Kylie Brant: The Last Warrior

But in one of life’s cruel little ironies, interest, and a lot more, was raised by this woman. She was the last type of female he’d ever consider getting involved with. She was another belagana, like his ex, and his failed marriage had taught him that non-Navajos could never understand the link he had to this place, to the land where his ancestors had lived.

Logic, however, played a poor second to lust. None of those reasons mattered, because permanency was the last thing he was looking for. They didn’t have to like each other for Joe to act on the heat that flared in the pit of his belly whenever he thought of Delaney. Wild, hot, mind-numbing sex didn’t have to have a damn thing to do with the brain.

Resolutely, he shoved aside the wayward thoughts. He’d never been a man to be controlled by the area south of his belt. Nor did he seek out needless complications, which Delaney Carson had written all over her.

She leaned forward and started fiddling with the rearview mirror.

“What are you doing?”

“Changing the temperature button to the one marked compass.” She sat back. “This afternoon I didn’t end up where I was originally heading, but I know the directions I went. Pretty much.”

“Around here we call that lost.”

“Do you?” She aimed a dazzling smile at him. “I call it differently located.”

That smile hit him square in the chest with the force of a fast right jab. Any other woman would still be shaky and maybe a bit hysterical after what she’d been through. She shouldn’t be humorous, displaying an unmistakable charm that made him stop and wonder if there was more to her than he’d considered earlier.

And the fact that he did wonder irritated the hell out of him.

“Turn north on Highway 89,” she said.

He slowed, and turned as she requested. “How’d you happen to get lost if you were on the highway?”

“This isn’t the way I came, but I ended up on this road on the way back. Anyway, it was when I got off the main roads that I wound up…somewhere other than where I’d intended.”

It was safer to retreat behind a professional mask. “It’d be wise to take a guide with you the next time you get the urge to go exploring. A person can die of heatstroke pretty rapidly in this climate. Not to mention the chance of happening on a poisonous snake, scorpion or black widow.”

Her smile faded and she turned back to the window. “I’m aware of the dangers. I took the precaution of packing a survival kit for my vehicle.”

“If one of those shots had found its mark, you wouldn’t have had the chance to get back to the Jeep for the kit,” he replied grimly. “No one would have known where you were. Chances are you’d have died out there and it would have taken days for someone to find your body.”

“Nice thought,” she muttered, rubbing her arms. “You’ll be happy to know the Navajo Tribal Council has arranged to place a guide at my disposal.” She craned her neck to look out the window. “I’m not inexperienced in traveling in remote places, but this isn’t exactly Afghanistan or Iraq. There, women weren’t safe alone in public, so obviously I was never unescorted. Foreign journalists are obvious targets for kidnapping. Indonesia was just as volatile.”

Her words had him surveying her more carefully. He’d heard something of her background, but hadn’t familiarized himself with the details. “So why’d you keep going to those kinds of places?” Some people were adrenaline junkies. He could understand that. Police departments had their share.

Her face swung to his, genuine surprise in her expression. “For the stories, of course. How would you get your news about what’s happening outside our country if people like me didn’t report it?”

The reasonableness of her response was lost on him. “But why you? What was there about the job that made you take the kind of risks you did, day after day, for years?”

She seemed to be searching for words. “My father is a painter,” she said finally. “He makes a living with his portraits, but his love is the stills. I used to watch him mix his paints when I was little. He’d spend hours getting just the right shade of blue and I couldn’t understand that. Sky is blue. Just choose blue and get on with it, right? But he used to say, ‘the impact lies in the shade I use.’”

She pushed her glasses on top of her head, and Joe found himself distracted by her eyes, with their odd, exotic slant and curious wash of color. He couldn’t recall ever seeing that gray-green hue before, with the startling band of gold around the irises.

And he couldn’t recall the last time he’d bothered to analyze a woman’s eye color.

“Photography was my first love,” Delaney was saying. “I took journalism classes just so I could do something with it, but quickly figured out I got hooked on the story. Not only what happened, but why. Your job, it’s more cut and dried, isn’t it? Someone does something to someone and you find out who did it. Make them pay. But truth isn’t always black and white.”

“That’s what most of my suspects would say,” he replied wryly.

“I’ve seen the devastation, the poverty in some of those countries, the results of primitive governments and war. But the story, the truth, varies depending on whose eyes I’m telling the story through. In a time when news can be slanted to suit political purposes, it’s even more important to show all sides. That’s what my photos do. Put tangibles, faces to the news. Because the impact lies in the pictures I use.”

He heard the passion in her voice, and could appreciate the enthusiasm she had for her job, even if he couldn’t fully understand what drew her to it. But then, most people didn’t get why he’d chosen investigative work, when his college degree would have qualified him for a number of higher-paying occupations. People were lucky to feel that kind of commitment to any job. When they did, it was impossible to imagine doing anything else.

“I got the feeling from your grandfather yesterday that you and he are close.”

The shift in conversation caught him by surprise. “Yes.”

“But you don’t approve of my being here. Of his cooperation on this project.”

He kept his voice carefully neutral. “Did I say that?”

“Your reaction yesterday did. You didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat when you figured out who I was.” When he remained silent, she prodded, “Has your difference of opinion caused problems between you and your grandfather? Because I wouldn’t want…”

“My relationship with my grandfather is none of your business,” he said succinctly. He didn’t need her reminder that he hadn’t yet spoken to the older man, hadn’t smoothed out the friction that had risen between them in the last week or so. “We aren’t two of the faces for you to add to your project. Our personal lives are off-limits.”

“Really.” She twisted in the seat to glare at him. “So it’s only questions about me that are fair game.” She nodded, as if in understanding. “Be sure and write these rules down for me so I don’t make the mistake of believing you’re capable of rational conversation.”

She couldn’t make him feel small. Not about this. “We were having a rational conversation.”

“Wrong. Since you were the only one allowed to ask questions, it was more of an interrogation. But don’t worry. The boundaries are clearly marked. I caught that. Take a right up here.”

He almost missed the direction, couched as it was with sarcasm. He took the corner a little fast and she slapped a hand on the dash to brace herself. But she didn’t say anything else. As a matter of fact, she lapsed into the same silence she’d kept earlier, and this time he wasn’t stupid enough to try to get her talking.