NOMAD (Sons of Sanctuary Book 3)

by Victoria Danann

  “Going to bed. Why are you so nosy about everything I do?”

  “You’re goin’ to bed in your clothes?”

  “It can’t have escaped your attention that you met me on the run.” Even though it was true that she had been a runaway, something about her use of the phrase ‘on the run’ struck him as hysterical. Probably because it conjured images of bad men in badlands. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I have a change of clothes and that’s about it.”

  He nodded, feeling more serious. He’d been with Molly long enough to know that women are particular about hygiene and cleanliness and having the appropriate thing to wear for the appropriate event. He suspected that Bud usually wore pajamas or some version thereof and that doing without was part of her sacrifice. He had to admire the kid. She was committed to keeping that baby safe. She was probably gonna make somebody a good mama.

  “Okay. Maybe it’s just as well. Those quilts don’t look all that warm.”

  He separated a bottled water from the plastic casing and set it down by her bed.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, gripping the quilts so that they were pulled up over her chin. She was so unused to thoughtfulness directed at her, much less small kindnesses such as that and wasn’t sure what to do with the feelings that came up in response.

  “You’re welcome,” Cann said matter-of-factly as he turned away to set the screen in front of the fire.

  Despite being in her street clothes and in a strange place, Bud slept through the night. That was an event that had been a lot less common since she’d been pregnant. She woke to the sounds of Cann rekindling the fire then scrambled up and hurried toward the toilet before it was too late.

  The relief she felt from emptying her bladder was almost a pleasure in itself.

  She looked in the mirror and wished she’d thought to bring her bag in with her. She cracked the door open.

  “Johns?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you hand me my bag?”

  He glanced toward the bed where she’d stowed her bag under the bottom bunk. “No good mornin’?”

  After a slight hesitation, she sniffed and said, “Sure. Good mornin’,” trying to remember if she’d ever before in her life, even once, been expected to utter a courtesy considered so common by so many.

  After pulling the bag through the crack in the door, she brushed teeth, washed face and tamed the wild hair. By the time she was finished with that she was, to her amazement, smelling bacon cooking.

  When she drew near, she saw that Cann had set an iron skillet off to the side of the fire after forming a section with just the amount of heat he needed.

  “Want coffee?” he said.

  Her eyes traveled the hearth until they found the pot. It looked like it might have been red at one time, but had been blackened and encrusted with the flame and soot of many such mornings without modern convenience. She briefly wondered who the other people were and why they had sought refuge in the small rock house on the Mexican border.

  “Yes,” she said in a voice that sounded too rough to be hers. She cleared her throat. “Is there something I can do to help?”

  “Yep,” he said without looking up. “Go get us one of those rolls of biscuits out of the cooler.” As he was using a fork to turn the bacon over, the grease made a loud popping noise. Cann hissed and brought the heel of his hand up to his mouth. “Christ. That hurts.”

  Bud hurried to the cooler and grabbed a handful of ice. When she returned she slapped it on Cann’s burn.

  “Here. You hold this. I’ll take care of the bacon.”

  Cann looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time. Sometimes she didn’t seem like a kid at all. Dutifully, he took the ice in his big hand and held it on the burn.

  “This is pretty clever,” she said. “Cooking food in a fireplace.”

  “Yeah. Imagine that. Quest for fire.”

  “Well it may not be new to humanity, but it’s new to me.”

  By the time Cann walked over to the cooler, the ice had melted. He took one of the cans of biscuits out, greased the second skillet and placed them in the pan snuggled up close together, unlike what the directions said to do. But of course, the directions talked about baking in ovens.

  He brought the pan of biscuits back to the fire and set it off to the side where, he estimated, it would be exposed to just the right amount of heat.

  “Bacon’s done,” she said as she forked it onto the wood tray that had been lined with a paper sack and paper towels.

  “Okay.” He used the ancient oven mitt to pick up the skillet, walked it outside a ways from the house and dumped the excess grease into a rocky crevice, leaving just the tiniest bit in the pan.

  When he returned she said, “What’s next?”

  He nodded toward the kitchen area. “There’s a bowl over there with some eggs whisked and ready to go. Bring it over here if you please.”

  When she saw that he intended to dump the beaten eggs into the skillet, she said, “NOOOOOO!” He looked up at her and smiled just before pouring the eggs into the bacon grease. “How could you do that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I’ll see what? Inedible eggs.”

  He laughed. “You know you have the makings of a drama queen.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do.”

  “Oh my God! Look what you’ve done to those perfectly good perfectly yellow eggs. They’re disgusting!”

  “They’re not disgusting. They’re called dirty eggs.”

  “And that’s exactly what they look like! No thanks.”

  “Tastin’ before judgin’.”

  “Is that a policy statement?”

  “I don’t know what a policy statement is.”

  “It’s a rule you live by.”

  “I don’t make rules about food, but if I did, that would be one of ‘em. Up. Biscuits are ready.”

  “Are those plates and forks clean?”

  “Caretaker. Everything’s fine. Just take the bacon over there and sit down at the, uh, table.”

  “Do we have any juice in that ice chest?”

  “I think I saw some. You’re welcome to hunt around.”

  While Cann carried a skillet of eggs and a skillet of biscuits, Bud was bending over the ice chest looking for juice. One look at her heart-shaped derriere pointed in that position had his cock twitching in his pants. He scolded himself for the inappropriateness of that and looked away, suddenly on a mission to find the salt and pepper.

  “Eureka!” she shouted, holding up a pint bottle of orange juice like it was a prize. “Want some?”

  He could see by the look on her face that she was hoping he’d say no. He shook his head after biting into a piece of thick slab bacon and used a booted foot to invite her to sit by pushing her chair out and away from the table.

  As she dropped into the chair he spooned a large helping of ‘dirty’ eggs onto her plate.

  “Hey!” she said. “You said taste. Not consume a dozen eggs.”

  “There’s not more than two eggs there, missy. And you need the protein.”

  She gaped. “Now it’s missy?”

  He chuckled. “This mornin’ it is. Keep up.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, pumpkin.”

  He laughed out loud. She’d done it again. Made him forget for a second that he was a hapless man overdue for a meeting with suicide.

  Bud took a long, long look at a tiny bit of scrambled eggs on her fork before she put it in her mouth, but her expression quickly changed from revulsion for the food to respect for Cann.

  “This is good.” She said it like it was a miracle.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  While Bud looked on, Cann used a spatula to separate a biscuit and delivered it to her plate. She supposed the last time she’d been fed by another person was before her earliest memory. He rose and grabbed the open butter container he’d used to grease the biscuit pan.

/>   “Hunted around in there.” He meant the ice chest. “But I didn’t see any jam or jelly or honey.”

  “Butter’s fine.”

  “Okay.”

  She took a bite of hot buttered biscuit and moaned softly. “This is so good. I don’t know. Maybe the best food I ever had.”

  “Well, you know what they say.”

  “What?”

  “That the best food is the food you don’t have to cook yourself.” He chuckled.

  “Yeah.” She grinned. “Might be something to that.”

  Bud didn’t hear anything, but Cann’s head suddenly jerked toward the front of the house. It only took his long legs three strides to reach the windows. He relaxed visibly.

  “Must be Maria.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the vehicle is not exactly this year’s model. Or last year’s.”

  Bud nodded. “I get it.”

  By the time Maria was knocking at the door, they were finished with breakfast and clearing the table.

  After hellos, Cann had a conversation with Maria in Spanish. She appeared to be in her forties and had an engaging smile which she turned toward Bud three times during the conversation with Cannon Johns.

  “What size shoes do you wear?”

  “Seven. Why?”

  “Maria’s goin’ to go into Presidio and get you a pair of hikin’ boots, just in case we end up walkin’ around. You can’t wear those…” He waved at her feet. “Whatever those are.”

  “Keds.”

  “Like I said… whatever. Is there anything else you need from town? More juice?”

  “Snickers.”

  He looked at Maria, who nodded. Bud assumed that meant Snickers is Snickers in any language.

  “And shampoo! Something that smells nice.”

  After another brief exchange Cann handed Maria a couple of large bills. She nodded at Bud and smiled on her way out the door.

  “So. You speak Spanish.”

  “Well, yes, sugar. I’m from Texas.”

  “I’m from Texas and I don’t speak Spanish.”

  “I don’t know how that’s even possible? Didn’t you say you’re from El Paso?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you’d have to be workin’ at not learnin’ it.”

  “Not true.”

  “You don’t know any Spanish?”

  “Gracias. Mucho. Grande. Si. No. Señorita.”

  He stared for several seconds. “That’s just sad. How do you expect to get a job here without speaking any Spanish?”

  “There are always other people around who do?”

  “That’s ridiculous.” She laughed. “What’s funny?”

  “I don’t know. The way you say ‘ridiculous’. It just seems so out of place on your bad ass bikeryness.”

  “I don’t need to tell you that’s not a word. Right?”

  “Okay. Since there is nothing else to do here, why don’t you teach me Spanish?”

  He seemed to be considering that.

  “I might. What do you have to offer in exchange?” Her smile fell and he realized how she’d taken that. “No. Not that. Something to teach me that I don’t already know.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She looked around the room. “Wow. Seems like you already know how to cook.”

  “Got it covered.”

  “I know how to shoot.”

  Though he seemed interested, he didn’t ask. “Got that covered, too.”

  She looked over at her bag. She didn’t have a lot of stuff with her, but she did have a deck of bicycle cards. “You know how to play cards?”

  “Of course.”

  “Gin rummy?”

  “No. Poker.”

  “Okay then. I’ll teach you gin rummy.” When he said nothing, she offered, “Or the chicken dance.”

  “I don’t know what the chicken dance is, but I’m pretty sure I’m not interested in learning it.”

  “Tastin’ before judgin’,” she said, throwing his words back at him.

  They had nothing else to do to pass the time so playing cards was as good as anything.

  “Gin rummy it is. Payment for Spanish lessons.”

  By mid-afternoon Bud was working on ten common conversational phrases. Cann laughed at her accent, but all in all, he wasn’t a bad teacher.

  They ate junk food and enjoyed long periods of companionable silence playing gin rummy.

  “It’s not fair that you’re better than I am at the game I taught you!” Bud complained.

  Cann laughed at her. “It’s just luck. Come on. Next time you’ll get better cards.” She didn’t get better cards, but continued to be vocal about not liking it. “You’re competitive,” he said, like it was a revelation. “Also a sore loser.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are.”

  Maria returned before dinner with bags full of goodies that included a cell phone adaptor for the truck and a couple of changes of clothes for Bud. Tee shirts, jeans, socks, underwear, pajamas. Hiking boots with thick tire tread soles and leather up to the ankles.

  “Get your dirty laundry together,” Cann said. “Maria’s going to wash our stuff and bring it back tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Bud looked from Cann to Maria and back like she was sure he was lying. The idea of someone else washing her clothes was so alien to her that she was having a hard time picturing it.

  Cann looked at her like she was slow. “Yeah. Really.” When she didn’t move, he said, “You need help?”

  She shook her head. “No. Just a sec.” She grabbed a plastic bag from the kitchen and shoved everything that she wasn’t wearing into the stash. When she handed it to Maria, she said, “Thank you.”

  “You can do better than that,” Cann said.

  It took Bud a couple of seconds to understand what he meant. She grinned at Maria. “I mean gracias.”

  Maria grinned and nodded her head. “De nada.”

  Bud took the top off the shampoo and inhaled. Green apples. “Damn it.”

  “What’s the problem?” Cann asked.

  “Now I have this great-smelling shampoo and no hot water.”

  “I can get you enough hot water so that, when you add cold, you’ll have about eight inches of warm water in that tub in there.”

  She blinked at Cann a couple of times before saying, “I’ll take it.” He nodded and set to work pulling out the two big soup pots in the cabinet. “And thank you,” she said a little more softly.

  “You’re welcome. You get your bath stuff together. It’ll take a little bit.”

  He put more wood on the fire and filled the pots.

  “You’re kind of handy. You know that?”

  Cann wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or gratitude, but it sounded like it might be a bit of both. “Can be,” he answered with a small measure of masculine pride.

  Even though the bath was far from ideal, Bud emerged feeling clean and renewed, with towel dried hair and skin that felt pristine. Cann took one look at her and burst out laughing.

  “Don’t blame me,” Bud said. “I’m not the one who speaks Spanish. All I’ve got to say is that now I understand why Maria kept smiling at me.”

  Bud stood there in Spongebob Squarepants pajamas with a hand on one hip and a challenging posture. On the one hand, the print was beyond silly. On the other, the lightweight knit outlined every inch of Bud’s lithe young figure and brought attention to the fact that her stomach was still ironing-board flat.

  “What are you looking at?” she said.

  His eyes came back up to hers quickly. “Just noticin’ that you aren’t, um, showing.”

  “If I was far enough along to be showing, then it would be too late to…”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “So how far along are you?”

  “Eight weeks. I think.”

  “How did he find out?”

  “I told him. I thought it would be better to tell him why I wasn’t starting school this semester than to pay the money and drop out.”
>
  Cann regarded her thoughtfully. “Most kids your age wouldn’t think like that.”

  “Will you stop calling me a kid?” Normally she would have left it at that, but the part of her that recognized that at the very least she owed the big handsome biker courtesy for being her unlikely rescuer urged her to add, “Please.”

  “You know someday you’re gonna wish folks thought of you as younger.”

  Without pause she said, “Then I’ll ask them to call me a kid.”

  He chuckled, shaking his head. “It’s hard to think of you as a grown woman when you’re wearin’ those pajamas.” It was a lie. Anatomically she was all woman, but it sounded plausible.

  She looked down at the pajamas. “Clothes don’t make the, um, person.”

  After taking a sip of coffee, he said, “Cannot argue that.” He pulled the phone out of his pocket and looked at the face. “I’m going to go run the truck long enough to charge the phone. Shouldn’t take too long. You be okay here?”

  Bud cocked her head at the question. After a lifetime of taking care of herself, it was odd to have someone ask if she’d be okay. She tried to remember if her father had ever asked that short and simple question and couldn’t say that he had.

  When Cann looked closely at her young flawless face, waiting patiently for an answer, he saw for the first time that the eyes looking back belonged to someone who was older than the edge of eighteen. On the inside.

  “Of course,” she said, with the maturity of a woman. Not a girl.

  And he wondered how he’d failed to read the situation correctly. He was a hundred years old walking around in a twenty-five-year-old body. She was twenty-five walking around in an eighteen-year-old body.

  As he rose to his feet, he ducked his head in acknowledgement then set the coffee cup down on the table, and walked to the shed that was temporarily housing the truck.

  Bud noticed the instantly empty feeling of the house when she was left alone. She had known that Cann was a big guy surrounded by a big invisible presence, but experiencing the difference in atmospheric environment after that presence withdrew was breathtaking.

  That’s what they mean when people talk about someone being a force of nature, she thought.