A Man of His Word Page 6

  “There they are,” Tish murmured. “The smoke marks left by the cook fires.”

  Sydney eased away from the camera, her heart pounding. Tish knew what to do. They’d talked about it, planned it. She’d keep one camera trained on those black streaks, follow them down, wait for the village below to appear.

  It was close now, so close.

  “I’d better change cassettes,” Tish murmured. “I don’t want both cameras to run out at the same time. You’ll skin me alive if I miss this.”

  Swiftly, Tish ejected the thirty-minute Betacam cassette in camera one and substituted a fresh videotape. She could have used a sixty-minute cassette, or even one that ran for two hours. Neither she nor Sydney wanted to exchange quantity for quality, however.

  “Better pull out another battery, too,” Sydney murmured to Katie.

  The grip nodded and rooted in one of the cases for another spare. Then a quiet settled over the crew as they waited for the village to show itself.

  Finally it appeared. First, a rounded arch aged by centuries of smoke. Then a shallow depression. The top of a stone tower. A square window in the stone.

  “In close,” Sydney whispered to Tish. “As close as you can get. Find me a face in that window.”

  Without taking her eye from the viewfinder, the camera operator smiled. “This is only a legend we’re documenting, right, Syd?”

  “All myths and legends spring from some aspect of real life,” she murmured. “They’re tied to the cycles of the season, or a woman’s passion for her mate, or the birth of a child.”

  Sydney hugged her arms. This particular legend was tied to more than just the cycles of the season. It was tied to her youth, her coming of age. And to her father. Especially to her father.

  Only when a cloud drifted across the sun and momentarily plunged the canyon into darkness again did she remember that the legend of the Weeping Woman of Chalo Canyon also had its roots in death.

  Chapter 5

  S ydney got in one glorious day and one moonlit night of shooting before a wall of black clouds rolled in. She awoke before dawn on Wednesday morning to the buzz of her travel alarm and the distant rumble of thunder.

  Groping for the alarm, she hit the snooze button and buried her face in the pillow. A moment or two later, the significance of the sounds that had awakened her sunk in. She jerked her head up and stared at the curtained window.

  “Oh, no!”

  Throwing aside the blanket, she wove her way through stacks of equipment she and the crew had brought into the rooms last night for safekeeping. A quick yank untangled her sleepshirt enough to cover her hot-pink bikini panties. Semidecent, she parted the curtains and peeked outside.

  Rain sheeted the window, blurring the darkness beyond. Dismayed, Sydney stared at the puddles of light made by the bulbs hanging above the motel doors. Suddenly a streak of lightning zapped out of the sky and lit everything in greenish-white light.

  “Yikes!”

  She jumped back and yanked the curtains shut in the foolish belief they would keep out the sizzling electricity. She’d seen enough of these high-desert storms in the years she’d lived in Chalo Canyon to have a healthy respect for them.

  Scurrying away from the window, she switched on the bedside lamp and dug her schedule out of the canvas briefcase Zack had scrounged as a replacement for the one that now resided at the bottom of the gorge. With legs crossed under her, she studied the schedule.

  The crew had arrived on Monday and got in some good footage around the canyon rim. Yesterday, they’d shot the emergence sequence and some good visuals of moonlight playing on the village.

  Today, with the reservoir fully emptied, they were scheduled to hike down into the canyon and shoot some close-ins of the ruins. She’d already arranged for a team of locals to haul in the crates containing the ladders and pulleys her crew would need to get themselves and their equipment up to the cave.

  Worrying her lower lip with her teeth, Sydney studied her schedule. She’d built in some slippage, but not much. She’d planned on eight good days of shooting. She could live with six. Between trips down to the ruins, she intended to tape interviews with selected local residents to add authenticity and local color to the legend.

  And that was the easy part. After the actual shoot would come months of work in her L.A. studio, editing the tapes, synthesizing sound tracks, recording the scripted narrative, adding the titles and graphics that transformed raw footage into a stunning visual statement. If all went as planned, she would finish the first cut by the end of August and the fine cut by mid-September. PBS wanted to view the edited master tape by October fifteenth. Once approved, the documentary would broadcast in the spring, which allowed plenty of time to get it in the running for next year’s Oscars.

  Another nomination would go a long way toward helping her pay off the loan for her studio. Even more important, completing this project would fulfill her promise to her father. She’d put Chalo Canyon and her past behind her once and for all and get on with her life.

  Sighing, Sydney slumped back against the rickety headboard. She missed her dad so much. She wasn’t lonely, exactly. Her grief had dulled enough for her to accept his loss, and her various projects kept her too busy to indulge in long periods of introspection or sadness. But at moments like this, with the night still wrapping the world in darkness and rolling thunder threatening her with hours of enforced idleness, she felt the emptiness.

  There’d been other men besides her father in her life, of course. But after Jamie Chavez, she’d remained wary. Cautious. In retrospect she probably owed Jamie a real debt of gratitude. He’d taught her a valuable lesson, so much so that she’d kept subsequent relationships light and unentangling. None of the men she’d dated over the years had tempted her into anything more than casual companionship.

  Then again, none of them had kissed her the way Reece Henderson had.

  The memory of those startling moments outside her motel room that night slid into Sydney’s mind and wouldn’t slide out. To her surprise, a tight little flicker of desire ignited low in her belly.

  Frowning, she willed it away. Forget it, girl! He’s not your type, not that you have a clue what your type is. Besides, he’s convinced you’ve only come back to Chalo Canyon to wreak havoc among the natives.

  The reminder of the barely disguised disdain she’d glimpsed in Reece’s eyes that night irritated her so much that she shot another glance at the clock. Almost six. He should be up by now.

  Jamming the receiver to her ear, she punched in the number for Reece’s room. The phone shrilled once, twice, three times. She’d just started to disconnect when he picked up.

  “Henderson.”

  Sydney had to admit the man had a voice like cut velvet. Deep. Rich. Sexy smooth, with just enough of a Southwestern accent to hint at cowboys in old Stetsons and tight jeans. Briefly she wondered if he’d ever considered doing voice-overs to supplement his income. Probably not. She had no idea what engineers earned, but from the way his men jumped every time he opened his mouth, he must rank right up there at the top of the pay scale.

  “Reece, it’s Sydney.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s raining.”

  There was a moment of dead silence.

  “You called me at 5:46 a.m. to apprise me of that?”

  Did the man always think so precisely, for heaven’s sake?

  “Were you asleep?”

  “No, I was in the shower. Now, I’m soaking wet, buck naked, and wondering what the hell you expect me to do about the fact that it’s raining.”

  Sternly, Sydney suppressed a vivid mental image of Reece Henderson soaking wet and buck naked.

  “I don’t expect you to do anything except give me blanket authority to trek into the canyon when the rain stops.”

  “Call me when the weather clears. We’ll talk about it then.”

  Her back teeth ground together. “Can’t we compromise a little? I’ve hired a guide and some locals to haul
in the ropes and ladders we’ll need to get up to the ruins. I hate to waste the whole day if I don’t have to. How about at least letting us drive to the access point to wait out the storm?”

  “It’s not just the rain in this vicinity we have to worry about,” he pointed out. “It’s been raining north of us, too. I don’t want you or your crew caught by a flash flood.”

  “Neither do I,” she assured him earnestly. “One disaster per project is my limit. We’ll await your go-ahead before trekking into the canyon.”

  Another silence followed.

  Sydney wasn’t above wheedling and cajoling when the occasion demanded. She’d already learned, however, that Reece wasn’t particularly wheedlable.

  “All right. Call and speak with me personally before you go in.”

  “Thanks.”

  She hung up before he could add any further caveats. Dragging up her knees, she looped her arms around them and tried to detail the sights and sounds they would record when they got to the ruins. To her disgust her mind kept zinging back to the vivid and wholly erotic mental image of Reece Henderson’s wet buns.

  Four rooms away Reece dropped the phone into its cradle and headed back to the shower. He’d been awake for an hour, stretched out in bed, waiting for the lightning to pass before he showered and shaved, thinking about his crew, about the stress fracture, about the exterior-damage assessment he hoped to complete today.

  Hell, who was he kidding? He’d spent most of the time trying not to think about Sydney.

  He still couldn’t quite believe he’d bent her over his arm that night and laid one on her like that. He hadn’t experienced such a brainless, idiotic, caveman response to the feel of a woman’s body pressed against his since…since…

  Since never.

  The unpalatable truth stared him in the face, and he didn’t much like it. Granted, Sydney Scott could rouse a dead man with those flashing green eyes and supple curves, not to mention the round, neat bottom that had fit so enticingly in Reece’s lap, but he’d met his share of enticing women in his time. Once, he’d even thought about marrying one. A brown-eyed Brazilian beauty with a shy smile and a degree in agriculture had kept him in South America long past the time required for the job that had taken him there. She’d shied away from a permanent commitment to a foreigner, however, and Reece had left Brazil with his heart surprisingly undented.

  Even then, even with Elena, he’d never felt such a hard, tight slam of lust when he’d taken her in his arms. He’d wanted her, yes, but with a controlled passion, a measured need…totally unlike the urgency that knifed through him when Sydney plastered herself against his chest.

  Frowning, Reece turned his face up to the tepid water. Of all the rowdy Henderson brothers, he’d always exercised the most self-discipline in his work, in his finances, in his personal habits. He enjoyed a good fight, sure, and had been known to down his share of brews with his brothers, although the last time any of them had gotten drunk, really, honest-to-goodness, falling down drunk, was just after Jake’s high school graduation. All five of them, even eight-year-old Sam, had sneaked off to one of the line shacks with a couple of cases of beer to celebrate Jake’s passage into manhood. Their father had found them the next morning and never said a word about their pasty faces and red-veined eyes.

  At the thought of his father, Reece stiffened. He still couldn’t think of Big John without a tight whip of anger. The fact that the old man had cheated on his wife was bad enough. Leaving those damned letters behind for her to find just when her grief had started to heal made his betrayal even worse.

  Reece didn’t have any use for a man who would betray his wife. Or for the woman who’d encourage him to do it…which brought his thoughts back full circle to Sydney.

  Why had she gone along with Reece’s clumsy attempt to save Arlene embarrassment? To discourage Jamie? Or dig the spur in deeper? Make him think he had a rival? Rouse his competitive instincts even more?

  Looking back on it, Reece found himself wanting to believe her dry comment that it was all water over the dam. He’d supervised enough men and women over the years to trust his instincts about people, and his instincts were telling him to take Sydney at her word, to accept that she’d returned to Chalo Canyon to make a movie.

  Or maybe he just wanted to believe her…because he wanted her.

  Ducking his head under the pulsing stream, he soaped his scalp. Why didn’t he just admit the woman had a mouth made for sin and leave it at that? He didn’t have time for any more quixotic gestures or clumsy attempts to salvage anyone’s pride, let alone for lusty little interludes with the delectable Ms. Scott.

  Comfortable in a blue workshirt, jeans, sturdy boots and his trusty Stetson, he left his room twenty minutes later and joined the men hunched over mugs of coffee and platters of huevos rancheros in the restaurant. The accommodating Lula provided the crew with thermoses of steaming coffee to sustain them during the drive to the dam. Headlights on, windshield wipers swiping at the rain, the work vehicles formed a small caravan and headed out.

  As they pulled out of the parking lot, the light glowing behind the curtains of Unit Six caught Reece’s eye. Resolutely, he put Sydney Scott out of his mind.

  The pounding rain had fizzled to foggy mist by the time Sydney and her crew began loading their equipment. They had most of it stowed when the guide she’d hired drove up in a pickup covered with more rust than paint.

  A bubble of delight danced through her veins when Henry Three Pines stepped out of the vehicle. She remembered him from the times he and her father worked together—her dad as fish and game warden, Henry as headman of the Hopi clan whose lands bordered the Chalo River Reservoir. Sydney had talked to him again by phone a few months ago. He’d agreed to act as their guide and, she hoped, share some of the lore of the Anasazi who’d inhabited the region.

  She had no idea how old he was. He’d seemed as ancient as the earth two decades ago. Now his immense dignity and the sheer visual magic of his weathered face, shadowed by a brown felt hat with rattlesnake skin band, called to the filmmaker in her.

  “Henry! It’s good to see you again.”

  “And you, Little Squirrel.”

  Sydney grinned at the nickname he’d given the pesky, curious, irrepressible nine-year-old who’d dogged his heels her first summer in Chalo Canyon.

  His gnarled hands folded over hers. His black eyes spoke to the little knot of pain she carried just under her heart.

  “I know you still sorrow for your father, but he lives on in spirit with the kachina.”

  As an outsider, Sydney made no claim to understanding the complicated and all-pervasive religious structure the Hopi had evolved over the centuries. She knew only that it answered the insecurities of a people living in a harsh environment. She still treasured the hand-carved wooden kachina doll Henry had presented her upon her departure from Chalo Canyon, and took comfort from the understanding in his seamed face.

  “He is why you’ve come back,” Henry said softly. “You wish to honor him with this film you make.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is good for a daughter to honor her father.” His arthritic hands squeezed gently. “It is good for me to help her do so.”

  “Thank you.”

  His calm gaze took in the assembled crew. He greeted each of them with grave courtesy, awing even the still-sleepy Zack into a handshake instead of his customary high five.

  “Hey, dude, er, Mr. Three Pines, er, sir.”

  “Call me Henry.” He turned back to Sydney, his aged face unflappable. “I am told you hired men to deliver crates to the canyon.”

  “I did.” Frowning, she swiped a look at her watch. “They should have been here by now.”

  “They do not come.”

  “What?”

  “Sebastian Chavez has told them they must not aid you.”

  Her jaw sprang shut, effectively stopping a curse.

  “If you wish,” Henry said calmly, “I’ll arrange for my grandsons to c
arry these crates down into the canyon. They’ve gone to Phoenix this morning to enroll at the university for the fall semester, but they return later this afternoon.”

  Swiftly Sydney reordered the shoot schedule. If the rain let up, and if Reece gave them permission to trek down into the canyon, they could concentrate on more background shots until Henry’s grandsons arrived with the heavy equipment. Almost choking with disappointment that she’d have to wait to get into the ruins, she accepted Henry’s offer.

  With Zack driving the van, Sydney and Henry climbed into the replacement Blazer. This one, thank goodness, came equipped with automatic drive. She didn’t even want to think about working a clutch on narrow, wet roads.

  Denied direct access to the western rim through Sebastian Chavez’s property, they had to drive a good twenty miles out of their way. Sydney seethed for a good part of the way over Sebastian’s attempts to block her shoot.

  Well, no amount of contrariness on his part was going to drive her away. Not this time.

  They crossed the river via a bridge south of the dam, then headed north. A few miles later the asphalt road dwindled to an unimproved dirt track. By the time their small caravan reached the narrow path that wound down into the canyon, the rainy mist had begun to dissipate.

  Sydney had just picked up her cell phone to check in with Reece when Tish jumped out of the van with an ecstatic shout.

  “Omigod, look at that!”

  The whole crew froze as the mists parted, revealing a perfect, shimmering rainbow. One end disappeared in the clouds to the east. The other touched down right above the distant cliffs that sheltered the ruins.

  Tish dived back into the van, all six feet of her ablaze with excitement. Swooping up one of the video cameras, she darted toward the canyon rim.

  With her own swan dive over the cliffs still fresh in her memory, Sydney hotfooted after the camera operator and grabbed the tail of her tan safari shirt. A swift tug yanked her back.

  “Not so close to the edge.”