Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

only family she had left.
    But the state of Mason’s bunkhouse meant that if Rio stayed at the Valley of the Sun, he would have to sleep in the other bunkhouse or in the house.
    Hope rejected the possibility of the second bunkhouse as soon as she thought of it. It would take too long to clean out the pack rats, mice, spiders, and dust that had collected since the last of the ranch hands had left a year ago. Rio would have to use either the remaining upstairs bedroom in the ranch house or the daybed on the screened porch downstairs.
    The thought of having him sleeping just down the hall from her upstairs room made a delicious sensation prickle over her body. Telling herself that she was being foolish, she made up the bed in the upstairs room and put out fresh towels. Then she made up the bed in the sunroom, shaking out the sheets and blankets with a brisk snap. To make the choice an even one, she set out towels on that bed, too.
    Then she wrote a note and stuck it on the back door, telling Rio to take his pick of beds.
    The note didn’t say that she wanted him upstairs, that she wanted to fall asleep in his arms and wake up the same way. It certainly didn’t hint of her hungry curiosity about his taste, the resilience of his body, the feel of him in passion.
    “Don’t be stupid,” Hope said under her breath as she slid into her own bed. “He’s here to find water, not to hammer me into a mattress.”
    She shivered at the sound of her own words. After Turner’s bruising attack, she hadn’t wanted any man to touch her.
    Yet she couldn’t think of Rio without wanting just that. To be touched by him.
    The sound of the truck driving into the yard awakened Hope later in the night. The back door squeaked open. She held her breath and listened for the sound of a man’s footsteps climbing the stairway.
    The downstairs shower sputtered to life, shaking and hammering as water shoved air out of the pipes. Rio was as fast and efficient at showering as he was at everything else, because the water ran for only a few minutes.
    She held her breath again.
    A door creaked. It was the door that opened from the kitchen to the screened-in porch that ran along the back of the house.
    Hope told herself that she wasn’t disappointed. She was still telling herself when she fell asleep. She didn’t hear anything until her alarm went off in the small hours after midnight. Since she had worn her clean clothes to bed, it didn’t take long for her to dress. She pulled on boots, jacket, gloves, and hat, and headed out into the darkness.
    The predawn chill bit into unprotected flesh. Despite the lack of rain, it was still November. Hope’s breath was a pale gust of steam that was absorbed instantly by the dry air, as though even the sky itself was thirsty for any bit of moisture.
    The stars had a brittle brilliance that came only when there was almost no humidity in the air. A breeze stirred fitfully, bringing with it a cold promise. Winter was waiting to sweep down out of the north, riding on the back of the long, icy wind.
    Hope rubbed her stinging nose, pulled her denim jacket closer around her body, and hurried into the barn. A rooster crowed like a rusty engine, then with greater force, although only an optimist would have said that dawn was near. Hens clucked and muttered as though resenting the rooster’s loud summons to another day of pecking the dust and each other.
    After she scattered food for the chickens, she checked the nests for eggs while the hens were busying their sharp little beaks on grain. The drought hadn’t upset the chickens in the least. Fifteen eggs waited within straw nests like huge pearls within shapeless golden shells. She pulled a paper bag out of her jacket pocket, carefully put the eggs inside, and left the chickens to what they did best—eating and complaining.
    When Hope went to check on Dusk, she saw that Rio had been up and in the barn. All the chores she usually did were already done. Fresh hay filled