Only 03 - Only You

told Eve she had indeed been correct. Once, Reno’s bold arousal would have embarrassed or unnerved her. Now it simply made heat splinter delicately through her. She remembered what it had felt like to give herself to Reno’s heat and strength and heady sensuality.
    “Sugar girl, you do tempt a man,” he said in a deep voice.
    “I do?”
    “You sure do.”
    “I’m just sitting here,” she pointed out.
    “And looking at me like you’re wondering how I’d taste with butter and maple syrup,” Reno drawled.
    Eve flushed, but couldn’t help laughing. She was still laughing when Reno pulled her out of the saddle and gave her a kiss that made her dizzy.
    “I like having you look at me that way,” Renosaid against her mouth. “I like it too damn much.”
    He carried Eve the few steps to her horse.
    “Mount up, gata. I’m going to have hell riding as it is.”
    As Reno spoke, he lifted Eve into the saddle. Then he let go of her and turned away quickly, heading for his own horse once more.
    “I didn’t mean to tease,” she said.
    A curt nod as Reno mounted was his only answer.
    “Couldn’t we…” Eve’s voice faded, then strengthened along with the color in her cheeks. “You’re hurting and I’m all right and there’s no reason we can’t…is there?”
    Reno reined Darlin’ over to Eve and looked at her for the space of several heartbeats.
    “There’s a reason we can’t,” he said.
    The calm of Reno’s voice was belied by his smoldering green glance.
    “Slater?” guessed Eve unhappily.
    Reno shook his head. “I figure it will be at least two days before Crooked Bear cuts our sign again. The shaman figured it about the same, and he knows the land better than the Spaniards and Cal’s daddy combined.”
    “Then why can’t we…?”
    Despite the hunger knotting his guts, Reno smiled at the bright red on Eve’s cheeks.
    “Because, sugar girl, the next time I get my hands on you, I’m not going to let go until neither one of us has enough strength left to lick our lips.”
    E VE sat with her chin on her knees and her arms around her legs. A few feet beyond her boots, the land sheered away.
    At the moment, Reno was exploring the head of the ravine that the shaman had told them wouldtake them across a fringe of the stone canyon and then join with one of the old Spanish trails. If the trail was clear enough, they would ride by the ghostly light of the moon. If not, they would make a dry camp here, at the edge of the plateau.
    Off to the west, the sun hovered a few degrees above the horizon. Below and in the distance, long, dense shadows flowed out from countless stone formations. Like the sun, the shadows moved, changing everything they touched, making and remaking the landscape in a slow-motion kaleidoscope of shifting colors and breathtaking vistas.
    When footsteps approached, Eve didn’t have to turn around to know that it was Reno rather than some stranger walking up behind her. The unique rhythms of Reno’s steps had become a part of her, as had the sweet memories of a hidden pool and water braiding down cliffs of solid stone.
    “Penny for your thoughts,” he said.
    Smiling, Eve looked back out over the slow transformations of stone and shadow and sunset.
    “I keep wondering,” she said, “how the maze got here and why it’s so different from everything I’ve ever seen.”
    “I felt the same way the first time I saw it. I came across a government paleontologist about eight years ago, and he—”
    “What’s that?” Eve interrupted.
    “A paleontologist?”
    She nodded.
    “It’s a four-dollar word for a man who hunts bones so old, they’ve turned to stone.”
    Eve made a sound of disbelief. “A stone bone?”
    “It’s called a fossil.”
    “Where do the bones come from?”
    “Animals that lived a long, long, long time ago.”
    A vague memory came to Eve, left over from atime when she had attended the orphanage school.
    “Like the ‘terrible lizards’?” she asked.
    Reno looked surprised. “Yes.”
    Eve put her chin back on her knees.
    “I thought the older kids were teasing me, but one of them showed me a photograph in a book,” she said dreamily. “It was a skeleton of a lizard standing on its hind legs. It was taller than a church steeple. I wanted to read the book, but somebody stole it before I could.”
    “I’ve got the same book back at Willy and Cal’s ranch,” Reno said, “along with about fifty others.”
    “Do any of them tell you how that