Sunrise Canyon (New Americana 1)

“That’s great news,” she said. “But don’t expect the moon. For most PTSD cases, there’s no guaranteed cure. There are techniques to help you manage it. But in the end, you make it through one day at a time—and if you slide back, you just pick yourself up and move forward again. You’ll need to accept that, maybe for the rest of your life.”

She gave him that measuring look, her eyes silvery in the dawn light. The old Kira was back, taking charge as usual. But that didn’t mean he’d forgotten how she’d felt next to him in bed. He was still battling the urge to seize her in his arms and kiss her until that warm, sexy Kira he remembered surfaced and came back to him.

“What do you really want, Jake?” she asked.

Thinking, Jake poked at an exposed root with the toe of his boot. “Just normal things,” he said. “Holding down a decent job, having the means to take care of other people, instead of being taken care of. Most of all, I guess, I’d like to have a relationship with my daughter—one where I don’t have to worry about losing control and scaring her, or even hurting her.”

And a relationship with a woman crazy enough to put up with me.

Leaving that thought unspoken, Jake picked up a rock and skipped it across the swollen pond. “What the hell, I know better. Maybe the best I can hope for is to be free, with nobody to care, nobody to hurt, nobody to cry over me when I’m gone.”

She laid a hand on his arm, her touch butterfly light through the fabric of his sleeve. “Look around you, Jake. You saw this spot before the flood came down the canyon. Now look at it.”

Jake’s gaze took in the brown water, noticing the places where the creek’s high bank had washed away, exposing the tangled roots of trees and the layer of silty mud, which coated everything, leaving no trace of green. The place would make a good setting for a zombie film, he thought.

“What happens to all the floodwater?” he asked, pretending not to notice her lingering touch on his arm.

“It flows down the canyon into a wash. From there it runs through a culvert under the road and spreads out onto the plain. You can see the silt fan from that flat rock on the upper trail.”

Her fingers tightened on his arm, the contact triggering a warm tingle. Jake resisted the urge to turn and brush back the tendril of light brown hair that had stolen across her cheek. Leave it be, he thought. It softened her finely drawn profile and made a pretty contrast with her rose petal skin.

Looking at her now, he wondered how he could have seen her as plain for so long. Standing in the pale dawn light, her face bare of makeup, her cheeks flushed from the cool morning air, she was enchanting.

“Would you believe this canyon gets flooded almost every year?” she said. “Right now, it looks ruined. But ride down here in a few weeks, and you’ll see clear water, grass growing, flowers blooming.... It never comes back quite the same as it was. Some things are lost. Other things are new. But the canyon always comes back.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was trying to tell him, Jake thought. If the canyon could come back and thrive after a disaster, so could he.

She made it sound so simple. But Jake felt as if she were talking to him the way she might talk to one of her students. As a therapist, she should know that his PTSD had been etched into his brain with needles of pain, guilt and shock. It had become part of him—who he was and would be for as long as he lived.

He could call her on it. But that would only stir up tension between them. And right now, he didn’t want to talk about his PTSD. He was here with this compassionate, spirited, maddeningly beautiful woman. All he really wanted was for her to stop lecturing and let him hold her, maybe even taste those warm, ripe lips again.

But he was fantasizing now. And Kira had already released his arm and stepped out of reach.

“I have to go,” she said. “My students will be waking up soon. You can take your time getting back. We won’t need you until after they’ve had breakfast and the stable’s cleaned out.”

“Go ahead. I won’t be long.” He watched her as she disappeared up the narrow pathway. Moments later, Jake heard the sounds of her mare going back up the trail toward the ranch.

He gave her time to get a head start before he returned to Dynamite and mounted. He wouldn’t be going back to the ranch just yet. He had too much thinking to do. For that, he needed time and solitude—and the company of a wise old horse.

At the top of the canyon trail, he took the left-hand fork that wound along the foothills and down

to the flat below, where glistening saguaros stood like a vast army of giants. In the east, the sunrise streaked glory across the sky. Losing himself in the majesty of the morning, Jake rode on.

* * *

Kira rode in under the ranch gate, dismounted and, after a quick rubdown, loosed her mare into the paddock. She’d thought about Jake all the way up the trail, remembering how her desire had surged as he kissed her and how she’d held him through the night, feeling his chest rise and fall with the sound of his breathing. She’d felt so warm and safe, that it had been all she could do to ease herself away from him and go before dawn.

Was she falling in love with the troubled soldier—or was she drawn to him simply because he needed her?

Jake was a proud man—especially now, when pride was all he had. He would never settle for a relationship in which he was the needy one. Maybe that was why, in the long run, nothing between the two of them could possibly last.

When it came to boyfriends, Kira had lost out to too many clingy, dependent girls not to know that her strength drove most men away. Maybe that was why she’d never had much of a social life, let alone anything close to marriage. But she was who she was. When something needed doing, or when somebody needed help, she took charge.

A domineering woman and a proud, dysfunctional man—it was a recipe for disaster. The worst of it was, as she confessed to herself, she’d never wanted any man the way she wanted Jake.

As she walked toward the house, she could see her students gathering for breakfast. Forcing herself to close the mental box that held thoughts of Jake, she refocused on her job—helping these young people find the peace and self-confidence they needed to live productive lives.

Paige was waiting on the front porch with the dog. She was dressed in a mismatched shirt and Jeggings, her fiery curls scrunched up in a lopsided ponytail. Her shoelaces trailed behind her sneakers as she walked.