His voice was quiet. Deep as the night. “Your folks aren’t the only ones who try hard.”
“I guess,” she said, the thud of his heartbeat steady against her palm. For once, she couldn’t be smart, and she couldn’t be snarky. It was too real, and too raw. “But I know how I disappointed myself, and how upset they were for me. And I don’t want Stacy to go through that. I pulled myself up from my mistakes, but it wasn’t easy. And I’m . . .”
“Strong,” he said.
“Yes.” She knew she was. No point in denying it. “And what Stacy told us tonight about that girl. She made some bad choices, picked the wrong guy, and look at the price she paid. It’s too easy. It happens too much.”
“That wasn’t Stacy, though. Maybe Stacy’s stronger than you think. If she’s anything like her sister . . . I think so. And she’s got something you didn’t have.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s got you.”
They were both quiet for a minute, then, because Rochelle had to let that one soak in. “So,” she finally said. “We keep showing each other our tender places, don’t we?”
She was afraid he’d make some cheesy comment in response to that, and she couldn’t have stood it. But all he said was, “Yep. We sure do. And it doesn’t make me want to kiss you one bit less.”
She swayed into him, and he let her hand go at last, then put his own hand around her head, his thumb stroking her jaw, and lifted her face to his.
“Damn,” he breathed. “It’s that mouth.” And then he kissed her.
It wasn’t hard, it wasn’t rough, and it wasn’t fast. It was slow, and thorough, and oh, so hot. The wine was sweet on their tongues, the air was warm and heavy, and Travis was all over her. Somehow, he had her backed up against the truck with one hand at her waist pulling her close, the other on her shoulder. That maddeningly slow thumb traced the edge of her halter neckline, sending a tingling message all the way down her body. He angled his mouth over hers, took it more deeply, and she was melting.
He must have felt her response, but he still wasn’t rushing. Not a bit. His body said, We’ve got all night, and all her body wanted to say back was, Cowboy, take me home.
His lips were drifting over her cheek now, moving all the way to her ear until he took hold of her earlobe with his teeth and bit down, and she heard herself whimpering and couldn’t stop it. She had hold of him, too, had one hand caressing the back of his neck, the other grabbing his shoulder, pulling him closer. She needed all that hardness against her, inside her. She needed it now.
His mouth moved slowly back to her own, and he gave her another kiss that was hot enough and hard enough to steal her breath. She was making some noise, leaning back farther against the truck, willing his hand to move, because she needed it. And then he was breaking the kiss and stepping back.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding shaken. “So much for kissing you goodnight.”
“Travis . . .” She didn’t move. She wasn’t sure she could.
“Two choices,” he said. “A, you invite me in, but you won’t, because of Stacy. B, you come home with me and know that I’m going to be walking you backward all the way into my bed. If we make it farther than the door, because the way I feel right now, it’d be up against the wall.”
That one sent a tremor through her, and for once, she couldn’t answer.
“Or there’s C.” His hand was on her face again as if he couldn’t stand not to hold her. “You get back in this truck and let me touch you everywhere I need to.”
“You’re doing it again,” she managed to say. “Outline form.”
She wanted C, and she wanted it right now. She wanted to fog up the windows. She wanted those hard hands all over her body. She wanted . . . she needed to let go. She needed to turn it loose, and to feel him do it, too. She needed to climb on board and ride that train all the way down. But she didn’t need to do it at nine o’clock at night in front of all her neighbors, and she did need to talk to Stacy.
“Come on, baby,” Travis said, his hand in her hair now. “Choose.”
“D,” she said, with the greatest effort of her life. “To be continued.”
UPS AND DOWNS
Her sacrifice looked like it was going to be in vain, because at first, Stacy refused to talk to her.
“What?” her sister said when Rochelle knocked on her bedroom door and went in to find Stacy in her underwear and a T-shirt, sitting on the edge of the bed and rubbing lotion into her legs. “I’m pregnant now? Would you stop, please? I mean, yay for free rent, but seriously, Ro, you need to get a grip.”
“Well,” Rochelle said, off balance once more, “I just thought I’d check. Because you seemed so upset tonight.”
“Because somebody died. Because a girl who looked like me and had my job was murdered and dumped in a ditch. Not because I’m wondering how I’ll raise my love child.” Stacy lifted the hem of her T-shirt. “Look. Flat stomach. I’d show you the real evidence, but there’s a limit to sharing, you know?” She leaned closer and whispered, “But if you’re counting the tampons, too? I’m making a dent.”
A snort of laughter escaped Rochelle, and she sat down beside her sister, took Stacy’s bottle of lotion from her, and started doing her own legs. “You’re right. We’ll stick with the stomach. Yours is sure flatter than mine.”
“And note,” Stacy said, “that I didn’t ask you whether you’ve been slacking off on the sit-ups, or maybe making a cozy home for my future niece or nephew. I’m also not moving on from there to ask what you’re using to keep Mr. Irresistible’s little swimmers from slamming their tiny heads into your plump, juicy ovum. Because that would be your business.”
“Ick,” Rochelle said, but she had to laugh. This was Stacy sounding like Stacy at last.
“Hey. Bio major. I can’t help it.”
“Anyway,” Rochelle said, “that’d be a boring conversation either way, because Mr. Irresistible and I aren’t doing the deed.”
“Well, that’s tragic.” Stacy rolled over onto her stomach and stuffed the pillow under her cheek. “Watch and learn: I’m not even going to ask how come. I could guess, but . . .” She paused to consider. “Nah. He’s tall, he’s hot, and he was holding your hand and staring into your eyes before I showed up tonight and wrecked it. I got nothin’.”
Rochelle slapped her sister’s butt, and Stacy jumped and laughed.
“All right,” Rochelle said, feeling much more cheerful. “Congratulations on your restraint. And for the record? Birth control pills, for no other reason lately than a stubborn refusal to admit defeat, because I sure haven’t been needing them. Or you could be nice and call it an optimistic nature.”
“I know,” Stacy said. “About the pills. I live here. I open the medicine cabinet. And for my record . . . IUD. Happy?”
“Well,” Rochelle said, “getting there, anyway. Thanks, sweetie.” She bent and kissed Stacy’s cheek, and her sister put an arm around her neck and held her there for a moment.
“Thanks,” Stacy said, her voice muffled by the pillow. “For bringing me home tonight. I kinda needed you to, you know?”
“I know.” Rochelle kissed her sister again. “Love you, babe.”
“Love you, too.”
So Wednesday was what you’d call a mixed bag. Some very bad, and some very, very good.
Thursday, on the other hand, was just plain awful.
The day dawned hot, muggy, and overcast. Stacy woke up blurry eyed and grouchy, they’d run out of milk, and the “Check Engine” light came on when Rochelle pulled out of the driveway. By the time she’d dropped the car off and hiked up to the university, she was dripping with sweat. Add being late into the office, and having Dr. Halvorsen, her least favorite department head, already in there frowning and looking at his watch?
Yeah. It was one of those days where it got really hard to count your blessings. Until it finally got better.
ONE HELL OF A RIDE
Either Travis was going to have sex
with Rochelle sometime in this calendar year, or he was going to die. He was pretty sure it was going to be one or the other.
He made it through Thursday. And then he turned the computer off and did something about it.
She was in her front yard when he pulled up. Dressed to kill—him, anyway—in khaki shorts, a white V-necked T-shirt, and work boots, swinging a hoe for all she was worth despite the heat, a baseball cap pulled low on her head and her hair back in a knot. She looked hot, she looked grumpy, and she looked like exactly what he wanted.
He could be a good guy and help her with her garden. Or he could be the man he thought she needed right now and pull her out of it. He knew which one he was going for.
He didn’t even get out of the truck. When she looked up at the crunch of gravel from his tires, he leaned over and said through the open passenger window, “Hey, pretty girl. Want to go for a ride?”
She stood, the hoe in one hand, drew a forearm across her face, and said, “Where to?”
“You’re going to have to find that out for yourself. Got a cooler in the back full of ice and Corona. Climb on in, put those pretty toes up on my dash, and let’s see where we get.”
She dropped her hoe into the dirt and swayed her way over to him, working it in that way she should have a patent on. When she got there, she put her forearms on the rolled-down window and gave him a sneak preview of paradise right down that shirt.
“A girl could get in trouble accepting that kind of invitation,” she told him. Those blue eyes were sparkling, the full lips were curving, and he was already starting to burn.
“Yep.” For once, he wasn’t trying not to look. He was going ahead and looking. Tonight, they were going to be throwing the rule book out the window. “She sure could. Least that’s what I’m hoping.”
“You know what?” she said. “I’ve been awfully good for an awfully long time.”
“Sure seems like it to me,” he said. “Being in charge all the time’s got to get old, too. Maybe you could step back and give somebody else a chance.”
She cocked her head and looked at him from under the brim of her ball cap. “And would that somebody be you?”
“One way to find out.”
And then he waited while his heart beat so loud he’d swear he could hear it. Until she pulled the door open, climbed on up, and said, “Well, hell, boy. Let’s go.”
She was in Travis’s truck, headed for who-knew-where, with her laundry still tumbling in the dryer and her yard half weeded. And she didn’t care. She’d borrowed his phone to text Stacy, and that was it. She was done.
She started out by unlacing her boots and pulling off her socks, and then, yes, she put her feet up on his dash. He started to roll up the windows, but she said, “Nah. Leave them down. I like the wind,” and he obliged.
There was a hint of a breeze now, the stultifying heaviness of the day promising to break. Threatening to pour down over them, to pummel them delirious, and she wanted to be out here to feel it.
She reached behind her head, pulled out the two sticks that had been holding her hair, and let it fall. It instantly began flying around her head, restrained only by the ball cap, and she laughed. “Feels good.”
“Now, see,” he said. “That’s the kind of picture I had in my head all day.”
“You did?”
“Oh, yeah. You can’t kiss me like that and not leave me thinking.”
“I thought you were the one kissing me. Sure felt like it.”
“Good.” He turned onto the county road on the east side of town and headed north, the low hump of Paradise Mountain rising farther to the east.
“We going hiking?” she asked lazily, her elbow on the open window matching his own. He was dressed like her. Shorts and T-shirt, running shoes without socks. “Going to have to put my boots back on, then.”
“Thought I told you to wait and see.”
She turned her head to look at him and saw his half smile. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re a miserable failure at being a New Age man?”
“Aw, baby,” he said. “Now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings.”
They were in the foothills now. The fields not yet plowed, glowing yellow in the evening light with the remnants of the harvest. Hay bales lying round and golden against a background of higher hills dotted with evergreens, with the humped gray cloud banks looming beyond. And then Travis slowed and made a right, and they were heading to the mountain.
When he turned off onto the gravel road and raised the windows against the dust, she said, “Oh, yeah. I think I’m getting a clue. But then, you like to swim. I haven’t been out here in a while.”
“I do. Like to swim, that is. And why haven’t you been out here? You seem to like to swim yourself.”
“More of a high school thing. And I was busy. All that life stuff. All that being in charge, like you said. I do have a story, though.”
“Let’s hear it,” he said, heading around a corner. Not too fast, because Travis knew how to drive in gravel. Surprise.
“First time I was here? Kegger. Fifteen years old, told my folks I was spending the night with a girlfriend, and they found out. I’ll never know how.” She laughed, remembering. “There I was, sitting around a campfire with a bunch of other kids, all of us out to be wild and crazy, drinking my very first beer and thinking how bad it tasted. Stuart Landford with his arm around me and his hand getting closer, thinking it was his lucky night, when there came my dad.”
“Ah,” Travis said. “Haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your dad yet, but I’m imagining he’s a powerful force.”
“He sure was that night. Looming up into the light like something in a campfire horror story, looking right at me, saying, ‘Rochelle Amanda Marks,’ like it was being pronounced from the pulpit. I thought I’d keel over dead of a heart attack right there, and you never saw anything faster in your life than the way Stuart’s hand whipped off of me.”
“That cure you of being a bad girl?”
“I think you know the answer to that. I still had plenty of lessons to learn. I should’ve listened to my dad a lot more than I did. Had a thing for bad boys for way too long.”
“Maybe,” he said, swinging around another turn, “you just need the right guy to be bad with.”
“A good, strong man with some bad boy in him? That’s the idea. Haven’t found one like that yet, though.” She shifted her feet on the dash, curled her toes, took off her ball cap, lifted her hair in both hands, and pulled it over one shoulder.
“You think?” he said. “And here I thought maybe your search was over.”
“You that guy?” She slid her eyes on over to him, then left them there, because he was worth watching. Sitting so still, nothing but one hand moving, turning the steering wheel.
“I sure hope so,” he said. “I know I’m a guy who wants a good woman with some bad girl in her. What’s life without a little adventure?”
Her breath had been coming harder ever since she’d hopped up into his truck, and now . . . well, she hoped nobody was going to be taking her pulse anytime soon. “We done going slow, then?”
“Far as I’m concerned? From tonight on, we’re in the fast lane, pedal to the metal and pushing it all the way. That’s the way I want it, anyway. Fast and bumpy and scary as hell.”
“I hope so,” she said, “because if you’re looking for smooth, I’m not it. I’ve got all that complication going on, and so do you. It’s not going to be easy.”
He pulled over, then, at a place she wouldn’t have been able to find, all this time later. Nothing but a wide spot in the road and some tire tracks, and a path leading into the cedars.
He pulled the key out and tossed it under the seat. Idaho security. He didn’t say anything for a minute, and she waited.
“I don’t want easy,” he finally said. “I’ve had easy. I don’t want pretty good, and I sure as hell don’t want close enough. I want all the way. I want crazy-about-you. I want can’t-get-enough. I want to get a
ticket next time I drive home from the airport because I couldn’t go another minute without being with you. And I want to know you feel the same way about me. I want you, and that’s it.”
“You’re talking about sex.” She couldn’t get her breath. She couldn’t still her heart.
“You think so? I’d say I’m talking about everything. I’m talking forget being careful. Forget being safe. Hold my hand and jump off that cliff with me. Eyes wide open.”
“You think we’ll work?”
“Second time you’ve asked me that. I don’t know if we’ll work. We could go down in flames. But I’m betting it’ll be one hell of a ride.”
STORM DAMAGE
She was off balance. He could see it. Not answering, just looking at him. And then she shoved her door open and hopped down, and he followed her, stopping to pull the seat forward and grab the compact Styrofoam cooler and the big lantern-style flashlight.
The crunch of the doors shutting set a crow cawing from somewhere overhead, a harsh sound quickly taken up by another bird, then dying away to silence. Gravel shifted under his feet, and ahead of him, Rochelle quick-stepped over it onto the dirt path that led into the woods.
The sun was beginning to tint the clouds to the west with pink, the insects buzzed in the undergrowth, and the scent of cedars hung nearly palpably in the warm air. A breeze gusted, lifting his hair, letting him know that the storm would be breaking soon. And he followed Rochelle into the trees as she climbed the dirt path in her bare feet. Up and over the little rise, and there it was.
The first and biggest of the three dredge ponds, like teardrops carved out of the mountain, relics of long-ago mining. The water lay deep and still, inviting in the twilight, its shimmering depths edged by huge, tumbled slabs of stone. The buzz of insects was stronger now, and Rochelle was standing on one of the flat stones at the edge, looking out over the water.
Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho) Page 17