Page 104 of Forbidden Protector

"Where exactly are we going?" Mackenzie asks, mare stepping easy beneath her, saddlebags loaded with more cheese and bread than two people need and a bottle of whiskey I've been saving since Christmas.

"You'll know it when you see it."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting today."

I give her a full, unrepentant smirk, the closest thing to a victory lap I've got left in me.

She's earned the right to hunt down every secret I own, five months of dragging my silences out of me like a dog on a blood trail, but today the secret's mine to keep, and the smirk says so before I do.

She narrows her eyes at me over the mare's ears, honey gone gold in the morning light, and lets it go without a fight, which from this woman counts as a gift.

The timber opens up an hour in, all at once, like the mountain finally decided to let a person see what it's been hiding. The pool sits at the base of a falls that, today, with the melt still feeding it, comes down loud and full, glass-green water pooling below it, wildflowers crowding the bank in every color the Rocky Mountains know how to make. Dragonflies work the air over the water in electric blue arcs, and the whole clearing hums, warm and alive, sun coming straight down through a gap in the canopy like it was cut there on purpose.

Mackenzie goes still in the saddle.

"Holt."

"Found this place at seventeen. Never brought anybody up here. Not John, not Knox, not one living soul in twelve years." I dismount, tie off both horses, and reach up for her before she's decided whether she wants help. "Wanted the first person I ever showed it to, to be somebody I actually chose."

She comes down off the mare slow, eyes still on the water, everything guarded in her finally dropping like it dropped once before, her hand on my jaw in a hospital room, telling me not that word, not tonight.

"It's magic," she says, breathless, turning in a slow circle to take in the falls, the wildflowers, the whole impossible clearing at once, a grin breaking across her face like she's twelve years old and just found the one place on earth built for her.

"It's yours now too."

We spread the blanket in the sun. I pour whiskey into two tin cups and she laughs at the cheese, an actual wedge, apples sliced thin, bread torn instead of cut because I never learned to pack a picnic properly.

"This is the least tactical meal I've ever eaten with you."

"Get used to it. I'm retiring from tactical picnics."

She toasts me with the tin cup, whiskey catching the light amber. I watch her throat work when she drinks it and lose the thread of whatever I was about to say next.

"You've got a look on you," she says.

"I've got a look on me most days now. You'll have to be more precise."

"Don't say precise to a federal agent. You'll get us both audited."

"Too late. Already said it." I grin at her, easy, unguarded, a man who's stopped rationing himself out one sentence at a time.

She laughs, and the sound of it goes up into the trees and comes back different, cleaner, like the whole clearing wanted a piece of it.

I hook an arm around her waist before she can get another word out and pull her down flat on top of me, the blanket taking both our bodies at once.

I get a hand in her hair to bring her mouth to mine. She tastes like whiskey and sun, and I take my time with it before I pull back enough to look at her.

"How's this look?" I ask, doing my best attempt at hooded, lustful eyes, which by her expression isn't landing anywhere close to subtle.

"Like a man who's about to get exactly what he's after."

"Good. Wanted to be precise."

We eat slow. She tells me about a Boy Scout troop she nearly drowned on the Yampa, and I laugh harder than I've laughed in months, whiskey burning warm in my chest, sun doing exactly what she promised it would to a body that spent a decade forgetting how to be warm on purpose.

Then she stands, unbuttons her shirt right there in the sun, and doesn't look back to see if I'm watching.