But inside, he had painted and bought new furniture, so that it seemed as if she was in a different house than the dreary one she’d broken into weeks before. In a side window, a new air conditioner hummed.
Joe explained, “I left it on yesterday. So it would be comfortable in here, just in case you came.” His voice was hesitant, almost shy.
“I see.” She felt shy herself, suddenly. She looked up, remembering the watermark that had been on the ceiling. Now there was no sign of it beneath a fresh coat of paint.
He seemed to read her question in the direction of her gaze. “I patched the roof, so it should be okay. If not—” he shrugged “—I’ll find out I’ve got problems when we get the
next good rain....Now, come on. Let’s get these groceries to the kitchen.” He led the way through the hall, and then together they set about putting the food away.
When they were done, she turned to him. “Joe, I really am impressed,” she said of the changes in the house. “You must have been working at this pretty steadily since...”
He gently finished for her. “The last time you were here?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“I guess I have, now that you mention it.”
“All this—” she made a gesture that encompassed the whole house and the weedless yard “—couldn’t have left you much time for chasing bad guys.”
“It hasn’t.”
“You’ve been taking some time off?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms. “Truth is, I’m considering a career change. Hunting down bail jumpers isn’t doing it for me anymore.” His voice was as casual as the way he leaned against the counter, but Claire sensed this subject troubled him more than he wanted to let on.
“Since Mexico?” she dared to ask.
She was pleased to see he didn’t tense when she mentioned the place where he’d watched a boy die. “Yeah, since then,” he answered without heat. “And probably before that. Skip tracing...” He paused at the use of the more current name for the business of bounty hunting, “Well, it’s a rough life. You’re out on your own with no one on your side. A lot of bounty hunters aren’t much more than borderline crooks themselves. I’d like to...maybe do more with my life.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Like what?”
Beneath her hand, she felt him stiffen. He chuckled, but his golden eyes turned hard. “Hell. Maybe I’ll run for president. Who knows?”
She felt a little hurt—and left out of the harsh joke. “Joe, I didn’t mean to—”
“Right. Sure.”
“All I asked was what you might do instead. Is there something wrong with my asking that? It seemed like a logical question.” She tried to pull her hand away.
He snared it so quickly she hardly saw him move. “Yeah. A logical question. And you said it so politely.’’
She was bewildered. One minute they’d been having a nice conversation, and then suddenly he’d turned defensive on her. “And just how else would I say it?”
“How about a little honesty? How about just saying what you’re thinking. You know, ‘Joe, are you crazy ? What else will you do? You barely made it through high school. How are you going to eat?’”
“That is not what I was thinking, and it’s unfair of you to assume it was.” She tried to jerk her hand from his grasp.
He held on. He said nothing for a moment as his hand held hers prisoner, and his eyes branded her. Then his expression softened. He spoke gently, regretfully. “I know.”
She was still hurt. “You know you were being unfair?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why did you do it? Why did you... attack me like that?”
“I’m thin-skinned about this. To be honest, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do for work if I give up what I know.”
Claire studied his lean face and then suggested, “Maybe we could just kick some ideas around. Explore the options. Talk about what you know and what you can do, and see what kind of jobs you might be able to apply your experience to.”
He was rolling his eyes. “Okay, okay. But later.”
“When?”
“Sometime in the next few days, all right?”
“Deal,” she said, pleased, hoping that when they did talk about this, she could be of help to him. He had done so much for her lately, she was beginning to feel there was no way she could repay him.
She relaxed, and felt his hand relax around her own. They smiled at each other.
And then he reeled her in by her captured hand, so she came up against him. Her breasts brushed his chest. She hitched in a breath and stared up at him.
“Claire?”
She moistened her lips. “Yes?”
He watched her mouth. “To tell the truth, there’s something else I’d rather do now than talk...”
He didn’t have to say more. She knew what was on his mind. It was clear in his amber eyes. Still, she wanted him to say more. She wanted him to say that he wanted her here as much as she wanted to be here, that he desired her as much as she desired him. She wanted all the beautiful words that lovers always want, including the words I love you, though she’d long ago accepted that she would never hear those words from Joe Tally’s lips.
“Hell, I...”
“Yes?”
“I... put your suitcase in the guest room, like I promised your mother.”
She smiled, knowing that what she and Joe wanted of each other was something mothers, in spite of all their righteous efforts, are rarely able to prevent. Still smiling, she touched his collar with her free hand and let her fingers trail up to caress his neck and the side of his jaw. His skin felt almost smooth. She realized he must have showered and shaved early this morning while she still slept.
Gruffly, he went on. “I also... took care of the contraception problem when we were in Grass Valley.”
She glanced away, and then back. From somewhere far off, her conscience chattered at her, insisting that it was dishonest not to tell him that contraception was totally unnecessary.
Claire shut the chatter out. She’d said nothing when he made the brief stop at the drugstore, though she’d known what he would buy there. She would say nothing now. This time with Joe was a lifeline for her. She would neither say nor do anything to endanger it.
Her life was coming apart. Was it so wrong, for a little while at least, to want the chance to simply feel and be?
Unaware of the battle her conscience was trying to put up, Joe released her hand and tenderly cupped her face. Then he began combing her hair in lingering strokes with his fingers.
The chatter of her conscience faded away to nothing as Claire clutched his strong shoulders and pressed closer against him.
“Claire, I want you.” He lowered his mouth and kissed her, and Claire forgot what the word conscience meant. Then his hands were sliding down her neck and over her shoulders. He began rubbing her back. “And I want to make love with you,” he said. “I want to make love with you now.”
She couldn’t find words. So she nodded instead.
Chapter Nine
Joe Tally looked down at Claire’s upturned, inviting face. Her lips were soft; they waited for his kisses. Her body leaned eagerly into his, as sweet and compliant as his was hard and hungry. Her dark eyes were shining.
He knew that what they were about to do was probably one massive mistake for everyone. It was not good for Claire, who had never been anything but kind and generous to him. It was dishonest to her mother, who had only gone along with his bringing Claire here because he had sworn that he and Claire were nothing more than friends.
And for himself, it was plain stupid. He’d always been careful to keep away from Claire—until that night several weeks ago, anyway. But that night he’d broken his own rule about her. He’d put his hands on her, he’d been inside her. And he’d spent too damn much time since then thinking about being inside her some more—and reminding himself how he’d sworn to both
of them that he wouldn’t do a thing like that again.
Yet here he was, with her in his arms. And nothing was going to stop him. He would do it again.
Plain stupid. Because, in the end, for her sake, he would have to give her up. And that was going to be grim.
“Joe?” Her sweet, flushed face showed concern. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
He put his hands on the curve of her back and pulled her so snugly into him that her breasts swelled full against his chest and he could feel the warm cove between her thighs, that hot and welcoming place where he most wanted to be.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he muttered. “Not a damn thing...” And he took her soft, waiting mouth with his own.
She sighed and opened for him. With his tongue, eager and knowing, he explored the moist place beyond her lips, starved for the taste of her, as he’d been since that first taste, all those weeks ago.
He kissed her for a long time, tasting her at his leisure, as they stood there against the kitchen counter. And then his hands found the buttons of her shirt and he slipped them quickly from their holes. With a hungry moan, he pushed the thing off her shoulders, revealing the sweet swells beneath, protected now only by her ivory-colored bra.
He cupped her breasts, and squeezed them, feeling for the response of her nipples, which rose and hardened like dark pearls in their lacy nest. And then, a little roughly, he fumbled for the clasp of the bra, found it, at last felt it give. He then slid the straps down her arms, so that her breasts were bare for him.
She let out a little sigh, as if she liked being bare for him. He sipped that sigh from her willing mouth in another extended, thoroughly arousing kiss.
Then he kissed his way downward, so he could get his mouth on her breasts, too, take the nipples beyond his hungry lips. As he suckled her, he felt her body yearning back and up, offering him everything, eager and so achingly, innocently carnal, that the taste of her was everything sexual—and everything pure.
He nuzzled his way over, so he could taste the other breast. And she offered it the same as she had the first, pushing herself so sweetly up against his mouth, sighing and holding his head to help him keep his hold.
As he had the last time, that night when she had come and brought her light and goodness into this darkened house, he wanted to touch her in that most intimate of places. He wanted her completely naked, at the command of his hands.
So he worked at her jeans, unhooking, unzipping, and finally sliding them and her panties down her slim legs. She helped him toward his goal, kicking off her shoes, kneeling to push off her socks and then rising again, stepping free of the hindering jeans. He pulled her close again and his hand slipped into that nest of curls, until he found the center of her desire. She was wet and eager, and he loved the way she stood on tiptoe, holding herself up for him, so he could love her body and make her moan.
But then she was pushing at his shoulders, murmuring half protests, and though he didn’t want to stop or even pause in what he did to her, he forced himself to pull back a little.
The minute he hesitated, he knew what she was up to. She wasn’t satisfied with being the only one without clothes on. Eagerly, like a child with a large present, she began to unwrap him. She yanked his shirt from his pants and, with little urgings and cooings, she slid it up and away. She knelt— he stared, aroused as hell, at the beautiful curve of her back—and she pulled off his boots and then his socks. Slowly, rubbing herself along his legs and body, she stood once more to unsnap his jeans, parting the plackets with an adorable little sigh, and then slithering them down his hips and off, taking his briefs along, too.
Then she took a step back. “It does look like it’s healing well, ’ ’ she said huskily.
He stared at her, uncomprehending, until she placed her lips on the red, puckered scar at his shoulder where that bullet he’d got in Mexico had gone clean through.
“Yes, it’s fine.” He heard himself groan. And he gathered her close, feeling the whole nude length of her against him and thinking that it was worth it to live thirty-two grim and dreary years for this moment and the few like it they might share in the next brief days alone together.
He held her tighter, as if he could squeeze out the thought that their days here were numbered, that what they were doing would have an end. Now was not the time to think of endings.
She squirmed a little. “Joe?” she asked, sensing his dark thoughts. He made soothing noises and loosened his hold.
As soon as he did that, she slipped around him. Laughing, she disappeared into the hall.
He followed where she led him: to his own bedroom, pausing only for a detour to the bathroom, where he found the condoms he’d put away when he carried her suitcase to the guest room.
With the needed protection in hand, he went into his own room and stood in the doorway. She was stretched out on her side across the bed, smiling, her eyes dreamy, her body pale and pure as her name: Snow. Softly, in that polite voice bred into her as a Snow and a somebody in her community, she complimented the new easy chair in the comer as well as the king-size bed on which she lay.
Never taking his eyes from her, he approached the bed. He wanted her so much, it hurt. His manhood stood out, hard and ready. She watched him come, her eyes meeting his. And when he reached her, she held out her hand.
After seeing that she was protected from pregnancy, he set the rest of the condoms aside, and took the hand she offered. He went down, beside her, and then, at her tender urging, he kissed her and rose over her.
She wrapped her beautiful legs around him, and she pulled him down again, this time into the sweet heart of her softness. He went willingly, sighing, holding himself back enough that she could fully take him at her own pace. He found he was more in control this time than that other time, when his need for her had been the need of a drowning man for air.
He held his weight on his hands and thighs enough that she could set the rhythm, and when he felt it and knew it, he moved with her, a slow, heating build of sensation, one that he was able to sustain for an eternity of ever-mounting ecstasy.
But then the rhythm changed. Her movements became hard and frantic. He allowed himself to surrender to the insistence of her hips meeting his. His need grew in tandem with hers. They moved together, rolling, from one side of the big bed to the other, until, finally, he was on top once more.
He drove into her. She took all of him. She cried out, and her body closed around him with her completion, tight and so sweet he thought he might die. She held him so hard, forever it seemed, and then, with a long sigh, she began to relax.
Her sudden total softness, her utter surrender, was the finish of him. His climax came like something sucked out of him. He pushed into her. She opened fully. His mind spun away as his body knew an utter, numbing release.
He collapsed on top of her. She wrapped her arms around him and held him to her heart.
He lay there, thinking what he knew he shouldn’t, what he was going to have to be very careful never to say aloud to her: that she had shown him twice now what beauty and wonder there could be in this troubled, hurtful world. That in her arms, however briefly, he’d found something he’d never thought to know.
She breathed his name against his skin. Gently he rolled away and then gathered her into his body. She sighed. With a cherishing hand, he brushed damp tendrils of hair from her forehead.
“Oh, Joe. I feel so peaceful. I could just drift off to sleep right here....”
He murmured his agreement and closed his eyes.
A while later, they got up and showered together and went out to the kitchen looking for something to eat. They made fat sandwiches, poured milk, and sat at the table together.
As they ate, she asked him questions—about his mother, and his father, and what growing up was like for him. Joe found it wasn’t hard at all to answer any question she asked.
He talked for hours, and she listened to every damn word. He told her how his father brought his mother
to the ranch to live, and then kicked her out when he found out what she was. He talked of the years he lived with his mother, about all the men, in and out all hours of the night—until she finally found a man she thought she loved. He was a mean sonofabitch, and Joe had the scars to prove it. In the end, partly to keep from losing that man and partly to protect her son, Belinda Sweeney dropped Joe off with John Tally.
Joe told Claire, “My father was...a quiet man. He didn’t know how to...show himself to other people. I think he took one chance, with my mother. And when he walked in on her with someone else, he never took a chance like that again. Folks thought he was crazy, because he would come into town and turn away, mumbling and looking freaked when people would try to talk to him. But... contact just scared him, I think. Hell, I guess I don’t really know. He came here from Kansas alone. If I’ve got other family, I don’t know who they are.
“I could never get through to him. He wouldn’t talk, you know? But the day he came and stuttered out that he wanted to make me his legal son, I knew what I meant to him. And that was enough.”
Claire asked softly, “Where is your mother now?”
“She’s dead, too. I got a letter from one of her girlfriends. About six years ago now. Lung cancer. She never would give up those smokes.”
“Did you hate her?’’
He smiled. “Nah. I loved her. She was so damn beautiful.”
Evidently, Claire had heard that before. She nodded. “That’s what they all say. In town. That she was beautiful and bad.”
He shook his head. “I think she was lost, more than bad. It was like she was looking desperately for something, and she just never could find it. Maybe, finally, she did find it. I hope so.”
They were lying across his bed together at this point, looking at the few pictures in his father’s one dog-eared album. She pointed at a studio portrait of a wide-eyed little boy. “That’s you. It is, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t have been more than three. My mother had it taken, I guess. She sent a bunch of old pictures of me in the mail, after she left me with my dad. I think this was one of them.”
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