Dance of the Winnebagos

by Ann Charles

  He took several swallows, frowning as she rose to her feet. “Where are you going?”

  “To get us two more beers.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  “You can get the next two. What’s on your fingers?”

  “Brake fluid.” He stood and glanced toward the Bucks room. “I’ll be right back. I need to wash my hands.” His gaze bore into her, his eyes piercing, assessing. “You sure you’re okay?”

  She saluted him with her empty glass. “I’m working my way back up to cloud nine. The way I see it, after nearly becoming bug-splatter on the grill of an eighteen-wheeler, my day can’t get much worse.”

  “You’re one of a kind, Claire.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek and then threaded his way toward the men’s room.

  Claire stared after him, feeling like her head was floating about three feet above her shoulders, until reality slapped her back to Earth. Those were hardly words of undying pining and heartfelt need. And the kiss was just a peck, really. She’d seen him give Ruby similar quick kisses on the cheek.

  She weaved her way over to the bar and flagged down the owner, who was busy drying glasses. “Hey, Butch, I’ll have two—”

  “Hey, sugar,” Joe’s ex-wife interrupted, leaning over the bar. Her over-inflated boobs nearly spilled out of her slinky tank top. “Will you grab Billy and me another couple of Coor’s Lights?”

  “Hey!” Claire glared, bristling like a pissed off porcupine.

  Sophy flashed Butch a mega-watt smile. “Make sure you get a lot of head on those—Billy likes to lick the foam off my lip.”

  Claire slammed her glass down. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I was here first.” Claire shot Butch a warning look. If he valued his life, he’d make Sophy wait her turn.

  “And you’ll be here last,” Sophy said, looking down her nose at Claire. She turned to Butch. “Just go ahead and fill those quick. I’m holding up a pool game.”

  “Listen, you cradle-robbing, huss—” Claire started.

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad, bitch.”

  A burst of rage rocketed through Claire’s skull. She cold-cocked Joe’s ex with a hard right. Her fist smashed into Sophy’s cheekbone with a solid thwap, knocking the woman flat on her ass on the wood-planked floor.

  A hush spread through the bar, broken only by Barbara Mandrell on the jukebox whining about sleeping single in a double bed.

  Claire sniffed, wiping her hand on her pants. “Now, about those beers, Butch.”

  She kept her eyes on the older woman, who used a bar stool to pull herself to her feet.

  Glowering, Sophy touched her cheek where an angry-looking red welt was already surfacing. “You’re going to pay for that, you stupid cow.” She rushed, red talons extended.

  Claire lifted her arm to shield her face. Sophy’s body collided with hers, sending them both flailing and crashing to the floor with Sophy on top. Rolling around under the elk horn chandeliers, Claire grunted and growled, peanut shells cracking under her. The smell of cigarette ashes and the bitch’s perfume nearly suffocated her.

  Sophy grabbed a handful of Claire’s hair and yanked, then dragged her nails down Claire’s cheek.

  Eyes watering from the pain, Claire rolled on top of the woman, aimed for her nose, missed, and belted her in the chin instead.

  Suddenly, a strong pair of arms hauled her off Sophy and dropped her onto her feet. Claire shoved her hair out of her face, ignoring the cheers shouted by the crowd surrounding her, and glared across at Sophy.

  Butch held Joe’s ex—barely—with the help of a skinny blond cowboy.

  Claire tried to twist free of her keeper, wanting to finish the job she’d started.

  “Damn it, Claire! Quit struggling,” Mac said in her ear.

  Strong-arming her out of the stuffy, smoky bar into the cool clear desert night, he directed her through the parking lot over to a halo of light cast by a streetlight. Once there, he lifted her onto the hood of an old Chevy Nova, and then stepped back, arms crossed. “What in the hell happened back there?”

  Claire tried to comb her hair out of her eyes and came away with a palm full of it. “Sophy pissed me off.”

  “So you tackled her?”

  “No, I decked her. She’s the one who tackled me.”

  Mac shook his head. “Christ, woman.”

  She felt something dripping down her cheek and touched her finger to it. Blood, dark and wet, smudged her fingertip.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” Mac ordered. “I’ll be right back.”

  While he jogged across the road to his truck and back, Claire pulled another handful of hair from her crown.

  Mac dropped a first aid kit on the hood next to her and popped it open. “Remind me never to piss you off,” he said as he dabbed her cheek with cotton. Then he sprayed something on the scratch that made it sting like a horsefly bite.

  Claire sat quietly, coming down from her adrenaline rush, while Mac patched her up. Anger seeped out of her bones as his fingers brushed over her skin. She kept her gaze lowered, not wanting him to see the hunger gnawing at her for something more than just casual contact from him.

  He moved closer, tipping her head to one side and then the other; inspecting, touching. His breath, warm and beer-tainted, fanned across her lips and nose.

  She peeked up at him. He stared back, his eyes mirroring the frustration grinding inside of her. “You look like you want to kiss me,” she whispered.

  “You know I do.” His voice was smooth, like butter-soft suede.

  Shifting closer, she tilted her head to make room for his lips. “So, do it.”

  “You’re nothing but trouble, Claire.”

  “Yeah, but you seem to like trouble.”

  He chuckled under his breath, his eyes zeroing in on her lips. “Not as much as I like you.”

  His lips brushed hers, tentative, testing. Then a low growl rumbled in his throat and his mouth grew bolder, his lips seeking.

  Claire moaned, tasting him, breathing him in. The touch of his tongue to hers just about blew the sneakers right off her feet. She leaned into him and ran her palms down his ribcage. Her fingertips pressed into his abs, fingers clinging to his shirt as she hung on for dear life and tried to keep her head from spinning right off her neck.

  “Claire,” he said hoarsely against her mouth, tipping her head higher, his fingers cupping the back of her head.

  “Umm.” She slid her hands under his T-shirt, her thumbs skimming along the trail of soft hair leading up the center of his chest. His skin was firm, warm under the pads of her fingers. She scooted closer, squeezing her inner thighs around the outer seams of his jeans.

  His mouth slid along her jawbone, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. He nibbled the skin below her ear. “You smell like watermelon,” he whispered.

  “It’s my shampoo.”

  “I want to sink my teeth into you.”

  Claire tipped her head back, staring dazedly up at the blinking light of a passing satellite. Much more of this and she was going to slip down off the side of the car and lie panting at his feet. Her toes curled as he traced the outer shell of her ear with the tip of his tongue.

  “I hate to break up the show, lovebirds,” a deep, nasally voice said from behind Mac, slicing through the haze in Claire’s brain. “But you’re sitting on my car, and if I don’t get home in the next ten minutes, my wife is going to lock me out.”

  Mac pulled away from Claire, his breath uneven. “Sorry about that,” he told the guy and helped Claire to the ground. He grabbed his first aid kit. “Come on, Slugger,” he said to Claire, taking her by the hand and tugging her along behind him across Interstate 70.

  As they neared his pickup, he let go of her hand. “I’m going over to the gas station to give Ruby a call to come pick us up. Wait for me at the truck.”

  Claire nodded, her voice box scorched from the inferno still raging inside of her.

  “And try to stay out of trouble,” he said with a lazy grin,
and then strode over to Biddy’s Gas and Carryout.

  Claire floated to his Dodge.

  Between the beer, the after-burn of adrenaline, and Mac’s blistering kisses, her head hovered somewhere between the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. But by the time Mac strode back across the gravel, reality had seeped back in, along with the need for a cigarette.

  She rested against the closed tailgate of the pickup and watched him approach, a question waiting on her lips.

  “Howdy,” Mac said as he leaned against the truck next to her. “What’s on your mind?”

  “How did you ...”

  “Your eyes. You’re not very good at hiding what’s going on behind them.”

  That sounded like a bunch of hooey.

  “It’s the truth,” he said, apparently reading her eyes again.

  She looked away quickly. That could be dangerous when it came to him.

  “So spit it out,” he prodded.

  “When you picked me up outside of the R.V. park, you wanted to talk to me about something. What was it?”

  He grabbed her hand, flipping it palm-side up, tracing the outline of her fingers.

  Screw the cigarette, she needed sex. Claire quickly batted that notion out of her mind. Sex with Mac would be a problem of Chernobyl proportions.

  “I found some small boot prints up in Socrates Pit,” he said. “Like the ones we saw out where Henry’s dog tag was lying.”

  She watched as he laced his fingers with hers and lifted her bruised knuckles to his lips.

  Little stars danced behind her eyes. She blinked, several times, rapidly. Hadn’t she read somewhere that sexual frustration could cause blindness?

  “I also found something else.”

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out something that crinkled, sounding like flimsy plastic. He unlaced his fingers from hers and dropped a wrapper in her palm. Under the pale orange streetlight, she could see a familiar label.

  “Remember the wrapper you found stuck in that diamond cholla cactus?”

  She nodded, surprised he’d remembered she’d grabbed it.

  “This is the same kind of beef jerky.”

  She licked her lips. Suspicions raced through her mind. “You know what this means, don’t you?” she asked, stuffing the wrapper in her back pocket.

  “That Henry likes beef jerky?” Mac answered with a cocky grin.

  “Henry likes food period—beef jerky included. You know what else it means?”

  Mac grabbed her by the arm and drew her toward him, his hands dropping to her hips as he settled her between his long legs. “That Henry is a litterbug?”

  She chuckled as he brushed his lips over her chin, her breath suddenly heavy in her chest. “Not quite. Guess again.”

  “Hmmm,” he said as he nuzzled the hollow at the base of her neck. “What will I get if I say it?”

  “You should be more worried about what you’ll get if you don’t,” she said, fighting for oxygen as his mouth slid along her collarbone. “I’ve been known to throw a mean right hook.”

  “Mmmmm, yes, you have.” He nibbled his way up to her earlobe, tugging on it with his teeth.

  “I believe,” he spoke against the sensitive skin of her inner ear, sending chills spiraling down her arms, “what you’re looking for are the words, ‘You were right about Henry.’”

  Her legs nearly buckled as blood rushed to muscles that hadn’t been exercised for much too long. “Something like that.”

  As she dissolved against him, a voice of wisdom nagged at the back of Claire’s brain. They needed to stop for some reason.

  Mac gripped her hips tighter, pulling her even closer.

  “Ruby!” Claire suddenly remembered and yelped. She jumped out of Mac’s hold a split-second before a pair of headlights spotlighted them.

  Gravel crunched under the old Ford’s new tires as it slowed to a stop.

  Ruby, wearing a white bathrobe and fluffy slippers, tore out of the pickup. “What do you mean someone sabotaged your truck?”

  * * *

  Friday, April 16th

  Claire rolled into the R.V. park, Mabel’s V-8 rumbling as she crept along. The afternoon sunlight reflected off the chrome window edging, ricocheting UV rays straight into her skull. She switched the vent to full blast, gritting her teeth in the whoosh of hell-hot air, and cursed Gramps for being too stubborn to install air conditioning.

  Up ahead, Mac stepped from Ruby’s front porch and flagged her down.

  Claire’s libido gurgled to life at just the sight of his long legs. What was it about kissing a gorgeous guy that made the birds start singing Disney tunes and the clouds morph into fluffy tufts of cotton candy floating in a powder blue sky?

  She shifted into Park.

  Mac rested his forearms on the passenger’s side windowsill. “I need your help.”

  “It’ll cost you.”

  He flashed her an X-rated grin. “Name your price.”

  Claire fanned the front of her shirt. “We’re playing with fire, you know.”

  “I like the heat.” He winked.

  “If anyone finds out about what we were doing last night outside The Shaft, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “I know.”

  “Not to mention that we have different opinions about Ruby selling the mines.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So why do you keep smiling at me that way?”

  He shrugged. “I’m an avid fan of the Pink Panther.”

  Claire glanced down at the Pink Panther iron-on covering the front of her T-shirt. Something tingled in her gut, and it wasn’t the Pop Rocks she’d eaten for breakfast. “You said you need my help,” she reminded him, changing the subject before she slid down the seat and melted into a pool of sexually charged protons.

  He dragged his gaze up to her eyes. The heat was still there, but slightly banked. “My truck is ready to pick up, and Ruby is at a doctor’s appointment with Jess in Tucson.”

  Claire glanced behind Mac and saw the Be Back Soon sign hanging in the General Store’s window.

  “I need a ride to Yuccaville.”

  Perfect. She needed someone to act as a lookout. “Sure.”

  He crawled in, sniffing as she reversed and drove out of the R.V. park. “What’s that smell?” he asked, sniffing again.

  “It’s me.” She’d spent the last half-hour over at Creekside Supply Company, spraying and spritzing every spot of bare skin with cheap perfume, and she’d only made it through half the rack.

  Thank God Henry hadn’t smelled like mule piss when she’d found him.

  “You trying out new perfume?”

  “No. I’m trying to figure out what Sophy was wearing last night.”

  “Why?”

  “She smelled like Henry did when I found him sitting in Mabel the other day.” She cringed, waiting for Mac to start berating her about her half-assed suspicions.

  He draped his arm across the back of the seat, his fingertips brushing the bare skin of her upper arm with every little bounce and bump. “Did you figure out the brand?”

  What? No comments on her hare-brained scheme? “Not yet.”

  In spite of the sweat trickling down her spine, goose bumps speckled her arms.

  She glanced at Mac from under her eyelashes. Did he have any idea how dangerous it was to flirt with a woman who’d started sniffing pepper on a daily basis after Cosmopolitan rated sneezes second to orgasms on their “Pleasure Scale.”

  At the Interstate 70 junction, she turned right.

  “Yuccaville is the other way,” he said, frowning at her.

  “We’re taking a detour.” Claire pulled the folded phone book page from her pocket and tossed it into Mac’s lap.

  “What detour?”

  “The one that runs by Sophy’s house.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Mac told Claire as they pulled up in front of Sophy’s gray, single-story, cinderblock home. There was someth
ing about the lack of another house within sight that made him feel like he’d stumbled onto one of Hitler’s secret hideouts.

  Claire shut off the car. “I didn’t figure you would.” She pushed open her door and stepped out into the early afternoon sunshine.

  Mac followed, hesitating at Mabel’s front bumper. The urge to drag Claire back to the car and haul ass out of there vibrated through his body. Glancing around at the orange-brown hills speckled with daisy patches that barricaded Sophy’s place from the road below, he wondered if Claire’s wild imagination was rubbing off on him.

  As warm sunshine blanketed his shoulders, the tinkling of wind chimes merged with the sound of Claire’s footsteps on the pebble drive. Soft puffs of hot air filled with the smell of seared clay and baked dirt rose through the small canyon from the valley below, whipping her hair about as she crossed toward a shed.

  The small building was a sure-fire magnet for a woman bent on proving her suspicions. With its corrugated steel roof spotted with surface rust, and the cedar boards flanking it faded gray with weathering, it was a haven of possibilities.

  Mac growled and took off after her. While creeping around Sophy’s property made him feel as warm and fuzzy as bending over to touch his toes in a proctologist’s office, the idea of Claire casing the place on her own made his gut burn.

  Claire was frowning down at the yellow padlock fastened to the door latch when he reached her. “It’ll take a .44 slug to open this door,” Mac said.

  “Damn it.”

  He glanced at Mabel, her chromed-toothed grin sparkling in the sunshine. “What time do you think Sophy leaves the diner?” he asked.

  “Feeling flighty?” She jiggled the lock. It didn’t budge.

  “I’m new at this trespassing business.”

  “Who says we’re trespassing?”

  “That sign hanging on the gate at the end of the drive.” He wouldn’t be surprised if Sophy carried a six-shooter. Most everyone did around these parts.

  “What sign?” Claire cast him a mischievous smile. “I didn’t see any sign.” She disappeared around the side of the shed.

  Mac followed, cursing the weak half of his brain that kept him scurrying along after her like a lovesick Gila monster.