by Arlene James
Pain spasmed across his face.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that.” But she’d wanted to hurt him, the way he was hurting her.
“It’s this cattle drive,” he insisted, ignoring everything else.
“Somebody wants to keep us from getting to New Mexico on time.”
“I know, I know, but that doesn’t mean it’s Payne.”
“He still gets my vote,” Rye said stubbornly.
She bowed her head. “What if I call Payne in Denver, prove to you that he’s there.”
Rye tugged at his ear lobe. “Worth checking.”
She’d taken to carrying the phone in a little hip pack buckled around her waist. Unzipping it, she took out the phone, flipped it open and punched in Payne’s home phone number. A sleepysounding Payne answered on the second ring.
“Hello?” He cleared his throat. “What time is it?”
Kara grinned, relief sweeping through her, and glanced at her wristwatch. “About six-fifteen. Good morning, sleepyhead.” She lifted an eyebrow at Rye, who combed his mustache with his fingertips thoughtfully.
“Kara? What’s wrong?”
She chuckled, hoping it didn’t sound too forced, and lied through her teeth. “Not a thing. This is just the first moment I’ve had to get in touch.”
“How’s it going?” he asked. “Where are you?”
“Oh, we’re just outside La Sal Junction. Right on schedule.”
“Utah? You’re still in Utah?”
“That’s right, and will be for three or four more days.”
“It’s going well, then.”
“Everything’s fine. We’re all tired, and I, for one, never want to sleep on the ground again after this, but we’re managing.” They chatted on for several minutes, until Rye caught her eye and impatiently tapped his wristwatch to indicate that it was growing late. He had salvaged as much of the grain as he could sweep up off the ground, having appropriated several trash bags from Dayna. Kara quickly rang off and stowed the phone. Folding her arms, she gave Rye a smug, challenging look. “Well?”
“Well what?”
She stomped her foot, a recently developed habit. “You just don’t want to admit you’re wrong about Payne!”
Rye leaned an elbow on the rail of the truck bed. “I’ll admit that whoever put a knife in these bags had to be here to do it.”
She took that for capitulation. “Then it couldn’t have been Payne.”
“True enough,” Rye agreed. Turning, he strode off toward the remuda, pausing only to ask, “You coming? Or were you thinking of putting your feet up for the rest of the day?”
“I’m coming,” she muttered, but she hesitated a moment to frown at the feed spilled on the ground. A shiver skittered up her spine. It wasn’t Payne behind this; she’d stake her life on it. But if not Payne, then who?
It rained buckets for two days. Everyone lived in dusters and plastic hat bonnets, but water found its way inside them. The ground became a quagmire that no covering could withstand. Difficulties magnified. Horses came up lame. Cows went down sick or just plain exhausted. It was the worst at night. Even after the rain stopped on the third day, they were still sleeping in mud. Everyone, excluding Dayna and Champ, both of whom slept in the motor home, were teetering on the edge of exhaustion, and it told most forcefully in the snappish moods of the crew. Kara especially found herself on edge, so much so that Rye loosened the leash and suggested she ought to sleep in the motor home with Dayna and Champ. Even as the thought of a dry bed tantalized her, she vehemently rejected it.
“I’ll throw my bedroll on the ground like everyone else, thank you very much. Just because I’m a woman, don’t think I can’t hack it out here with the rest of you!”
“Whoa!” Rye held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I wasn’t implying you aren’t tough as nails. Fact is, if someone offered me a bed inside tonight, I’d jump at it.”
“Done!” Dayna said, stepping up to make herself a part of the conversation. “In point of fact, Pogo and I have discussed this recently.”
“You have?” Kara and Rye asked in unison.
Dayna let that pass and went straight to the heart of the matter. “We feel that from here on out we ought to take turns sleeping in the motor home, just as we have driving the vehicles—well, all but the most boneheaded of us. That way everyone has a chance to get a good night’s sleep once in a while.”
Kara and Rye looked at each other. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Mom, are you sure you want to give up a nice, warm bed to sleep on the ground?”
“No, I don’t want to! But I’m not selfish, and it’s only fair.” She grinned, “Besides, it may do me some good.”
Kara could almost feel the soft, dry mattress at her back. “Rye?”
“I will if you will.”
“Please say you will.” This came from Dean, but George was nodding his head encouragingly. “That way, we can, too.”
“Let’s draw up a schedule,” Kara said, capitulating easily.
“Uh, your mother and I already thought of that,” Pogo said, stepping up next to Dayna and draping an arm across her shoulder casually. Kara had trouble keeping her mouth closed as Dayna whipped a folded sheet of paper from her jeans pocket.
“Now we figure Champ ought to stay inside, period.”
Everyone agreed to that instantly.
“So,” she went on, opening up the paper, “it depends on whether or not you guys can share a bed.”
Dean looked at George and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know.”
“Fully clothed, separate sleeping bags,” George mused. “I think I can hack it.” Dean nodded his agreement.
“Okay, then,” Dayna announced. Reading off the paper she went on, “Rye and Champ get the big bed tonight. Kara’s on the couch. Tomorrow it’s Dean and George; Champ’s on the couch. Next night, Shoes and Bord.”
“Champ can sleep with me,” Shoes volunteered. “Won’t be the first time.”
“Bord’s on the couch then.”
“That just leaves you and Pogo,” Kara commented. The camp went instantly silent. Pogo lifted an eyebrow at Dayna, who calmly handed the paper to Rye, while smiling at her daughter.
“That’s right, dear.” Dayna lovingly patted Kara’s cheek. Her eyes held a wealth of warning, a hint of apology and the underlying shine of implacable decisiveness that Kara had come to know so well as a child. She had decided that she liked Pogo, and she was sorry if Kara had a problem with it, but those were the facts. So that’s why they were getting along so well all of a sudden! Good grief, they were just like her and Rye, striking sparks off each other until... Kara gulped. Pogo Smith would be sharing a bed with her mother—if he wasn’t already.
Kara hoped her face retained more color than she feared it did at this moment. “W-well then, that’s it.” She hadn’t sounded as light and offhanded as she’d meant to, but it was the best she could do, and her mother accepted it as such.
“Thank you, darling,” she whispered, leaning forward to kiss Kara’s cheek. Then she walked away, hand in hand, with a man who wasn’t Kara’s father.
Kara quickly got busy gathering her things for transfer to the motor home. The camp remained quiet, but gradually the others went back to whatever they had been doing before. Kara found plenty to do, repacking her clothes, checking charts and maps, counting and recounting the money left in the strongbox. Everyone else had turned in by the time she climbed up into the motor home and closed the door behind her. She’d tried not to notice that Dayna and Pogo were not with the others. No doubt they’d found some privacy, zipped their sleeping bags together and were at that moment...
Oddly, she couldn’t form a picture of what they might be doing, and it hit her suddenly that she’d never formed that picture of her parents, either. She’d witnessed many gestures of affection between her parents, some of them pretty steamy, and she’d known they slept together, had sex—and yet she couldn’t form the pictu
re. Maybe because she’d never pictured herself making love, never wanted to—until lately. She glanced through the living and kitchen areas and down the narrow hall of the motor home to the bedroom door.
Rye was in there now with his son. She knew that if she just closed her eyes, she could see herself making love with Ryeland Wagner. She’d been trying not to see it for days and days now, but it had been creeping up on her all this time, and now she wondered how much longer she could hold it at bay. Suddenly that couch looked like a torture rack to her. But surely she was too tired to lie awake dwelling on matters best put out of mind.
She went to the bank of cushions built into the wall and began removing those along the back, stacking them in the seat of the dining booth. The resulting bed was wider than she’d expected, about the size of a twin bed. Her sleeping bag unrolled with space to spare. She unzipped it and sat down on the edge of the bunk. Reaching up she switched off all but one small light recessed into the wall at the head of the bed. She slipped off her boots and pulled out her shirttail, then lay down and flipped the side of the bag over her body. She folded her arms beneath her head, sighed, and closed her eyes.
He heard her come in, heard the muted clumps of her boots as she removed them. He lay in the dark, aware of his son’s sleeping form beside him, the comfort of the mattress beneath him, the warmth that came merely from blocking out the wetness. A tiny night-light glowed red in the switch beside the door. His boots sat at the foot of the bed. He vowed that he would never again take the simple luxury of a bed for granted, even though he knew he would not sleep this night. The irony of the situation was not lost on him.
They had lain side by side several nights within arm’s reach, and yet to him she had felt farther away then than she did now at the other end of this little house on wheels. He could feel her there in the dark, feel her distress, her unease, her awareness. It was odd how much difference a few walls made. Walls meant privacy. Privacy provided opportunities that sleeping around a campfire with five or six snoring cowboys did not. The privacy would keep him awake and, as he was being honest with himself, concern would, also. She’d been thrown by her mother’s tacit announcement that she was sharing a bed with Pogo Smith. Everyone in camp had known it, of course. Everyone but Kara. And they had all wondered how she would take the news when it was finally spelled out to her.
He’d been proud of her, perverse as that was, for though the news had come as a shock, she hadn’t vented any of the emotions she must have been feeling. Embarrassment. Disappointment. Disillusionment. Perhaps even betrayal. He’d wanted to take her in his arms and whisper that everything would be all right. He’d wanted to explain things that her mother should have explained, point out that nothing was chiseled in stone, reassure her that no one could ever take her beloved father’s place. Those unsaid words had lodged in his throat, congealing into a doughy lump that wouldn’t move. He wished he had Pogo’s courage. A threetime loser, how did he manage it?
A whisper of sound brought Rye upright in bed. The skin on his arms tingled. The soles of his feet itched. He knew it was her, and the instant he heard the doorknob rattle, ever so softly, he knew she’d given up. Moving swiftly, he slid out of bed, picked up his boots, lifted his jacket from a hook on the wall and let himself out into the narrow hallway flanked by a small pantry and a dinky bath. He ran on the pads of his feet, jeans swishing as the seams rubbed. Dropping down onto the side of her bed, he pulled on his boots. Then he went to the door, opened it carefully and stepped down into the night. He caught a glimpse of her off to his left. Shrugging into his coat, he went after her.
The ground was spongy under the trees, but not too bad for walking. Still, it wasn’t as easy as it should have been to find her. She seemed to have disappeared into thin, cool air. He shivered inside his coat, though in truth he felt plenty warm. It was having her out of sight, out of sense. She wasn’t thinking reasonably or she wouldn’t have gone off by herself. If someone was trying to get to her, this would be the moment. Urgency drove him on.
He found her a few minutes later, sitting on a rock in a small clearing, staring up at the sky. The white peaks of mountain limned the horizon. The going was rough enough, but thank God they didn’t have to go over the tops of those. He kicked pinecones to make himself heard as he approached her. She didn’t move so much as a muscle until he drew to a stop.
“You’d think we’d be dead to the world by now, tired as we are,” she said without turning her head.
He picked up a tiny pinecone and rolled it around in his hand. “He’s been dead over a year, Kara. A woman gets used to some things. She misses them. It’s only natural to—”
“I know,” she said on a sigh. “It’s all right. I think, more than anything else, I’m jealous.”
He dropped the pinecone and reached for her, pulling her off the rock and into his arms. He was shaking, frightened. He tried to make light of it. “Got a thing for Pogo Smith, do you? I’m sure if he knew—”
“No,” she said against his shoulder, so solemn. “I have a thing for you.” She slid her arms around his waist inside his coat and tilted back her head, gazing up at him. “I’ve never been with a man, Rye, never really wanted to be until now. That’s funny, isn’t it? I’m almost thirty years old. I’ve lived and worked with men all my life. I’ve never made love with one.”
“God, Kara!” He pressed her face into the bend of his neck and folded her close. His heart was thumping like a rabbit sounding alarm, and his jeans were too tight again, so tight they hurt. He felt her tears, warm against his skin. “Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry.”
She turned her head, laying her cheek in the hollow above his collarbone. “It was so easy when Dad was alive,” she whispered. “We worked together every day. Sometimes we had help, mostly we didn’t. I never wanted to be anywhere else, never wanted to leave the ranch at all.”
“What about school?”
“I didn’t go. It was too far away. Mother taught me at home. I got my high school diploma early, and we studied some college-level courses after that, but eventually I let it go to concentrate on the ranch.”
“Weren’t there ever any—” he had to swallow to get the word out past the lump in his throat “—boyfriends?”
“A few, but never for long. They’d come to help with round-up or just for the experience, and at first they were friendly, flirty. We’d laugh and spend time together. Sometimes we’d even walk out alone. A few even kissed me. But then we’d saddle up and get down to business, and before long I’d find myself barking orders at some greenhorn nonsense or just showing them up by doing what I’ve always done best. It’s funny how ugly and unattractive you get when you best a man. I got sort of defensive about it.”
He chuckled. “I noticed.”
She smiled, but it was faint and it faded quickly. “I’d give ten years off my life,” she said, “to be loved as a woman just once.”
He closed his eyes, but the decision was already made. “I don’t want ten years,” he said, stepping back and grabbing her hand. “I just want tonight and you,” He pulled her with him.
“Where are we going?”
“To hell,” he said, “by way of heaven. Hurry!”
They ran, dodging around trees and rocks, sliding on pine needles over mud, and were back on the edge of camp within two minutes. He drew her to his side, lifting a finger to his mouth. She nodded, blue eyes gleaming like beacons, and he led her quickly to the door of the motor home, opened it, and pulled her up inside. He kissed her hard and shoved her toward the bunk. “Get undressed.” He shot a look at the back of the hall, expecting to find just what he did. Silence, darkness. Privacy. He locked the door, then hurried through the kitchen to open the bathroom door and block the view if Champ should come out of the bedroom. Hurrying back, he dropped down onto the end of the booth and yanked off his boots. Looking up, he saw Kara watching him doubtfully. “Shuck ’em. Detmeyer, and be quick about it.” He stood and peeled down to skin, then kissed h
er as he unbuttoned his jeans. He backed her against the edge of the bunk, his hands pulling free everything he could reach while he explored her mouth with his and her hands worked at the buttons at her wrists.
“Rye, are you sure?” she asked breathlessly, ripping her mouth from his.
For answer he lifted her flannel shirt and pulled it off over her head. Her T-shirt followed, and then he reached around her to release the catch of her bra. He was shaking so badly it took several tries, but eventually the blasted thing was swept away, and bare skin met bare, succulent skin. He sucked in his breath through his teeth and filled his hands with her. “I’ve never seen anything like you,” he whispered between kisses. “Never felt anything like you. Never wanted anyone like this.” He pushed her down on the side of the bunk and tugged her boots off one at a time. “Lie down.”
She angled her long body across the bed. He lifted one foot and then the other, peeling off her socks to press his thumbs against her arches, watching as she gasped and her large, peachy nipples peaked invitingly. She got her jeans unbuttoned, and he stripped them off, leaving only her panties. Stepping back, he raked off his remaining clothing, while she lifted her hips and shoved down her sensible cotton undies, kicking them to the foot of the bed.
He opened her legs with his hands and came down between them, fitting his body to hers. Perfection. He throbbed against her. Absolute perfection. She was wet, ready. He closed his eyes and brought his forehead down to hers, working hard to get out what he had to say. “I don’t have any condoms. I’ll try to pull out, but I can’t make any promises. I want you so much!” He opened his eyes and steeled himself for some sign that she’d changed her mind. She wound her arms around his neck and arched her back, moving against him urgently. He smiled and slid his hand down between them. “Hold on, sweetheart.”
She dug her heels into the bed, lifting her pelvis. He slid inside her, shuddering as her sleek, wet tightness accepted him. She convulsed, taking him to the hilt, panting and clawing at his back. He was panting himself.