A Man Without a Wife

by Beverly Bird

“It happens every month,” Dallas pointed out.

  “No. The pink color doesn’t. Neither does the ring. And it’s usually too cloudy or the desert dust gets blown up so you can’t see it when it does happen. But once in a while it’s like this, clear and visible.” She swallowed carefully.

  “And?” Dallas prodded. There was something else. Again, he could sense it.

  “The People believe it’s an omen,” she said stiffly. “The pink light hides things right beneath your nose. But when it clears, it marks a time when everything comes to light, when secrets and mysteries are understood.”

  “Right away?” Dallas asked. “Like a snap of the fingers or a light bulb going on?”

  “No. Before the moon turns full.”

  “How long before that happens?” Ricky asked.

  “About two weeks,” Dallas told him.

  This time she did get up, but she didn’t run. She hugged herself and wandered off alone into the darkness.

  Dallas watched her go, scowling. He was getting very good at reading her expressions, he thought, no matter how fast they flashed over her features. And this time, in the firelight and the glow of the warrior’s moon, he had seen fear.

  Chapter 13

  When Ellen finally returned to the camp, Ricky was asleep inside his tent. Dallas was outside, poking at the last of their fire with a stick. She tried halfheartedly to dodge into her own tent, murmuring a good-night, but he stopped her.

  “Walk over to the creek with me.”

  Where Ricky won’t wake up and hear us, she finished for him.

  She followed him mutely. The creek bed was snarled with trees and he leaned his back against one, positioning himself so that he could easily keep an eye on the place where Ricky slept. It was such a subtle thing, but she knew that if she had handpicked a man to be Ricky’s father, she could never, ever have asked for more than Dallas Lazo.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said finally, “and I’m getting tired of trying to guess what it might be.”

  She flinched a little, but there was no use denying it. She nodded.

  “Why?” he prompted when she didn’t answer. “What?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him, and knew in that moment that when she did she would never see him again. She would never see either of them again. It was in the way he kept one eye on the tents, protecting his son. It had been in his rage when Ricky’s room had been vandalized. Never, ever would he take any chances with something that might hurt the boy. Even if he didn’t feel betrayed by her secret—and she was sure that he would—he still wouldn’t risk having Ricky learn of such a staggering revelation.

  And she couldn’t blame him.

  “Not yet,” she whispered.

  Until she heard her own voice she wasn’t aware that she had spoken aloud. But the echo of her words banged around in her head, gaining fury and heat with each ricochet. She still had some time left, some precious, sweet time before it was all wrenched away. She knew suddenly that she wasn’t going to squander a single moment of it.

  She moved to him fast, without warning, turning her face up to his. At first Dallas was too startled to react. His thoughts were tangled with questions, with doubts. But she was like a tonic, soothing places inside him that had been raw and hurting for too long. She was addictive; now that he had had a taste of her he couldn’t turn away from the promise of more. He caught her hips reflexively, dragging her closer, meeting her mouth with his own.

  She knew this was crazy. She had no business making the situation worse, and Ricky was asleep a mere fifty yards away. But none of that mattered when Dallas’s tongue stroked hers. She dug her fingers into his waist, holding on, then she realized she was fumbling with the buttons of his shirt.

  She pulled her mouth away from his to look up at him wildly. “Please,” she whispered. “One more time.”

  One? “Lady, I’ll be damned if I know what’s going on with you, but it’s going to be more than that.”

  He came away from the tree suddenly, his arms coming around her tightly as he reclaimed her lips. Her legs seemed hollow. She felt them giving out beneath her, such an odd sensation, but he went down with her, easing her into the sand and loam and leaves, covering her. Still, for all her desperation, for all his hunger, there was something more tense and controlled about their touches this time. He didn’t yank her shirt out from her jeans; he popped each button free with hurried, deft fingers. He laid his palm flat against her tummy and something shivered inside her, outward from that single point of contact. There was only his mouth and his hand, moving now, finally moving, catching the snap on her jeans, tugging down the zipper. Then his touch was flush against her again, sliding up, beneath her bra for the touch she craved.

  “Yes,” she moaned, arching into him. She heard his hoarse chuckle, ending on a hitch of breath.

  He closed his mouth over her nipple through the fabric, then he finally pushed the lace up with his hand, nuzzling beneath it. She shivered as his mouth slid first left, then right, back and forth, neglecting no inch of skin, missing no taste or texture. When she thought she could stand no more, he finally moved to her neck, nibbling, marking her, biting gently on her ear.

  She started struggling to get out of her shirt—it felt too tight and restrictive against her skin. He caught one edge and brought it back.

  “Careful,” he managed, and her head swam as she realized all over again, that even now, even in the midst of this, he could still keep a care for Ricky while she was being swept away from all rational thought. But of course, he had lived with him, had learned to adjust for him, and she had never had that sweet responsibility.

  “Yes,” she agreed, and she thought she might cry.

  But she didn’t, because then he was sliding her jeans down her hips, not too far, just enough, and his hand slid beneath her panties again, touching her, coaxing a response from her too easily, too quickly.

  She was already damp and hot when his fingers found her, and that alone almost made him forget where they were, what they were doing. He groaned and slid his mouth down her belly, flicking his tongue into her navel, tasting her there, too, because now that he had started again he couldn’t get enough. He finally slid her panties down with her jeans, then his tongue touched her intimately. She clapped a hand to her mouth and had to bite down on her thumb to keep from crying out. But he wouldn’t stop and finally not even the pain from her teeth was enough to keep her from gasping aloud as pleasure rained through her. She heard his own voice as though from very far away.

  “Here, come here.”

  He sat up, moving back toward the tree again, leaning against it. Then she understood. She followed him, tugging desperately at his belt, his jeans, and finally wrestling off her own. She straddled him and sank down on top of him, and this time there was no chance for savoring the sweet connection, for measuring each other’s responses.

  He was ready to explode, had held himself back too long already. As he felt her close over him, he tried to hold her hips to keep her still. But she moved anyway and he finally released her to drive his hands into her hair, bringing her mouth back to his. If Ricky wakes up, he began to think again, and then his son’s image went out of his mind fast as the exquisite pressure built and throbbed and demanded release. His mouth moved to her breasts again, dragging the tip of one in, teasing it until she cried out one more time.

  The sound undid him, wrenched away the last of what little control he had. He gave in to the sweet lure of release, went with it, burying his face at her neck, in her hair, feeling her spasms match his. Finally, slowly, breath returned to him, and with it, sanity.

  “That was crazy,” he managed, his voice low and hitching beside her ear.

  It was all crazy, she thought, every delicious, wrenching moment she spent with them. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “But worth the risk.”

  “I thought so.”

  Then Ricky screamed.

  The sound seemed to
echo in the canyon. It was electrifying, stunning. Dallas moved reflexively to get to his feet, spilling her back into the sand, scrambling to pull his jeans up again. In the next moment he was running, fastening his belt as he moved.

  It took Ellen a heartbeat longer to dress and follow him. Dallas didn’t bother to try to go through the small tent door. He grabbed one of the uprights and yanked, pulling up the whole shelter, hurling it aside.

  Ricky had recovered quickly. He was sitting upright in his sleeping bag, brandishing a flashlight. An animal—she took a shaky step closer and saw that it was a badger—snarled quietly at him from a few feet away.

  “Freeze, Ricky,” Dallas said very softly. “Just...don’t...move.”

  The boy opened his mouth to respond.

  “Shh!” Dallas hissed at him.

  Ellen backed up carefully, then she looked around. They needed something to strike the animal with. The cooler? Too unwieldy. Trying to scare it into running might only make it leap, teeth bared, for Ricky instead.

  She finally scrambled into her tent for her purse, wrapping its long strap around her fist, then, almost as an afterthought, she dropped to her knees to stuff some rocks inside. She zipped it shut again then crept up behind Dallas.

  He was standing very still, his gaze moving about fast as he sought his own alternative. Finally his gaze dropped to her bag. He wrenched it from her and swung it up and back over his shoulder in the same motion. Before she could gasp, he brought it down on the animal’s head. The little beast staggered back, shaking itself. Ricky let out a yelp of surprise, but the badger didn’t charge back for him. It scampered around in a few abortive circles, then it fled.

  Ellen’s legs folded lifelessly beneath her. Dallas went to Ricky, gathering him up, holding him as if he never expected to have the pleasure again.

  His face was ravaged with guilt.

  She opened her mouth, not knowing what she could possibly say to him, but she didn’t have a chance anyway. He spoke to Ricky.

  “Did it bite you?”

  “No. Wow.” It took Ellen a moment to realize that Ricky was laughing, not crying. “That was something. A wild animal right in my tent.”

  “Yeah,” Dallas managed.

  “You really nailed it, Dad.”

  “Yeah,” Dallas said again. Ricky was struggling to get free of him. Ellen was wondering if he would let him go.

  Finally he did, depositing him back on his feet. “So much for the great outdoors,” he muttered. “I think I prefer motels.” He glanced at his son. Ricky was inching away in the darkness, trying to follow the path the badger had taken. “Hold up, there, Sport.”

  “Aw, Dad, I want to see it.”

  “It’s long gone, Ricky,” Ellen managed.

  He let out a heartfelt sigh and came back to them. “I bet he smelled our food. I read about that somewhere. Bears do it. Do you think there are bears here, too?”

  “Not...not any more.” Her breath was feeling shallow.

  “Hey, Dad, look what you did to my tent.” The frame was warped and bent.

  “You can use mine,” Ellen said.

  “Where are you gonna sleep?” he asked.

  “Outside, like we were going to do at the Kinaalda. I don’t mind.”

  “You’re sure?” Dallas asked.

  “Of course.”

  She got up again and wandered back to the creek while Dallas got Ricky resettled. It was a long time before he joined her. His eyes seemed more shadowed than the strange light of the warrior’s moon would make them, and the pink hue was already beginning to fade.

  “Stop it,” she said harshly. “There’s no way you could have seen that coming, even if we hadn’t been doing...what we were doing. We were too far away for you to see something that size scamper into his tent.”

  “If we hadn’t been doing what we were doing, I would have been in the tent with him,” he answered tightly.

  She shot him an incredulous look. “No. We would have been standing right here, talking, and you know it. Neither of us was ready to call it a night.”

  He shrugged stiffly.

  Stop it, Dallas, stop doing this to yourself. She wanted to touch him again—a desperate need that had her reaching one hand out to him. But then she pulled it back because her urge was one to comfort this time, to stroke and to soothe. And she knew there was no way she could do that. She couldn’t tackle that guilt inside him, that horrible thing that insisted he had betrayed Mary, even after all this time, that he had somehow let her down by neglecting their son. He could only challenge that himself.

  Slowly, surely, he was doing it, she realized again, but if she was the catalyst, she wouldn’t be around long enough to see it through. She took a shaky step away from him.

  “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “What did you mean—’not yet’?” he asked suddenly. “You said, ‘Not yet.’”

  It took her a moment to understand. Her limbs felt heavy, her body sated, her mind foggy and dull. Finally she remembered.

  “Next weekend,” she decided, her voice husky. “When this visitation business is all over, I’ll explain everything.” She supposed, deep down, that that had been her plan all along.

  All over? Dallas didn’t like the sound of that. “It doesn’t have to end then,” he answered sharply. “The visitations are an agreement with the commission, not you.”

  An almost bitter smile touched her mouth. Then her expression settled into one so wistful, so sad, it made him hurt.

  “Yes, it does,” she answered softly. “And once you understand, you’ll agree with me.”

  “Is this going to hurt Ricky?” he demanded, suddenly frightened in a spot deep inside himself, an instinctive kind of spot.

  “No. I’m not going to let it.”

  He watched pensively as she went back to the camp. She took one of the sleeping bags from where his tent had once been, carrying it close to the one where Ricky was now, lying down there protectively. No badger, nothing of any sort, would be able to get inside to him without climbing over her first.

  Did she even realize what she had just done? He couldn’t ask. Somehow he knew that even if she didn’t fall asleep immediately, she would pretend to be as soon as he went back to the camp.

  * * *

  Things were strained between them in the morning. It was a subtle shift in the atmosphere, but even Ricky sensed it. His eyes moved back and forth between them as he ate another hot dog—Dallas had forgotten to bring anything that might constitute a nutritious breakfast. Finally Ricky gave a small, satisfied burp and demanded, “Hey, are you guys mad at each other?”

  Ellen felt a nasty squeeze in the vicinity of her heart. “No, of course not.” She looked at Dallas. “I have to go home. I hadn’t planned on staying here all night.”

  He nodded.

  “So do we have to leave already?” Ricky asked plaintively.

  “You could just give me a lift up to the rim,” she suggested.

  “No,” Dallas said in a vaguely clipped tone. “I have things I have to take care of today, too.”

  “What, Dad? What’s so important that we have to rush out of here?”

  Dallas stood and tousled the boy’s hair. “Making money to buy you more of those TV games.”

  “But it’s Sunday.”

  “And this is one Sunday I’ve got to make a few phone calls.”

  Ricky gave up, although he did it reluctantly. They packed up and made the long trip back to the headquarters in relative quiet. Ricky pointed out a few interesting pieces of scenery, asked a question here and there, but Ellen felt as if her heart wasn’t in her explanations. She felt as if all the warmth, all the goodness of this month was slowly draining out of her. By next weekend, she thought, the barrel would be empty again.

  Ricky was already thinking about next weekend as well. “Can we go to another one of those ceremonies?” he asked. “I mean, now we’ve got tents so we could sleep outside without borrowing anything. Except Dad messe
d mine up.”

  “I can fix it,” Dallas said shortly. “I try never to trash anything I can’t repair.”

  Ricky laughed, but Ellen felt something cold move in her heart. His comment had been decidedly pointed.

  When they reached the visitors’ building, she slid out of the Jeep fast. “I’ll check around to see if anything’s going on around the Res next weekend,” she offered stiffly.

  “So we’re still on?” Dallas’s gaze came around to her hard.

  “Of course.” Yes, a thousand times yes. She had one more weekend. But if the tension between them was as palpable then as it had been this morning, she wondered how she was going to be able to stand it.

  “Call me and let me know,” Dallas said finally.

  She glanced at Ricky and dredged up a smile for his benefit. “See you then, okay?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned back and climbed over the gearshift to get into the front seat she had vacated.

  The Jeep engine revved once, twice, then it growled as Dallas left to return it. Ellen stared after it for a long time. Something told her this was going to be the longest week of her life.

  * * *

  Ricky waited only until they were back in the newly painted Jaguar to start badgering him with questions. Dallas admitted a little grudgingly that he would have been more alarmed if the boy hadn’t been curious.

  “You are mad at her, Dad. I can tell.”

  “No,” he said automatically. “I’m not.”

  Ricky ignored his denial. “How come? What’d she do?”

  “Nothing. Not a thing.” And that was the whole damned problem, he thought. He wanted more, so much more, each time he saw her. And she was somehow giving him less and less, getting further away emotionally even as she drew nearer physically. It was a subtle thing, but it bothered him.

  “Did she start something and not finish it?” Ricky asked.

  “What?” Dallas took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at him, then he remembered. Oh, hell.

  “You know, to make you blue,” Ricky persisted.

  “I’m definitely not blue.”

  “So you consolimated?”