Rio: Man of Destiny

by Cait London

  The fields stretched into the night, a huge owl soaring across the moon, and deer grazed with the cattle. This was what Boone had loved so much. Paloma breathed the fresh night air, scented of newly tilled earth. Endless space, all clean and waiting for her. Frisco and Mai-Ling pranced beyond the pasture fence.

  Once inside, she looked at the stacked furniture, Rio’s neady made bed, the old piano and Boone’s mother’s trunk waiting in the shadows. She wanted to make a home, for herself, for Rio, just to see if she could do what other women did, if she could find the same peace and pleasure as when she’d cleaned the store. Too tired to do more than shower, Paloma wound a towel around her fieshly shampooed hair and tugged on Rio’s soft chambray shirt, rolling up the sleeves. She sat tailor-fashion on his bed and studied the room as she petted the sleepy kitten. “I can do this, Lucille.”

  Nine

  “Your Lucille is a tomcat-a male,” Rio said impatiently as the kitten rolled on its back. It batted at the print material flowing from Paloma’s sewing machine, resting on top of a board between two old barrels. He’d brought the kitten to town as an excuse to see Paloma, saying the kitten missed her. He wished she would cuddle him the way she did the kitten. But for the past week, Paloma had come home to drop into bed. Then, last night, Lettie had appeared, hot and ready. He’d fended her off, sent her home, and had come into the house to find Paloma dragging her blankets upstairs. She hadn’t spoken at breakfast—except to Lucille. A shield of ice surrounded her, blocking his attempt at light conversation.

  A man inexperienced with frosty women, Rio had decided to withdraw before he pushed too hard, or lost his temper and yelled.

  In the feed store’s empty room, Paloma was revving up the sewing machine the way she did everything else since she’d discovered the excitement of small towns and country living. Narrowed blue eyes leveled a glare at him, and he studied her cautiously as she returned to her sewing. “Place the two edges together.. right sides together, join with a straight pin at a ninety-degree angle to the intended seam—” Those eyes flashed again, burning him this time, yet her very proper, airy tone could have frozen fire. “I didn’t know that Lettie was going to drop over last night.”

  Rio realized he was in a dangerous bog. He hadn’t worried about Lettie’s thwarted attempts to bed him, but now he had to explain. One wrong word and Paloma would retreat from him. “It was only a neighborly thing to do. You didn’t have to move upstairs just because she brought a cherry pie and lasagna. Else and my sisters-in-law have brought over casseroles.” It seemed safe to equate Lettie with his family, defusing the potential danger to his tentative hold on Paloma.

  “Lettie isn’t Else and it was late last night. As though she wanted to be very neighborly. You fed me her lasagna at the dance. I recognized it and you smelled like her,” Paloma said around the straight pins in her mouth. She revved the brandnew deluxe sewing machine as if going to war.

  Rio wondered how lasagna could be recognized. He sniffed stealthily to see if Lettie’s perfume remained. He braced himself to begin again firmly, recognizing the error of his ways. “I did not ask her to come. Okay, she’s hunted me for most of my life. I don’t think much of it, anymore.” He decided a safe tactic was to distract the woman jabbing pins into the material. “I didn’t know you sewed.”

  “You shouldn’t send off those sexy signals,” she accused.

  “If I have, they’ve ricocheted off you. I’ve tried to make it clear to her that you’re all the woman I want.”

  She eyed him coolly. “Don’t do anything that would cost you a good cook and a curvy body.”

  “Maybe rve come to crave a lanky woman with a steamy temper.”

  He grimaced as she shoved a straight pin into the material and soared down a length of fabric. She tore it from the machine and dropped it into a basket, just as though she were discarding him. “You asked if I sewed. I don’t. I ordered this machine last night, for an overnight delivery. The material, too. After your interlude with Lettie—I saw her try to push you into the barn and I know perfectly well what you are capable of in a bam, Rio Blaylock—I’ve decided to take a hand in building the store’s profit. If this idea sells, we’ll hire a seamstress. Right now, I’m calculating cost versus profit. At least I do not have to think about what went on in that barn.”

  “Nothing went on in that barn....I do the books. The store’s profit is fine. I thought we had an agreement—until things get back to normal and this room is used for what it’s supposed to be—”

  “I said I would take my half and you could have yours. The issue is square feet. Profit is an overall mutual concern. I have Boone’s interest to protect,” she stated righteously. “I’ve checked the books and we could do better. You could get more room if you rearranged and organized that storeroom. There are boxes of old horseshoes and barbed wire.”

  “The storeroom is the same as always. People—men—know where to go to get what they want. And the horseshoes and wire are collectibles.”

  “We’re not in the collectible business. Mmm. Self-service. We need a new scales for bulk seed. That one looks as if it’s been around since the Civil War, and it wouldn’t hurt to stock more flowers and potted plants. The cash register could be electric. Pueblo might not like a computerized one.”

  Rio ran his hand through his hair and wondered how the woman who had been sleeping in his bed looking so tempting and sweet—before Lettie set upon him—now could look as if she wore a suit of armor. “Pueblo knows how to work the old cash register. How is that sewing machine going to do anything for profits?”

  “I’m sewing feed sacks, and the keys stick on the old cash register,” she said and Pueblo gasped in the distance. “I’m trying a marketing idea—your sister gave it to me when she gave me those lovely chicken feed sacks.”

  “You need to cool off,” Rio said when he caught his breath. He didn’t like the way Paloma jabbed the straight pins back into the cushion on her wrist.

  Paloma stood, looked coolly at him and walked into the newly rosebudded bathroom. She slammed the door behind her. When “Lucille” mewed and scratched at the door, it opened. The kitten strolled in before it closed.

  A moment later, Rio shoved open the bathroom window and eased inside. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, fearing he would reach for Paloma. He noted that her hand brushed a liquid soap container, and it danced perilously close to the edge of the counter. He righted it. “I’m sorry that this is a small space and that I make you nervous. All I want to know is if you’re coming home tonight,”

  She gathered the kitten close to her as if using it for defense while she studied him. “I know so little about you. I didn’t know you were in the special forces. There’s more to this than that little boy in the mine, isn’t there?”

  Unprepared for Paloma’s change of mood, Rio closed his eyes and leaned back against a rose-splattered wall. The images of frightened children, orphaned by the power mongers, sprang behind his lids. He’d saved most of them, and Paloma’s entrance into his life softened and dimmed those painful edges.

  Paloma’s hand touched his cheek, smoothed it, and he opened his eyes to her soft blue ones. “Just come home to me,” he whispered unevenly.

  “Does the kitten miss me?” she asked, smoothing the hair back from his brow.

  “He does. I’d help you find what you need, if I could.” Rio wanted to make her safe, wanted to take away her doubts about Boone, and change her childhood, but he couldn’t.

  “I’m not certain exactly what I do need now,” she said quietly, smoothing his face. “I’d like to watch you shave. That was an old-fashioned shaving mug and straight razor in your bathroom, wasn’t it?”

  “It was my father’s. I’d like to give it to my son one day.”

  Paloma’s slender hand rested on his chest and he brought it to his lips. “You see how different we are?” she asked. “How you cherish your family, when I don’t even know who my father was or is?”

  “Y
ou can have my family,” he said simply, meaning it He brushed his lips across her soft ones. “I can even learn to like a new fabric on my favorite chair—for you.”

  Rio closed his eyes as his tractor veered across the daisy and sunflower field glowing in the early June sun. Coming home from Jasmine and terrorizing Pueblo, Paloma had parked her motorcycle by the bann. After staring up at the elk antlers on his livestock bam, she’d placed a ladder against the building and climbed up to remove them. The trophy antlers were a small price to pay, he decided and hoped that she’d come kiss him. That hope died as she’d eyed his tractor and climbed up on it.

  Rio instantly regretted the driving lessons he’d given her, a nifty little erasing-Lettie-incident present, and because Paloma’s excitement about the smallest things delighted him. He liked having her sit on his lap, loved holding her close and watching her thrilled expression. In the field, birds, frightened from their cover, flew from the path of the tractor and into the clear blue Wyoming sky; deer grazing on the lush natural grasses leaped to safety in the pines. He lowered his hammer to the anvil and took the horseshoe nails from his lips. He could almost hear Paloma talking herself through driving it.

  He worried about her as she tore through country living, stopping and finishing the old rocker he’d gotten from Miss Lorene. The more she did, the more she seemed to thrive. Paloma had revved up her sewing machine to make sienna and cream pillows for the couch. The fabric-covered chicken feed sacks left the store as fast as she made them and a seamstress had taken over that job.

  Paloma needed to ease her troubled life by working until she couldn’t move or think. She’d helped Else clean, Kallista with her shopping—although Paloma avoided going to Llew lyn House--and played piano at Mamie’s as if pouring her life out in music. Paloma had terrified Pueblo when she came into the store hefting a portable power saw and lumber. Rio had returned from checking on a report of a calf-killing wolf to find her framing in the corner of the feed storage room for an office. He’d helped her, fearing her lack of skill with the saw. After an argument about the best place to put a door, Paloma had banged away happily. She stared at him coldly when he pointed out that she hadn’t measured the boards properly and that a door would never hang right. While she hammered unfitted boards across each other, his body tensed every time she bent, her jeans tightening across her hips. His midnight rendezvous with new boards settled the problem, and in the morning Paloma had been delighted with “her” work. She wasn’t happy when he advised her how to plant the late garden, taking care to tie string between sticks and using it as a guideline for straight rows.

  Upon discovering that Paloma loved old movies and popcorn, the Blaylock wives arrived for an evening of movies. As early June slid by, Paloma’s emotions remained troubled, her quest unresolved. Her hands would smooth Boone’s old piano, her eyes would drift to the old trunk and Rio would ache for her. His father had always said to give an aching woman time and she’d come back stronger. But that didn’t make it easier.

  There were calls from her agent in which she laughed and calls from her mother that left her pale and shaking and silent. Then Paloma would desperately leap into another project.

  The tractor slowed and followed a fence row to Boone’s land. Paloma slid down from the seat to stand, gripping a fence post as she scanned the extensive Llewlyn Ranch. Rio ached for her, a woman who didn’t know her heritage and who might never settle the pain inside herself. All he could do was wait and give her time. Waiting to be shoed, Lotus Blossom, Phil Jenning’s mare, nudged his shoulder as if she understood. “It’s not an easy thing to do, to wait and let her work out her problems. I want to make her life right for her and I can’t.”

  In the field, Mai-Ling came to stand behind Paloma and she wrapped her arms around the mare. Rio’s throat tightened as the mare followed Paloma. Then Frisco and the rest of the horses walked in line behind her. Paloma walked the length of the fence, separating Boone’s property from Rio’s, then stood on a stump. Mai-Ling waited patiently as Paloma eased up on her. They walked to the end of the fence, the other horses following, then returned slowly and again walked back with Paloma’s face turned toward Llewlyn land. Rio braced Lotus Blossom’s hoof between his legs and sized the shoe. He thrust the tongs holding the horseshoe into the fire, watching the metal turn red before he withdrew it. Frustrated and feeling helpless as he watched Paloma sort through her life, he pounded the metal too hard. He wished he could correct Paloma’s life as easily as he matched the iron shoes to the horse’s hooves.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, walking toward him. “You’re pounding at that as if you’re killing it. Can you teach me?”

  “No.” Rio didn’t want her near the burning metal. He pounded the horseshoe with anger born of frustration and of watching the woman he loved ache. Because he ached for her, because he wanted her wearing his wedding ring, Rio fashioned a ring from a horseshoe nail and placed it on the tip of his little finger.

  “Is this another male and female role thing? Are you saying that fitting horseshoes is a male-only job?”

  When Rio turned to tell her how dangerous the fire and metal were, handled improperly, his breath tore away. In the sunset, Paloma’s gaze was slowly drifting from the sweaty red bandanna tied around his forehead, down his face to his bare shoulders and lower. She shivered and stared at him, a flush rising on her cheeks as if she had just seen what she wanted. She slowly placed her hand on his upper arm and squeezed gently, her eyes widening. Her hands lifted to latch to his shoulders. “Sweat,” she said, as though sorting through a new spice. “Oh, my. It’s slick. Your body is so hard. So hot”

  Rio closed his eyes and wondered if he’d live through Paloma’s experimental stage. Her elegant hands moved over his chest, circling his nipples, and she licked her lips. She looked past his flat stomach to where his desire lurched against his jeans and touched him, just there. After he groaned painfully and pulled himself together, Rio stared at his borrowed chambray shirt and the twin hardened nubs thrusting against the material. He managed to suck in air. Just managed. She eased the damp bandanna from his head, dipped it in the pitcher of cool water, then dabbed at the sweat on his face. Paloma shivered again and her breasts moved softly beneath the material and desire slammed into Rio. He had to stop, he had to give her tima-Paloma licked her lips, eyeing his body, and he almost sagged. “I want you,” she whispered, looking at him helplessly, a flush rising up her throat.

  She looked away as if embarrassed. “I can’t believe I said that.”

  “You did, and I want you, too.”

  “Why? I’m lanky and lean and—”

  Rio leaned to brush a kiss across her lips; he could have strangled whoever had diminished her self-confidence as a woman. “Stop that. You’ve filled out, honey, in case you haven’t noticed. And in all the right places.”

  Her eyes widened. “I’ve gained weight? That’s impossible. I’ve tried for years to gain weight.”

  “Country food will do that to you.” He almost laughed as she looked down her body.

  She stared at him as if just discovering the wildfire that ran between them. She ran her hands down her hips and up toward her breasts and Rio’s blood turned to lava. “Put your hands on me,” she whispered.

  “Honey, I’m sweaty,” he protested, but let her place his hands on her breasts. Her expression softened momentarily and she breathed unevenly beneath his touch; the pulse at the base of her throat fluttered wildly. “Now, you’ve done it. I had such good intentions,” he murmured, shoving the material aside to mold her soft flesh. “You’re so soft.”

  “You desire me,” she said as though dissecting the moment between them and tossing away past insecurities. “You’ve got that dark, tense look and your desire is obvious. It’s there. For me. Just for me. You do not look at any other woman like that. That is truly amazing. For me,” she repeated, stunned.

  Unable to resist her tremulous, awakening look, Rio walked her slowly backward, kissing h
er along the way, until they were in the shadowy barn. “Oh, Rio,” she whispered shakily as he pushed her against the wall and found her mouth hungrily.

  With a cry, she allowed him to nudge her legs apart, to find the warmth of her, despite the layers of cloth separating them. He loved her and taking her there seemed only natural and sweet and exciting. “You’re aroused, aren’t you?” she asked, biting his ear and Rio almost tore away his clothing, desperate for her.

  “I’m trying to control myself, but—” He groaned as her legs moved along his, heat pouring from her. He found her breasts, took them desperately into his mouth, needing everything. He was too rough, he knew, straining to hold himself in check—and then she touched him.

  She arched against him, driving his need higher. “Take me like this, Rio. It’s so honest and sweet and perfect. You make me feeL I’m terrified, because I feel more than this need, as if this is right and nothing can ever be so right again. You’re my friend, and yet you’re more.”

  With shaking hands, her body burning him, she kissed him feverishly. Rio tore away their clothing. His hand touched her warmth, cradling her for a moment until she shuddered, tightening upon him. Then he was in her, lifting her bottom in his hands, and her legs wrapped around to hold him. The primitive fire came quickly, and Rio held her tightly as they flew through the heat and cried out at the same time. She kept him within her grasp for a time and then Rio eased her to stand, leaning back against the wall.

  “That was real,” she whispered. “Are you ashamed that I want you so desperately?”

  “I’m honored, my love,” he answered, kissing her in the long, slow, sweet way he wanted as he straightened her clothing and his own.