A Man Without Love

by Beverly Bird

  His jaw clenched hard as he eased away from her. Not yet. Not now. She wouldn’t whimper and complain, but she deserved more. If for no other reason, she deserved everything he could give her.

  She wrapped her legs around him, refusing to let him go, and he knew he was lost.

  Catherine dug her fingers into his skin where the hard, perfect angles of his waist tapered down. “Now,” she moaned. “God, please, now.”

  He rose above her, and his strong, hard face filled her vision. He gave a guttural roar of defeat and plunged into her. In the last moment he had the stunning sense that he was sealing his destiny.

  She had never dreamed that it could be like this. Raw and hungry, needs discovered and quenched in the same breath, new ones exploding and demanding to be met. He filled her and she felt herself closing around him. With his arms strong and straight, he drove into her until there was nothing but pounding urgency, until her nails dragged frantic trails in his flesh.

  Harder, faster...she thought she screamed, but her breath was snagged, trapped somewhere in the tensing, tightening knot inside her. The stars swirled above her, sparkling and winking even when she finally closed her eyes. Then they erupted in color, as the knot inside her broke and shattered.

  His arms came hard around her, and he followed her over the edge.

  * * *

  “Be careful.” His voice was muffled against her neck. “Look over your right shoulder.”

  She did, and her breath flew out of her body again. Vertigo swam through her. “God.”

  “I’d guess he probably has something to do with the fact that we’re still up here. The pope must have put in a good word for you, Cat Eyes. I’m going to move now. You stay still.”

  He eased off her. Catherine couldn’t have moved if she had wanted to. Her eyes were glued to the butte edge where it fell away sharply, just inches from her right hip.

  The cold air rushed at her when he was gone, but she didn’t care. Then he took hold of her left hand. “Roll toward me.”

  She didn’t roll—she leaped, coming to her feet in one motion with a death grip on his hand. Then she stared at him as he bent to grab their jeans. He was as calm as if he had just risen from his own bed.

  “Didn’t you know?” she gasped.

  “I did.”

  “Then why didn’t you move us away from there?”

  “Can’t say it was uppermost in my thoughts. Besides, it added an edge to things.”

  “You’re out of your mind!”

  He gave her that look again, too serious, too steady. “Must be.” He handed her her jeans. “You sorry?”

  If she was, then he was all wrong about her, and for a moment he felt something like real fear roll inside him where there had been nothing but hunger and heat before. Once he would have taken her for the type who would have worried and fretted about what road this might lead them down. But he thought that the Cat Eyes he had come to know would simply accept that they were on it and navigate it as best she could.

  “No,” she answered, and he breathed again. “But I might have been if I had died for it.” She looked back at the butte edge again.

  A corner of his mouth lifted. “Could have sworn there were a couple moments there when you wouldn’t have cared.”

  No, she thought, she hadn’t cared about anything at all but him. Too late, she ran her hand fleetingly across her scar as she zipped her jeans. It really was little more than a flesh wound, an angry red crease. Still, she had no doubt that if he looked at it closely in the light, he would know it for what it was.

  Jericho’s eyes narrowed as he watched her hand skim that place at her hip. Was that what she had been so skittish about the first time he had nearly undressed her in the canyon? A surgical scar? He’d noticed it—had felt it really—when he had pulled her jeans off, but then he hadn’t given it another thought. But it must embarrass her, he thought, even if such self-consciousness didn’t fit with what he was coming to know of her.

  Then again, there was that unaccountable part of her that had developed a taste for french-vanilla coffee as well.

  “I’ve got to go by the windmill yet,” he said as he finished dressing. “I can’t take you with me.”

  She pulled her jacket on. “I’ve met Lance.”

  “Yeah, but you embarrassed the hell out of him, Cat Eyes. No offense, but you’re not high on his hit parade at the moment.”

  She flushed, then shrugged, helping him gather up the wine and the Doritos and trash. “Nothing I like better than long, lingering romance after sex.”

  He grabbed her arm as she bent for the paper bag, pulling her upright again. “I can’t give you that,” he said tightly. “I’m not that kind of man.”

  His eyes were so intense that something began heating in her all over again. “I know,” she said quietly.

  “I won’t bring you flowers and I won’t serenade you at your bedroom window. Hell, I don’t even know what’s going to happen between us next. But I’m game to find out, if you are, and I can promise you this...” He had both her arms now, tight in his hard hands. “If you ever decide to let me in on your secrets, I’ll protect them. I’ll be there if you need a friend.”

  Catherine swallowed carefully. “If I doubted that, I wouldn’t be here.”

  He was quiet for a long time. “No, I don’t think you would.”

  Finally he dropped her arms. “Come on,” he said, going back to the Rover. “If Lance starts on a second bottle I’ll never get him sober, and Ida’ll feed him to the goats.”

  They bounced back down to the road, crossed it and headed over the desert again bearing west. It was a short ride as the crow flew. Moments later, he pulled up in front of the trailers. He went into the clinic to get what he needed for Lance’s inevitable headache. Catherine waited for him outside.

  He closed the door hard behind him and thumped down the steps again, pausing in front of her. His mouth quirked in a smile, then he brushed his lips very softly over hers. It almost undid her. He might not bring her flowers, but he had a special sweet-hard romanticism all his own.

  “See you in the morning,” he said quietly. “Sleep.”

  She sighed. “I’m beat. Even if my brain says no—” and she was pretty sure it would “—I don’t think my body will cooperate.”

  “Go inside before I leave so I know you’re safe.”

  “Bogeymen and chindis again?” she quipped, but in truth she didn’t mind. She was so very tired of looking back over her own shoulder all the time. It was like a yawn after a long, hard day, to have him do it for her.

  She left him and went to her own trailer. He waited until she had locked the door behind her, but Catherine only went to the side window, over the sink, to watch in the darkness as he drove off.

  He headed north on the main road. She watched until his taillights faded to pinpoints in the distance, then she let out a shaky sigh. She didn’t even know where he lived. Where would he go to close his own eyes and sleep? To a hogan, isolated in the desert? To one of the trailer conclaves, so he would be accessible to the people who needed him?

  She had known a multitude of things about Victor—or thought she had. How could she possibly be falling for a man when she didn’t even know where he lived?

  The thought jolted her. She hit the light switch over the sink to dispel it with the darkness, then she recoiled with a thin shriek.

  The sink was full of water. Floating lifelessly on top was an effigy doll of herself.

  She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. The door had been locked. She’d had to find her key to get in. She whipped around again, her nape prickling, but no one was behind her.

  She hadn’t noticed in the darkness, but the trailer was a shambles. Hot, furious tears welled in her eyes. She turned back to the sink, plunged her hand into the icy water and grabbed the doll. She was loathe to touch it and just as afraid not to look at it more closely.

  Its neck was skewed at an awkward angle, clearly broken. Catheri
ne moaned. Clippings of what looked to be her hair were glued to its head. She ran her free hand spasmodically through her own. How? She hadn’t even slept in two nights! How could anyone have possibly gotten hold of her hair without her being aware of it?

  Then she noticed that the doll was dressed in a crude imitation of the swimsuit she had worn on the day she had finally fled from Victor, blood seeping from the crease in her side. Her head spun badly and she had to grope her way back to the bed to sit down before she fainted.

  She leaned over and put her head down between her legs. The message was clear. She had been inordinately lucky to escape the first time. The next time would be a different story.

  When her head felt clearer, she straightened again, looking about. Then she scowled at the ransacked condition of the trailer.

  Had the intruder been looking for something? She had nothing here that Victor might feel it was important to get back—nothing but the last of the thousand dollars she had saved in the weeks before she had run. She stood up and reached beneath the mattress, pulling out the envelope, counting it with shaking hands. Roughly five hundred dollars after airfare and expenses. It was all still there.

  She frowned at the blanket on the bed. It had not been ripped back as it might have been if someone had torn it apart to search for something. It was sort of wadded in the middle. She looked about again. The table was knocked over—but it had been unsteady to start with. The refrigerator door was agape, and some food had been dragged out. She grimaced at the small bag containing the last of her coffee. It was torn open and destroyed.

  Suddenly she stiffened. A faint scratching sound came from the bathroom.

  She hurried away, back to the other side of the trailer. “Who’s there?” She was amazed at how forceful her voice sounded. But then, she wasn’t totally at the intruder’s mercy, she realized. She had Jercho’s gun.

  She slid open one of the kitchen drawers. Her hand closed over the weapon and she found the speed-loader without taking her eyes off the bathroom door. She rammed the bullets home blindly and aimed it, but something was wrong here.

  The door was ajar and that bathroom was small, barely big enough for her to turn around in without bumping into her shadow. The light was off, but surely if someone were in there she would see them.

  Suddenly the shower curtain ballooned and the little plastic rings at the top rattled.

  “Come out of there,” she snapped. “Slowly. So help me, if your hands aren’t up over your head, I’ll blast you.”

  The intruder cooperated. The rings rattled again and it half leaped over the bottom lip of the enclosure, getting hung up halfway before it wrestled its way free again.

  A possum?

  Suddenly Catherine was shaking so badly her teeth clacked together. She put the gun down carefully on the counter.

  A possum. No wonder the place looked less searched than simply torn apart.

  “Shoo,” she managed. “Go on.” Then it occurred to her that it might be rabid. Wild nocturnal animals normally showed more fright when they were trapped, especially in such light. But this one only stared back at her with shiny little eyes. It didn’t look dazed and panicked at all, but measuring.

  She took up the gun again, moving carefully for the door. She reached sideways, struggled with the lock without looking at it, and flung it open.

  “Get!” she tried again.

  Its upper lip trembled. It bared its teeth, snarling, then it launched itself toward her.

  Catherine screamed and pulled the trigger. She hit it, she knew she hit it. Droplets of blood spattered on the bed behind it. It squealed, a sound that froze her blood. Then it flew past her out the door.

  She whipped around to look after it, watching to see if it would drop. The gun was only a .22, but the possum wasn’t a big animal. Yet it seemed to gather steam as it ran, going faster and faster and faster, finally disappearing into the desert. Slowly, carefully, Catherine closed the door again.

  She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to think. In the aftermath of adrenaline, she swayed with fatigue.

  She took the remaining bullets out of the gun, returning them meticulously to the speed-loader, and stumbled back to the bed. No, not there. She looked at the blood, at the doll she had left there, at the rumpled blanket, and her stomach churned.

  It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t sleep tonight either.

  She sat down on the floor, her back to the kitchen cupboards. She drew her knees up and hugged them to her chest.

  Sometime before dawn she surprised herself. Her head fell forward and she dozed out of sheer exhaustion.

  Chapter 12

  She woke with a cry when the door crashed open. Her head snapped up and she banged it squarely on the wood behind her.

  “What’s wrong?” Jericho growled. “Why aren’t you at the clinic?”

  Then he seemed to notice the condition of the trailer. His gaze shot around and he crossed to her, hauling her to her feet. His hand found her hair and he pulled it just enough that she had to look up into his face.

  “When did this happen?” he asked more quietly, but his voice still vibrated with tension. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I found it this way when I got in last night.” She intended to ease away from him, if for no other reason than caution. It still troubled her that she was falling for him, fast and hard, when she knew so little about him, when she didn’t even know where he went at night or who he went there with. But she found that she was reluctant to let go of him. She realized that whether she knew myriad details about him or not, the only times she hadn’t been afraid in these past months were the moments she had spent in his arms.

  She dug her fingers into the worn leather of his jacket instead. Then she flinched when he snapped at her again.

  “Why didn’t you yell for me to come back?”

  “The way you drive?” Then she shook her head and sighed. “I didn’t turn the lights on right away. You were long gone before I saw what had happened.”

  Finally, she let go of him and stepped away. “Where’s Ellen?” she asked. She went to peer through the door he had left open, but she didn’t see the nurse outside.

  “How should I know?” He looked around at the trailer again almost bemusedly.

  “Didn’t you bring her this morning?”

  “Thought about what you said and decided it might be better if she got her car fixed. I called Eddie Begay from home and sent him over to her place.”

  The news should have cheered her, but it only made her gnaw her lip. “Could she have done this?”

  His gaze came back to her and it was blank. “Ellen? No way.”

  “But Shadow told me she doesn’t like Anglo externs and doctors.”

  Jericho thought about it. “Well, she doesn’t. They don’t respect her native talents so she has a hard time respecting their views. But she wouldn’t try to scare you off. For one thing, even if she got rid of you, the IHS would just send another to take your place. It’s not you personally she doesn’t like, but the whole situation.”

  “But what about...I mean, if the service sent someone else, that person wouldn’t necessarily be one you’d...you’d...” She flushed and trailed off. She didn’t know how to finish.

  His mouth quirked. She realized he was enjoying her discomfiture.

  “One I’d what?” he asked softly, crossing to her. He put his hand under her chin and tilted her head back again. “I thought about you all night.” He studied her face for a moment, looking for something, then his lips grazed hers.

  “Yes, that,” she breathed.

  Suddenly his mouth closed over hers, fully and hot. His tongue slid past her teeth, and her womb ached with wanting him. Now? How could he possibly make her react like this when someone was hunting her and rabid animals were running loose in her trailer?

  His mouth left hers. “You do something to me, Cat Eyes,” he said huskily. “Next time will be different, I promise you.”

  “Di
fferent?” She felt dazed.

  “I won’t let you drive me past control. I’ll love you all over until the sun comes up.”

  Her heart slammed and her blood swirled and she was ready for him again. She dug her fingers into his waist. “Will there be a next time?” Tell me there will. Tell me it’s now.

  He gave a hoarse laugh. “No doubt.”

  Suddenly she felt him stiffen. She twisted to look over her shoulder, following his gaze. He was staring at the effigy doll on the bed.

  “What’s that?”

  Catherine shrugged, feeling oddly fragile. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you. Apparently I had two intruders—one who left that and one who did this.” She waved a hand at the trailer. “The latter was a possum—rabid, I think.”

  He let go of her, crossed to the bed and grabbed the doll. “It’s your hair.” Red glinted through the black curls in the sun that came through the window.

  “I...it can’t be.”

  He bit out a dark, violent oath. “The hell it’s not. Tell me about this possum.”

  “It was in the shower, rummaging around in there. When it heard my voice it came out and I shot it.” She stiffened at the look on his face. “Did you have to promise I wouldn’t shoot animals to get that permit? It snarled at me. It was going to bite me. I had no choice.”

  “Where?”

  “Where what?”

  “Where did you shoot it?”

  “Dead on.”

  “And?”

  “It ran like hell.”

  He looked at the blood spattering the bed, noticing it for the first time. “Where’s the bullet?”

  “The bullet?” she repeated dumbly. “Well, it’s there someplace, I guess. It would have to have been a clear-through shot for it to run like that. At least with people, the fatal ones are usually those that get trapped inside, tangling up with vital organs.”

  He began tearing the bed apart. He shook the blanket and the sheets, but nothing fell out. He threw them at the middle of the floor and examined the mattress.