Free The Traveling Kind by Janet Dailey Page A

of the rugged land outside the truck windows. “But I guess I was mountain-bred. Look at that.”
    With absent obedience, she glanced out the window and felt the breath being drawn from her lungs. It had stopped raining, leaving behind a world that had been washed clean. The air was vibrantly clear and fresh, its clean scent rushing into the cab through the now opened windows. The leaves of the trees had seemed to turn emerald green, while the pines took on the darker shade of green. The sun had broken through the clouds, a patch of blue showing in the sky. Against the backdrop of the wild mountains, a rainbow arched its multicolored promise.
    “Everything is always so beautiful after a rain,” Charley murmured with a trace of awe.
    “Yes.” But he was looking straight at her when he said it. The disturbing darkness of his blue eyes disrupted the steady beat of her heart.
    She turned quickly to face the front again and fought the rush of wild longing that swept through her. The cab of the truck suddenly seemed very cramped. She was conscious of his long, muscled thighs on the seat near hers and the sinewed strength of his arms beneath the sleeves of his shirt. It became difficult to think clearly in such close quarters and Charley tried to concentrate on the passing scenery.
    “Where are we going?” she asked as she tried to recognize her surroundings.
    “That’s a surprise,” Shad replied, deliberately mysterious.
    “Tell me where you’re taking me,” she insisted. The game he was playing brought a reluctant smile to dimple the corners of her mouth.
    “Somewhere out of this world,” he said with a mocking grin and refused to tell her more than that.
    Her curiosity was fully aroused as she sat back and watched the .passing scenery. Her mind raced in an attempt to guess their ultimate destination. She made a lot of guesses and discarded them all, no nearer to unraveling the mystery than before. And Shad wouldn’t help her.
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
    THE HIGHWAY SWUNG along the foothills of the mountain range with the Snake River Plains spreading out flat on the other side. Charley was still in the dark about their destination until she saw the harsh, forbidding landscape ahead of them. Barren of plant life, it was a tortuous collection of volcanic rock and solidified lava.
    “The Craters of the Moon, that’s where we’re going,” she guessed accurately this time.
    Shad chuckled and reminded her, “I told you it was someplace ‘out of this world.’ “
    “That was a rotten clue and you know it.” She poked her fist at his shoulder in a playful reprimand and laughed.
    Slowing the truck, he turned into the entrance of the Craters of the Moon National Monument. The jagged rockscape flanked the road on either side of them. The colors varied from near black to a purplish gray. Shad stopped the truck in a small parking area along the side of the road.
    “Come on,” he said as he opened his own door. “Let’s get out and walk.”
    Charley pushed her own door open and joined him by the front hood of the truck. Almost casually, he reached out and took hold of her hand to lead her onto the rough terrain. Charley didn’t resist the warm grip of his hand as she followed him onto the uneven ground.
    When the road disappeared behind them, an eerie silence seemed to descend, darkly lonely and mysterious. Shad paused in the center of this harsh, dangerous landscape and Charley lifted her face to the whispering breeze, pushing the hair back from her face and holding it there.
    They were surrounded by cones and craters of volcanic rock. Long ago, massive underground explosions had created these weird formations and sent out the lava flows to create an island of rock crags in a land of grass and trees and earth. Its resemblance to photographs of the moon’s surface was uncanny, so empty and lifeless.
    Charley glanced over her shoulder at the mountain range on the horizon, needing the reassurance that this desolate