by Jane Toombs
"Whatever happened to your guitar?" Vala asked Bram.
"I didn't realize you knew I had one," he said. "It's around somewhere."
"Can you still play it?" Davis asked.
"I suppose. Haven't tried lately."
"He was something in high school with that guitar," Vala said, remembering. "He knew all the right tunes and sometimes he'd play after classes out in the parking lot, standing there by his motorcycle, surrounded by a crowd."
Davis stared at him. "You had a Harley?"
"No such luck. An old Honda."
"Still..." Davis seemed lost in admiration.
"I never noticed you in any crowd," Bram said to Vala.
"I was there." She didn't add that she'd tried hard not to be obvious.
"Staying in the background seemed to be a characteristic of yours."
"I got over it." Wanting to shift attention from herself, she said, "I never in my wildest guess would have imagined you as a lawyer."
"Nobody else's either. Could be that's why I took prelaw when I got that college baseball scholarship and then went on to law school."
Vala expected Davis to chime in about now. When he didn't, she glanced at him and saw he'd fallen asleep. Following her gaze, Bram said, "Should we be quiet?"
She smiled. "Never worry about waking Davis up. Ten brass bands marching by couldn't rouse him. He's the soundest sleeper in the world."
"He's a good kid. Smart, too."
"Unfortunately his father doesn't seem to know that. Or care. The only thing Davis could do to make Neal take any notice is to become an outstanding athlete. That's not likely."
"He interested in sports at all?"
"He likes to watch baseball but gave up on playing it after one season in Little League. Davis is not well- coordinated, no matter how hard he practices. Lately he's given up completely on trying to please his father. I can't blame him, since nothing does."
Bram scowled but remained quiet, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. "Hell of thing for a kid to go through," he said finally. "Shouldn't happen."
"You know that and I know that, but try to tell Neal."
"Why'd you marry him?"
Taken by surprise, she blurted, "Because he asked me." After a moment, she realized, to her distress, that it might actually be the truth of the matter. She hadn't been in love with Neal, no matter how she'd tried to convince herself she was.
Bram shook his head.
"Okay, so it was a lousy reason," she snapped. "I'm sure he's much happier with his new wife and son."
"How about you?"
She shrugged. "I'm happier without him. So is Davis, actually. He no longer has to hear on a daily basis how he doesn't measure up to Neal's image of a son."
"Man's a fool not to be proud of a kid like Davis. Take the old Ndee he befriended. Mokesh saw something in Davis that made him believe in the boy's potential or he'd never have given Davis so much of his time, much less that map. It's not easy to impress an old medicine man."
"I thought Mr. Mokesh was probably just lonely."
"With others to talk to in that nursing home, he chose Davis. You can bet it wasn't as simple as loneliness."
"I've noticed you seem to know quite a lot about Mr. Mokesh's people. Like Davis, you don't say Apache, you say Ndee."
"Everything has its right name."
She waited for him to go on before finally realizing that was the only answer she was likely to get.
"It was good of you to offer Davis a kitten," she said into the silence, "but I don't know if we'll be able to take it home with us."
"Let's wait and see. I can always ship it." He shifted position on his sleeping bag to peer at the rain through the little view window on the flap. "Isn't letting up any yet." His new position brought them closer together but she hesitated to shift herself, not wanting him to think his nearness disturbed her. Which it did. He seemed to radiate a sensual aura she was extremely susceptible to.
She found the weather a safe subject. "No more lightning and thunder, though. The rain can't last forever" He nodded, then said, "Surprised me when you mentioned my guitar. I'd have sworn you never noticed me that much back then."
Never noticed him! When she'd spent every school day waiting for a glimpse of Bram, hoping and praying he'd say even one word to her. "You were pretty hard to miss," she said dryly.
"Always in trouble, you mean."
"That, too. Even though I never used the stuff, I happened to be pretty good at spotting the druggies but I never figured you for being high on anything. Which was remarkable given the drugs available."
"If you realized that, you must have noticed me a damn sight more than I ever knew."
"Come on, Bram, you were a bigger than life rebel. Everyone in the entire school paid attention to what you did, students and staff alike. Plus you were the star of our winning baseball team."
"I figure that's the only reason those in power put up with me. Us rebels got to have at least one in, you know."
Vala smiled at him. She'd always found Bram sexy but she'd never dreamed he'd turn out to be fun. "I didn't know you'd won that scholarship, though."
"Got it when the university recruited me. I decided to accept it--what did I have to lose?
"So you wound up with a law degree you don't use."
"Not a total loss. I still use a lot of what I learned getting it. And who can predict the future? That degree may come in handy some day."
"At least you had the courage to know what you really wanted."
He gave her a lopsided smile. "Maybe, maybe not. In some areas, though, I think maybe I always knew what I wanted. Trouble was, I didn't know how to get it. Figure that's how the idea of law school came in to begin with."
Vala sighed. "I don't think I ever knew what I really wanted. If I had, I wouldn't have married Neal. But then, of course, I wouldn't have Davis. He's the prize I never expected."
The tent seemed to have gotten smaller, she thought. Which was impossible. Yet Bram's nearness was overwhelming her. She struggled to find words to throw up as a barrier between them.
"Surely at one time you must have thought of marrying," she said.
"Nope. No reason to."
"How about being in love?"
"Who knows what love is?"
"I'm the last person to ask," she said tartly.
"You brought it up. Weren't you ever in love with misguided Neal?"
She shook her head, ashamed to admit it aloud. You ought to love the man you married, shouldn't you?
Time to shift the focus back to him. "You could have had your pick of any girl in high school, so I imagine--"
He cut her off. "You're wrong."
Vala stared at him. "I don't think so. Remember, I was in that school, watching and listening. What I was trying to say, though, is if you've never fallen in love or married, it surely hasn't been for lack of opportunity."
"Rebels don't make good marital partners."
"If by that you mean women don't understand them--"
His tone was so bitter that she began to understand he must be speaking of someone other than himself.
"Been there, done that," he added. "Not again."
It occurred to her that in high school he'd lived alone with his mother. Was he talking about his absent father? Whatever it was, she decided Bram had been hurt as a child. Without thinking, she reached out and placed her hand over his in a gesture of sympathy.
Though she hadn't seen him move, suddenly he seemed a lot closer, making her lick her lips nervously.
"Invitation?" he asked, watching her.
"I--um--" She couldn't find words to tell him no.
And then it was too late.
His mouth brushed against hers in a feather kiss, which shouldn't have been the slightest bit erotic. Or at least that's what she tried to tell herself as she leaned into the kiss, helpless to deny the very real invitation she was now offering.
His arms came around her, pulling her close, his lips
urging surrender as he deepened the kiss. No man, certainly not Neal, had ever aroused her so completely by one kiss.
She wanted to melt against him, melt into him, to possess and be possessed. The feeling was completely foreign to her, making her realize there'd been a pitiful lack in her life up until now.
If this was a prelude, she wasn't sure she'd live through the main performance. She was so consumed with longing she could hardly think straight.
Wrapped in his arms, his male scent drugging her senses, the taste of his mouth branding her, she had no desire to try to free herself because it felt as though she belonged exactly where she was.
She couldn't tell herself the reason for her eager response was that she hadn't let any man kiss her for a very long time because, the truth was, no man had ever kissed her like this. It was even possible no other man could, only Bram.
"Long overdue," he murmured against her mouth without letting her go.
He was right. More than ten years overdue, if only he knew it.
Chapter 5
Vala, held close in Bram's arms, never wanting to leave them, not until she began to realize where she was. Closed in a tent on the side of a mountain during a storm. With her son asleep only a few feet away. Not that they'd done anything really improper, but she'd come close to getting swept away by her feelings.
Bram's words about the rain rushing down the mountain trail in a torrent echoed in her head. She repeated them aloud as she freed herself. "It doesn't do to get swept away."
He let her go without a fuss. Easing back so he was sitting once again on his own sleeping bag, he said, "Why not?"
Flustered, she gestured at Davis, still sleeping peacefully.
Bram grinned at her. "So if we're alone, it's okay?"
"No! What I mean is--" She paused, unsure of what she actually did mean.
"Took me by surprise, too," he admitted.
She wondered if he meant her admittedly ardent response or that he'd been in danger of getting swept away, too. "I don't usually--" she began, then hesitated. Kiss strange men? Bram wasn't exactly a stranger. "I mean, I shouldn't have let it happen," she finished lamely.
"You had a choice?"
Bram was teasing her, but at the same time trying to force the issue. If he'd read her body language right, she'd no more been in control once they got into that zinger of a kiss than he'd been. He was damned if he was going to let her negate what had happened.
"There's always a choice," she snapped.
"What you mean is you finally remembered Davis was asleep in the tent with us."
Vala flushed.
Aha. Struck home. He pushed on. "We can't ignore what's between us. Tell me you haven't felt the pull ever since we met again in that Apache Junction cafe."
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I've never forgotten the last time I saw you, years before. How could you have been so cruel?"
He stared at her, completely baffled. "Cruel? Me? What the devil are you talking about? You think it wasn't cruel for you to stand there that night looking down your nose at me as though I'd just crawled out from under a rock?" She gave him an incredulous look.
"I did no such thing! I knew why you were there and I was trying not to cry, that's what really happened."
"Knew why I was there?" His words echoed his confusion.
"You should have been ashamed of yourself!"
"Why? What did I do? Nothing, that's what."
"It was mean. I thought you'd never noticed how I watched you in school, how I hung around on the fringes of your crowd. But you must have. Otherwise you wouldn't have come to my house that night. One of your buddies must have told you my parents weren't home."
"Hell, they bowled in a couple's league every Thursday night. It didn't take a Mensa member to turn that up. I didn't have a clue you even knew who I was. But I sure as hell was interested in you. Took me a long time to make a move."
"I wouldn't have cared if it had been your move." Her voice rose. "Instead what did you do?"
He scowled. "Since you seem to have some secret information I don't possess--what did I do?"
"You made a bet!" Her voice broke on the last word and she turned her face from him.
Bram blinked, taken aback. "What in hell are you talking about? What bet?"
"Don't deny it, I overheard two of your buddies talking about how they'd bet you couldn't get so much as a kiss out of the Ice Maiden. Then the same night you show up at my house after never so much as saying one word ever to me at school."
"I vaguely remember the bet," Bram said after a moment or two. "But what makes you think anyone ever called you the Ice Maiden?"
Vala turned toward him again, frowning. "What are you saying?"
"Honey, you tried so hard to blend into the walls that you didn't even have a nickname, good or bad, at school. The Ice Maiden was Lori Salter. I may have showed up at your house hoping for a kiss, but it was my own idea. The truth is, you fascinated me, but I figured you'd never go out with me. So I didn't talk to you at school for fear of having everyone watch you turn me down."
"But--but--" she sputtered.
"You were so far off with that bet business you weren't even on the planet."
"Are you telling me the truth about Lori Salter?"
"Want to ask me if I won the bet?"
"No! Now that I think about it, Lori was sort of stand- offish. I suppose..." She let the words trail off.
"Tell you anyway. I kissed her, all right. Winning the bet was a lot more fun than the kiss."
She slanted him a quelling glance.
"I didn't even come close to kissing you that night," he said. "Didn't so much as get one kind word, as I recall."
"I wanted you to kiss me!" she cried. "But not on a bet. I spent the whole time you were there trying not to burst into tears."
He shook his head. "I didn't have a clue. Between us, we blew it. I guess the only remedy is to try to make up for lost time."
"I think we already have," she said.
"Wrong. We've hardly begun." He gave her a long, speculative look. "If you hadn't been hung up on that bet and I had kissed you that night, I wonder what it would have been like?"
"We can hardly go back and find out."
He persisted. "Would you have responded?"
"What do you think?"
He ran his forefinger along the curve of her lower lip. "I think we'd still have been locked together in that kiss when your parents got home and there'd have been hell to pay."
She bit his finger.
"How come you're biting him, Mom?" Davis asked sleepily. "Because I've been teasing her," Bram said before Vala could speak.
"Oh." Davis sat up. "Hey, I don't hear the rain hitting the tent any more. Is the storm over?"
Bram's gaze caught Vala's. "Is it?" he asked.
She eased over to the flap window and looked out.
"All over," she said, glancing at Bram. "The sun's out."
Though there were hours of daylight left, Bram opted to stay where they were, give the horses a good rubdown and let the tent have a chance to dry in the sun's warmth.
Vala watched as he let Davis build their small campfire, which sputtered and smoked because of the wet. "Be careful," she called to her son, earning an exasperated look from him. It was kind of Bram to let Davis do things but she sometimes felt he didn't realize the boy was only nine.
During the storm, too much had happened both in words and deeds for her to put her thoughts and feelings in any coherent order.
The thunder and lightning were past, the rain gone, but not her inner turmoil. Seeing Bram and Davis huddle over the old map, she marveled at what that ancient scrap of deerskin had led her into. An ambush? At the moment, it almost felt like that.
She wasn't ready for any of this, wasn't ready to discover she was wrong about their last meeting, nor prepared to take up not where they'd left off then. It was completely unknown territory, as dangerous in its way as the Superstitions.
Neal had taught her men couldn't be trusted. She may have known Bram before, but that didn't count. He, too, was a man. After the divorce she'd decided it was safer not to get involved with any other man, which had been easy up until now. The problem was, Bram couldn't be put in the just any other man category, he was someone she found much too attractive and she was trapped in his company for the next few days. Luckily Davis was with them. But would he be buffer enough?
She carried her worried confusion to bed with her that evening and sleep didn't come easily.
Bram, outside under the stars, studied the very slightly lopsided moon and decided it'd be full in two days. He fell into a reverie about making love to Vala under mountain moonlight, managing to get himself completely aroused.
He shut down the erotic imaginings. Just where the devil do you think you're going to take this? He asked himself.
Sure, he wanted her, but Vala was no quick fix. Would she expect more than a night or two of pleasure? Would she understand that when she flew back east chances were they'd never see one another again? For that matter, would she even let him near her in the first place?
Smiling as he recalled her eager response to his kiss, he decided if the right time and place came together, they'd go up together like rockets. One question remained--was that the smart way to take it? He wasn't ready to get seriously tangled up with any woman, maybe never would be.
He fell asleep before he found an answer.
Nothing went well in the morning. For a start, the oatmeal burned. Then it looked like the pack horse had taken lame, though digging a pebble out of the left hind hoof seemed to help.
Vala insisted on trying to saddle Susie Q by herself and wound up with the saddle sliding under the mare's belly. She snapped at him when he tried to help, so he let Davis show her.
Before they mounted up, a brightly colored gila monster, in all its beaded glory, darted into the camp area and, when it stopped temporarily on a rock, Davis hunkered down over it, fascinated. Bram was watching to see he didn't get too close when Vala finally spotted the lizard.
"Get away!" she screamed at Davis. "It's poisonous. It'll bite you."
Davis backed off with a scowl. There was none of his cheerful chatter after that. When they finally set off, they made a silent crew.