Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire Read Online Free PDF

ham, potatoes and eggs.
    Craig ate with obvious appreciation. “You eat like this every morning?” he asked her.
    She felt a laugh quiver on her lips and in the pit of her stomach. “Of course not.”
    He looked straight at her then, his dark eyes holding her. “Thank you. You didn’t need to go to this trouble for me.”
    “It was the least I could do.”
    The breeze gusted, snatching a tendril of her auburn hair and dragging it across her face. She tucked it back behind her ear and tried to ignore the way this man’s attention made her feel. Little butterflies had settled in her stomach and she felt exhilarated somehow. But then he returned his attention to his plate, and she felt strangely deflated.
    The silence felt awkward, so she searched for some safe topic of conversation. “How is Cromwell doing?”
    He looked up again and smiled, an expression that took her breath away. When he was straight-faced, he looked stern and proud, but now he looked…welcoming and warm in a way that made her feel she could trust him. A little warning sounded in some corner of her mind, reminding her that looks could be deceiving. After all, hadn’t her father been as handsome as the devil himself?
    “Cromwell is Cromwell.” He shook his head slightly and shrugged. “I’m beginning to think I should have named her Marco Polo, or Magellan. She managed to cross the fence again and when I found her yesterday she was maybe a quarter mile from the rest of the flock.”
    “How does she get through that barbed wire?”
    “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know. The really amazing thing is that she crossed the electrified fence, too. Sometimes I think she teleports.”
    A bubble of laughter rose from Esther’s stomach and tumbled over her lips, bringing another smile to the harsh landscape of Craig Nighthawk’s face. They both apparently had the same thought because at the same instant he whistled and she hummed the opening bars of “The Twilight Zone” theme. And together they burst into laughter.
    “Great minds think alike,” Craig remarked. “I don’t know about that sheep, but I’m honestly beginning to think she jumps the fence.”
    “It could be. They can jump, can’t they?”
    “I haven’t a clue. It’s not something that ever crossed my mind before, but it’s clear as day that that ewe couldn’t have come through the fence, because if she had she would have gotten a serious sting from the electrified fence and wouldn’t have gone any farther.”
    “Why do you electrify the fence? Isn’t that dangerous?”
    “Only for predators, and Cromwell, if I’ve done it right. So far it seems to be working and it’s easy to move with the flock. These home fries are really great, by the way.”
    “Glad you like them.” She went inside to get the coffeepot and returned to fill his mug, then set the pot on a hot pad beside them.
    “What made you move out here?” he asked. It was a casual question, the make conversation kind, and there was no reason she should feel threatened by it. She felt threatened anyway.
    Looking away from him, she stared out over the softly rolling land toward the mountains. “I…needed to get away. From everything.”
    “Well, you can’t get much farther than this,” he said easily enough. “At times I’ve gone weeks without seeing another living soul.”
    She returned her gaze to him then, feeling cautious but curious. “Do you want to get away, too?”
    He hesitated, helping himself to another mouthful of potatoes before he answered. “Getting away can mean a lot of things. I wanted to get away from the reservation.”
    She hardly knew how to respond to that. Being of immigrant stock herself, she bore the guilt of a nation when it came to the treatment of the Native American peoples. At the same time she had very little real notion of the wrongs that had been done to people like Craig Nighthawk, so she felt herself floundering for something that might be an appropriate response.