Kitabı oku: «A Warrior's Vow», sayfa 3

He rerolled her sleeping bag into a tight bolster—the woman had obviously never camped a day in her pampered life—and secured it to the back of Belle’s saddle. He tossed handfuls of sand on to the remaining coals and scuffed more on to them with his boot.

She rose and dusted her jeans.

“We’re heading north,” he said, bending over and cupping his hands to give her a leg up.

“That’s the spirit,” she said, stepping into his hand. She put all her weight into it, instead of using it as a hoist. He tossed her upward, and she landed in the saddle with a low “Oof.”

“Thank you,” she said, as if he’d merely given her a boost. “It’s good to know we have a meeting of the minds here.” Though she spoke cheerfully enough, he didn’t meet her gaze.

He reached for her stirrups to lower them.

She shoved her boots into the footholds and pressed down. “I don’t think so, Mr. Daggert. I may be forced to ride on a western monstrosity, but I refuse the full discomfort.”

He decided that icy tone of voice fit her long, elegant body to a T.

“Suit yourself.” She’d be singing a different tune by midday.

“All the children at Rancho Milagro keep a journal. It was one of my partner’s ideas—a chance for the kids to download. I read Enrique’s before we set out,” she said. Her falsely cheerful note was back. Why did Daggert think her more dangerous when she used it?

He swung his leg over Stone’s broad back.

“Have you ever heard of a place called Cima La Luz?”

“In the mountains,” he said.

“Light Peak, right?”

He grunted an assent.

“I’m beginning to suspect you’re not a morning person.” When he didn’t answer, she continued, “I believe Enrique might be heading there.”

Daggert stared at her coldly. “You didn’t think it important to tell me that yesterday?” he asked finally.

Her smile faltered but she didn’t flinch. “You didn’t exactly give me a chance,” she said. Her eyes dared him to deny this.

“Lady, if you don’t kill yourself riding like that, I might just do it for you. Good thing we’re heading toward Cima La Luz or I’d flay you right now just for the sheer hell of it. But just out of curiosity, why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

The flush that stained her cheeks gave him all the answer he needed. She’d been testing him.

He spurred his horse forward while giving Sancho a go-ahead whistle.

“I’m sorry,” she called from behind him.

Daggert ground his teeth.

By the time the sun was directly overhead, the last thought on Leeza’s mind was cheerful needling. Her fears for Enrique were escalating with each passing hour. Her guilt was on the rise, as well. And her irritation with one noncommunicative tracker was boiling like mercury in a burning thermometer.

She’d tried giving him the same silent treatment he’d accorded her. Unfortunately, that seemed to work perfectly for him. She’d babbled at him and he’d ridden ahead. She’d hidden her exhausted tears from him the night before, and blinked them back now, but doubted he’d care even if he did see them.

He didn’t seem the slightest bit affected by the elements, the cruel sun, the cold morning or the fact that Enrique had been missing for at least thirty-nine hours now. In fact, Daggert seemed so indifferent to his surroundings he might as well have been made from bedrock, as she’d first imagined him to be.

And why she found herself attracted to him, she couldn’t even begin to fathom. It must be a by-product of the worry she felt for Enrique, and the unfamiliarity of searching for a child who didn’t want to be found.

It was the hostage syndrome, she thought, where a captive transferred feelings of faith to her abductor. Patty Hearst had done it; so had countless others.

Except Leeza wasn’t a hostage, she’d come on this mission against the tracker’s express wishes. She’d demanded to be included.

She was forced to admit he would have made better time without her. Any discomfort she felt was her own fault entirely.

Given her nature, this did not make her feel remotely better.

“He can use that chip on his shoulder to light a forest fire,” she told Belle. She grinned, feeling a little giddy. “Okay, wait, I have another one. There once was a man named Daggert…that’s too hard. There once was a man named James, who never would talk to the dames.”

“Enjoying yourself?”

She blushed as she never had before. It wasn’t a gentle rise of color; it was a raging conflagration of embarrassment. She hadn’t seen him halt his horse, and had caught up with him, literally unaware. But she lifted her chin, met his eyes directly and said, “Immensely.”

“We’ll stop here for lunch,” he said, and dismounted.

“Fine. Good.” Her stomach growled at the mere thought of food. She’d been foolish to give her eggs to Sancho. But she wasn’t about to admit it. “Belle could use a break.”

“Right,” he said. “Want a hand down?”

“No, thank you. I’m perfectly capable.”

“Just keep hold of the saddle horn.”

It took her about five minutes to dismount and another five before she could let go of the saddle horn. “I’d kill him,” she murmured to Belle, “but then how would we find Enrique? And I’m not sure I could find my way back alone.”

She gratefully accepted the moist towelettes he handed her, and leaned against the large boulder he’d selected as a shady picnic spot. She’d been too tired—and too busy making up nasty Daggert limericks—to notice the terrain while riding. It had changed considerably since dawn.

Low foothills, sparsely covered with scrub pine and liberally dotted with cholla cactus and chamisa, gave way to taller mountains in the distance. She’d read somewhere, probably in the material that came when they were first considering buying Rancho Milagro, that the Guadalupe Mountains weren’t technically part of the Rocky Mountains proper. They belonged to an older range, from the Devonian Period, and were more similar in nature to the Appalachians than to the Rockies, filled with caves, such as the Carlsbad Caverns, and pocketed with numerous sinkholes. Beneath the Guadalupes, oil awaited recovery, and within them somewhere, a little nine-year-old boy needed rescue.

Daggert whistled for Sancho and set out a bowl of water for him.

Leeza waited for a cup this time and accepted the warmish liquid with as much gratitude as she had the towelettes. She remained standing as she drank this time; however, her bottom being so sore she’d have cried out at contact with the solid ground.

Apparently unfazed by the long ride, Daggert sat down Indian-style and used a long, curved knife to pry apart something in a deep pouch. A moment later he pulled out a long strip of beef jerky. Using the blade of the knife, he handed the piece up to her.

While she was a personal fan of beef, believing recent medical findings declaring red meat to be rich in iron and calcium, she couldn’t say she was remotely fond of it salted, dried and rendered into strips of peppered leather. Add jalapeños to it and it was pure torture.

She spat her bite into her used towelette.

Daggert used his knife to tear off another piece of jerky and tossed it to an eager Sancho.

Sancho caught the bit of beef with alacrity and gulped it down after slashing it only a couple of times with his white teeth. He sat on the pebbled sand and whined.

Daggert tossed him another piece, which the dog caught but set down. He whined again.

“What is it, boy?” Daggert asked.

The dog lifted his right paw as if wanting to shake hands, or as if he’d acquired a thorn.

Daggert checked the raised paw, apparently found nothing amiss and ruffled the dog’s neck. “Go ahead,” he said.

The dog looked from the beef to his master and whined as he again lifted his paw.

“What are you telling me, Sancho-dog?” Daggert asked.

Sancho barked in answer before finally eating the piece of jerky he’d set aside.

Daggert watched him, frowning, then tore another piece free and passed it up to Leeza.

She held up her hand. “Please. No.”

“Too hot?” he asked. “So you’re as tender mouthed as you are a tenderfoot.”

“I think I have this figured out,” she said. “In your mind, I’m the ‘disliked one,’ the one who caused Enrique to run away.”

Daggert looked at the dog nearby. He gave Sancho a nod and the setter answered with a swift bark before tearing away from the picnic site.

“You don’t even want your dog to hear this,” Leeza said.

Daggert sighed, and the patronizing patience on his face fanned her fury. “You’ve decided the whole subject is taboo—at least you won’t talk to me about it. You don’t care to know the reasons why he may have decided to dislike me. Not you. Oh, you asked me last night, but you didn’t make any comment on my answer. Because you don’t care. Your mind is made up. It’s as obvious as the nose on your chiseled face that you’re making me a whipping boy. The more discomfort I feel, the more you like it. And you think the harder you push me, the more I’ll fall apart right in front of your golden eyes. Do you want to know why?”

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes had narrowed.

“I do,” she said, ignoring the sign of his growing anger. “I’ve had hours to study the question. And I think I have the answer. I think your whipping-boy complex stems from a deep-rooted fury at yourself because you didn’t manage to find someone. That you failed in your big search once. I don’t know who or what they meant to you, but it was—”

Leeza didn’t see Daggert move. She heard a low growl and a whoosh and then felt the wind being knocked out of her. For a full two seconds, she wasn’t even aware he’d lunged at her.

She focused on several things simultaneously: his muscled body pressing her against the boulder behind her. The knife he’d been using to tear the beef jerky being held against the hollow of her throat. And the tawny eyes she’d stupidly thought unreadable glaring into hers, filled with rage.

“Never talk about my son again,” he said. How had she thought his voice was like velvet? It was a razor, sharp and deadly.

She tried to nod, but his hand against her chin prevented movement.

So slowly it made her tremble, he lowered the knife’s point from her throat. But he didn’t release her. His eyes still burned with fury, but no longer, thankfully, with murderous intent. His knife hand trailed down her arm in a slow, strangely electrifying sensation. It was the very opposite of sensual, yet every nerve ending she possessed seemed attuned to his touch.

“Tell me you’re listening to me,” he growled.

“I—I’m listening.”

“Tell me you won’t do it again.”

“I won’t. Of course I won’t.” She could feel the heat of his body covering hers and sharp edges of the boulder digging into her shoulder blades. She registered the corded muscles in his legs against hers and, most of all, his arousal. “Please,” she murmured, not sure what she was asking him for.

“Please?” he whispered.

Her breath felt trapped inside her and she was fairly sure he could feel her heart thundering against his chest. He looked from her eyes to her lips, and something twisted on his face. His eyes closed and she had to bite back a whimper as she felt the anger draining from him.

When he opened his eyes again, she realized that while the anger might be ebbing, the tension in him hadn’t. But it was tension of another kind. A sort that met her head-on, man to woman.

“You have a smart mouth,” he said.

As if answering for her, her lips parted of their own volition.

She knew he was going to kiss her, and knew she should protest. Wanted to protest. Ached to find the means to tell him that he should back off and leave her alone. Instead, she leaned into his lips, meeting him halfway.

His mouth was as hot as his anger had been, and every bit as ruthless. He plundered her lips with determined purpose, a roughly banked passion. His tongue warred with hers, demanding capitulation. He was liquid and solid all at the same time.

She heard the knife clatter to the base of the boulder, then felt his hands strafing her body. He’d used those same hands to gentle the horses, but on her, he incited a riot.

She’d imagined running her hands across his broad shoulders, down the rippling muscles of his back, and didn’t know when she began doing so in reality. One moment she’d literally been as afraid as she’d ever been in her life, and the next she was matching his passion touch for touch, kiss for kiss.

His lips gentled and he uttered a low, pained groan. His hands on her body slowed, still exploring her curves, and somehow the new tenderness in his touch made her feel inexplicably confused. Passion she understood, at least to some degree. Tenderness she didn’t understand at all; it had never been a part of her life.

Daggert raised a hand to her face and molded it gently as he kissed her. And she could taste his withdrawal.

He pulled back from her, his eyes once again unreadable, his emotions masked. He straightened and ever so slowly ran the back of his hand over his moistened lips, still gazing at her.

She remained sprawled against the rock, a discarded rag doll with heaving breasts and glassy blue eyes. And she knew desire was written all over her.

He bent and picked up his knife. He pressed a button and slowly folded the blade back into the handle. It seemed a metaphor, and perhaps was.

Chapter 4

Leeza Nelson, former boardroom wizard, watched James Daggert stomp away from the lunch campsite and disappear around a huge boulder much like the one she sprawled against.

She lifted a shaking hand to her lips, half expecting them to be different somehow.

They were. They seemed fuller, more sensitive. Stunned.

Her lips felt stunned.

She felt stunned.

She was a veritable thesaurus of shattered—shocked, aghast, astonished and utterly confounded.

She’d been pushing him, needling him, trying to goad him into talking to her. She’d been trying to get him to finally acknowledge her as more than a nuisance. She would have been content to have him yell at her, or fall apart at the proverbial seams in obvious frustration. Anything to get him to speak to her, instead of being a silent rock riding in front of her.

Of all the things she hated in life, the worst was being ignored. She’d made a career and an entire life out of being the person most noticed, most sought after, most desired. Ignored wasn’t in her repertoire.

Until she’d begun this journey to search for Enrique.

But Daggert’s reaction to her prodding wasn’t what she’d expected. She would never have anticipated it in a million and one years.

In her high-rise office in Washington, D.C., she could dig at people with impunity; if they didn’t want to deliver what she wanted to know, they might not receive the dollars they sought from her. Needling was a seemingly necessary evil, and her right.

In those instances, however, whoever came knocking at her door was playing with fire. This time, she’d been the one taunting the flame.

Never in her wildest thoughts had she imagined she would rip at him with such uncanny accuracy. Nor would she ever have dreamed that such an attack would bring him to the point of murder.

Her hand lowered to her throat. Where she’d envisioned blood, perhaps a permanent reminder of the lesson “don’t play with fire,” Daggert hadn’t left so much as a mark. That he hadn’t branded her didn’t address his fury, but rather a measure of the icy control she’d glimpsed several times in the short while she’d spent following him in his search for Enrique.

But he’d demanded she never speak of his son. Not a nameless someone he’d been hired to find, not a stranger—his son.

Leeza closed her eyes. She let her body be warmed by the heat within the boulder, the sun beating down on the arroyo, and her own embarrassment.

She didn’t want to even think about what losing a child would do to a man’s psyche, to his heart. If she was right in her analysis of his dramatic response, James Daggert had once searched for his own missing son and either had not found him or had not managed to find him alive. Either case must bring the worst possible pain to a parent. It explained so much about the unusual tracker.

“Oh, I’m so very sorry,” she said aloud, and her voice seemed to echo in the narrow dry riverbed.

But Daggert wasn’t there to hear her, and she wasn’t apologizing for anything she’d done, but offering the absent man her heartfelt sympathy.

She’d lost her parents, a grief she still felt with every passing day. He’d lost his son. His child.

She forced herself from the boulder and stood, albeit shakily. The world hadn’t slipped on its very axis, as she felt it should have. The sun still beat straight down on the narrow, boulder-strewn arroyo, and the sand beneath her feet remained hot and slippery. The sky was still blue and the yellow chamisa bushes still smelled like skunks.

Daggert’s horse, Stone, pulled at some threads of grass on the bank about thirty feet away and whispered something to Belle. The mare nickered back.

Everything seemed normal, yet nothing was. Nor could it ever be again.

Enrique was missing. Had been for hours upon hours. Leeza knew she had lost him by pushing him too hard. And she was literally shaking in her boots, not wholly from guilt, not entirely from remorse, and not even in horror at Daggert’s furious response. She shook in a stunned reaction to his kiss.

A kiss.

“Just a kiss,” she said aloud.

Belle whickered.

“Okay, so it seemed like a lot more than a kiss.”

Stone gave a grunt.

“All right, a whole lot more than a kiss.”

Neither horse answered vocally, but Stone shook his head, his reddish-brown mane dancing in the air.

Leeza cautiously approached Belle and withdrew a notebook from her saddlebag, then her cell phone from the pommel, which Westerners aptly called a saddle horn.

Retreating to a different boulder, she penned her confusion in the notebook, jotting down her fears, her wishes about the next twenty-four hours. Never once did she mention her gigging James Daggert. Nor did she describe the kiss.

And she didn’t fill the rest of the notebook with her response to that kiss, as she could have.

Some things were better left unsaid.

When James Daggert hadn’t returned an hour later, Leeza broke down and tried some of the beef jerky from the pouch he’d discarded earlier. It still burned her tongue and made her stomach roil, but she knew the man was right about needing to keep up her strength, and she wasn’t about to dig in his saddlebags in search of something else to eat. If words could set off his fury, what might violating his privacy do? She was tempted, but didn’t want to bring on a confrontation.

After eating the vile jerky, she tried calling the ranch on her cell phone again. She couldn’t even reach an operator. All she heard was a scratchy message telling her she was out of range in an undefined area.

What else was new?

She tidied up the site and, more as an apology than from any real sense of the saddle being uncomfortable, fumbled with the buckles and straps to lower the stirrups two full notches. She led Belle to the side of the boulder where Daggert had kissed her so thoroughly.

“I’m going to mount now,” she announced grimly. “You move so much as a step away and I’ll send you to a knackery when we get back to the ranch.”

The horse rolled her eyes.

“Believe me, they’ll probably love rendering you. And if they don’t, I will.”

Belle grunted but remained placid.

With the stirrups lowered, and by climbing up on the boulder, Leeza was able to get astride Belle without Daggert’s helping hands. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to touch the man; it was that she wanted to do precisely that. And have him do the same to her. And more.

And she wanted to tell him she was sorry for goading him.

What she didn’t want to do, much as she ached to know the story, was to ask him about his son. That would have to come from him, if and when he ever decided to forgive her or to confide in her.

But she wasn’t about to be the supplicant. She would never beg for absolution. At least, the Leeza Nelson who used to live inside her body as recently as three days before would never have begged. This Leeza now, the one who had left everything she knew behind to follow a stranger into the mountains on a search for a lonely little boy—she might just have a few pleas tucked away.

She only had to wait astride her horse for a few minutes before James Daggert came back into view.

Her heart leaped at the sight of him and she felt every inch a fool. The man was just a man, and rude, at that. So he’d kissed her. What did that mean in the grand scheme of things?

Nothing.

Everything.

“Nothing,” she muttered aloud.

Daggert checked his stride and his tawny eyes traveled from her head to her feet.

Leeza thought his gaze would move up again in that age-old macho affirmation and condemnation some men could manage with a single, melting look.

But James Daggert’s gaze locked on her lowered stirrups.

His eyes shifted away before meeting hers. The passion still lingered on his face, as did some anger, but she couldn’t tell if the latter was directed at her or at himself.

He didn’t provide an explanation for his hour-long absence. He merely swung a leg over Stone’s back and settled into the saddle. Without a word, he urged the horse forward. And without a backward glance, he headed away from the narrow escarpment he’d chosen for their lunch break.

Leeza followed, angry at his dismissal of her, but not trying to get him to speak now. She wouldn’t have known what to say to him, and would have bitten her tongue off before attempting an apology to his rigid back.

Watching his broad shoulders up ahead, Leeza wondered what motivated the man. She suspected she now understood at least some of the demons that tormented him, but what kept him so focused on tracking? She’d seen people with lesser trouble crumble and abandon their professions, dreams and desires. Even having lost his son, Daggert kept pursuing the misplaced children of the world. Why? How could he, when doing so had to bring back every memory, every torment each time he mounted a search?

Though he hated to halt for a second night, afraid the boy’s chances decreased with every delay, Daggert had to rein in Stone and whistle for Sancho when the shadows lengthened and the sun dipped low on the western horizon.

Now that they were higher into the foothills, darkness would come swiftly and bring with it the first taste of winter. September in New Mexico always felt tumultuous—one day hotter than hell, the next producing a surprise snowfall. Nights could dip below freezing and sunny days could burn the leaves off trees before they even turned to gold.

But weather wasn’t the worst he feared could befall the little runaway. Being out-of-doors and alone wasn’t bad, not really bad. There were far more terrible horrors out here in these mountains.

When Daggert had left the woman earlier, shock at his own actions sending him on a long, soul-searching walk, he’d found tracks belonging to Enrique’s horse—that telltale bent horseshoe nail. Though he’d searched, he hadn’t found tracks of another horse, one not shod by the Milagro farrier.

While this filled him with relief, he hadn’t been able to shake the neck-tickling sensation that someone else was out in these mountains watching every move the boy made, and Daggert literally ached to keep going.

It’s someone Donny knew.

Someone he knew. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker…

But they had to stop for the night. If he was tired—and God knew he was—the woman had to be worn to her very bones.

Daggert glanced back at Leeza Nelson. She’d already halted her horse and was working at dismounting.

She hadn’t said a single thing to him all afternoon. Guilt stabbed him.

The lady’s muscles weren’t cooperating with her efforts to get off her horse, and she seemed scarcely aware of her surroundings. If he hadn’t known how sore she must be, he might have found the scene vaguely humorous.

But he did know, and he also knew just how enormous an apology he owed her.

He moved Stone back to flank Belle.

“Here,” he said. “Hand me her reins.”

Though she looked at him without understanding, she did as he asked.

“Shake free of your stirrups. That’s right. Roll your feet at the ankle. Good. Now, put your arms around my neck and hold on.”

She hesitated.

“Trust me,” he said.

To her credit, she didn’t slant one of her patented “Oh, right,” looks at him. But she didn’t move either, except to sway a bit.

He sighed. “It’s okay,” he said. “I know I haven’t given you any reason to, but trust me. Come on, Leeza.”

He held out his free hand.

She looked at it as if he might strike her with it.

She might as well have stabbed him with his own knife. “Leeza. Trust me. Please. Put your arms around me. I wouldn’t let you fall.”

He suspected his use of her name compelled her to lift her arms. He felt the warmth of her sun-gilded shirt and her struggle not to place any weight against him.

He reached for her waist and felt her stiffen, leaning away from him. “Trust me.”

“I’m so confused,” she said, and he knew it was true. He also suspected that trust didn’t come easily to Leeza Nelson, though why he felt so certain about this, he couldn’t have said. It was simply a fact, like her beauty.

Her body leaned into his, and Daggert could feel how she ached with wanting even if he wasn’t certain it wasn’t his own desire projecting on to her.

“Hold on tight,” he said, but he should have warned himself to hold on. A part of him, alive for the first time in several years, needed to be very careful.

“One, two, three.” In one sure move, he hoisted her out of her saddle and on to his lap, where he sat astride Stone.

As she had the evening before, Leeza startled him by limply nestling against him, her exhaustion stripping her of all defenses. Remembering her statements in the firelight, he was sure she’d be surprised to learn that vulnerability was an incredibly alluring quality in a human, especially in one as strong and lovely as Leeza Nelson.

He wrapped his arms around her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Thinking she was apologizing for her physical weakness, he said, “It’s okay.”

“I’m not sorry about this,” she said, and raised one of her tired hands to the base of his neck. As she had from the very first moment he saw her, she surprised him. He would never have expected this powerful woman to admit to any physical frailty, to concede to exhaustion.

As her fingers curled into his hair, he felt a spear of true desire drive through him.

“I’m not, either,” he said honestly.

“I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier.”

He waited for her to say more. She didn’t, and he wondered at that. In the first place, she owed him no apology. In the second, most people attempted to mount a defense of their actions, their words. I didn’t want to hurt you, but…or I’m sorry, but you made me so… Leeza Nelson felt she owed him an apology, but not an explanation.

Hers was a straightforward acknowledgment of fault or guilt, with no groundwork laid for self-exculpation. And all the while her fingertips lay quiescent at the base of his neck, as if they felt the very pulse of him beating, throbbing.

As the silence stretched, with him trying to form words of apology himself, Stone stomped a foot as if prodding him along. How did one go about saying he was sorry for having held her at knifepoint?

Finally, Daggert said, “What I did was damnable.” Like her, he wouldn’t give an explanation, but he owed her more than a handful of words. Much more. “I—”

“I’m not sorry about the kiss,” she interrupted, her cheek pressed against his chest.

Fierce desire stabbed at him.

He closed his eyes. “Me, either,” he admitted.

“Will we do it again, do you think?”

His eyes flew open and he felt he was seeing a wholly new landscape. A brighter one. A sharper one. He smiled. “Lady, you can take it to the bank.”

She chuckled.

The feel of her weak laughter against him was both an erotic sensation and one so strangely intimate that he felt arousal shifting to something more complex and disturbing.

If Stone hadn’t stomped his foot again, Daggert might have sat there all night, holding her against him, his senses filled with the scent of her hair, the texture of silk against his lips.

“Hang on,” he said, and clasped her to him, hiking her up. He swung his leg over Stone’s neck, holding Belle’s reins with one hand and Leeza’s waist with the other. He shook his foot free of the stirrup and gently dropped the two of them to the ground.

Leeza slid down his body, leaning against him as she regained her land legs. Her silken wisps of hair tickled his chin and her hands clung to his shoulders. Without looking at him, she said, “I would never have admitted this, but I owe you one. The stirrups felt better lowered.”

Daggert couldn’t help it. He laughed aloud.

Stone sidled a couple of steps away from them, apparently as startled by the unfamiliar sound as his rider.

Daggert looked down at Leeza and found her studying him with an unreadable expression on her lovely face.

“What?” he couldn’t help asking.

“You should laugh more often.”

“Because?”

“Because it takes my breath away when you do,” she said, efficiently stealing his.

Knowing it was wrong, but unable to resist the temptation of her parted lips, Daggert slowly lowered his mouth to hers. The universe seemed to shrink to this one point of connection, her lips drawing him closer, her tongue teasing his. She tasted of possibility, and kissing her was like discovering that hope and promise could still exist somewhere.