by Jane Toombs
All her concern about the possibility of somebody coming and finding them in the pool fled as she melted into the kiss.
Bram had her just where he wanted her--in his arms and naked. Her skin was so very white where the sun didn't reach, white and soft and arousing to caress. Pauline's soap had a faint herbal aroma which mingled pleasantly with Vala's own scent. He wanted her as acutely as he had the night before, with the added edge of having learned how passionate she could be.
He'd had vague dreams when he was young of finding out what she was like under that aloof manner of hers. What he'd finally discovered all these years later was beyond his wildest imaginings.
She was not going to be easy to forget.
Once they were locked together, the world vanished, except for Vala. Rockets didn't begin to describe the way she made him feel. He couldn't get enough of her. He wanted their love-making to last and last. Forever.
When he finally peaked and came down, he still didn't want to let her go, but he was afraid she might be getting cold, wet as they both were. With considerable reluctance, he released her.
As they quickly finished washing, she said to him, "I'm perfectly aware you planned this from the very beginning. What does it take to stop you from doing something you've made up your mind to do--a legal document?"
He grinned at her, "Are you complaining?"
She flushed, but looked him in the eye. "Wouldn't you be surprised if I said yes."
"Under oath?"
"This isn't a courtroom."
"And I couldn't be more grateful. After all, I don't have my tie handy."
"I doubt the judge would be any more lenient if you did have it here." She giggled. "I can just see you naked, but wearing the tie, trying to explain how you seduced a poor innocent maiden."
"Easy. I'd explain you were a princess and so everything that happened was your fault because I was a carefree frog until you kissed me."
It warmed him to watch Vala laugh.
When they were dressed and had remounted the horses, she asked, "Do you think you'll ever go back to being an attorney?
"I don't rule it out. But not at the moment. Why?"
"Curiosity. I know it must have taken a lot of hard work to get that law degree and pass the bar exam."
"In a way, you drove me to it."
"Me? What on earth do you mean?"
"Once I was a lawyer, the Channings would no longer think I wasn't good enough for their daughter. Something like that."
Taken aback, Vala said, "I can't believe I was that important to you in those days."
"Actually, what I needed to do crystalized for me after our unhappy night of misunderstandings. At the time, it seemed to me law school was the answer."
"So it wasn't me, exactly."
"Don't abdicate responsibility for turning me into a respectable citizen."
"Which you didn't enjoy being?"
"There's such a thing as too respectable. If I hadn't learned that on my own, Sheba, my Siamese cat, would have taught me in her own fashion."
"Back then you always acted as though you knew what you were doing, but I was such a wimpy kid," Vala said. "Not till I divorced Neal did I finally learn to stick up for myself. If I'd learned it before I met him, I'd have had enough sense not to marry him."
Bram knew he might be pushing it, but he really wanted to know. "Did you love him?"
She hesitated before answering. "Looking back I'd say no. Infatuated is closer. Neal was a take-charge person and I realize now I simply let him take charge of me, of every facet of our life--until Davis was born. You might say mother love gave me a clear look at the man who was my son's father and I didn't like what I saw. But it took me two more years to get up enough courage to end the marriage."
"You seem to be standing pretty firmly on your own feet now."
"Thank Davis for that. Single moms have to learn to be assertive. Now it's my turn to ask you. Have you ever been in love?"
"To use your term--an infatuation or so, nothing lasting."
Vala didn't say anything for a bit, then she zinged one at him. "Was Lori the Ice Maiden one of them?"
He laughed. "Frozen sherbet's never been one of my favorites."
"You kissed her."
"To win a bet, as you reminded me. I kissed a lot of girls back then."
"But not me."
"Whose fault is that?"
"Maybe the Trickster's."
Vala's tone was light but her words triggered a memory he didn't know he had. The two of them, his father and him, a child, somewhere in the desert on a hot day, driving to see his grandmother.
"Mom misses you," little Bram had said.
"I miss her, too," his dad replied.
"Then how come you don't stay home?"
"The Trickster made me a wanderer and your mother a homebody. I can't stay in one place any more than she can put up with always traveling. It's not easy for either of us."
The child Bram had been didn't quite understand, even though he knew about the Trickster.
He thought he understood now. They must have loved each other, his mother and father, but had been too different to be able to live together.
What other memories of his father had he repressed into forgetfulness? He'd always blamed his old man for making him live like a kid without a father. For not being there to applaud his successes or help him through his failures.
For neglecting him.
Unsettled by the direction his thoughts were taking him, Bram shoved them aside.
"How are your parents?" he asked Vala.
"My dad's still alive. Retired and living in Florida. Mom's been dead three years. I really miss her. She's the only one who supported my divorcing Neal. Dad thought I was giving up security for chaos. Which wasn't far from the truth for a while there. How about your mother?"
"She's living in California with her sister. My father died before I finished law school."
How, he thought, can you miss a man who was never there? A man you resented? Yet he did.
At last they came to the place where Pauline had told them the plants would be growing and found she was right.
As Bram grubbed for the roots, he said, "We did this backward. Should've done the digging first, then the bathing. Of course, we could stop on the way back...."
"In your dreams."
He put down the trowel, made a grab for her and kissed her so thoroughly he managed to get himself aroused. "Guess it'll have to be here, then," he murmured into her ear, only half teasing her.
"You are so bad," she told him, pushing away. "What's Pauline going to think when we come back with only two roots?"
"The truth, probably. I figure she deliberately split our search for the plants into two so she could send us off twice to be alone together."
Vala blinked, then nodded. "I should have realized that."
Her unconcern--she didn't care if Pauline knew they'd been making love--puzzled her. Meeting Bram again had turned her world upside down, no doubt of that. Proper Vala had shed inhibitions like leaves from a maple in the fall. And had fun doing it.
Although fun wasn't exactly the right word. Not even close, really. Making love with Bram was like nothing she'd ever experienced. It was so addictive that she kept wanting more and more.
"We can't keep on doing this," she protested when he reached for her again.
"Why not? Tell me you don't want me."
She'd have to lie to do that. About to succumb to the magic of being in his arms, she caught movement from the corner of her eye and froze, staring at a huge black and hairy spider no more than a foot away.
"Tarantula!" she cried, leaping to her feet.
Bram rose more slowly. "They're harmless."
"How can you say that when you know they're poisonous?" Vala kept her gaze fixed on the giant spider, now scurrying away from them toward a clump of cacti.
"If one does happen to bite you, it'd be no worse that a bee sting. Black widows are far more deadly."
She had no doubt Bram, an expert when it came to the Superstitions and what lived here, was right, but it didn't make her any less wary. "Tarantulas look dangerous," she muttered.
Poisonous or not, the spider's appearance put an end to even the thought of love-making in tarantula territory, at least as far as Vala was concerned. They finished gathering roots and rode back toward Pauline's singing a song from the time they were teens about flying away.
Vala felt as though she'd done that--flown away from who she was. A line from the song stuck in her mind, "...can't go back, never go back..."
She wouldn't want to. Bram had set something free she never realized she had. If she could just think about that instead of the trip ending and leaving Arizona. Leaving Bram.
"I remember listening to you play that tune on your guitar in the school parking lot," she said.
"Did you ever wonder if I was playing it for you?"
Vala laughed. "Joker."
"You're right. I was playing it for myself. To get attention. I wouldn't want to see Davis go down that road. The problem is to hold the attention, you have to get wilder and wilder, until you'd rather not remember what all you did."
"He won't be like that!"
Bram shook his head. "I hope not. My mother didn't think I would, either. She was and is a good woman who did her best." He didn't add that what he'd needed was a father, partly because he didn't want to reveal so much, but also because Davis obviously needed one, too.
Unfortunately, Vala could do nothing about the creep who'd fathered Davis and then refused to accept the kid. So what if your son didn't measure up to what you wanted? The important thing was to help him grow in ways he could.
His own father might not have been around much but when he did show up, he never belittled. Any belittling, Bram realized, had been in his mind, not in any word or deed of his father's.
As clearly as if he'd heard his father speak, words came into his head. "Doesn't matter what you do as long as you're true to yourself."
He'd heard those words when he was too young to understand and had taken them as a license for wildness. Hadn't remembered them in years. Only now did he realize what his father had been trying to tell him.
"Did anyone ever tell you to be true to yourself?" he asked Vala.
"Not that I--" She paused. "On second thought, maybe that's what my mother meant when she said if I felt in my heart it was right to divorce Neal, then I should go ahead."
"This trip is turning into a confession session," Bram said, thinking he'd already told her far more about himself than he'd ever revealed to anyone. Too damn much.
"That's because it's so easy to talk to you about anything and everything," she told him.
He nodded. She'd hit the nail on the head. She was easy for him to talk to as well. Good thing the trip would soon be over or the devil only knew what she might hear next from him.
Once the trip ended, though, Vala would leave. But they still had tonight to be alone together, he told himself.
Once more night of holding her in the moonlight, of making love....
"Full moon tonight," he said.
"I hadn't forgotten." He smiled at the promise in her voice.
When they reached the cabin, Pauline checked over the roots they'd brought back, admitted they were the right ones, but added, "Took you long enough to get this lot."
"Yeah," Davis chimed in. "It's way after lunch. We been waiting for you to come back. Pauline needs to tell you guys something about the next marker on the map."
Pauline explained that she figured the snake drawing on the map was meant to be the long squiggly rock formation that used to be called the rattler. "Ain't there no more," she finished. "Broke off a couple years ago into pieces." She looked at Bram. "You ever see it?"
He shook his head.
"Then I best tell you how to find where it was," Pauline said. "What you do is take the trail up to the bear, then look for another trail leading off to your left...."
While Pauline went on giving directions to Bram, Vala fixed her attention on her son. "How's your sore behind?" she asked.
"Real good. Pauline said I could ride at least as far as where the snake used to be. She thinks Bram did real good getting every sticker out and not leaving any part still in me 'cause then it festers." He lowered his voice, "She told me we got to be careful tomorrow but she thinks we may be okay on account of Mokesh was my friend."
Vala wasn't quite sure what he meant. "Careful because of your accident with the cactus spines?"
His "Nope," sounded so much like Bram's that she smiled.
Davis hesitated before going on, obviously torn between telling all and wanting to hold onto his secret for a while longer. "Maybe we should wait and see," he said finally. "Pauline says a lot of times that's all you can do anyway."
Vala couldn't argue with that.
They had red beans and rice Creole fashion for supper with Indian bread. Vala watched with amazement while picky eater Davis—"I hate hot stuff, Mom"--cleaned his plate. "Pauline used to live in New Orleans," Davis said. "She let me help her cook supper. Did you know there's voodoo down in Louisiana? They even sell the stuff to make voodoo with in stores. Pauline says most of it's fake, except for once in a while."
Vala decided to leave well enough alone and keep her mouth shut. Some form of voodoo belief probably did exist in New Orleans. Since Pauline had already assured Davis it was fake--or most of it, anyway--she'd do best not to go into her stock reminder of what was real and what wasn't.
"Pauline and me," Davis added, "we'd rather believe like the Ndee." He looked at Bram. "Tangible's when you can touch something--right? You said gold was tangible. You said the treasure might not be tangible. Pauline told me you were right. What I want to know is what good is treasure you can't touch?"
"How would Mokesh answer that question?" Bram asked.
Davis thought for a moment before replying. "He'd probably tell me one of his stories, the kind I only sort-of could understand. He'd wouldn't ever explain them, all he'd say was, 'Wait, and you'll know.'"
"That's as good an answer as I can give you--wait."
From the look on Davis's face, Vala saw he wasn't satisfied. She decided it was time to divert the talk into another channel.
"Are you all packed for tomorrow?" she asked Davis.
At his head shake, she said, "Better get to it now. No point in wasting time in the morning."
"I'm gonna sleep outside in the tent so I can get ready real quick," he told her.
Without intending it, her gaze caught Bram's and he lifted his shoulders slightly in a resigned shrug. They wouldn't be alone under the full moon tonight.
Which was just as well, she tried to tell herself as she helped Pauline clear the table. She'd already lost far too much of her common sense in Bram's arms.
By the time the three of them left the cabin for their nearby camp, Davis was yawning. He hardly argued when Vala told him it was time to bed down, diving obediently into the tent.
"How about you?" Bram asked her. "Tent or stars?"
"We can't--" she began.
He interrupted. "I know that. But Davis won't be upset if you decide to sleep under the stars."
Bram and she could share that much, she told herself. They could enjoy the night and the stars and the moon together. The romance of it appealed to her.
After giving Davis time to fall asleep, Vala slipped into the tent, undressed, donned her grungy old sweats and emerged with her sleeping bag. She spread it near Bram but not close enough to be able to reach out and touch him.
They lay for a time in their separate sleeping bags, bathed in the moon's silvery light and looking up at the night sky.
"Now I remember which two stars in the Big Dipper point to the north star," she said finally. "Those two there, by the handle." She didn't admit the reason she couldn't come up with the answer the night before was because she was lost in his embrace.
The stars were beautiful to
look at but they were far off. Bram, beautiful in his own way, lay here almost within reach but, under the circumstances, as far away as the stars. He hadn't offered to kiss her good night. She knew why as well as he did. Neither would ever be satisfied with one kiss, not any more, not when they knew...
Vala sighed and shifted inside her sleeping bag. Frustration was not a companionable emotion.
Bram heard her sigh and knew the reason as surely as if she'd told him. They both would be better off with her inside the tent rather than here where she was barely out of reach. He felt on fire with need for her. Damn, but the woman had gotten under his skin.
If they did make love, chances were good Davis would sleep through it. What if he didn't, though? The kid had enough problems without being confronted with an adult issue like love-making. Wouldn't be fair to the boy.
Good kid. He wouldn't do anything to hurt him.
Bram half-smiled. In this case altruism sure as hell paved the way to frustration. He wasn't at all sure he could last the night this close to Vala without touching her.
After a time, a scraping sound tensed him. He sat up to look around and saw Davis dragging his sleeping bag out of the tent toward them.
"Hey, Mom," Davis said to Vala, as he wedged his sleeping bag in between the two of them, "how come you didn't tell me you were gonna sleep out here? You guys get to have all the fun."
Chapter 9
With Davis in his sleeping bag between her and Bram, Vala finally relaxed and slept, the temptation to reach out to Bram gone.
In the morning, they ate a quick breakfast in the cabin. Pauline followed them out and drew Davis aside while they were packing up to leave. Vala couldn't hear what she said, though it evidently surprised Davis because Vala heard his startled "Whoa!" very clearly.
He listened some more and then nodded. "Okay, I won't forget," he assured Pauline. About to turn away, he added, "I wish we lived closer to you."
"Things are as they are," Pauline said. "But remember, boy, conditions are always changing for man and beast alike."
She waved to them all, reentered her cabin and closed the door, not waiting for them to ride off.