Alanna opened the General Mercantile at precisely seven-thirty, a tradition started by her parents that she’d carried on since inheriting the store.

She poured a cup of coffee and turned toward the door, the red clay chimes announcing her first customer. Her smile blossomed as Brady strode across the floor.

“Morning, good-lookin’.” He smiled and handed her his grocery list.

She leaned over the counter, her face turned up. “What? No good morning kiss? Remember last week at your place? Couldn’t wait to give me a kiss and then some if memory serves.”

“Ally.” He glanced around the store. “Someone could hear you.”

She walked away grinning over her shoulder. “You’ve got to loosen up, let your hair down.”

Her slim hips moved easily beneath the skin-tight Levi’s and open-heeled sandals accentuated her long, shapely legs. Her lack of inhibitions both intrigued and embarrassed him.

The only daughter of an Anglo father and a Tonto Apache mother, Ally was thirty-five years old, bronze-skinned and radiant, with waist-length, blue-black hair that framed a face adorned with just enough makeup to emphasize high, pronounced cheekbones and full, inviting lips. Her expressive, light gray eyes sparkled in the Arizona sunshine. She was sensuous, alluring and sure of her power to please.

Her father, Patrick R. Morgan, had wandered into Sedona early on. A sly investor, Morgan made the decision to forsake a blooming Wall Street career in favor of the more leisurely paced life of the golden southwest. He returned to New York, liquidated his assets and headed back to Sedona with a four-hundred thousand dollar security blanket tucked away in a leather suitcase.

A month later, he began courting Ulsa Alykhotani, a full-blooded Tonto Apache Sedona area native. They were married in a traditional Apache ceremony a year later and blessed with Ally’s birth the year after that.

That fall, with a portion of Patrick’s money and help provided by Ulsa’s brothers, they erected and celebrated the opening of Sedona’s General Mercantile.

Ally had attended college, graduating from Smith College with a major in economics. She’d hung around long enough to catch an interview and secure a position with a financial consulting firm in Brookline, Massachusetts. Then, it was home to Arizona for a three-week visit.             

Sadly, the return flight coupon was pasted inside her diary. 

She’d returned home to find her mom bedridden with a broken hip, having fallen off the store’s loading dock, and a case of double pneumonia. The strain of working the store and caring for her mom had also begun to wear on her dad. Concerned for their well being, she had called her employer and been granted a two-month extension on her starting date. Two months later, her mother’s condition no better and activity at the store picking up, she’d telegrammed her regrets to New England.

Ulsa passed away in November of the following year and her father two years later.

Ally’s inheritance included hefty money market accounts and deeds to the General Mercantile and the Morgan family home. Her net worth was estimated at over two million, a figure she soon doubled. Young, attractive, and wealthy, she soon began to attract a bevy of suitors, none of whom were taken seriously. 

She and Brady met not long after he’d purchased the cabin in Sterling Canyon.

It had taken her months to bed him and they had been partaking on and off ever since; a carefree, purely physical relationship. It seemed an impossible meld, he, a stoic introvert with a secretive past, existing in a self-imposed purgatory, and she, a gregarious extrovert who viewed each new day as a grand and glorious gift from God.

“Brady?” She returned to the counter, a basket filled with canned goods, meats and vegetables. “Some of these items won’t be in until later today.”

“That’s okay, no rush. I can swing by later.”

“I can deliver them personally, provided payback includes dinner.”

“My place, six o’clock?” he said with a grin.

She handed him the groceries, bent over the counter and brushed her lips against his cheek. “Can’t wait.”

He stopped at the door. “Ally? The girl who’s renting one of your jeeps?”

Her brow arched.

“How much do you know about her?”

“Well, she’s young, blond and built for speed, but obviously you’ve already noticed.  She’s a photographer on assignment from National Geographic. Stops in once a week to pick up supplies, but drops in to place a phone call every day at 3:00 . Why do you ask?”

“No special reason. I ran across her last night on my way home.” His face pulled up into the boyish grin Ally believed was reserved only for her. “Lobo gave her a hell of a start, I’ll tell you.”

She gave him a studied look. “Three or four days in the valley and she’s already caught the attention of my two favorite males.” She picked up a rag and dusted off a spotless countertop.

“I have to run.” he said. “Don’t forget, six o’clock sharp. Oh, and Ally?”

“Yes?” 

 “For a moment, your eyes looked more green than gray.”

She gave him a look reserved for the truly demented, then her eyes brightened and she palmed a can of beans and launched it.

He ducked out the door, the can rebounding off the wall behind him, then peered back through the window and waved.

“You’ll pay for that, smart-ass,” she shouted.

She wandered into the back room wondering if old green eyes had reared its head? Jealousy was an emotion with which she was utterly unfamiliar. She and Brady had been lovers for almost as long as he’d lived here but it had always been a purely physical thing, no emotional ties or moonlight promises that faded by dawn. That’s the way they wanted it, right?

She wheeled her jeep along side Brady’s cabin at ten minutes to six.

After a dinner of beef tenderloin, baked salt potatoes smothered in butter and chives and Caesar salad they sat on a blanket in front of the cabin, Ally’s head nestled into Brady’s shoulder and stared into a roaring campfire.

Lobo, his interest piqued, inched his way out of the trees and circled the cabin. He chose a spot just outside the cone of light formed by the fire and sat back on his haunches, bright, yellow eyes studying every movement.

“That was delicious,” Ally said.

“Something special for a special lady.” His ran his fingers through her long, silky hair. “Cognac?”

“Sure, but you don’t have to get me loaded to take advantage of me, you know.”

He shook his head and loped up the cabin steps, returning moments later with two large snifters of golden nectar. Ally was wrapped in her mother’s old Indian blanket.   

“Cold?”

“Not really.” She wore a sensuous smile, leaned back on her elbows and let the blanket unfold. “Did I mention that I was bringing dessert.  Her golden-bronze skin shone seductively in the firelight and his gaze traveled the length of her.

He stripped off his clothes and kneeled down between her legs, his hand priming her warm, wet mound as he mouthed a nipple, his lips kneading it to a tender, fiery tip.       

Her hips rotated in tight circles, her back arched off the ground as soft cries escaped her throat.

He moved on top of her, paused momentarily to run his tongue through the valley between her breasts and then speared her with one swift plunge.

Her body, slick with perspiration, arched up to meet his, her hands climbing over his back and hips. “God, yes,” she whispered.

The need within them was primitive, exciting, and they trembled in each other’s arms. Then, the earth fell away and they traveled to a place of rapture, surrendering to a spiraling climax.   

Later, they sat in silence, staring into the flames, Ally’s blanket fending off the cool air.

“Can you stay the night?” His eyes were fixed on the fire.

“I don’t know. I don’t normally spend the night with strangers.”

His brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look, we’ve known each other for quite a while now and yet…” her voice trailed off.

“Yes?”

“In many ways, you’re still a stranger to me. Think about it, how much do I really know about you or your past? About who or what you were before you showed up here? My Mama used to say that to truly know a man you must know his memories.”

He smiled at her but said nothing.

She jabbed his ribs. “So, how much longer before you open up and fill me in on this carefully guarded past of yours?” She paused, then added, “Put away the armor, Brady. You don’t need it when you’re with me.”

His head rotated back toward the fire, his gaze floating off into the distance.

“You really loved her, didn’t you?”

A tear tracked down his cheek and she reached up and wiped it away. “Tell me about her.” She knew there were places inside him, dark places that she might never reach and it made her all the more determined to press on. “Don’t you think it’s time?”  

A moment of silence passed between them. “Her name was Elizabeth,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I was an orphan. Never knew my parents.”

She sat back, her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees, and listened, never interrupting as he spent two hours recounting his past, the names of those he had known and the lives that had touched his along the way.

He spoke first of his youth and then of his relationship with Elizabeth and the hopes and dreams they’d shared. “As far as her parents were concerned dating me through high school was fine, but her future lie with someone else. They were convinced that I could never provide for her in the manner to which she’d become accustomed.

She was sent off to school to carry on family tradition and to happen upon a more suitable mate.”

The glow in his eyes suggested a lethal predator and a chill raced through Ally that neither the blanket nor the fire could quell.     

“I ran into a man just before I mustered out of the Army. A man who promised me a job with a solid future and money enough to provide Elizabeth the kind of life her parents had planned for her.” 

He described his training in Okinawa and of his acceptance of a position with ‘The Company’, never referring to COMMEX by name. “Eventually,” he said. “I got so caught up in what I was doing that the years began to slip by unnoticed. I suppose that deep down inside I convinced myself that she would always be there waiting for me. I was still young enough to believe in starting over and naive enough to believe in forever.” He paused and wiped away a tear. “I saw her again, years later, on Hilton Head Island. I can’t explain it, but it was like we’d been reborn, given a second chance to fulfill the dreams, the promises.” 

He spoke of their last days on Hilton Head, of a daughter he’d never known and finally, of the explosion that had claimed Elizabeth’s life avoiding any reference to his affiliation with COMMEX.

“My God,” she whispered when he’d finished, her eyes shiny and wet. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I never would have…”

“No, please.” He put a finger to her lips, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “I’ve told you this because I wanted to, needed to, not because you asked me to.”

They sat quietly then, resting comfortably in each other’s arms, sipping Cognac and staring into the fire.

Ally broke the silence. “Tell me more about this company you went to work for, the one that kept you from getting in touch with Elizabeth after she’d left for school?”

“It was a government agency.”

She pulled away and grinned. “Government, huh? Let me guess, FBI? CIA?”

“What? Do I look like a spy or something?”

“Don’t know, never met a spook before. Still, why do I get the feeling there’s more to this story than you’re letting on.”

“Not now, please?” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.

“Come on.” She poked his side, prying, yet striving to keep it light. “Don’t stop now.”

“I can’t. It’s still too soon, Ally. Besides, I’ve already told you things I’ve told no one else. Ever.” He turned and pressed his lips against her forehead.

She’d pushed as far as she could, had put at least a chink in the armor. If she pushed much further, he was liable to disappear into that hole in the past from which he had come. She would eventually learn all there was to know, but it was going to take a long time.

“Tell you what,” she nuzzled against his chest.  “You start a fire inside and turn down the bed. Tomorrow morning I’ll cook you a first-class breakfast.”