Patrick grinned somewhat sheepishly. “You know what cow people are, girl. Give ’em a good year and ever after they want to think that was normal and calculate according. Damn it! Lyin’ here like a rotten log, not being able to see for myself—”
He passed his hand violently across his sightless eyes. At a muffled sound from Tracy, he controlled himself. “You never knew my father, honey. Wish you could have heard him say grace. ‘Course, once would have done it because it never changed. ‘God bless the grass,’ he’d say. ‘God bless the grass.’”
No better thing to bless; without green plants converting air, sunlight and minerals into food, there’d be no life. Patrick sighed. “I guess I’ll have to talk to Judd. If we can’t lease some graze, we’ll sell down to what we can carry.”
Judd wouldn’t take to that kindly. He was a tough opponent, even for a man in full health. Tracy felt a burst of indignation at Shea. If he were helping run the Socorro instead of withdrawing, holier-than-thou, to his own little kingdom, Patrick wouldn’t have to fight these battles, at least not alone.
Mary came in to see if Patrick wanted anything before she left. Both young women kissed him goodbye and Patrick laughed. “Say, now, there are advantages to being old and helpless! Good thing for you I can’t chase you around the bed, Mary mía!”
“I’d chase you right into it!” she teased, and hugged him with a sort of fierce protectiveness before she joined Tracy at the door.
“You’re certainly good for him,” said Tracy as they went out to the pickup. She had been a bit startled, though, at Mary’s kissing Patrick.
Mary offered no apologies. “He’s a wonderful guy. That wife of his—”
She bit the words off. Tracy turned the subject. “There’s another wonderful man waiting for you. And wait till you meet Le Moyne!”
Geronimo had finished rigging the shower. He showed Tracy how to attach the fitted hose to the pump nozzle when she wanted to fill up the tank. Then he took the first shower while the women made big open-faced grilled-cheese sandwiches with spiced mustard, crisp radish sprouts and sliced dills. Tracy retrieved a bottle of chablis from the concrete cooling trough, and dessert was sesame cookies and yogurt with crushed fresh pineapple.
When Tracy said Patrick had decided to sell some cattle, Geronimo looked skeptical. “Judd’ll find some way around it.” He glanced shyly at Mary. “How’d you like to go to dinner in Nogales, maybe to a movie if there’s anything good?”
“What’s good?” asked Mary.
“A show where Apaches beat the white-eyes,” he grinned.
“If you find it, I’ll buy the tickets.” Mary glanced at Tracy. “Sound fun to you?”
“Sounds like a date.” Tracy laughed. “Have a good time. And Geronimo, thanks for putting up the shower. Pure luxury!”
She felt deserted, though, after they were gone. She did the dishes, then collected a saw and baling wire. Going to the edge of the clearing down where the spring water began to run cool, she erected a blind, a concealment of dead boughs and brush, where she could set up her camera and wait for a good shot.
Hot and dirty after she was finished, she had a lukewarm soap shower, and then, in her terry robe, went to the rock basin to soak. Tossing her robe over a branch, she lay down in the smoothed stone, resting her head against the back of the bowl.
With Le Moyne drowsing nearby, she felt completely safe, drowsy after her troubled sleep of the night before. Late sun filtered caressingly down on her. She shut her eyes, lulled by the constant rippling of water over rocks.
Half asleep, wholly relaxed, she didn’t respond for a moment to her sensing of a denser shadow. When she did, fear shot piercingly through her, sent her heart pounding.
What was there? What would she see when she opened her eyes?
Shea’s face. Strange and grim, his long mouth severe. But his eyes were blue fire. He began to strip. How beautiful he was! Muscled shoulders and broad chest curved to flat belly and steel-sinewed thighs. She felt weak, a thick salty taste like blood in her mouth, as she saw the proud thrusting of his desire.
She closed her eyes again. He caught her shoulders, gave her a little shake. “Do you want me?”
Unable to speak, she held up her arms to him.
He took her at once, pace going from fury to gentleness, carrying her with him, controlling her with hands and mouth and gripping legs. When she cried out in sobbing rapture, he crested like a storm, sweeping her out of time and space, laving her in a swirl of soft exploding lights and darknesses.
When that calmed, she was content to lie in his arms, face on his shoulder and chest. Content till what he’d told her so scornfully that first time came crowding into her brain. But when she stirred, he turned lazily. He was smiling as he took her lips. She trembled and was open to his hands, then to his renewed force.
He was her man. She couldn’t deny that. Just as surely, she was his woman. But after a second deeper, richer, less frantic time, he got up and began to wash himself.
Tracy got up from his clothes, which had again made their bed and pulled on her robe, not at all ready to wash his scent from her. She was totally unprepared for his sardonic query.
“Well, did you learn all about how to kill people?”
His juices stung her then. She ripped off the robe and washed herself, letting him see the repudiation. Certainly, she wasn’t going to admit that she’d given Judd the gun.
“What I do is none of your business!”
He nodded his red-gold head. “Right you are. But any man who found you in that basin would make it his business.”
“Le Moyne would tackle anyone but you and Geronimo.” She belted on the robe and thrust her feet into her sandals, keeping her face turned so he couldn’t see she was close to tears.
Damn him! How could he make her feel like a cheap whore when their loving was so wonderful? She started rapidly toward the house, but he didn’t have to stretch his legs to keep up with her.
“Where is Geronimo?”
“He and Mary went to Nogales. They’ll be late.”
“Just when I need him!” Shea frowned. “Well, we’ll make do.” Without being asked, he followed her inside, glanced around in reluctant approval. “Looks pretty comfortable.”
“It is,” she said harshly, furious in remembering the times she’d wished him here, sitting down to a meal, reading by the stove at night, but most of all, loving each other or sleeping beneath the blue-and-white quilt.
As if he read her thought, he peered inside the bedroom, turned to her with a spreading grin and maddening confidence. Crossing to her, he set his hands at the front of her robe and opened it to his gaze.
“No,” said Tracy in a voice that shook. “What do you think I am?”
“A woman.” The derisive tone cut like a razor, though his smile was amiable. “That’s all right, honey. If you get desperate before I do, you know where to find me.”
“There are other men!” she flamed.
“Sure.” From the doorway, he caressed the Ridgeback. “That’s why I gave you Le Moyne.”
Before she could figure that out, he was gone.
Concealed in the blind next morning, trying not to think of Shea, she got pictures of a doe with twin fawns, a dozen javelina and some coatis that came bounding along the stream and, alarmed by something, climbed trees where they perched like a cross between anteater, monkey and raccoon.
Back at the cabin, mollifying the imprisoned Le Moyne with one of her hotcakes, she breakfasted and then spaded the best soil she could find for her garden. The ground was so dry that she wetted it down with the hose in order to get the spade in. It would have to be fenced but that could wait a few days.
Though she had to keep shoving away memories that made her ache with longing, she doggedly planted carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and the garlic and marigolds that were supposed to keep off insects, took a shower and went to see Patrick.
He was amused at her excitement over the little gard
en. “Sounds great—if you’re a rabbit.” He added, in a tone of relief, that Judd had made arrangements to lease land short-term from a neighboring ranch which had switched to raising quarter horses and didn’t need so much graze.
“So that’s settled.” He tweaked Mary’s long black braid as she brought him his tequila. “This one’s in love, I bet. She’s hardly said a word all morning.”
“I’m not in love,” Mary said belligerently. “That Geronimo!” She blew out her cheeks and expressively let the air escape. “He’s got the weirdest old-fashioned ideas!”
“Such as?” queried Patrick.
Mary blushed. “He wants to get married.”
She sounded so annoyed that Tracy laughed and Patrick hooted. “Showing more sense than I thought he had. What’s wrong with that, Mary mía?”
Thrusting her hands in her worn jeans pockets, Mary stared out the window at the mountains. “He doesn’t want his wife to work on cars and trucks.” She snorted. “He thinks I should stay in the damned house, cook his meals and have his babies. Hell’s bells, Patrick! I can do that and still be a mechanic.”
“Mm-hm,” said Patrick mildly. “How do you feel about him?”
Mary blushed again, looking young and vulnerable. “Even if I was crazy about the big goofus, I wouldn’t let him tell me what a woman should be! He can take what I am or look someplace else!”
“‘Little bronco that would not be broken of dancing,’” Patrick quoted with a rueful smile. “Geronimo’s a good man, honey.”
“His ideas are moldier than last year’s cheese,” she sniffed, turning. “And now, patrón, it’s time we got you shaved!”
Patrick drooped his movable eyelid at Tracy. “She does that when she wants to shut me up,” he complained. “Sing for us, Tracy, so she can’t scold while I’m at her mercy.”
Though she didn’t play each time she came, Tracy always brought her guitar. She played while Mary shaved Patrick and trimmed his curly white mane. By then, he was asleep.
The two young women looked at each other. Tracy was sure they were making the same wish: that Patrick would go like that, drifting into sleep lulled by music and gentle hands.
Both stiffened as they heard the click of Vashti’s sandals. Barely nodding at either woman, the shapely blonde glided to Patrick and took his hand.
“Dearest,” she said brightly, “that nice Mr. Fricks is here.”
“That damned developer, you mean?”
Vashti winced. “Patrick, love! His company, Vistas Unlimited, does only the most tasteful, quality kind of place. He’s got a wonderful idea—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
The dark-green eyes glittered but she swallowed and kept control of her voice. “Patrick, even Judd thinks we should sell off that worn-out area around the old house and highway.”
“Over my dead body!”
“You won’t even see Mr. Fricks after he flew down from Phoenix to talk to you?”
“Especially not since he did.” Patrick freed his hand from hers. “You’d better go keep him company so he won’t think his trip’s been a complete loss. Just be sure he knows I’m not selling.”
Vashti glared speechlessly at her blind husband. Then, her back rigid with anger, she swept past Tracy and clicked down the hall and stairs.
Patrick let out a sighing breath and softly, fervently, swore. Mary, without being asked, brought him a drink. He tossed half of it down, then said reflectively, “I got thrown by a horse once up in the Santa Ritas. Had a bad concussion, lay there a couple of days. When I really came to, a couple of buzzards were sidling around. Smelled like whatever they’d been eating and had those bald red heads. Let me tell you, I sat up in a hurry!”
He glanced toward the mountains he couldn’t see. “That’s how I feel now,” he said, and finished his drink.
Tracy was fixing supper when she heard a vehicle across the stream. Looking out the window, she saw Vashti’s Cadillac and wondered what had induced her to bring the car up the narrow road with its scratching shrubs and branches. A man got out, too, and followed Vashti across the log. They walked toward the hot spring.
Fricks of Vistas Unlimited? It would seem he hadn’t gotten Patrick’s message. Tracy moved her egg foo yung to the table and, with Le Moyne, sauntered to the spring.
Vashti’s eyes flashed a warning as she gave a tight smile and said, “Tracy, dear, this is Hal Fricks. Hal, Tracy is Patrick’s adopted daughter. She’s living in the line shack while she works on a wildlife picture book. Isn’t that quaint?”
Hal Fricks had carefully styled blow-dry hair the same sand color as his eyes, suit and moustache. His tanned skin suggested sunlamps or a lot of time by the swimming pool. He might have been forty. His smile, as he reached for Tracy’s unenthusiastic hand, radiated charm.
“Tracy, what a pleasure!” His voice was pitched to virile intimacy. “And what a marvelous spot! I’m sure Vashti has told you of Vistas’ plans to share it with a select group who’ll respect and appreciate it.”
“Last Spring?” Tracy blinked.
Vashti smoothly interposed. “Patrick was too tired to listen, dear, but the wonderful idea Hal wanted to discuss with him would involve this area as well as the land across the highway.”
“Or we’d even buy this part by itself if Mr. Scott wants to retain the old house section for sentimental reasons.” Fricks’s glance was warmly confidential. “With this spring for a spa-like attraction, we could launch our condos here and later spread out.”
Stunned, but not eager to antagonize Patrick’s wife, who so obviously still had the power to make him unhappy though she lacked either the will or ability to cheer him, Tracy spoke with care.
“Mr. Fricks, I don’t think my great-uncle has the slightest intention of selling any land.”
Fricks’s smile stayed in place though he turned questioningly to Vashti. “Isn’t Judd his manager?”
“Yes.” Vashti slanted a murderous look at Tracy. “But as I’ve told you, Hal, my husband is like most strong-willed men of action who suddenly become physically dependent. He sees plots in the most reasonable suggestions.” She smiled dazzlingly, putting her hand on Fricks’s arm. “I’m sure he’ll come round, but he has to be humored.”
“I can’t wait too long to settle on a location,” Fricks warned. “This is superb, but we have firm commitments and there are other possibilities.” Gazing at Tracy, he upped the voltage of his smile. “You must have a lot of influence with your uncle, Tracy. I expect we could give you a condo custom-made to your tastes if you could convince him that it’s almost criminal to let such a beautiful place go to waste.”
Outraged, Tracy spun away. “The best you can hope for is that I won’t tell him what you just said,” she threw over her shoulder. “And the only reason I won’t is because he doesn’t need any more trouble! He won’t sell to you, Mr. Fricks, so you’d better look elsewhere!”
She didn’t look back till she was inside the house. By then, the Cadillac was pulling away. She sank down on the floor by Le Moyne and wept with helpless anger against his neck. Why did Patrick have to be blind and paralyzed? And why didn’t Shea help him?
X
Wednesday she arrived at the ranch in time to lunch with Patrick. Judd joined them for pecan pie and coffee. Though they’d be spending the afternoon in his plane, he wore his hand-stitched alligator boots and tailored ranch clothes that fitted like second skin to his splendidly proportioned muscular body.
“Lost many calves?” Patrick asked, stirring restlessly.
“Just a couple. And two young heifers didn’t make it. Pretty good season.”
“That new graze working out?”
Judd smiled. “Just fine. If you’d let me put some more land in alfalfa—”
“We don’t have that kind of water.”
“But Dad—”
“I can see feeding in winter,” Patrick snapped. “But when the herds can’t make it through the summer, it’s time to thin till th
ey can.”
Square jaw clamping, Judd said, “They’ll make it.” He rose in one lithe motion. “Well, Tracy? Ready to see how the old homestead looks from the air?”
“You be careful with her,” Patrick growled. He didn’t like airplanes.
Judd grinned down at Tracy as he took her arm. “I’ll be careful, Dad—as she wants me to be.” Restored to good humor, Patrick chortled.
Pausing at the top of the stairs, Judd tilted her face up and gave her a quick kiss. “How careful do I have to be?” he asked with mock solemnity.
“As careful as you can, and then some.” She laughed, slipping free to precede him down the stairs. Vashti appeared at the bottom, striking in soft wool-crepe jade tunic and trousers.
“How lovely that you’re getting an air tour, Tracy!” she greeted. “May I come along?”
Judd’s tone was bland but his tawny eyes pressed at his stepmother. “You’ve seen it all before, Ti. Patrick’s expecting you.”
She didn’t protest but her mouth tucked down. Tracy uneasily felt that those green-black eyes were following them, and not with good will.
“You’re not very nice to Vashti,” she said as they passed the tennis court.
Judd shrugged. “She crowds.”
It was something more than that, an element of dominance and submission that jarred Tracy as being out of place between a man and his father’s wife. “It’s dull for her here.”
“Not terribly. She got in hours of swimming and tennis with Hal Fricks before he left this morning. When her stream of company slacks too much, she takes a trip.”
Vashti could undeniably take care of herself. Tracy dropped that subject and asked Judd point blank if he favored selling the land called Last Spring.
“That depends on the offer.”
“But Patrick doesn’t want to!”
Judd patted her knee and helped strap her into the seat next to him. “Look, baby, Patrick’s still the boss. I’ll not buck and pitch with him in no shape to fight back. But he won’t live forever.”
A Mating of Hawks Page 12