"As for prestige or a tenured teaching position," Diana continued, looking out the window, "I'm not a great candidate for any university, especially an eastern one. I love the Colorado Plateau country too much to live anywhere else. I stand in front of classrooms full of students-worshipful or otherwise- cause teaching gives me the money and time to explore the Anasazi culture in the very places where the Ancient Ones once lived, and then make what I've seen and learned come alive in drawings."
"You're an artist?"
Short, golden brown hair rippled and shone in the sun as Diana shook her head in a silent negative. "At best, I'm an illustrator. I take the site photographer's pictures, read the archaeological summaries of the site and study the artifacts that have been excavated. Then I combine everything with my own knowledge of the Anasazi and make a series of drawings of the site as it probably looked when it was inhabited."
"Sounds like more than illustration to me."
"I assure you, it's less than art. My mother is an artist, so I know the difference."
"Do your parents live in Colorado?"
My mother lives in Arizona." Normally Ten would have let the matter of parents drop, especially since Diana's voice had planted warning flags around the subject, but his curiosity about Diana Saxton wasn't normal. She showed flashes of passion coupled with unusual reserve. And it was reserve rather than shyness. Ten had known more than a few shy cowboys. Not one of them would have been able to get up in front of a room full of people and say a single word, much less teach a whole course.
Diana wasn't shy of people. She was shy of men. Ten had immediately figured out that she didn't much care for the male half of the human race. What he hadn't figured out was why.
"What about your father?" Ten asked.
"What about him?"
Though Diana's voice was casual, Ten noted the subtle tightening of her body.
"Where does he live?" Ten asked.
"I don't know."
"Is he why you don't like men?"
"Frankly, it's none of your business."
"Of course it is. I'm a man."
"Mr. Blackthorn-"
"Ten," he interrupted.
"-whether I hate or love men is irrelevant to you or any other man I meet."
"I'll agree about the other men, but not me."
"Why?"
"I'm the man you're going to spend the next five days alone with."
"What?" Diana asked, staring at Ten.
"One of the grad students broke his ankle climbing up a canyon wall," Ten said. Without pausing in his explanations, he whipped the truck around a washout on one side of the road and then a landslide ten yards farther down. "Another one got a job in Illinois working on Indian mounds. The other three can come out only on the weekends because they work during the week."
"So?"
"So I'm staying at the September Canyon site with you."
"That's not necessary. I've been alone at remote digs before."
"Not on the Rocking M you haven't. There will be an armed guard on the site at all times." Without altering his tone at all he said, "Hang on, this will get greasy."
The relaxed lines on Ten's body didn't change as he held the truck on a slippery segment of road where sandstone gave way to thin layers of shale that were so loosely bonded they washed away in even a gentle rain.During the summer season of cloudbursts, the parts of the road that crossed shale formations became impassable for hours or days. Nor was the sandstone itself any treat for driving. Wet sandstone was surprisingly slick.
"There are professional pothunters in the area," Ten continued. "They've worked over a lot of sites. If someone objects, they work them over, too. Luke and I decided that no one goes to September Canyon without a guard."
"Why wasn't I told this before I was hired?" Diana asked tightly.
"Because the sheriff didn't tell us until last night."
Diana said something beneath her breath. Ten glanced sideways at her. "If you can't handle it,tell me now. We'll be back at the ranch in time for dinner."
She said nothing, still trying to cope with her seething feelings at the thought of being alone with Ten in a remote canyon for five days.
"If I thought it would do any good," Ten said, "I'd give you my word that I won't touch you. But you don't know me well enough to believe me, so there's not much point in making any promises, is there?"
Diana didn't answer.
Without warning Ten brought the truck to a stop in the center of a wide spot in the road. He set the brake and turned to face his unhappy passenger.
"What will it be?" he asked. "September Canyon or back to the ranch house?"
Almost wildly Diana glanced around the countryside. She had been so excited when Carla had offered employment for the summer. The salary was minimal, but the opportunity to study newly discovered ruins was unparalleled.
And now it was all vanishing like rain in the desert.
She looked at Ten. Part of her was frankly terrified at the prospect of being alone with him for days on end. Part of her was not-and in some ways, that was most terrifying of all.
Shutting out everything, Diana closed her eyes. What am I going to do?
The image of Ten's powerful hands holding the kitten with such care condensed in her mind.
Surely Carla wouldn't send me out here alone with a man she didn't trust. After that thought came another. My father was never that gentle with anything. Nor was Steve.
The ingrained habit of years made Diana's mind veer away from the bleak night when she had learned once and forever to distrust men and her own judgment. Yet she had been luckier than many of the women she had talked with since. Her scars were all on the inside.
Unbidden came a thought that made Diana tremble with a tangle of emotions she refused to name and a question she shouldn't ask, even in the silence of her own mind.
Would Ten be as gentle with a woman as he was with that kitten?
5
Ten sat and watched the emotions fighting within Diana-anger, fear, hope, confusion, curiosity, longing. The extent of Diana's reluctance to go on to September Canyon surprised him. He had glimpsed the depth of her passion for the Anasazi; if she were considering turning and walking away from September Canyon, she must be in the grip of a fear that was very real to her, despite the fact that Ten knew of no reason for that fear. While most women might have been initially uneasy at spending time alone with a stranger in a remote place, their instinctive wariness would have been balanced by the knowledge that their unexpected companion was a man who had the respect and trust of the people he lived among.
That fact, however, didn't seem to make much difference to Diana.
"Can you talk about it?" Ten asked finally.
"What?"
"Why you're afraid of men. Is it your father?"
Diana looked at Ten's searching, intent eyes, sensing the intelligence and the strength of will in him reaching out to her, asking her to trust him.
Abruptly she felt hemmed in, required to do something for which she was unprepared.
"Stop hounding me," Diana said through clenched teeth. "You have no right to my secrets any more than any man has a right to my body!"
For an instant there was an electric silence stretching tightly between Ten and Diana; then he turned away from her to look out over the land. The silence lengthened until the idling of the truck's engine was as loud as thunder. When Ten finally turned back toward Diana his face was expressionless, his eyes were hooded, and his voice held none of the mixture of emotions it had before.
"In an hour or less, those clouds will get together and rain very hard. Then Picture Wash will become impassable. Anyone who is at the September Canyon site will be forced to stay there. Which will it be, Dr. Saxton? Forward to the dig or back to the ranch?"