, wondering with every movement if she had made a mistake coming back. There was nothing to tie her to the Rocking B but memories and a history that had no place for her. Her grandfather was dead. Her mother was dead. And the man who had never called her daughter was also dead.

  Lara’s hands hesitated as she remembered the call that had come to her aunt’s house two months before. She had answered the phone. Carson’s deep, gritty voice had told her that Larry Blackridge was dead. Hearing Carson’s voice again after four years had been like being dropped into fire. She had barely heard the words he was saying for the sudden roar of blood in her ears. And then the words had penetrated. The man who had adopted Carson and never called him son, the man who had fathered Lara and never called her daughter, the man her mother had loved well but not wisely – Lawrence Blackridge was dead.

  To this day Lara didn’t remember what she had said to Carson, or if she had said anything at all. Her next memory was of standing in the thin March twilight staring at the phone in her hand. A wailing sound was coming from the receiver. For an instant she had wondered if the phone were mourning her dead father. Finally she realized that she had simply kept the phone off the hook too long.

  Lara hadn’t gone to the funeral. She had told herself that she had stayed away because it was too soon after her own grandfather’s death to face the sadness of another loss. Yet even as she told herself that, she knew it wasn’t true. Cheyenne Chandler had lived and died as he had wanted to, in the center of the ranch he loved. After years of declining health, death had come to him as a friend, taking nothing from him that he hadn’t wanted to give. She would miss Cheyenne for the rest of her life, but she wouldn’t mourn him. He was still a part of her; his laughter and gentleness lived in her memories, and the love he had given to her was in every breath she took.

  It was Carson she hadn’t wanted to face, not sorrow. Lara still didn’t want to face him.

  “You don’t have to,” she reminded herself as she snapped the big suitcase shut and shoved it under the bed. “Your study covers 1860 to 1960. Carson’s per
sonal memories of the ranch are useless. He was too young.”

  The idea of Carson’s being too young for anything made Lara pause. She had never thought of him as a child. To her, he had always been an adult and the nine years’ difference in their ages an unbridgeable gulf. Even when they had dated, she had been more than a little in awe of Carson. That had faded gradually as her lifelong infatuation with him had deepened into love. She had thought that he returned her love.

  M. For Mistake. File it.

  Lara walked aimlessly around the room, grateful that Carson had left the homestead untouched after Cheyenne’s death. As she quartered the room restlessly, her fingers brushed over odds and ends from her childhood. The ribbons she had won barrel racing in local rodeos were faded. The glittering sunburst of quartz crystals she had found years ago was dusty. The framed picture of her riding her first horse was also dusty. Absently she cleaned the glass with the long tail of her old red shirt. As she stared at the faded photo, she wondered if Carson had a similar picture of himself somewhere in the ranch house that lay in the big valley below, less than a mile and more than a world away from the Chandler homestead.

  Though Lara tried, she couldn’t form the picture of Carson as a young boy in her imagination. All her mind could see was Carson as he was now – taller than other men, stronger, tougher. The length of his bones made him look almost lean. It wasn’t until she had stood close to him that she realized just how powerful he really was. His wrists were easily twice as thick as hers, his hands and shoulders half again as broad as hers, and his whole body was layered with the supple, cleanly moving muscles of a natural athlete. The closest he came to softness was in the long, thickly curling eyelashes framing eyes that shifted color without warning from green to amber. His mink-brown hair was also thick, with a tendency to curl at the ends when it was damp. The rest of his hair was thick, nearly black, warm and springy to the touch. She had loved to tangle her fingers softly in it.

  Lara reined in her straying thoughts with the ease of too much practice. She buried her sensual response to the memories so automatically that she didn’t even notice it. She had tried to date other men since Carson had rejected her so completely, but she had not been able to respond to them. Because she froze when they attempted to be intimate with their touches, she assumed that she was naturally cold. She hadn’t been that way with Carson, but then, Carson had always been the exception to every rule. She had loved him before she had learned any defenses against love.

  It was different now. She was very well defended. She had had the best teacher. Carson Blackridge.

  Abruptly Lara decided that she couldn’t yet face the cartons of family photos and mementos that awaited her in her grandfather’s bedroom. Everything was just as it had been when the final heart attack had caught Cheyenne surrounded by the lifetime of memories he was sorting through and packing away. Eventually she would have to complete the job Cheyenne had begun, but she would do it as a scholar rather than as a granddaughter.

  Eventually, but not right now. She wasn’t ready to face her own personal history with a scholar’s necessary detachment. There was no hurry. Carson had told her faculty advisor that the university’s representative could live on the Chandler homestead for as long as necessary to complete the study; the Rocking B had no use for the old house. Whether Carson had regretted the open-ended offer when he learned that Lara Chandler was the university’s representative – or whether he even knew that she was the historian who would do the study of the Rocking B – was never mentioned by her advisor. In any case, Cheyenne’s handwritten journals of his lifetime as the Rocking B’s ramrod would just have to wait for Lara to sort through them. It was afternoon, the early summer wind was blowing silky and warm and she hadn’t been riding in weeks. There were a few Chandler horses mixed in with Blackridge stock in the upper pasture. She would catch Shadow and ride over the long, rolling ridges and hidden side valleys that made up the Rocking B. She would say hello to the land she loved and would have to leave at the end of summer, when the oral histories had been collected and she had no further excuse to remain on the homestead.

  Outside, Lara saw the small signs of disrepair that had come in the six months since Cheyenne had died. The barb-wire was sagging in the boggy spot near the pasture seep. By spring calves would be able to wriggle out beneath the wire. The front gate, too, was sagging. By spring it would drag on the muddy ground, making life difficult for everyone coming to and going from the homestead. The lowest step on the porch was also sagging. By spring the step would be a menace waiting to trip the unwary.

  But that wouldn’t be a problem. By spring no one would be living on the homestead.

  The mare that came at Lara’s whistle was a graceful, spirited half Arab whose coat was the same blue-black as Lara’s hair. Cheyenne had often teased Lara by saying that he had bought the leggy mare because he missed Lara after she went away to school. It might have been true; certainly Cheyenne had spoiled the mare in a way that he had none of his other horses.

  “So you remember me, Shadow,” murmured Lara, rubbing the mare’s ears.

  The horse bumped her nose softly against Lara’s shirt and blew warm streams of air over her neck. Agile lips caught a long streamer of Lara’s hair and began chewing.

  “Hey,” Lara laughed, retrieving her hair. “That’s mine.”

  Serenely Shadow found another strand and began mouthing it.

  “Must be that lemon shampoo,” muttered Lara, grabbing her hair and backing away.

  She fished around in her pockets until she found the rawhide strings she always carried when on the ranch. With flying fingers she bound her hair into a single long braid, tied it and flipped it over her shoulder. Immediately strands started to work loose and curl softly around her face, making her look younger than her twenty-two years. Her eyes were as clear and blue as a high-mountain lake – and as shadowed by hidden depths and currents. Her eyes hinted at mysteries and emotions that rarely ruffled her surface, just as the curving lines of her breasts and hips hinted at a womanly sensuality that only one man had ever touched.

  Lara bridled the mare and led her back to the small barn. As she walked, she looked around several times, feeling as though someone were nearby. It wasn’t an uneasy or frightening feeling. It was simply there, like sunshine. Yet every time she looked around, the countryside was empty of all but horses and cattle. Inside the barn the feeling of another person being nearby diminished somewhat. With a shrug Lara began to curry the mare. As she worked, she realized that someone must have been caring for Shadow since her grandfather’s death. The mare’s coat had the sleekness that comes only from careful grooming, her long tail was free of tangles and her hooves had been trimmed and shod recently.

  “Which one of Cheyenne’s old friends have you wound around your delicate little hoof?” asked Lara. “Is it Jim-Bob or Willie? How about Dusty? Murchison?”

  Shadow snorted and shifted her weight. Her long tail swished, sending flies buzzing off to find a less lively target.

  “Not telling, huh? I don’t blame you. If I had one of those tough old sons eating out of my hand, I’d keep it a secret, too.”

  Lara cinched the saddle tight, then automatically checked all the straps for wear as she did at the beginning of every summer when she returned to the ranch. The cinch buckle on the off side was new, as was the stirrup buckle. The webbing of the cinch itself had been replaced. With a muffled sound of surprise, Lara went over every bit of Shadow’s tack. The homestead might be fraying at the edges, but Shadow’s gear was not. It had been carefully reconditioned, all of it, from headstall to saddlebags. Nothing would fall apart or give way under sudden stress, throwing Lara.

  “Well, Shadow. We owe somebody a double batch of chocolate chip cookies.”

  The mare nudged Lara firmly with a velvet muzzle, plainly wanting an end to preparations and a beginning to the ride. Shadow liked roaming over the land as well as Lara did.
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br />   “All right, all right,” said Lara, shoving the mare’s nose away from her stomach. “I hear you.”

  Lara led the mare out of the barn and mounted her swiftly, settling deep into the saddle. She expected a few wild minutes while Shadow worked off the months of not being ridden. Instead of a friendly round of bucking, Shadow immediately settled into a ground-eating lope. Somebody had been doing more than grooming and shoeing the mare. Someone had ridden her, as well. Someone who had demanded good manners and responsiveness but had done so in such a way that the mare’s soft mouth and eagerness to be ridden remained intact.

  “That lets out Murchison,” Lara said, stroking the mare’s black neck. “He’s a good man, but he’s got a heavy hand on the bit and spurs.”

  Shadow flicked one ear back toward her rider’s voice. Then both the mare’s ears shot forward. Lara looked up and saw the silhouette of a rider on the ridgeline to her right, which overlooked both the Chandler homestead’s small valley and the Rocking B’s ranch house in the larger, lower river valley. As the mare caught the scent of horse and rider, she nickered a welcome.

  Lara didn’t feel nearly so welcoming. She didn’t need to see the distinctive patterns of the Appaloosa that was Carson’s favorite mount to recognize the rider as Carson Blackridge. No man rode quite like him, sitting easily on the horse as though he had been born there rather than in a distant city. No other man had Carson’s combination of strength, quickness and male grace.

  Without hesitation Lara guided Shadow onto the left fork of the trail, away from Carson. Simultaneously her legs tightened around the mare’s sleek barrel, urging a faster pace. Lara’s reactions were completely unconscious. She had come to terms with her life as the illegitimate daughter of Lawrence Blackridge. She had accepted her mother’s death ten years before in one of the summer thunderstorms that Becky Chandler had loved so much. Lara had accepted her grandfather’s death and the loss of the home and the land she loved. But she had not come to terms with offering herself to a man who hadn’t wanted her in any way at all.