Home on the Range (AU,M/L,ADULT) Ch 30, 7/17/13 [WIP]

[Cardinal]

Chapter 11

Going to Town

Sunday marked the beginning of the second week on the Lazy L Ranch, and they celebrated it by moving on to the next level of the program. After an early breakfast, the guests mounted their horses before joining the ranch foreman Nando for their longest ride yet. Everyone was wondering where their cowboys were and it wasn’t long before someone asked about them.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Nando replied, “your cowboys left early this morning to set up a demonstration of what you all will be doin’ for the rest of the week. We are in the process of riding to a vantage point from which you can watch ‘em, while I explain what’s goin’ on.”

Another hour’s ride put forty-two ranch guests and one middle-aged foreman on top of a gently-sloped ridge that looked out over a wide, shallow valley. Down at the far end of the valley, the seven professional cowboys saw their guests arrive. Sharing a last look, the men moved from their position at the back of a herd of cattle to form a loose semicircle around the herd’s back half.

Over the next couple of hours, the cowboys did their job: herding the cattle down the length of the valley, with Nando describing the various tactics they used that allowed seven cowboys to control a couple hundred head of cattle. The idea was to give the ranch guests a visual idea of what they would be expected to do when their respective cowboys called out instructions. The primary difference between what the guests were going to be doing and what the cowboys were doing now was that the guests would be handling much smaller herds of livestock.

Just when some of the guests began to wonder about lunch, two rugged 4x4 trucks drove out to meet them. In it were Coleman coolers packed full of cans of soda surrounded by ice, while in other containers there were thick sandwiches, bags of potato chips and Cheetos, and freshly-baked cookies for dessert. With the beds of the trucks being crammed full of food, there was plenty for everyone, but no one got a morsel until the horses were fed and watered first.

Nando headed back to the main house with the food trucks, and after the herd from the morning’s demonstration was split into seven much smaller groupings, the afternoon was spent with each group working under the direction of their cowboy to guide its tiny ‘herd.’ Things were awkward at first, and it took a few hours for the newbies to work together as a halfway decent unit, but that was the purpose of the day’s outing.

At dinner that evening, back at the ranch house, Max told the members of his group that the next day would be their first day as real cowboys and cowgirls. Their group would collect a small herd in the morning and not return to the main house until dinnertime. Not only would they be herding longer on Monday, but they would be guiding a larger herd than they had done on Sunday. This would test both their physical and mental stamina as well as their nascent herding skills, and help get them ready for the all-out four-day cattle drive that would start on Tuesday and complete their stay on the Lazy L.

After the meal, Max’s workday was done. He waited for the others in his group to go their separate ways and then moved over next to Liz, and asked, “Are you ready for our date?”

She looked down to check her outfit: clean boots, blue jeans that were form-fitting without looking painted on, and a reddish-brown plaid blouse that she thought really made her brown eyes pop. After rubbing away a few imaginary crumbs, she looked back up, and asked, “Just five more minutes?”

“Take as much time as you want. While you’re finishing up in here, I’ll head outside and bring my truck to the door.”

“Okay. I’ll come out when I’m ready.”

All Liz really needed was to brush her teeth and put on a few dabs of her second-best perfume, but she figured the few extra moments couldn’t hurt. Looking up at Max while he loomed over her had scattered her thoughts to the four winds; she was going to need those extra moments to collect those thoughts once more.

The ranch employees parked in a small, asphalt-paved lot just over a small rise on the other side of the ranch house from the barn and stables. Max’s weather-beaten blue Chevy Silverado HD hadn’t moved since before Liz had come to the ranch. He hadn’t had time to get it washed, but since the parking lot was hidden from the view of anyone at the ranch house, and since no one else was in the parking lot with him, he pressed the palm of his right hand onto the truck to clean its body and tires with the slightest brush of his power. A repeat of that performance once he was in the cab cleaned the dash, floorboards, and seats until they looked neat and well cared for. It still looks like a piece of shit, he thought, but at least now Liz shouldn’t be humiliated to be seen in it. And then he was honest with himself. Well…she might still be embarrassed by my old truck, but at least now I won’t be ashamed to have her in it.

After one last look at his clothes to be sure they were still neat and presentable, Max pulled a small bottle of a woodsy-scented cologne out of his glove box and dabbed a bit on his neck and upper chest before putting his key in the ignition and bringing his truck to life. In a couple of minutes, the truck was parked in front of the ranch house and he was leaning against the side of the truck with his arms folded across his chest, waiting for his date to appear.

Liz had asked for five minutes, and she only took ten, which Max was wise enough to consider being right on time. When she popped out of the front door, he was taken anew by her fresh-faced beauty and wondered why a woman like her would be interested in a guy like him. For her part, Liz eyed Max up and down like he was some kind of treat. She was used to his close-cropped brown hair, amber-flecked brown eyes, sharply-chiseled face, and muscular forearms, but the form-fitting black t-shirt that was straining to contain his chest and shoulders, and the pair of jeans that settled low, just above his hips were new. Another inducement to lust, she sighed to herself. And as he straightened up and moved to hold her door open with one hand while offering her the assistance of his other hand to climb up into the truck, she added, Don’t get ahead of yourself, Girl. This is only a date, and a first date at that. Still, she couldn’t help but use the side view mirror to check out his denim-clad butt as he walked behind the truck to get to the driver’s door,

Liz then slid over into the middle of the bench seat and belted herself in. Once Max was sitting beside her, he belted himself in, and was about to fire up his truck, when she asked, “Where are we going?”

“Into town,” he replied, “or at least what passes for a town in these parts.” He had forgotten to tell Liz to not eat dinner before their date, so when she ate at the ranch house, that pretty much killed the idea of them having a quiet meal together. Given that there weren’t a lot of other entertainment options in a ranching community of four thousand people, he had to do some quick thinking during the drive. Luckily for him, a lack of options meant there wasn’t a lot for him to consider in the first place. But while he was thinking, Liz was thinking, too.

“I thought you told me ranch guests are strictly off limits,” she said, finally.

“I did.”

“Well, what happened to change the rules?”

“There aren’t any rules covering that,” Max admitted, after a moment’s pause. “The only rules were ones I made up for me.”

Liz shifted on the truck’s bench seat so she could more fully face him. “Why would you do that?”

“I’ve only been on the ranch for three years or so, and early during that first year there was a woman in one my groups that I liked. And, as the days rolled on, it seemed she returned my interest. So I asked her out and we went on a date. When I brought her back to her room after the date, we were seen by some of the other guests. By lunch the next day, two different women had complained to Carl and Nadine that it wasn’t right for me to be favoring one of their guests like that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I didn’t even sleep with the woman, but the other women were mad anyway…” Max’s voice drifted away to nothing. Liz waited patiently for him to finish the story and was rewarded when he said, “I guess I ruined their fantasy.”

“And you put guests off limits after that because you didn’t want the hassle?”

“Pretty much.”

Liz mulled over what this might mean, for him…and for her. “If I wasn’t certain you were serious about me before, I sure am now.”

“There are a lot of things about me that I might not be quite ready to tell you, Liz,” Max said, as he chanced a quick look at her, “but what I feel about you isn’t going to be one of them. After all, we only have another six days to go; time’s too precious to waste.”

Liz grinned widely and nudged Max with her elbow, as she said, “Then what are you waiting for? Step on it.”

That wasn’t a good idea, as they were still on the long, dirt road that led from the ranch house to the two-lane blacktop road that was the only highway in the area. The dirt road was rutted, making any kind of high speed driving an uncomfortable proposition at best. Soon enough, though, the truck made it onto the blacktop and Max duly increased his speed.

Liz had sort of expected him to gun the engine and takeoff like a rocket once they reached the highway, so his restraint had her puzzled. When she asked him about it, he smiled out of one corner of his mouth, and said, “There are a lot of things I could do that I don’t. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”

There were a lot of ways Max’s last sentence could be interpreted. More, even, than Liz could possibly be expected to know, but she knew which way she wanted to read it. Don’t worry big guy, she thought, we’ll get there soon enough.”

[Cardinal]

Chapter 12

First Date

Once Liz and Max settled in to the relatively smooth ride of the old truck on the two-lane asphalt highway, she asked, “Do I have to guess, or are you going to tell me what’s planned for this evening?”

After debating about whether or not to tell her, Max decided it couldn’t hurt to be open with her just this once. “I forgot to tell you to skip dinner at the ranch, so it’s my fault you ate. That kind of kills going to Joe’s for a pair of Prime Ribeyes, so…”

“Thick cut?”

“Huh? Oh! The steaks. Very thick.”

“Mmmm…” Liz moaned seductively. “A medium-rare ribeye, perfectly marbled with fat, a nice crust on the outside, and exploding with juices on the inside.”

The way Liz was going on about an imagined steak had Max thinking she was either having a religious experience, or was on the verge of having a sexual one. One quick look over at her was all it took for him to see the look of bliss on her face as she imagined the succulent treat. I guess she’s hungry after all. “Would you like to have dinner? We can still go to Joe’s if you’d like a little more to eat.”

If Liz was going to be completely honest with herself, she would have to admit she was still kind of hungry, which was totally unlike her. A meal like she had eaten back at the Lazy L would normally have been more than enough to tide her over to the next morning, but right now, she felt like she could eat a horse. Or at least a cow. But she didn’t want Max to think she was some kind of pig, so…

“No thanks.” Liz smiled slightly as she looked out over field after field of grazing land. “I think I’ve…” her stomach chose that moment to emit a most unladylike grumble “…had enough.”

Max pretended like he hadn’t heard the grumble and took Liz at her word. “So…what about going to see a movie?” He waited for a moment for her answer and then facepalmed himself when he realized he’d just offered to take a movie star to the movies. “Orrrrrr…maybe not.”

“No, no, a movie will be just fine,” Liz assured him. “Well…as long as I’m not in it anyway.”

“Do you ever…?”

“…watch myself act?”

“Yeah,” Max said.

“Outside of movie premieres, generally not.” Before Max could ask why not, Liz explained. “When I see me on the screen, I can’t get lost in the story. Instead, I’m always evaluating what I did and how I could have done it better, or maybe how the story could have been written better. It’s just too uncomfortable of a thing for me to do.”

Max could see where that might be a problem,

The sun was still an hour from setting off to their left, but the western sky was already a riot of pinks, oranges, and yellows in horizontal bands that darted out from behind a bank of fluffy white clouds. Liz turned in her seat to look past Max and admire the painterly sky. He, however, used his few looks away from the road to gaze in the other direction, right at her.

When Liz finally noticed, she gestured over his shoulder, and said, “The show’s out there.”

“The sunset’s out there,” Max corrected. “As brilliant as they are, they’re a dime a dozen around these parts. The show, the real beauty, is in here with me.”

Liz blushed and wondered why a simple compliment from Max affected her so, when she was indifferent to the compliments she was showered with on a daily basis.

They were nearly to the city limits – such as they were – before either of them spoke again. “As far as the movie goes, Liz, you can choose any one you want…as long as it happens to be the one playing at our local theater.”

“A one-screen theater? Really?”

“Oh yeah, and we’ve got two whole stoplights, too. We’re big time, I tell ya.”

Max slowed his truck half a block short of the movie theater, and slid it into an angled parking space, before hopping out and walking around to open Liz’s door with one hand while offering her a hand down to the sidewalk with the other. She had seen the big marquee over the entrance to the theater as Max had driven up and had been pleased to see that not only wasn’t the movie one of hers, but it was a movie she had been intending to see for the last month since two of her friends had small roles in it.

“Is this a movie one of yours?” Max asked, as he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“No,” Liz smiled, “not one of mine. But I have been wanting to see it.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Max tilted his head toward the distant ticket booth. “Let’s go.”

Minutes later, Max had purchased two tickets and they were waiting in line at the snack counter. While Liz had turned down another meal, he was sure she was still hungry and he was going to make sure she had plenty of options during the movie. As they were waiting, he looked over the coming attractions posters, while she looked everywhere but. Max’s eyes shot wide when he spotted a poster with Liz on it; her makeup was flawless, her hair was done up in an elegant chignon, and she was wearing a sleeveless little black dress, sheer hose, and black leather pumps. All in all, she was virtually unrecognizable as the woman standing next to him. Just as he was about to nudge her and point in the direction of her poster, he overheard the two couples standing in front of them as they commented on the same poster. He supposed it was hearing the name ‘Liz’ that had drawn his attention.

“Death Spiral,” the red-headed guy said. “You wanna see that one when it comes out?”

“Probably,” the blond-headed guy allowed. “It looks like it has got some good action in it, and you know the girls might actually go with us since that pretty boy Garrett Hedlund’s in it.”

That blond’s date playfully swatted his bicep, and shot back, “As if your main interest in going wouldn’t be Liz Parker. You’ve had a thing for her for years.”

He waved off the mere mention of Liz, as he said, “Meh…like I’ll ever meet her.”

Liz couldn’t help herself. She leaned forward slightly, and said, “Eh…I wouldn’t worry about her too much, a friend of mine says she’s an uppity bitch.”

Max had to stifle a chuckle as Liz ripped herself to a set of complete strangers. Those couples looked at her rather strangely, but none of them came close to making a connection between the fresh-scrubbed beauty at Max’s side, and the glamorous movie star standing next to a disheveled Garrett Hedlund on the poster. When they collected their snacks and walked off, Max muttered, “I feel kind of sorry for that guy. So close and yet so far.”

“I look at it this way:” Liz replied, just as quietly, “I gave him a fair chance to recognize me, and if he had, I would have signed autographs and taken pictures with all of them.”

For snacks, Liz got a Coke Zero and a bag of strawberry Twizzlers, while Max nabbed a box of Skittles and a Cherry Lime Icee for himself and a ginormous tub of buttered popcorn for the both of them. The movie wasn’t half bad, which surprised both of them, but for different reasons: Max hadn’t thought much of the movie’s title, while Liz knew several people involved in the production besides her friends, and hadn’t expected to like their work nearly as much as she did.

Max thought about sharing a fancy ice cream concoction with Liz at the locally owned and operated ice cream parlor. It would give them something to do with their hands as they sat and talked, but after spending two hours with their butts planted in the theater’s plushly upholstered seats, both Liz and Max felt like getting physical…just not the kind of physical she had been intending ever since arriving at the Lazy L.

“We can go for a long walk if you’d like to work off some of that candy and popcorn,” Max said. He wasn’t sure if he should have even mentioned “working off” what she had eaten, as it was plain as the nose on his face that she was in fabulous shape. And even if she did need to work it off, mentioning that might not be the brightest move. “Umm…not that you need to work it off or anything.” Oh so lame there, Dr. Smooth.

Liz wasn’t the least bit insulted by what Max had said, but she did think the way he tried to cover for what he had said was cute, earning him a grin. “How about dancing?” she asked. “I had a lot of fun dancing with you the other night, and would love to have the chance to do it again.”

Relieved that Liz wasn’t annoyed, Max was more than happy to take her to the biggest local country bar. It was a few blocks down Main Street from where the movie theater was located, so he decided to walk. “I hope you like country music,” Max said, “‘cause that’s all they play in there.”

“I may live in California, but I grew up in Roswell, New Mexico. Country music is no problem for me. As long as the music is danceable, I’ll be fine.”

Max didn’t blanch this time when Liz mentioned Roswell, but he wasted no time in moving the conversation along to other things.

“In that case,” Max turned in place and offered Liz his arm, “we’re headed to the right place.” Without thought, she looped her arm around his and they headed off down the sidewalk. Max had liked the movie well enough, but he wanted Liz’s perspective on it, both as an audience member, and as an actor. It was the first time since they’d met that Max had made a real effort to draw Liz out and let her shine. He was surprised to find she had liked the movie as a whole as much as he did, but she then went on to make a few pointed critiques of things that he would never have noticed. It made him see the movie, and Liz herself, in a new light, as he’d never quite thought of actors as serious professionals before.

Now that Liz had piqued his curiosity about this side of her, Max wanted nothing more than to delve more deeply, to see what made a girl who had wanted to be a molecular biologist give that up for the seemingly dissimilar life of a movie star. But while getting a girl to open up and talk about herself was normally a good thing on first date, right now his date wanted to dance. And what Liz wants is what Liz gets, Max thought, as they took a table for two near the dance floor. Dance now, talk later.

The moment the waitress who was covering their table saw them, or more specifically saw Max, she made a sharp turn and headed directly toward their table to ask what they wanted to drink. When she finally saw who Max was with, her eyebrows climbed to the sky, but it wasn’t because she recognized Liz, it was because she didn’t recognize her. It was obvious, to her at least, that Liz wasn’t a local.

“Heya, Max!” the waitress greeted him.

“Hey, Lola,” Max said by way of returning her greeting, “how are you?”

“Not bad, thanks. How are you?”

“I’m doing well.” He looked over at Liz for the slightest of moments, and then added, “Never been better.”

“That’s good to hear,” Lola replied sincerely. “Now, whatcha havin’ tonight? Can I get you and the lady a pitcher?”

“No thanks, I’m driving tonight, so put me down for a Coke.” That earned Max an approving nod from Liz, as she had thought he would have at least one beer even if he was socially conscious. He just missed seeing her nod, however, when he turned to her and asked, “What would you like to drink?”

He figured she was going to order some kind of fruity froo-froo drink, and normally he would have been right. But Liz knew what he was thinking and she wanted to fit in. If she could somehow manage to pass herself off as just another local – even for one night – she would consider it a success. “A Shiner Bock, please.”

Max didn’t bother trying to hide either his surprise or his pleasure. Instead, after his eyebrows floated back to their normal position, he favored her with a look that was halfway between a boyish grin and a knowing smirk. That look – and the golden brown eyes that came with it – nearly took Liz’s breath away. Jesus! He shouldn’t be allowed to look that good.

“Good choice,” Max acknowledged, when Lola moved away from the table.

The two of them decided to wait for their drinks before hitting the dance floor. While Max wanted to continue drawing Liz out, he thought better of it as he had no idea who might overhear her. Before he could think of another way to engage her conversationally, Liz asked a question of her own: “I think you’re about my age, right?”

“Umm…what is your age?”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“Me, too,” Max replied. “Why’d you want to know?”

“Well…on the way over here, you said you’d only been here for three years, which makes you twenty-five or so when you started here…so I was wondering what you did between graduating from high school and starting to work here on the Lazy L.”

Max sat back in his seat like he’d just been slapped. It was beginning to seem like every other time Liz opened her mouth tonight, she was saying something that was making him reevaluate her. First it was the professional way she approached her craft and now it was the sharpness of mind evidenced by the way she had listened to what he said and how she had evaluated it. The first time, he had wanted to keep her talking; now, he wanted to get her to shut up. Max was determined to not lie to Liz, but what she was asking for was not something he wanted to share, not now, and not with her. But what could he say that would satisfy her? He only had a few moments to decide.

[Cardinal]

Chapter 13

Come Dancing

Max decided to tell Liz the facts, while glossing over his motivations, or maybe even skipping them entirely. But first he wanted to find out how much she had already figured out. “How do you know I even graduated from high school?” he asked, having to speak up a bit to be heard over the music and the general crowd noise.

Liz rolled her eyes rather extravagantly. “Give me some credit here. You’re too well-spoken to not be well-educated. I’ll bet you also went to college after high school like I did.”

“I did,” he said, as he nodded slowly. “I finished, too.”

Liz sensed a bit of teasing there, since she had quit school to pursue her acting career, but she let it pass. She might have had more true enjoyment delving into the mysteries of molecular biology, but seven-figure paychecks were hard to turn down, so she asked, “Where’d you go?”

“Mom’s a law professor at Baylor, so you’d think I would’ve gone there, but instead, I took an academic scholarship to Texas A&M.”

“Finding a way to pay for it yourself is very cool.”

“Thanks.”

“I know from experience that scholarships don’t grow on trees.” Liz looked to see if Lola was coming back with their drinks. How long could it take to get a Coke and a beer anyway? “Were you there for four years or five?” She had a few friends in Los Angeles who’d graduated from college, and all of them had been on the five-year plan. Something – call it women’s intuition – told her Max was different. He wasted little time confirming her opinion.

“Four years,” Max replied. “Other than my involvement with the rodeo team, I tended to stay by myself and study, so carrying a full course load was no problem.”

“Rodeo, huh? I never would have guessed.” He smirked at her when she said that, but he made no other reply, so she asked, “No wild parties?”

“I wouldn’t say that…” Max favored Liz with a crooked smile, one that told her she wasn’t going to be getting any of those stories any time soon. “I doubt you can imagine the kinds of trouble a bunch of drunken cowboys and cowgirls can get into. I just didn’t go to any other parties.”

“And after graduation…?”

“Grad school.”

“In what field?” Liz asked. “Wait! What was your major as an undergrad?”

Damn, Max thought, she would ask that. Now’s when things get difficult. No one understands. They never do. “My major was Pre-Law.”

“I can see now why you might not have wanted to go to your mom’s school if you were going to go for Pre-Law.” A lawyer? He’s a freaking lawyer? Liz gulped hard, having been taken completely by surprise for the first time. I guess there’s only one way to find out.

“Yeah,” Max sighed, “anything I did at Baylor that was related to the law school would have started nepotism rumors once someone found out. I couldn’t do that to Mom, or to myself.”

“And did you follow up on that major in grad school?”

“I did.”

“Where at?”

“Harvard Law.”

“No way…” Liz’s opinion of Max’s intelligence just went up a couple of notches. Okay, more than a couple of notches. She knew Harvard Law School had a matchless reputation; only the best of the best could even get in there, much less graduate. Harvard had been her dream school back in her high school days, but she hadn’t quite been able to get admitted there, which had caused her to go to Cal Tech. So actually, she kind of owed her current success to being rejected by Harvard, but that wasn’t the way she saw it at the moment.

The way she saw it, she was living everyone else’s dream, while Max had lived hers.

“What was it like?” Liz asked wistfully.

“Harvard?” When Liz nodded her assent, he said, “Three long, hard years. I think I spent more time inside the law library during the first two years than I did in my cramped studio apartment.”

Liz paused for a moment as their drinks finally arrived. Max smiled at Lola and paid for the drinks right away even though the bar would let him run up a tab if he wanted. Once they’d both had a couple of swallows, she said, “So, let me get this straight: you got a full ride to college, got into freaking Harvard Law School of all places, and graduated.”

“That’s right.”

“Then why are you here?” she asked.

“Sorry, Liz,” Max replied. “I’ve told you what I did after high school and before starting here at the Lazy L, but the whys and wherefores…those belong to me.”

Liz wanted to know why. It was almost always the most important question when it came to someone’s past, but it was always the hardest one to get answered.

Max had downed his Coke and Liz was halfway through her Shiner Bock before she slipped off her chair and pulled Max out onto the wooden dance floor with her. “Come on, Cowboy,” Liz said, “show me what you’ve got.” She had a strong belief that man who can move well on the dance floor could also move well in the bedroom. Her first sample of Max’s dancing ability the other night gave her hopes he could dance like a Boot Scootin’ Baryshnikov.

Liz was surprised to find that most of the dancing was not either two-stepping or line dancing like she had supposed. A lot of the couples had the man’s arms around the woman’s back and her arms looped around his neck, as they swayed back and forth to the music. Liz could handle that, and Kyle’s teaching at the beginning of week made her a tolerable two-stepper – especially when in Max’s arms – which meant she only had to sit out during the line dances. Max, on the other hand, was an excellent two-stepper and he knew most of the line dances that were played. He skipped them, however, figuring Liz’s company was more than worth the slight cost.

Max downed three Cokes over the course of the night, while Liz worked her way through two beers, which was definitely her limit. She explained briefly, saying, “One more beer and you’d have to guide me back to your truck.”

“So, you’re a lightweight?”

“Both literally and figuratively.”

“So noted,” Max said.

It wasn’t long after Liz finished off her second beer before Max decided it was probably time to go. The night had gone very well up to that point, and he wanted to end things on a positive note. He left a healthy tip for Lola and guided Liz to the door. Both of them had worked up a light sweat during the evening’s exertions, making the cool night breeze feel even cooler.

“If you want,” Max said, “you can go back inside and wait for me to bring my truck down here.”

“It’s just a little bit chilly,” Liz replied. “I can handle it.

This time, he offered his arm to her deliberately and she took it just as deliberately. And as they walked down the sidewalk toward his truck, their linked arms dropped and their fingers intertwined as they assumed more casual and comfortable positions. They made the walk in silence. Max realized it was the second time tonight that they’d shared a silence without either one of them ruining it with needless chatter. Liz noticed it, too, and limited herself to squeezing his hand briefly to indicate how she was feeling. Max smiled faintly as he squeezed her hand in return just before opening the door for her and handing her up into the truck.

They were miles out of town before the truck’s heater finally started blowing warm air, but neither one cared, as they’d already found a nice heat source in each other. Liz was in the middle of the bench seat, snuggling next to Max with her head resting on his shoulder. He was driving with his left arm while his right one was looped around her shoulders in a light embrace.

Neither Max nor Liz wanted to break the spell they were under. Neither one wanted to be the first one to speak. And they didn’t, until the truck rolled to a stop right in front of the front door of the ranch house. When Max opened the door for Liz, and she stepped down onto the dirt, she asked, “Why did we come home so early? We were having such a good time.”

“You need your sleep, and so do I. Tomorrow’s going to be at least as rough on us as today was.” Max and Liz were almost to the steps leading up to the porch when he stopped and pulled her around to face him. “Just because we’re back at the ranch doesn’t mean we have to stop enjoying ourselves…or each other.”

With that, Max took a light hold on Liz’s shoulders and held her close while bending down to taste her mouth. He’d been dying to kiss her all night, and judging from the way she rose up on her toes to meet his lips halfway, she had been waiting for this kiss, too. They both tilted their heads to the right, to make room for their mouths to cover each other. Lips brushed, pressed, bruised while tongues darted, flicked, and dueled. Their mouths never stopped moving, seemingly in fear of somehow missing out on some sublime new sensation that they hadn’t explored the other night in the barn. By the time they both ran out of oxygen and were forced to break off their kiss, Liz’s hands had come to rest on top of Max’s shoulders, while his hands were nearly encircling her waist.

“So,” she said breathlessly, as she lowered her heels to the ground, “I take it this means another date tomorrow night?”

“I think it does.”

“Same time?”

“Right after dinner,” Max said.

“Goodnight, Max,” Liz said, as after giving him a peck on the lips.

“Goodnight, Liz,” Max replied, as he reluctantly let her go. She was up the steps and almost into the ranch house, when he called out to her. “Liz?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t eat dinner tomorrow night. There’s a thick, juicy ribeye at Joe’s with your name on it.”

[Cardinal]

This update is a little bit short, and I'm sorry for that, but it's for a good reason: this chapter needed to end where it does so I can go on in a new direction next chapter.

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Chapter 14

Synergy

The next morning, Liz was up early and fairly floated through her toilette before pulling on a powder blue, western-cut blouse, a freshly-washed pair of blue jeans, and the not-quite-so-fancy cowgirl boots she had been using for her daily work. A quick look in her bedroom’s mirror satisfied her as to her appearance before she headed downstairs for breakfast. It didn’t occur to her until she was halfway down the stairs to wonder how last night was going to affect today. Are the other female guests going to know? she wondered, as her booted feet clomped downstairs. Most of them should, she decided. The ones that don’t know don’t care. Now, are any of them going to be jealous? Only the ones who thought they might have had a chance with Max in the first place, and since that doesn’t include any of the girls in the group I’m in, things should be okay. At least for today.

Liz was right…sort of.

As usual, Max was in the dining room eating his breakfast when she made her entrance, and so were the other six cowboys and the ranch foreman, Nando. The one thing she hadn’t calculated on her way down was how Kyle might react to seeing her cuddle up next to Max so soon after she had spent time kissing him. She paused in the doorway, looking from one kissee to the other while her mind raced. Jesus! she thought. This is worse than the plot of half the crappy scripts I get. You’d think I was living inside a Lifetime movie or something.

Making the snap decision that she didn’t have the energy to worry about more than one guy this morning, Liz strode over to the breakfast buffet, put a selection of fresh fruit slices on one side of her plate, and biscuits and gravy on the other. Looking at her loaded plate, Liz giggled as she thought, What a weird combination this is. My nutritionist is gonna shit when she learns what I’ve been eating out here. A fresh cup of coffee was all she needed to make her morning meal complete, before walking over to Max and taking the seat next to him. She wasn’t in any danger of sitting in his lap or anything, but there wasn’t much in the way of space between them either.

Max stood as Liz approached, and after she sat, he reclaimed his seat, and asked, “How are you this morning, Liz?”

“Quite well,” she replied sunnily. “And thank you for asking.” She spent a moment arranging her plate, utensils, and coffee before she asked, “How are you this fine morning?”

“I slept like a baby, and after a hot shower and a greasy breakfast, I’ll be ready to go.” Max chose that moment to reach over, snag a juicy chunk of pineapple off her plate, and pop it into his mouth.

“Hey! Get your own, you fruit thief,” Liz said in mock outrage. When she saw the succulent fruit disappear between his all too tempting lips, she wanted to lick them on the spot. But when he followed that with an all-too-pleased smirk, she plotted her revenge.

Liz waited until he looked up from his plate to greet a few other guests before she struck, nabbing a strip of maple-smoked bacon from his plate. She used one hand to hold the bacon as she ate it, while her other hand warded off his increasingly humorous attempts at getting his bacon back.

Max wasn’t seriously trying to “save his bacon,” he just liked the excuse to touch her in public. And once the last of the bacon disappeared from sight, he contemplated tickling her, but decided that would cause too much of a scene. “Fine, be that way,” he whispered in her ear, as he extended her mock outrage with pretended annoyance of his own “I didn’t know you were that desperate to get your hands on my…meat.”

Liz was so surprised by what Max said, and the throaty, highly suggestive way he had said it, that she choked on the last bit of bacon. Max responded as he and the other ranch employees had been trained to do: he stood and moved behind Liz just in case the Heimlich maneuver was needed, but as long as she was coughing and still making noise, he made no move to interfere with her natural processes.

While Max was moving into position to help if needed, Liz’s face was going from its normal tanned state to a dark, dangerous-looking brick red. The other cowboys looked on with interest, partly because this was a risky situation they might need to get involved with, but mostly because they wanted to see how it was affecting Max, as his open affection for the woman had already been dominating their table talk.

Liz hacked and sputtered, before finally managing to dislodge the recalcitrant bacon and spit it back on the table.

“Are you okay, Liz?” Max asked quietly. “Would you like some water, or something else?”

“Water,” she replied, with a little extra rasp in her voice.

Max left her side just long enough to get a large glass filled with filtered tap water. Once he had the glass in his hand, he made the drink cool by slowing the molecules in the water. He was careful to keep the water from getting cool enough to frost or even fog the glass, but he wanted the water to be as refreshing as possible if she decided to drink it instead of just rinsing out her mouth.

When Liz heard him approach, she blindly reached out an open hand and he placed it in her palm. As her slender fingers curled around the glass, he withdrew his and squeezed her shoulders once as he passed behind her to retake his seat. Once she’d rinsed out her mouth, Max deadpanned, “I wasn’t that funny.” That made Liz giggle. He leaned in a bit and a smile managed to quirk its way out of the corner of his mouth, even as he became more serious. “Please don’t scare me like that again, Hun. I’m just getting used to having you around; I’m not willing to let you go just yet.”

The sweetness and sincerity of Max’s quiet plea struck Liz in a most vulnerable place: her heart. She was beginning to feel something more than the momentary exhilaration of their kisses. It wasn’t a new feeling for her, but it was one she hadn’t experienced in a long count of years, and it wasn’t until all of the ranch guests were outside and mounting their horses that she figured out what it was.

Love.

At that exact moment, she whipped her head around, somehow knowing exactly where Max would be. When he looked up and favored her with that heart-melting grin of his, she could feel her heart drop down into her stomach before bouncing back up into her throat. Oh, she wasn’t in love with him yet, but she very nearly panicked as she realized she was falling for him. Cowboy, lawyer, nothing mattered to her at the moment but this: together, they were more than the sum of their parts. Whenever she was with Max, 1 + 1 = 3.

[Cardinal]

Okay, this took longer than I thought, mostly because I spent two days trying to make sure I had yet to give Max's horse a name. I didn't find one, but I might have overlooked it in my haste. Should any of you kind readers remember me naming that horse, or better yet, know where I can find that name, I would be most appreciative...because I'll then go back and edit that name out of the official record. :p

I need for that horse to NOT have name. Hmm...maybe I should try to plan my next fic.

* * * * * * * * * *

Chapter 15

Fight or Flight

Liz was sort of right when she thought the other women in her group wouldn’t mind her success with Max. It was true no one came over to her to make any cutting remarks, but Holly and Stephy did ask if she had been out with him the night before. After a moment’s pause, she admitted they had been out on a date. That made the other women squee with delight before pressing her for details.

Not wanting to give the women a reason to turn on her, and secretly proud of her success to this point with the brutally sexy cowboy, Liz gave them a thumbnail sketch of the date. The only part the women found hard to believe was her insistence that nothing had happened beyond a hot kiss at the very end.

“Well, I guess that’s good, in a way,” Stephy said, when she finally gave in and believed, “‘cause who wants to do it on the bench seat of a truck or in some seedy motel?”

“Speak for yourself,” Holly said archly. That comment made her best friend’s head whip around faster than Linda Blair’s did in The Exorcist.

“You didn’t…”

“I most certainly did.”

“When? With who?” Stephy paused a moment, and then added, “Where?”

“That’s not important at the moment,” Holly sniffed. “Right now we are focused on Liz’s sex life…or her lack thereof.”

“Thanks, Holly, thanks a bunch,” Liz said sarcastically. Turning her attention back to Stephy, she asked, “Why would we have had to do it there?”

“Because the other night Holly overheard one of the staff members telling someone that the cowboys could ‘fraternize’ with the guests on their own time as much as they wanted, but they weren’t allowed to ‘do it’ in the ranch house.”

“Really?” Liz was initially surprised by this piece of information, but given what Max had told her about his personal reason for making guests off-limits for himself, she guessed she really shouldn’t be too surprised about a company-wide ban on sex in the ranch house. After all, the Luzinskis would want to protect their business as much as they could within reason.

“That’s what the woman said,” Holly replied. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I don’t have any reason to doubt her.”

“So, if you didn’t get laid last night,” Stephy said, pointedly, “what was the point in going out with Max in the first place?” Edie rode up to the other three women just in time to catch the end of Stephy’s question, and to hear Liz’s reply.

“I, umm, well…” the diminutive movie star squirmed a bit as their direct questions were starting to make her feel a little uncomfortable. “It…it was a date, a first date.” She didn’t like how defensive that last comment of hers had seemed. It had come out sounding like she had felt a need to defend the choices she and Max had made, when in reality, it wasn’t any of their damn business in the first place.

“A first date?” Edie roared with laughter. “Girl, you have exactly one night left in the relative privacy and comfort of the ranch house and its many outbuildings before we leave tomorrow morning on a four-day cattle drive that will end our stay here. Or have you forgotten that little fact?” She laughed again as she rode off with her husband Jim and her son Dan when they came over to find her. Just before she rode out of earshot, Edie looked back over her shoulder and fired one last comment at Liz. “Get busy, Girl!”

Liz pursed her lips and idly watched the Wyoming family as they moved away from the milling throng of novice cowboys and cowgirls. Get her away from her husband and son for a few moments, and ol’ Edie starts talking like a sex-deprived sailor. Then she grinned widely as she had a related thought. Maybe she’s like that in private, too. If so, it’s no wonder Jim’s so devoted. Max rode up to three ladies before Liz could spend any more time ruminating on Edie’s private life, and told them it was time to go.

The six newbies and their cowboy rode for nearly an hour to reach their small herd, at which point Max sat back and watched with thinly disguised enjoyment as the greenhorns spent another hour getting their cattle into some semblance of order. Once they were ready, he got them all headed in the right direction and then rode along at the back of the herd to supervise.

Things were going smoothly, or at least as smoothly as could be expected, which caused Max’s thoughts to drift. Soon enough, he wasn’t watching the small herd, but was instead watching the way Liz’s denim-clad hips rolled with every stride of her horse. The long, glossy brown hair that came tumbling down out of her battered straw cowboy hat in a ponytail received its share of approval, as did every other part of her he could manage to see. The date the night before had gone well, spectacularly so in his estimation, and he couldn’t wait to take her out to again once they got back to the ranch house.

As for Liz, she had spent half of the first hour with the herd trying to make the stupid cows go where she wanted them and the other half chasing down strays that sauntered away from the herd while she was herding other cattle. All the while, she was cursing under her breath at the smug bastard who was supposed to be helping them. Oh sure, he had told them this was their job and he wouldn’t intervene unless they got into trouble, but she just knew he was sitting back there laughing his ass off as the rest of them flopped around like fish on dry land.

Once the cattle were finally under control and the drive got underway, however, Liz cooled off a bit and so did her temper. After that, she settled in to watching her section of the herd, determined that no cow would manage to escape her now and slow their progress even more. Still, the monotony of the slow march soon took its toll, and she found herself turning her horse left or right on almost any pretext, just so she could get another look at her cowboy. In her mind, she was already referring to Max that way, even though she didn’t have an official claim on him. Not yet anyway, she thought.

And that’s pretty much how things went, until a just a little bit before noon.

While the ranch guests were carefully guiding the cattle along a shallow valley, Max was wondering where they should stop to eat and get some rest. He knew with the ranch guests, that the time to rest and relax would be just as important as the meal, but there was little in the way of shade out here to give them a break from the relentless pounding of the sun. There would be no ‘lunch truck’ today because the ranch was providing a progressively more realistic experience for the guests. Instead, their lunches were neatly packed into their capacious saddlebags, along with extra canteens of water.

Liz was ready to eat just like everyone else, but at the moment she was busy taking a short drink from one of her canteens, when she heard a sharp rattle just before horse Mistral took off like a shot. The canteen fell to the ground and she fell back in her saddle as her free hand grabbed desperately for the reins. Once she pulled herself upright again, her other hand got a hold on the reins, and she pulled back with all of her might, hoping to bring her suddenly crazed horse under control, but it was no use. Mistral wasn’t stopping for anyone or anything, because that rattle Liz had heard had been the last warning of a Prairie Rattlesnake, and that was a warning her horse meant to heed…post haste. When it came down to fight or flight, Mistral was firmly on the side of flight. Her only issue today was knowing when it was safe for her to stop.

Luckily, Max had been watching Liz at the very moment her horse bolted. He’d been admiring how the noonday sun played on her hair and face as she tilted her head back for her drink, so much so that he lurched forward as if to keep her from falling when she reeled in her saddle. He wasted little time or effort after that, though. He turned his horse toward hers and set off at a full gallop, yelling at everyone else to stay and watch their herd. He didn’t actually give a shit if they watched the herd or not, but he did not want them trying to help and getting hurt in the process.

Max laid low over his horse’s neck to reduce wind resistance as he dug his spurs in the horse’s flanks. He normally didn’t like using spurs on his horse, but now was not the time for half-measures. Especially when he realized Liz was on a spirited quarter horse, the sprinters of the horse world. And as expected, her horse pulled away from his from the start, steadily increasing the gap between them from thirty yards to more than double that by the time her filly crested the shallow valley’s rim. When Max and his horse topped the same rim seconds later, his main hope was that Liz’s horse would wear itself out, as quarter horses were bred for speed and quickness, not endurance. Still, he wasn’t worried too much, not as long as Liz could manage to stay on top of the horse which did not seem to be a problem at the moment.

That relative lack of worry lasted just as long as it took for Max to get the lay of the land and realize where Liz’s horse was headed. There were a few small, shallow creeks that wove their way across the ranch, including one not a half-mile distant. He knew the creek wouldn’t have much water this time of year, as the last rain around here had been the heavy rain that had marked the start of this cycle of tourists had been more than a week ago. But water wasn’t what worried Max, in fact, he wished the creek had more water in it than it likely did. What did worry him was that the creeks in the area were subject to powerful if infrequent floods which had carved their channels down a good twenty to thirty feet, with nearly sheer sides. He knew anyone who rode a horse over a cliff like that wasn’t likely going to live to tell the tale.

Those thoughts flew through Max’s mind in a moment, processed almost without conscious effort, as he spurred his horse again, viciously this time, and pressed one hand onto the old boy’s neck to lend him some of his alien energy to keep on running at his somewhat questionable top speed. He wasn’t even sure it would work, but he was desperate now and out of options, for while Liz’s horse would slow because it was made for brief bursts of tremendous speed, he knew his horse would slow also, simply because he was old.

Slowly then, inexorably, the gap began to close.

Max had never named this horse; for reasons all his own, he never named one. But in that moment, seeing his horse run like the wind, run like he had never run before in the three years they had been together, he named him: Aeolus, who in ancient Greek mythology had been the ruler of the winds. Max cheered Aeolus on, shouting words of encouragement to be heard over the wind of the passage, on and on he drove him, forcing the horse to go flat out, continuing to feed him more energy, driving his longtime companion past what he could hope to endure, past what any animal should endure, and then demanding more.

The gap was back to thirty yards…twenty…ten…and then five. Max was just readying himself to grab Liz and wrench her off of Mistral, when said horse did something he hadn’t expected: it stepped into a gopher hole. The entire hoof plunged down into the hole which threw off her gait so that by the time the hoof was coming back up for its next step, Mistral had already started to stumble. And when the hoof was unable to lift out of the hole in time for its next step, all the force of a 1,200 pound quarter horse traveling high speed was focused on her comparatively slender lower leg bone, snapping it in two like a chicken wing at Sunday dinner. Mistral went down on the spot and Liz went down with her.

Max immediately leaned back, put both hands on the reins, and pulled hard, bringing the suddenly wobbly Aeolus to a halt. He then jumped from the saddle, and before his boots hit the dirt, his horse fell earthward, too. Max sensed that peripherally, but his focus was on getting to Liz. He raced around the screaming Mistral and found Liz crying softly, her legs pinned under the horse’s side, as she feebly tried to pull herself free.

“Help me, Max!” she pled. “I’m stuck.”

He suspected she was much more than stuck, and without being able to see the extent of her injuries, he wasn’t going to be able to wait for professional help to arrive. He was going to have to do this himself. “Liz? Liz, Honey?”

“Yes?”

The noise of the screaming Mistral was becoming a distraction, but Max had no idea how to heal a horse whose lower leg was in one place while the rest of her body was thirty feet away. He shook his head and got back to the matter at hand. He kneeled next to Liz’s torso and stared into her eyes, figuring it was going to be much easier on her to be healed first and then be pulled out from under the horse. “Look at me. Look into my eyes. I need you to do that for me.”

As she made eye contact with him, his hand made skin-to-skin contact with her tummy, and his mind linked with hers. As he searched her body for the fresh imperfections that signaled injuries, he was inundated with moments from Liz’s past, like: a kindly blonde woman she knew as Grandma Claudia teaching her to ride a pony, her working as a waitress in a kitschy-looking diner with an alien-themed décor, or her and a friend of hers named Maria riding together in car, down the main drag of Roswell as they sang along to the radio and gossiped.

But those things weren’t important at the moment; her growing catalog of injuries was. Max knew she had to be in shock at the moment, because otherwise, she would be screaming loud enough to drown out the damn horse instead of just crying. He’d already given his horse a lot of energy in the race to catch Liz and Mistral; he knew healing her would take almost everything he had left. He looked over at Mistral’s head and took a moment to say goodbye before going to work.

In less than a minute, but what felt to both Max and Liz like an hour, he was done. Sweating profusely now, he had but one job left, and that was to get her out from under her horse before anyone else arrived. Because he knew sooner or later, one of the other guests in his group would disobey him and ride to the top of the ridge to see what was going on. If Liz wasn’t on her feet by then, he might have a hard time explaining why she half buried under a dead horse and yet wasn’t injured at all.

So, he dragged himself to his feet, walked behind her, curled his arms underneath her back and up between her arms and her torso. Then, just before he moved, he said, “This is likely to hurt. It may hurt a lot. But now that I’ve saved you, it’s time to try to save me.”

[Cardinal]

Chapter 16

The Reasons Why

Max was just about to try to drag Liz from under her fallen horse, until he realized there was a simpler way. Wanting to facepalm himself for not thinking clearly, he set her shoulders back on ground and instead knelt beside her. “I guess this won’t hurt so bad after all,” he said quietly, as he placed one hand on the ground next to her body.

What Max had realized was that he could use his ability to alter molecular structures to turn the solid ground beneath Liz’s body to a fine powder. Then, when he pulled her out from under the horse, her feet and legs would sink into the powdery dirt and slide right on out, digging a shallow trench in the dirt along the way. Then all he had to do was shove the dirt back into the trench and use his power to make dirt into hard-packed earth once more. Much easier than having all of that weight pressing down on her legs, he thought. The plan was simple, so much so that it almost took him longer to think it up than to execute it.

Once Liz was free and the dirt beneath Mistral was hard-packed once more, Max moved to check on both horses. As he’d thought, Mistral was done for; the horse was in agony and her destroyed leg was bleeding profusely. Heading over to his own horse, a quick press of the hand to Aeolus’ head to check his condition found that the old boy was merely exhausted. Max smiling widely at his old friend’s remarkable stamina, Max gave him what was left of his own healing energy before reaching into the saddlebag that was within reach and pulling out a Walther P99 pistol and a loaded magazine.

After sliding the magazine into the pistol and pulling back on the slide to chamber a round, Max walked around to Mistral’s head to do his duty and put the beautiful horse out of its misery. Liz wobbled to her feet just in time to see Max raise the pistol and fire twice from point-blank range.

“Nooooooooooooo!” she screamed, but her scream was too late, and as far as Max was concerned, it was also completely unnecessary.

Liz made her way to him, shocked and angry that he had killed Mistral. Max activated the pistol’s safety before tucking it between the small of his back and his jeans. Liz was just about to pound his shoulder with her little fists, when he turned to her and she saw the tears streaming down his face, making little runnels in the fine layer of dirt that covered his face. She stopped just short of him then, not quite sure how to interpret his tears, before he wrapped her in his chiseled arms, buried his face in her silken hair, and quietly sobbed as he held her.

All the anger spilled from her system as she realized the man she was falling for was hurting. She didn’t yet understand why he’d shot her horse, but she knew in her heart it hadn’t been for an evil reason; she needed to support him now, and find out what she was missing out on later.

As for Max, he knew there were a few things he needed to go over with Liz before anyone else arrived on the scene, but that could wait. He needed a few moments to get himself back together, and she seemed to be inclined to let him do it, so that’s what he was going to do; everything else would still be waiting for them when he was ready.

While Max was busy regaining his self-control, Liz’s mind wandered a bit, allowing her to wonder what had happened to her. One moment she was in pain and buried under Mistral, and the next moment, she felt right as rain and was struggling to her feet, but before she could follow that line of thought further, a loud sniffle from Max distracted her. She watched as he reached for the back left pocket of his jeans and withdrew a clean, neatly folded linen handkerchief. That handkerchief was one of two dozen he owned, each and every one of which had been embroidered with his initials: M.E. The curious thing was that he generally didn’t need one of the squares of cloth for himself, but always had one ready for the ladies.

Liz was surprised Max even owned a handkerchief, much less had one in his possession, but she leaned back and watched as he used it to wipe his eyes and then blow his nose. He then folded up the cloth and stuck it back into his otherwise empty pocket.

“Thanks, Liz,” Max said softly. “I…I’ve never had to do that before.”

“What was that?” she asked quietly, gesturing back toward Mistral’s dead body with one hand.

Max didn’t want to talk about it, but he knew she was a greenhorn – a ranch newbie – and might not understand otherwise. He released what remained of his hold on Liz and stepped back, closing his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, before looking her straight in the eyes. “I had to shoot her, Liz. She was in great pain and was dying. All that remained to be decided was when.”

“Wasn’t there anything else that could have been done?”

Assuming she remembered being healed, Max said, “I might have been able to heal her, might I say – mostly because I’ve never tried to reattach a missing piece of leg before – but success would have meant my end.”

Confused, Liz asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“It seems that whenever I heal someone, or something, from an otherwise fatal injury, I leave a mark behind…”

“Wait, you’re serious. You think you can actually heal someone?” Liz was more confused than ever, because she had been asking more about his assertion that he could heal than the idea that healing Mistral would have been bad for him.

“I just healed you,” Max replied. When she rolled her eyes at him, he said, “Lift your blouse, Liz, just enough to bare your abdomen.” He watched as she did as requested; still, she kept her eyes on his. “Now look down.”

She looked down, and gave an audible gasp as she saw the silver handprint on her tan skin. Her first reaction was to try to rub off what had to be silver paint – never mind how Max managed to get paint on his hand way out here – but when the handprint didn’t so much as smear, she looked back up at Max and let her blouse fall back into place. She was frightened now, and began slowly backing away from him. “I, um, we need to get back to the others…right now.”

Max took her reaction in stride, until she turned and started to hurry away from him. Then he ran after her, grasping a shoulder and turning her to face him once more. “That silver handprint is why I couldn’t risk trying to heal Mistral. If I had succeeded, the handprint would have been there for all to see, and it would have raised questions…questions I can’t answer.”

Liz remembered her pain again, but the memory was kind of fuzzy, as if it had taken place years ago. “You did heal me.”

The two of them looked up then and saw a horse and rider had topped the crest of the low ridge they had crossed earlier and was headed toward them. When the rider stopped and dismounted to pick up their straw cowboy hats, which had fallen off during their twin mad gallops across the countryside, Liz said, “I know it’s not nearly enough, but thank you for saving my life. It’s all I have to give right now.” She rose up on her toes then, grasped Max by the shirt, and pulled him down to her. “Well, and I have this,” she added, before laying a deep, passionate kiss on him.

When Liz finally broke the kiss and released Max, he brought one hand up to her face and swept a few loose strands of hair to one side. He didn’t do it because the hair was in her way – she could have handled it if it had been – he did it just to have an excuse to trace her cheekbone with his fingertips before dancing them along the translucent shell of her ear.

“You’re welcome.”

Those were the words he spoke, but Liz heard more than that, she felt more than that, and it made her nervous. She came to the shocking revelation that he hadn’t just saved her, but that he had risked his own safety to do so. “Why?” she asked tremulously. “Why me?”

Max knew what she was asking, even if her words were less than specific. “I have secrets, Liz,” he replied. “A lot of secrets, but I can’t continue to keep my secrets at the expense of another person’s life.” He looked down at his feet and toed the ground nervously before he looked back up at her, and said, “Especially not when it’s yours.”

“You’d risk your life for mine?”

“I already have.” Max paused to give her a crooked grin. “And now, the shoe’s on the other foot. My life is in your hands.”

It took Liz a moment to understand what he was getting at, but when she did, she hurried to assure him. “I won’t tell anyone what happened here today, Max. Not a soul.”

He watched her as she spoke and nodded thoughtfully afterward. “I didn’t think you would, but I need to make sure you realize what is at stake. You see, my one real fear is that someone will find out what I can do, and then that someone will tell the government, or maybe an unscrupulous corporation, and it will all end in a sterile research facility, where anonymous men and women in anonymous white lab coats, perform anonymous tests on an anonymous victim.

“I don’t want to be an anonymous victim, Liz. I just want to be Max Evans and be free to live my own life the way I see fit.”

Liz slipped within the compass of his arms, rested the side of her face against his massive chest, and wrapped her own arms as far around his back as she could, and murmured, “Whatever your secret is, Max, I will never betray it. I will never betray you.” She leaned back just enough to look up at the handsome face of the man who’d saved her life, and thought, It would be like betraying my own heart.

While Max and Liz wanted nothing more than to stay in each other’s arms, that happiness ended when he looked back toward the ridge and saw the rider was back on the horse and drawing closer to them. He knew they had a couple of minutes left before they had to deal with someone else, and in that couple of minutes, they needed to get their stories straight.

“What are we going to tell everyone else?” he asked. “My horse is blown and yours is…”

“Dead,” she added sadly.

“Yeah, dead.” Max reached up and scratched the back of his head with one hand. “You, on the other hand, are one-hundred percent healthy. So what do we say?”

“My horse got spooked,” Liz said, wondering what Maria would tell her to say, since public relations was her business. “After that, you chased me and you caught me. We just don’t mention me landing under Mistral’s body.”

“Or me healing you.”

“That especially.”

Max took a deep breath and pushed on. “As for what we haven’t talked about yet, we’ll talk about it later.”

“Only if you want to,” Liz said. “I know you’re different, but I don’t need to know how different. Not yet anyway. Not until you’re ready.”

Max eyed Liz speculatively before letting her go and heading to his horse, or more specifically, to the saddlebag that had held his pistol. He replaced the pistol and then pulled out what looked like a slightly larger than normal cell phone.

Raising her eyebrows, Liz said, “I thought we couldn’t get cell service this far from the ranch house.”

“You can’t,” Max confirmed, “but this is a satellite phone, and it gets service just about everywhere on the planet.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, every cowboy on the ranch carries one of these for emergencies, and considering the shape we’re in here, this qualifies.” Max turned his attention to the phone and speed dialed his boss, Nando, the ranch foreman. Nothing went to the Luzinskis without going through him first. “Yeah, Nando, this is Max…Uh huh, I had a spooked horse out here…Liz Parker…No, she’s all right. In fact, she’s standing right here next to me…Yeah, we’ll need the meat truck out here with a fresh horse for me…” Max put a hand over the mouthpiece and quickly asked Liz if she felt like continuing. When she said yes, his face lit up and he returned to his call. “Make that two fresh horses. One for me, and one for Liz…Where are we? Doesn’t this thing have GPS?...Oh, all right, just follow the path we had mapped out. If you reach the river, you went too far.” Before he ended the conversation, Max added quietly, “And Nando? We have one dead one to be picked up.”

Max shut down his phone and stuck it back in the saddlebag right next to his First Aid kit. “That was Nando, but I’ll bet a week’s pay either Carl or Nadine comes out with him to change horses with us.”

“Why?” Liz asked.

“Because a ranch guest was involved in an incident and because a horse died. They’ll want to make sure you really are okay. And if it’s Nadine that comes out, she’ll likely try to talk you into going back to the ranch house anyway.”

“Tough luck for her. I intend to stay.”

Max admired Liz’s determination and mental toughness, as he was fairly sure most guests who had experienced what she had gone through would have taken the rest of the day off, if not the rest of the week. By now, they were able to see enough of the approaching rider to tell who it was. Surprisingly enough, it was Dan, Jim and Edie’s son. “Let’s start walking my horse his way,” Max said. “He won’t be ready to bear my weight for days yet, but we can lead him at a nice, slow pace.”

And so it was that less than an hour later, Nando had brought out two fresh horses along with Carl Luzinski. As expected, Carl gave Liz the third degree about her physical condition while Max and Nando got the new horses ready to ride, and then got Aeolus loaded into the horse trailer. Lunch had been eaten while they waited for the new horses, so once Max and Liz had familiarized themselves with their new mounts, the drive got underway once more.

Hours later, after Max had led his group back to the ranch house, he was about ready to head to the bunkhouse for a hot shower and a clean change of clothes, when he turned back to his group and signaled for Liz to wait. Once they were alone, he asked if she was still up for their date, or if she would rather rest after the rough day she’d had. “After all,” he reminded her, “we start on a four-day trip tomorrow with nothing but a sleeping bag on which to sleep.”

“Take your shower, Cowboy,” Liz said. She sounded stronger than she felt, but she wouldn’t miss this date for all the tea in China. “I’ll meet you out front when I’m done with mine.”

That was the answer Max had been hoping for; if Liz hadn’t known that, his boyish grin would have told her. “Good, I’ll be ready when you are.”

[Cardinal]

Chapter 17

Starlight, Star Bright

Liz spent extra time under the hot spray of her shower, trying to loosen tired muscles as she sluiced away the sweat and grime of a long day in the saddle. She washed her hair twice before using a healthy dollop of conditioner, all to try to repair the damage caused by the oppressive heat. She was in the shower so long, that she made sure to take a short rinse under cold water to lower her temperature enough to keep from sweating once she dressed.

Dressing for her date with Max, she chose something from her luggage that was a little more ‘her’ than anything else she had worn on this trip, including the posh outfit she had worn for the trip to the ranch. She started with a champagne-colored v-neck t-shirt that had cold-shouldered dolmen sleeves and was spattered with metallic bronze leopard spots, and added the one pair of designer jeans she had brought with her, along with her dress boots. Her hair was down, hanging in shining brown waves, and after a last-minute run through it with her brush, she made one last check of her makeup before grabbing a small purse, making sure her ID and essentials were still inside of it, and heading downstairs.

Max hadn’t needed the extra time in the shower; he’d just showered off the filth and dug into his closet and small dresser for a dark bronze western-cut shirt and a pair of almost new blue jeans. His sister Tess had bought him the shirt for Christmas because she thought its color brought out the color of his eyes. He thought it was time to test that assertion. With the boots he’d worn during the day all scuffed up and sweaty, he opted to wear his best pair, which wasn’t all that hard to choose when you only had two other pairs to start with.

Max brought his truck over to the front door of the main house and was leaning on the passenger side front fender when Liz came out the front door. Unbeknownst to her, the women from Max’s group watched her go, wondering just what she was going to do to their cowboy, and hoping to live vicariously through her report the next morning. As he handed her up into the cab of his truck, he looked her over from head to toe and gave her an unconsciously approving nod of his head. While her style was a bit more ‘city’ than he was used to, it wasn’t ridiculous like what she’d worn the night they had met; it was sexy without putting all of her goodies on display.

Liz had studied Max’s appearance on her walk to the truck. She thought the cut and the dark bronze of his shirt suited him, while its rolled-up sleeves showed off a deliciously powerful set of forearms. And with the way he wore a pair of 501 Levi’s, she just had to wonder what he would look like in something with a little more of a designer look. Maybe something by Diesel, Rogan, or rag & bone, she thought.

The drive into town was quieter than the one the night before, as once they were alone, the events of the day settled in between them like a heavy fog. Max was thinking of what to say and how to say it, while Liz was itching to ask the multitude of questions that had been piling up in her mind ever since he had saved her. But those things were for later, and as the city limits came into view, they managed to put them away to be revisited later.

With it being a weeknight, the crowd at Joe’s was relatively small and the wait for a table was non-existent. Liz and Max followed the hostess on a weaving path through the circular tables before being seated at private booth along the far wall of the restaurant. She slid into one side of the booth, with him sitting on the bench across from her. The room was low-ceilinged and rather dimly lit, but he was quick to explain that décor was not the strong suit at Joe’s; the steaks were.

Not having eaten since a hasty lunch right after he saved her, both of them were ravenously hungry, and it showed in the meals they ordered. Max ordered an appetizer for the both of them, a plate of batter-coated, deep-fried mozzarella sticks with a side of marinara sauce, and then waited as Liz chose a thick-cut ribeye grilled medium-rare with a small house salad and a baked potato on the side.

Max smiled upon seeing she was a woman who wasn’t afraid to eat. He’d been out with any number of women who ordered and ate like they were allergic to food. He didn’t understand that attitude and never would; if they were doing it to impress him with their birdlike appetites, they failed, and if they just didn’t like meat, then they were with the wrong guy in the first place. His own order was for the biggest steak in the place: a thick and juicy porterhouse, also grilled medium-rare. While he got the small house salad and the baked potato like Liz had, they differed in what they drank. Liz asked for a nice red wine and ended up with a reasonably priced Malbec from Argentina. Max hadn’t even been sure Joe’s served wine, much less had a wine list, as he always drank beer with his beef.

When Liz saw a second ice-cold mug of beer come to the table before their steaks had even arrived, she raised her eyebrows once but said nothing as the two of them shared their cheese sticks and chatted about the day’s drive. After lunch, Max had shuffled the riders around in an attempt at making sure everyone got to spend some time working with each of the other guests. This time, he put the three Baldwins on one side of the tiny herd, and put Liz on the other side with Holly and Stephy.

That arrangement was a disaster nearly from the moment they set out, as the Baldwins had bickered from almost the very beginning, with Jim trying to give orders to his wife and son like he had some clue about what to do. Just as the corporate vice-president was used to giving orders in a work situation, Edie was used to letting his orders roll off her back and getting on with what needed to be done. Dan, however, had gotten a taste for independence during his freshman year in college, and having his dad treat him like he was still a little kid had caused him to fire off a few sharply-worded retorts that took his dad by surprise. That had led directly to some increasingly pointed verbal jousting, with Edie being drawn in as she tried to keep things from disintegrating further.

Max had ignored the Baldwins’ family issues until he realized they were paying more attention to each other than to the cattle. At that point, he trotted up their side of the formation and brought the two male Baldwins to heel with a few well-chosen words. More surprised by the sudden silence than by the previous arguing, Edie had pulled Max aside and asked how he had done it. He had declined to tell her, but had no problem telling the rest of the story to Liz.

“I told Jim that if he didn’t shut the Hell up and do what I told him to, I was going to embarrass him in front of his wife.”

“Ohhhh, that’s dirty,” Liz replied. “You know how much she means to him.”

“I know,” Max agreed, “but those two were getting out of control. I had to get their minds back on what they were supposed to be doing.”

“What did you say to Dan?”

“Much the same thing I told his dad, except I told him I was going to humiliate him in front of you.”

“Me?” Liz asked, holding a hand against her chest, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

“Yes, you.” Max was sure she wasn’t that clueless about the effect she had on men, so he assumed she was trying to be modest. While modesty of that sort wasn’t something she was too good at, he thought the attempt was a lot better than the alternative. “Dan’s paid an awful lot of attention to you ever since you’ve been here. I bet he’s had more pictures taken with you the last nine days than most of your boyfriends have had taken with you in six months.”

Liz knew the boy had a crush on her, but she hadn’t quite realized its extent. Still, he was a nice kid, and he was going home with his family at the end of the week, so she didn’t see the harm in continuing to be nice to him. Maybe she’d even have Maria mail him a sheaf of signed publicity photos once she herself had returned to California.

Thoughts of returning to California brought her mind back to what she wanted to happen here, before she left the Lazy L and the Lone Star State. While she still wanted sex with Max, she was also growing closer to him in the most unexpected of ways. Knowing they had to talk about what had happened between them out on the range, and knowing they couldn’t do it here, she found herself increasingly impatient to finish their meal and leave…a notion that came to an abrupt halt the moment their juicy, sizzling steaks were set in front of them. Conversation came in smaller bites for most of the next half hour, as Max and Liz took the time to thoroughly enjoy their meals, along with each other’s company.

After the meal, Max asked if Liz was up for dessert. Her eyes sparked brightly upon hearing that as almost everyone she went out to eat with these days assumed that an actress like her didn’t do dessert anymore. While she didn’t make a habit of eating sweet treats, she believed in the mantra ‘everything in moderation…including moderation.’ “I don’t mind if I do,” she replied.

Max didn’t even bother signaling the waitress, as he knew the few, but excellent, dessert options at Joe’s by heart. “They have a walnut brownie, a slice of apple pie, and a chocolate chip cookie. All three come in giant-sized servings and all have the option of homemade vanilla ice cream on the side.”

“Just how big are we talking about?” Liz asked, When he gestured with his hands, she thought maybe she should pass on dessert, as she didn’t like to waste food.

Max had other ideas. “You could get a doggie bag if you couldn’t finish it, or better yet, we could share.” He signaled for the waitress then and while they waited for her to arrive he asked her to choose.

“If we’re going to do this, then…apple pie,” she blurted, “with the ice cream.”

When the waitress arrived, Max said, “Apple pie, please, with extra ice cream.”

To properly share the sweet treat, Max moved over to Liz’s side of the booth and sat where the large plate was within easy reach of both of them. Bites of hot, flaky crust and firm, sweet apple combined with the creamy cold vanilla to make a simple but heavenly end to their meal. Sitting side-by-side, they started off more conscious of the fact that their thighs were touching than that they were eating, but it wasn’t long before they were feeding bites to each other and chuckling quietly over little events from their day.

When at long last they decided it was time to leave, Max reached for his wallet, but Liz put a restraining hand on his forearm. “You paid for last night,” she said, “let me get this one.”

Max’s instinct was to shrug her off and insist on his so-called right as a man to provide for the women in his life, but he’d been taught to think before acting when possible, and a moment’s reflection was all he needed to decide that if paying for a meal would make Liz happy, then he would swallow a tiny bit of his pride and let her. As he escorted her from the restaurant, he asked her if she was tired yet – considering the trying day they had already experienced – or if she was up for more.

Once on the uneven and chipped surface of the obviously ancient concrete sidewalk, Liz turned in toward Max, raised up on her tiptoes, and whispered into his ear, “Bring it on, Cowboy.”

The feel of her warm breath on his ear combined with her sultry tone of voice to put a wolfish grin on his face, and a twitch in his pants. But that wasn’t what he was here for, not tonight anyway, no matter how much his hormones screamed otherwise. “Then more it is.”

Max handed Liz up into the cab and shut the door once she was comfortably seated before walking around and climbing behind the wheel. By the time he was buckled in and turned the key in the ignition, Liz had slid over into the middle of the bench seat, buckled herself in, and was leaning against his shoulder.

“Where are we going?” Liz asked, once it became clear they weren’t headed back to the ranch.

“To find some peace and quiet,” Max replied.

Curious as to what he had in mind, Liz didn’t pursue that any further, choosing instead to snuggle more firmly into his side, causing him to lift his arm and possessively curl it around her shoulders. Over the next half hour Max’s truck went from a two-lane asphalt state highway, to a less well-kept two-lane asphalt county road, followed by a slightly rutted dirt road which it followed until coming to a dead end. A minute of careful backing and turning had the truck pointed back down the dirt road, with the tailgate of the truck looking out over what appeared to a whole lot of nothing.

“Give me a minute to get things set up and I’ll be back,” Max said.

“Get what set up?” Liz replied. “And set it up where?”

Max disappeared into the darkness, leaving Liz to look around and see if there was more out here than she had thought as they first approached. With the truck’s lights turned off, her eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, and with a clear sky overhead, there was more than enough light from the moon and stars for her to see. All she saw, however, was empty grassland broken up by the occasional row of trees along situated along long-decayed fence lines.

True to his word, Max was helping Liz down out of his truck moments later. He walked her around to the tailgate, which was already lowered, which allowed her to get her first look at what was in the back of the truck. As she stood there, she saw at least two blankets, several pillows, a small cooler, and what looked to her like an inflatable mattress.

“What the Hell?” Liz said. It was as much a statement as a question. “I thought you didn’t want to…”

Max cut her off before she finished what was sure to be an embarrassing sentence for at least one of them. “I do,” he assured her, “believe me I do; just not yet.” As he gestured to the back of the truck, he added, “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Then what is it?”

“Something happened out there today,” Max said, matter-of-factly. “Something we need to talk about. Something we are going to need absolute privacy to deal with.” Pausing a moment to be sure he had her undivided attention, he then went on. “I figured it might take a long time, so…I tried to make things as physically comfortable as possible.”

“Why back here instead of in the cab then?”

Max looked up briefly at the clear night sky before returning his gaze to her. “That’ll become clear soon enough.”

[Cardinal]

Chapter 18

Somewhere Out There

Liz nodded her head thoughtfully before taking a hand from him and climbing up into the bed of his truck. Max followed, but not before getting a close-up and personal view of her more-than-fine behind as her designer jeans were pulled tightly across its surface. Damn, Boy, came a thought from the hormonal, reactionary side of his brain, are you sure you don’t want to tap that?

He had a moment where he imagined doing things with and to Liz that she had likely never experienced before, things that had never failed to turn any woman he had been with to a quivering pile of mush by the time he was through. And due to his special physical constitution, he always lasted much longer than they could ever hope to. But then the better angel of his nature came to his rescue, and he climbed into the back of the truck right behind her, albeit with a slightly enlarged appendage.

One ‘blanket’ actually turned out to be a fitted sheet, mostly in case the mattress was less clean than Max remembered. The actual blanket was just in case things got a little chilly; he knew women Liz’s size could manage to get cold when everyone around them was still warm. The pillows were to comfortably prop her up against the back of the cab, while the cooler had a few warm cans of sugar-free sodas in case someone got thirsty. There were a few other items she hadn’t seen, and wouldn’t, unless they were needed.

Once they were situated on the mattress, Max leaned back, rested his head on the glass of the truck’s back window, and turned his head toward Liz. “What was it that freaked out your horse?”

Surprised by how he started things off, she thought back to early that afternoon. After a moment’s thought, she frowned. “I’m not sure. Mistral and I were standing still, and I was taking a quick drink from my canteen, when all of the sudden, she took off like a rocket.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see or hear anything?”

“N…wait a minute,” she breathed. “I did hear something.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure, but it was sharp and harsh-sounding, almost like a baby’s rattle.”

“A rattle?” Max’s mouth fell open just a little bit before he snapped it shut. “A rattlesnake. That’s what it had to be.”

“A what?” Liz screeched. It was hours after the event, and they were miles away, but neither was sufficient to keep her from panicking. “You mean to tell me…there are poisonous snakes out there?!?”

Taking some much needed relief from her comical reaction, Max chuckled, and came perilously close to an outright giggle. That did not, however, go over well with Liz. When she furiously demanded to know why the ranch hadn’t ‘gotten rid of them,’ he howled with laughter, doubling over until his forehead very nearly hit his knees.

“What’s so fucking funny?” Liz asked sharply.

“Getting rid of snakes in Texas would be impossible. If we tried and somehow got close, the liberals – who all live where there aren’t any poisonous snakes – would come rushing in to tell us we had to leave the poor things alone because they would then be endangered.” He shook his head briefly, and said, “But we’ll never try to kill off the rattlers, or any other kind of snake, because they help keep down the population of rodents, rabbits, and other smaller pests. Snakes mostly leave people alone.” Max elbowed Liz in the side and smirked at her, to find her with arms crossed tightly across her chest and her mouth set in a frown. “But if you had read the brochure the Lazy L sent you when you inquired about a vacation here, you would already have known about the snakes. The same is true for the contract you signed before ever coming out here. It has an entire clause covering the fact that the ranch, its owners, and/or its employees cannot be held liable for damages caused by snakes, or other wild animals, during your trip.

“Honestly,” he asked, once he’d calmed down a bit, “don’t you have a lawyer who reads over these things with you?”

“I’ve got a lawyer,” Liz said. “In fact, I’ve a top L.A. firm on retainer.” Then her mood shifted from defensive to sheepish. “I just didn’t show the vacation contract to them before signing it.”

“Oh man…” Max looked out into the darkness and ran a hand over his face before turning back to look at her. “Do yourself a favor: don’t tell anyone at your firm about this.”

“Yeah, I don’t need another lecture about how they can’t protect my interests if I won’t let them do their jobs.”

“I’m not your lawyer, and I haven’t even attempted to pass the bar in California…”

“I can just feel the ‘but’ coming,” Liz said.

“But,” Max smiled widely in acknowledgment of her perception, “you really ought to make use of your firm’s talents whenever possible. Especially someone like you who probably makes a lot of money and is in a prime position to be taken advantage of if she’s not careful.”

“Yes, Daaaaaaaaaaad.” Liz reluctantly nodded her head once as she digested Max’s mild reprimand.

“Dad?” Max winced. “Ouch, that hurts.”

The young couple sat quietly, looking out over the grassland, without knowing what they were looking for.

“Talk about a mood killer,” Liz said flatly.

“True,” Max replied agreeably, “but maybe that’s a good thing.”

“Good?”

“Yeah, good,” he emphasized. “You and I have something serious to talk about, something that could mean my life, so maybe a little clear-headedness is just what we need.”

Once again, quiet descended over the pair, with Max not quite able to decide how to broach the subject of the rescue or his abilities. He finally got an idea and asked Liz if she would like a can of soda to sip on while he talked. She wasn’t too thirsty, but a can would give her something to do with her hands, so she agreed.

“Coke Zero or Diet Mountain Dew?” he asked. When she asked for the Dew, he reached into the small red and white Igloo cooler, retrieved an aluminum can of the stuff, and handed it to her. The first thing she noticed was that the can was warm; air temperature at least.

“Umm, Max,” Liz asked, “is there something a little colder in there?”

“Oh, sorry,” he replied, without being sorry in the least.

He took back the warm can from her, and as she watched him, expecting him to reach into the cooler and come up with something colder, he held the can in his hand and as she watched, his hand seemed to glow slightly as it curled around the can. She looked on in amazement as ice crystals formed on the top of the aluminum can and glittered in the moonlight. She figured she had to be seeing things, but when he handed the can back to her and she could feel the chill in her bones, her eyes shot wide open and shifted from the can to Max and back several times before she could manage to speak.

“What…the…Hell!”

“Is that too cold for you?” Max asked solicitously. “Because if it is, I can warm it up for you.”

Liz ignored Max’s offer and focused on the can. “You can heal and you can change the temperature of things.” Almost afraid of the answer, Liz asked, “Anything else?”

Max nodded his head slowly. “Several things, actually,” he said. He went on to give her a thumbnail description of dream walks, mind warps, and power blasts, along with the molecular manipulation that allowed him to heal, to heat or chill things, and so much more. “I’m not especially good at the dream walks or mind warps,” he said, as his explanation drew to a close, “but I’m really good at power blasts and anything that involves molecular manipulation, like healing.”

Latching on to what seemed to her like the most disprovable of his claimed abilities, Liz asked dubiously, “You mean you can destroy things with a simple swipe of your hand?”

“Like that,” Max agreed, “but it’s more like pointing my hand right at something and then releasing my power.”

“I’m calling bullcrap on this one.”

Max just rolled his eyes before making his way to a standing position and locating a small nearby tree. Liz sat up a little straighter to get a better view once Max pointed out his target. Once he was sure she was ready, he extended his arm toward the tree, pulled up his fingers to point the palm of his hand at the trunk, and unleashed a blast of pure energy that absolutely shredded the tree’s trunk, causing it to topple.

“Ho – ly shhhhh…” Liz’s voice trailed off as she contemplated what she had just seen.

“Do I need to prove any more of my abilities?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she said absentmindedly, as her mind continued to focus on what she had learned. “How is it that you have these abilities? I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

Max took a deep breath, as he knew this was going to be the tough part of the explanation. Liz seemed to have dealt well with his abilities so far. He couldn’t imagine, however, there was anything in her experience that had prepared her for his origin.

“My whole family has them,” Max said simply. “We discovered our powers early in life. It’s the reason why my parents moved us from Roswell to Texas, just a few months after they adopted us. They were afraid someone would find out and link us to the…”

“Waaaaaaait just a minute,” Liz interrupted. “You mean to tell me you’re from Roswell, New Mexico?”

“Weeeeeell…” Max sat down on the side of his truck’s bed and scratched behind his right ear. “Not exactly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Either you are or you aren’t?”

Max waved his hands at her in a soothing ‘calm down’ motion. “Just give a few minutes and I’ll explain. This is, after all, what I brought you out here for.”

That settled Liz right down. She snuggled into the pillows and mattress, getting comfy for what she was expecting to be a long explanation.

“We did move to Texas from Roswell,” Max said slowly, “but before that, my parents found me and my siblings wandering along a deserted highway late one night.”

“Siblings? How many do you have?” The idea of having a brother or sister excited Liz. Like many only children, she had wanted brothers and sisters to grow up with, which partially explained why she, Maria, and Alex had grown so close.

“Three,” Max said. “Michael, Isabel, and Tess.”

Liz was momentarily jealous of Max’s family, wondering what having so many kids living under one roof would have been like. Then she wondered briefly what it might have been like to grow up with Max in Roswell, before he interrupted her thoughts with a continued explanation.

“According to the local government, no one ever figured out where we came from, but we knew.”

“Where are you from?”

Still sitting on the side of the truck bed, Max lifted his right hand and raised it until it was even with his head, with his first finger pointing up into the infinite darkness. From her comfy position resting on her side on the mattress and pillows, Liz looked up at his hand and followed the finger into the sky. All there was to see was a wall of stars, glimmering like tens of thousands of tiny diamond chips resting on a field of black velvet, and all she could think about was his earlier assertion that the reason for them being out here under the stars would ‘become clear soon enough.’

“Oh no…” Liz said, at long last “…you can’t possibly mean…up there.” She shifted her gaze from the late night sky back to Max’s handsome face, expecting to see a smile, smirk, or some other indication he was pulling her leg. But all she saw was a look that somehow managed to combine equal parts apprehension and hope. Her mouth fell open and her thoughts came to a screeching halt as she tried to make sense of what she had just been told. But try as she might, she couldn’t manage to wrap her mind around the thought that Max Evans was an alien, so she did the next best thing and stalled for time. “Run that one by me again?” she asked.

Max smiled, glad she wasn’t blowing him off, as he had no way of proving this particular claim. He spoke slowly and carefully, breaking what he said into a few smaller pieces to make them easier for her to digest. “I…and my brother and sisters…come from another planet.”

“You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack.”

“How do you know you’re an a-alien?” Liz asked, as she choked a bit on the important word.

Knowing this had to be difficult enough for Liz, a mind-altering experience at the very least, Max decided to not make any connections to the 1947 crash just yet. Instead, he said, “I think crawling out of a set of what must have been incubation pods, looking for all the world like a group of six-year-olds, was enough to convince me.”

“And you don’t remember a thing from before that moment?”

“Not a thing.”

Liz rolled from her side onto her back and looked up at the canopy of stars that twinkled overhead; for the first time in her life, she wondered if someone else was looking back. She remained quiet for a long time. “Where…where are you from?” she asked finally. Her voice was soft and uncertain, but full of wonder. “Which star is yours?”

Unlike her, Max kept his eyes on her and studied her face, drinking in the planes and curves of her face, noting the way her eyes sparkled in the starlight. While she was looking for his star in outer space, he was beginning to wonder if his star was lying next to him. “I don’t know where I came from; it’s somewhere out there. But I know where I am now. The Earth is my home.”

[Cardinal]

Chapter 19

The Morning After

The rest of their evening under the stars had gone well, particularly well given what Liz had learned, but she had made no promises to him other than to keep his secrets to herself. That was all Max had felt like he could count on going into this, and her good-natured response through all of it gave him hope she wouldn’t turn away from him.

Sleep came hard for Liz that night as she went over and over the things she had learned about him. There is life on other planets, and Max’s an alien; I mean, what else could possibly explain the things he can do? she wondered at long last. And how does that make me feel about him?

While Liz had trouble drifting off to sleep, Max’s issue was waking early, way too early. He was used to being the first cowboy up, but today he was up a full hour earlier than usual and had nothing to do with his nervous energy. He headed over to the ranch house as soon as he knew breakfast was on the table and had pounded through three full plates of food before anyone else showed up.

Liz was usually the first of the guests to arrive each morning, mostly due to the early wakeup calls she was used to while filming, but not today. Her late falling asleep time kept her in bed long enough that she was very nearly the last one down the steps. Well, her late sleep time and the fact that she was too nervous to eat much of anything in the first place.

Liz came down the main stairway, glided across the great room and entered the dining room. She spotted Max nearly the instant she entered the room, but he was involved in a spirited discussion with Nando, Kyle, and a couple of the other cowboys over which group of novice cowboys and cowgirls had the toughest trip to make over the next four days.

Smiling just enough to make the corners of her mouth curl up, Liz made her way through the room purposefully, with others in the room starting to pay attention to her as she slipped by. Moving in behind Max without making a sound, she covered his eyes with her hands, and said softly, “Guess who.”

Reaching up blindly to feel her hands, he played it up for all he was worth, blatantly caressing the backs of her hands under the guise of figuring out who was behind him. After a few moments pause he used his best puzzled voice to ask, “Carl, is that you?”

The whole room roared at that, but while Liz blushed, she didn’t back away, choosing instead to lean in close and nibble on the lobe of one of Max’s ears. His head instinctively turned back toward the nibble and his mouth opened wide, like he had a million things to say at once, but no had words that would suffice.

“Oh, Jesus, that had better not be Carl,” he finally choked out.

That brought an even bigger roar from the cowboys and the ranch guests. Most of them returned to their own conversations then, but a few of their gazes lingered as Liz wrapped her arms around Max’s neck and kissed his cheek before hugging him very warmly. When his hands came to rest on her forearms, she took a hold of one of them, leaned back and tugged. “Come on.”

Not knowing where this was leading, but dying to find out, Max got to his feet and followed Liz as she led him by the hand and took him from the room. She didn’t stop until they were well away from the ranch house, well away from any ranch building for that matter, as she knew no one could allowed to overhear what she had to say. When was satisfied with their level of isolation, she stopped, turned back toward him and took his other hand in hers. Holding his huge hands in hers, and idly stroking his palms with the tips of her thumbs, she looked up into his sea green eyes, and smiled.

“How are you this morning?” she asked, at long last.

“You mean ‘how did I sleep last night?’” Max asked. “I got a little sleep, but not much. How about you?”

“Me too. Something, or someone, was on my mind.”

Max was beginning to feel hopeful. He thought Liz was just too energetic, too happy, for her to be letting him down. “Good thoughts?”

“Confused ones at first,” she admitted. “You gave me a lot to process in one night.”

Max winced. “Sorry about that. I just don’t have much experience telling people my secrets.”

“That’s okay,” she assured him. “I wanted to know; I just didn’t think there could be that much to tell.” Liz took in a deep breath and then released half of it. “But that’s not why we’re out here. We’re here because I sorted through those confused thoughts and came to a conclusion. All the things you told me about: your origin, your abilities…everything…those are things that just cloud the one true issue for me, which is that where you were born doesn’t matter.” She squeezed his hands as tightly as she could. “What does matter is who you are."

Liz released Max’s hands at that moment and wrapped her arms around his neck before rising up on her tiptoes and pulling him down to meet her halfway. The kiss was soft, sweet, reassuring, the proverbial ‘cherry on the top’ of her thoughts, but that wasn’t enough for either of them.

Not now.

Not after what they had been through.

Max dipped just enough to curl his hands behind Liz’s knees. He then pulled back toward him just enough to buckle her knees before quickly sliding his hands up the backs of her thighs to gain a pair of handholds just below her buns. He then effortlessly lifted her into the air until her mouth was level with his, which was much more convenient for both of them.

Liz had yelped at first when her legs buckled, but when her mouth rose to meet his, she wasted no time in voicing her approval. “I do love the way you think,” she said, as she dug her ankles into the small of his back, laced her fingers into the short brown locks on either side of his head, tilted her head to one side, and eagerly reclaimed his mouth.

This time, softness was replaced by fieriness, sweetness by passion, and reassurance by unquenchable lust as Liz staked her claim for everyone to see. Max didn’t sit back and let her do the work, but he had no trouble with letting her set the pace; she controlled the tempo of their kissing as she eased her tongue into his mouth, slid it along his pearly white teeth, and scraped it along the heated flesh of his tongue.

Feeling Liz latched onto him like a limpet, Max felt free to move his hands a bit. He’d squeeze the undersides of her thighs then slide a little higher to squeeze her again. His hands kept moving higher and higher on her legs, until they claimed a firm grip on her small, firm, and deliciously round buns.

Left to themselves, there’s no telling how long they might have stayed there, lost in a world of their own making, but the outside world broke in at long last in the form of a piercing whistle from Nando, who was standing way over by the horse barn. When Max finally broke their kiss enough to see what the problem was, Nando waved them to come over to him as he shouted, “Time to go to work, Loverboy.”

Everyone that wasn’t busy getting a horse ready to ride was standing there watching Max and Liz as they hurried over to join them, and in that moment, the watchers would have been hard pressed to choose who looked to be more embarrassed at Nando’s joking name for Max.

With Aeolus judged to be in no condition to take up a four-day cattle drive and Mistral dead, Max and Liz waited as their backup horses from the day before were saddled for them. Before they mounted, he reminded her to check her saddlebags to make sure they contained a lunch, along with a Gore-Tex rain slicker and some basic first aid supplies. He then boosted her into her saddle and effortlessly mounted his own horse so they could join their group and get under way.

“You aren’t going to get in trouble for us getting caught like that, are you?” Liz asked quietly, as they rode over to the other five in their group.

“No, not for that,” Max assured her. “And if Carl and Nadine do decide they don’t like it, I can always go back to being a lawyer.”

“Why aren’t you a working as a lawyer right now?” Liz asked. “Seven years is an awful long time to devote to a degree, only to not use it.”

“You are persistent, aren’t you?”

“I figured if you were going to share one secret, you might be ready to share another.”

“Not yet,” Max replied. “Not yet.”

[Cardinal]

Chapter 20

Snugglebunnies

The last thing Max told Liz before they joined their group was that he was probably going to give her most of the dirty jobs over the next few days so that no one could say he was giving her preferential treatment. She grumbled in reply, but did so good-naturedly and then assured him she understood. Liz had never been afraid of hard work in her life; she wasn’t about to start now.

While Max rode away for a last minute consultation with Carl and Nando, the women of his group led Liz away from the men for private chat. Edie, Holly, and Stephy circled their horses around Liz’s, eager to pepper her with questions. They all knew they’d never have a shot at a man like Max, but they had no compunctions about living vicariously through her success, and as they knew she had gone out for a second date with him the night before, and after their earlier encouragement for her to ‘go for it,’ they wanted to know just what had happened.

“Soooooo?” Edie asked, without a hint of embarrassment. “How good is ‘tall, dark, and sponge-worthy’ in the sack?”

The two California beauticians giggled at Edie’s forwardness, but they all knew there wasn’t much time to waste on niceties because they would have to move out soon. Liz, however, denied anything physical had happened between her and Max. The women refused to believe they hadn’t done something together.

Exasperated, Stephy finally asked, “Did he touch you at all?”

Liz looked down at her hands as she thought for moment. How to explain something of what had happened without violating either Max’s confidence or my privacy? Just then he returned to Jim and Dan from wherever he had ridden off to. The mere sight of him was enough to make her smile from ear to ear, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the women around her; when the three women looked back to where the men waited, they saw Max smiling just as big in return.

“Oh my,” Edie said, as she began to comprehend what was going on between Liz and Max.

She wasn’t the only one, either, as Holly stated more than asked, “You really like him, don’t you.”

“I do,” Liz admitted freely. Seeing his smile, and the way it made her feel had given her an idea of how to explain the welter of emotions she was feeling. “And as for last night? He did touch me,” she gestured with one hand from her head to her toes, as she added, “but not here.” She then used the first finger of that hand to tap herself on her sternum, right over her heart. “He touched me here.”

As Max and his six greenhorns finally rode out to find their herd, one thing was different from the last two days. This time, a chuck wagon went with them, filled to the brim with food, basic first aid supplies, and some special items for camp. On this trip there wouldn’t be any nice, neat sandwiches and bags of chips to eat at meals, nor cans of icy cold sodas to sip on. Everything would be provided by the cook who drove the chuck wagon. The only thing the riders were responsible for was filling their canteens and using their water purification tablets to make sure the water was safe to drink.

True to his word, Max worked Liz hard. He tested her nascent skills, often pushing her to her limits, but never over them. And as success piled on top of success, her sense of accomplishment grew. By lunchtime, which was a meal of dried beef and water eaten in the saddle, Liz was plainly enjoying herself. That caused Dan, Holly, and Stephy to all ask Max to throw some of the tougher work their way.

He trotted up behind Liz to see how she was doing. “See what you’ve started?” he kidded, as he looked out over the herd.

“Don’t blame me,” Liz replied, as she took a swig from her canteen. “I think everyone just wants to get their money’s worth out of their vacations.”

“At least Jim and Edie have the sense to sit back and let the others handle the hard stuff.” Max looked over to Liz, taking a moment to admire her beauty. It never failed to surprise him just how well a straw cowboy hat suited her, but this time his attention was focused on the sweat that glistened on the tanned, toned skin of her face and neck. That, in turn, led him to note the very interesting way her thin blouse was plastered to her chest by the sweat. She might not have the biggest breasts, he thought, but they look perfect to me. Anything more than a mouthful is a waste anyway.

Max had known from their first day together on the ranch that Liz wasn’t going to be just another notch on his belt, but now that they had established something between them, however tenuous that something might be, he felt free to think of her in a sexual way.

He wasn’t the only one noticing things. Liz picked up on the fact that Max wasn’t sweating despite the heat and the hours they’d been in the saddle. It was something she had noted and been puzzled by before, but given the context of her current knowledge, it suddenly made sense. Looking around to make sure no one else was within earshot, she made a show of taking off her hat and wiping the sweat from her forehead, which instantly drew his attention back to her face.

“Must be nice staying dry,” she said drolly.

“Being me does have its advantages,” Max said with mock innocence before grinning widely at her. “I’m just using my abilities now and then to cool myself down.”

They stayed together for several minutes, chatting as their horses ambled along behind the sluggish herd, until Max figured he had spent as much private time with her as he could afford. Deciding it was time to circle the back side of the herd and check up on everyone else, he turned his horse to Liz, doffed his straw cowboy hat and swept it to one side in a courtly bow, then told her he needed to get back to work and that he was looking forward to seeing her at dinner that night.

Liz watched him go. She appreciated his sheer size and that involved much more than his height: the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his chest, and the breathtaking taper of his torso from shoulders to waist. Her only wish was that he would stand in his stirrups just long enough for her to get a quick look at his tight ass. Almost as if he was reading her mind, Max stood up in his stirrups to see over to the other side of the herd so he could locate the rest of his charges. Liz took a good, hard look at him and then gave him a loud wolf whistle.

He whipped his head around to look at her, somewhat surprised by how public she was being, but then he remembered their hot but brief makeout session earlier that morning. Even though she was a major star – according to Kyle – she sure hadn’t been shy with him then. So why should she start now? he thought. Sitting in the saddle again, he turned his horse just enough to favor her with a roguish grin, before eyeing her knowingly, giving her a big wink, wheeling his horse the other direction, and riding off.

By dinner time, the herd was settled within easy reach of water and the cook had a pot of beans and bacon cooking in a kettle hanging from a tripod which was standing over an open fire. Instead of trying to bake fresh bread in a Dutch oven, the cook had bent to expediency and brought along loaf after loaf of crusty French bread which had then been sealed in plastic bags to keep it fresh for the short trip. Once the kettle of beans and bacon was done cooking, a pot of water was put on to boil so the cowboys and cowgirls could have instant coffee with their meals.

No one was used to such simple fare, not even Max, but they were so hungry after a long day’s work that they wolfed it down and asked for seconds. After dinner, everyone sat around the campfire and shared stories of their day, but soon enough they were climbing into their sleeping bags, which were placed in a loose ring around the fire. Liz looked for a place to set her bag, debating whether to sleep by herself or to take a small risk and blatantly stick her new relationship with Max in everyone else’s faces.

Before Liz could make a decision, Max made it for her, signaling for her to join him on the far side of the fire. He had just finished rolling out his sleeping bag when she joined him and began to roll out her bag right next to his. Seeing the two bags almost touching each other, without much chance of their occupants getting to do the same, she murmured, “So close, but yet so far.”

Max heard what she said, and looked over at her curiously. “You want to be closer, do you?”

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Max replied, “I think I do.” He knew there wasn’t enough room in either his or her sleeping bag for both of them, but then he got an idea that should work. “Unzip your bag all the way down the side and across the bottom.”

“What for?” Liz asked, as she squatted down low to do as he wanted.

Max knelt and did the same to his own bag before opening it like a book and laying it on the ground. “Now we have something to sleep on,” he grinned, “and we can pull your sleeping bag over us like a very thick blanket.”

Liz caught on quickly, lifting her bag into the air before draping it on top of Max’s. Everyone else was busy pulling off their cowboy boots and socks, stuffing the latter into the former, and then wriggling their way out of whatever other clothes they didn’t want to sleep in.

That didn’t go unnoticed by either Max or Liz, who looked at each other before looking back to where jeans, shirts, and blouses were being placed in neat piles where they could be easily grabbed the next morning. Shrugging their shoulders, they went about taking off their boots and socks.

“Are you going to be okay stripping down to your underwear out here in front of everyone,” Max asked, his voice filled with concern, “or would you rather get under the sleeping bag first? Given who you are…”

“Yeah, I think maybe your idea is a good one.”

Wanting to give Liz all the room she might need to undress, Max began to undress outside, like everyone else, while she slid under her sleeping bag. While she wriggled and shimmied under the sleeping bag, he faced away from everyone else and sat on the edge of the sleeping bags. Her jeans and blouse came out quickly and came to rest on the toes of her boots, while he carefully folded his western-cut shirt and jeans before setting them aside, too. Wearing only a ribbed, cotton a-shirt and linen boxers, he quickly slid under the top sleeping bag to join Liz.

“Do you really think this was a good idea?” he asked, as they got cozy.

“Don’t tell me you’re backing out now,” she replied. “This was your idea in the first place.”

“Well…” Max said, as he reached up and scratched the back of his neck, right at the hairline, “I swear I could feel the stares of almost everyone in our group while I was getting ready for bed.”

“That’s because you could. The women want to be with you, and the guys probably want to be you.”

“I don’t know if they want to be me,” Max opined, “or if they just want to be in my place.” He rolled onto his side to face her. “I mean, if you’re even half as famous as Kyle swears you are, then there must be millions of men and boys who’d love to share even a makeshift bed like this one with you.”

“An unintended consequence of my accidental movie career,” Liz assured him, making light of his concern as if it didn’t matter. “After my first couple of major roles, I woke up one morning to find I had been anointed as Hollywood’s next sex symbol.”

“At least they got that right,” Max said, as his fingers swept a few stray strands of hair from her face. Then he looked over her to where three different people were still looking at him and her. “What do these people think is going to happen anyway? It’s not like we’re going to put on a show for them.”

“If we did,” Liz giggled, “we could sell tickets.”

“True, and with my share of the money we’d make from a crowd consisting of three women, two men, and our cook, I might even be able to buy a new pair of jeans.” That caused their conversation to momentarily dissolve into a series of snickers, giggles, and chuckles.

“Well then,” Liz said, at long last, “I guess we’ll just have to keep that part of our relationship private.”

“I can live with that,” Max replied.

The two of them settled down rather quickly after that, as their lack of sleep the night before, along with the mental and physical stresses of their long day, combined to overwhelm their natural excitement at being so close to each other with so little on. Max woke once in the middle of the night only to find himself spooned in behind Liz, with her bottom pressed against his crotch, and one of his arms curled over her torso in such a way that his hand had a light grip on one of her bra-clad breasts. When he realized that, his hand flew off of her body like it had been scaled; it wasn’t that he didn’t want his hand there, but he wasn’t about to even appear to take advantage of her while she was sleeping.

While Max was concerned about his behavior, to an outside observer it would have looked like his massive body was wrapped protectively around her petite one, and in a way, that was true. He had already risked his life for her once, saving her without taking even a moment for thought, even though it meant revealing his abilities. Then he had deliberately risked his life again by confirming what she had seen and felt, and then had gone further, opening up to her like he never had before, not to anyone. Whether he knew it yet or not, he was committed to her now; whenever she needed him he would risk everything to protect her, he would do anything to make sure she was safe.