Headlights sliced through the growing shadows as a pickup bounced down the gravel road toward his house. Soda, his collie, stood up from the porch and barked. The truck stopped and his Uncle John stepped out, looking for him as he hitched his pants up over his belly. Soda went over for a pat, her tail wagging.
It was about time John came looking for answers. Eli had expected him sooner.
“Up here,” Eli said.
John took three steps toward the barn, peering up at him from under his hat. “Fired?”
“Yep.”
“Boy, you better get down here and tell me what the hell happened.”
“Give me a second.” Slipping the hammer into his tool belt, he crab-walked over to the ladder and climbed down. He hoped his uncle had a six of Shiner Bock in the truck. Because what he needed a hell of a lot more than his uncle giving him a hard time was six cold beers.
“You let that woman fire you?”
“Go ahead, make your jokes.”
“Boy, you are the joke!”
Eli sighed, preparing himself to weather his uncle’s temper.
“Your father drank himself into a stupor every day he worked in that barn and he didn’t get fired.”
Eli shrugged. “Clearly I have a special talent.”
“You hit her?”
“What? No!”
“Well, even that’s forgivable with certain women.”
Eli stared at his uncle. That had to be a joke.
“What I did was pretty unforgivable. And it’s all right that I’m not there anymore. It’s …” He laughed. “It’s fine, actually.”
“Fine?” His uncle stepped closer, his wide chest straining at the buttons of his dirty shirt.
Eli felt the bite of his uncle’s temper on the scruff of his neck and he stepped away rather than pushing John back. He was just starting to feel good about himself; he wasn’t going to go and hit the only family he had left.
“It’s not fine. You’re a Turnbull.”
Laughter burned like bitter medicine in his throat. “And what has being a Turnbull ever gotten me?”
“Don’t go ungrateful on me now, boy. We agreed you having that job was our best chance at getting the land back.”
“We’re not going to get it back, Uncle John! Victoria has leased most of the land.”
“Leased? What the hell are you talking about? Since when?”
“Couple weeks ago.”
Uncle John’s face went white and still, and his big chest panted. Eli grabbed his elbow, feeling him weave.
“Whoa, Uncle John, you need to sit down?”
“What rights did she lease?” he whispered. “Water? Minerals? Someone going to start drilling on our land?”
“I doubt it. She leased most of it to ranchers in the area.” Eli led his uncle, ready to sit him down on the wide bumper of the truck, but John slapped his hands away.
“You said she had no idea what she was doing.”
“She didn’t. But she went out and got one.” He told himself it wasn’t respect coloring his voice, but Uncle John heard it and gaped at him.
“You like her. A skinny bitch from the city and a Baker to boot? Boy, I never thought I’d see the day when you’d so spectacularly fail me.”
Eli gaped, feeling like a kid getting hit for the first time by someone he trusted. “I feel nothing for her. I feel nothing for any of it anymore.”
“You are giving up.”
“I got my own life to worry about; I can’t keep carrying the mistakes my family made. It was making me …” He thought about that kiss, of her arms pushing against him. The fear and desire in her eyes. The way he ground himself into her softness, like a man without conscience. What kind of man takes advantage of that? What kind of man thinks it’s okay to use a woman’s desire to his advantage?
Not the kind of man he wanted to be.
“It was turning me into a man I didn’t like.”
“Who the hell cares?” John cried, sounding a lot like Mark thirty years ago. “Poor you. This is your home. Our home. All the home you ever wanted, remember? Jesus Christ, son, what have we been working toward all these years? This is for you!”
Eli shook his head, wounded by the look in his uncle’s eyes, by his words, by the injustice of his disappointment. “Not anymore it’s not. Even if I somehow could get my job back, no Baker will sell me the land. Not now. Between selling the herd and … this thing with Victoria …”
Uncle John rubbed a hand over his red cheeks. “You force her?”
It took him a second to catch on to what his uncle meant by “forced” and he instinctively recoiled, staring at John, wishing he could be offended, shocked at the thought.
But how far had he been, really, from something like that?
“No, but … I pushed … when I shouldn’t have.”
“Some women like that sort of thing.”
Jesus Christ, what kind of women was his uncle dating?
Eli thought of the prim Victoria, the pride she wore like another ugly shirt. She might have wanted him, but she didn’t want him like that. A woman like Victoria wouldn’t want something so coarse. So raw.
And she hadn’t.
“Not her. Trust me.”
“I thought we were a team, Eli.”
“Yeah, well maybe it’s time to realize we’re the losing team.”
“Bullshit.”
Eli couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t be under one more person’s boot heel.
“I don’t want all that land anymore, Uncle John. I’m done. If you can’t get behind me on this, then maybe you should leave.”
“You kicking me off your land?”
“Kicking you off? God, listen to you. No. But I don’t want to fight anymore.”
“I’ve lost enough to the Bakers; I’m not losing you, too. I’m still fighting.” That gnarled finger of his uncle’s jabbed his chest, sunk into his skin like a barb.
Uncle John pushed a six-pack of beer into Eli’s arms and then climbed back in his truck. Eli watched, shell-shocked, as the only man who’d been in his corner over the years drove away, leaving him to drink a six-pack all by himself.
It was too dark to keep working on the barn, much to his regret. He had nothing else to do but walk back into the house and wait for the morning to come.
And with it, Victoria.
He turned, the beer in his arms, and was brought up short by the sight of his house in the moonlight. It seemed so much smaller somehow. A toy someone could pick up and take away. He’d added a porch a few summers ago, while Uncle John had shouted advice at him from his seat under the poplars. The summer he turned fifteen, he rebuilt the stone chimney by himself after it had been ruined by raccoons. When his father moved out, he finally fixed the sagging floor in the kitchen that his mother had always complained about.
He’d lived alone in this house for fifteen years, systematically banishing the bad memories, and he’d never felt lonely.
But tonight the sky was so big and the stars were so far away.
Soda’s cold, wet nose touched his hand, urging him into action. He cradled the beer under his arm and practically ran up the porch, as if ghosts were after him. With a sigh of relief, he pushed open the door, letting the familiar golden light spill across his feet, welcoming him home.
Soda, all the company he’d ever needed, followed him into the empty house.
“You want this.” Eli’s breath skimmed over her skin, pulling her nipples into tight beads. She groaned, rolling her body against him, trying desperately to find relief, but her hands were tied over her head and he kept his skin away. His hardness just out of reach.
“Say the words, Victoria,” he breathed, licking her lips. “Like a good girl.”
His fingers toyed with the damp curls between her legs and she wanted to beg. She wanted to scream with lust and frustration, with the desire that she’d hidden away for fifteen years.
“Fuck …” She swallowed, the words so foreign, so ridi
culous in her mouth, but she was dying. “Fuck me. Please. Eli.”
The callused edge of his thumb slipped into her mouth and she sucked him, arching hard against him, seeking that hand between her legs. Something hard and rough brushed her clitoris and she cried out, shaking.
“More. God. More, Eli.”
“No.”
She screamed in frustration, breaking the bonds around her hands, and sat up, only to find herself in her dark bedroom, tragically turned on.
Alone.
Again.
Grabbing a pillow from beside her she put it over her face and screamed, flopping backwards. Lust ran thwarted circles in her body, making her crazy. Frustrated. But mostly, embarrassed.
It was just a dream. Just another sex dream wherein Eli debased her and she loved it.
Conscious, there was no way she wanted to be treated that way. But somehow when she fell asleep every night, all she wanted was to be forced to feel something. Forced to admit that under her clothes, under her skin, she was a woman who’d long been neglected.
Between her legs she was wet and sore with frustrated desire, and she curled over onto her side with a moan.
Early morning sunlight pushed against the yellow curtains, filling the room with a dim, milky light. She was going to see Eli today. He was coming to get his horses. It had been nearly two weeks since he’d kissed her and she felt like a different woman. The spa, Celeste’s support, Ruby’s eagerness—all of it had somehow changed her, given her more of herself than she’d had before.
But that kiss …
She knew in her heart that he hadn’t kissed her because of any desire he had for her. He didn’t want her like that.
But that didn’t change the fact that she wanted him exactly like that.
The cotton of the tank top she wore to bed was warm under her hands, her nipples ached against her fingers, her breath hitched. It had been years since she’d done this. When she was young, before the ice age of her marriage, she’d taken care of her small aches, the most persistent of her desires, instead of falling into shallow casual relationships.
Marriage to Joel, however, had proven her desires were not that persistent after all. And within a few years she’d channeled all that lonely desire into finding the perfect drapes for the den every spring.
But now it was back with a vengeance; she felt empty and her skin hurt with its need to be touched.
What she liked—the soft touch, the firm squeeze—came back to her in a flood.
Don’t do this. Don’t think of that man and touch yourself. You’re better than that. Better than him.
But in the end she couldn’t stop herself. She slipped her hand between her legs and thought of all the dangerous things Eli made her feel.
The horses neighed and stomped in greeting the minute Eli walked into the barn.
“Hello to you, too,” he murmured, running his hands over Phineas’s star, pulling on his forelock. Lucky snorted and danced in the next stall, and it broke his heart to be leaving her here.
“You’ll miss me, won’t you?” he murmured. A lifetime spent in this barn and this deaf old horse might be the only creature to care when he left.
Didn’t say much for his life up to this point.
He heard the scrape of feet against the hard-packed ground and his stomach flinched in sudden dread. Victoria. It had to be. But when he turned, it was the little boy standing there in rain boots that came up to his knobby knees.
“I’m sorry.” Jacob wrapped his hands in the hem of his own shirt, and Lucky stomped and shook her head in reaction to the boy’s agitation.
“What are you sorry for?” Eli asked, scratching behind Lucky’s ears just the way she liked. The horse immediately calmed, but the boy still vibrated with emotion. Down the way, Darling stomped her feet. Jacob was worse than a storm when it came to agitating the horses.
“I got you fired.”
Eli smiled sadly at the boy. “No, kid, you didn’t. Getting fired was all my doing.”
“But I knew my mom would be angry if I rode that horse and I did it anyway, and I tried to tell her but she wouldn’t listen and then she fired you and—”
Eli stepped up and put his hand on Jacob’s head, which was so little that his thumb and fingers touched the boy’s ears. His silky hair, so like his mother’s, sprouted up between Eli’s fingers. “Not your fault.”
The boy hung his head. “I’m still sorry,” he whispered.
For a second Eli thought about warning the boy about the dangers of taking on other people’s crimes, about guilt and the burden over the years, but in the end he just gave Jacob’s head a little wag and let go of him.
“You taking all the horses?” Jacob asked, jogging to keep up with him as he made his way to the office.
“Phineas, Patience, Darling, and Buddy.”
“What about Lucky?”
“Not my horse.”
“Who is going to take care of her?” Jacob gasped as if Eli were abandoning the horse on the side of the road.
Eli smiled down at the kid. Maybe he was putting off leaving this place, or putting off going to see Victoria, or maybe he was taking a minute to do something good. Which was practically a trend with him at this point.
“How about you?” he asked.
“Me?” The boy lit up like a bonfire.
“Jerry will handle him, keep him clean. But you’re going to need to feed him.”
“Oh … okay.”
“I’ll show you what to do.”
Ruby put a bowl of her yogurt and grapes sprinkled with granola in front of Victoria and waited for the verdict, a smug smile on her pink lip-glossed lips.
“I think this is the best granola yet,” said Celeste, who was sitting beside her at the counter.
Victoria tasted the granola and agreed. Filled with pumpkin seeds and dried cherries, it was crunchy and delicious. After that first considering bite, she dug in with gusto. Torrid dreams and shamefaced masturbation gave her an appetite.
“Where’s Jacob?” she asked.
Celeste sighed. “I don’t understand why all of a sudden you want to talk with your mouth full.”
“He went into the barn,” Ruby said, looking out the sliding glass door. “Eli’s there, picking up his horses.”
Victoria’s throat locked down like a prison. She pushed the grapes away.
“Already?”
“His truck and trailer are out by the barn.” Ruby pointed vaguely toward the front of the house.
“Amy is coming this morning to bid on the project. Any minute,” Celeste said, making notes in the calendar at her elbow.
Ruby turned, staring at them wide-eyed and horrified.
“Is that … a problem?” Victoria asked, though she could feel the answer in the air.
“Amy hasn’t been back on this ranch since she left, when Eli was eight,” Ruby said.
Victoria’s stomach twisted, those pumpkin seeds turning into heavy clumps in her throat. “Because Eli always goes to see her in Dallas? Because despite her leaving they have always had a loving and close relationship?” She sounded delusionally hopeful. Perhaps she should have pushed Ruby for more information about Amy Turnbull, but she’d just been so excited about getting a woman down here to look at the project.
“As far as I know, Eli hasn’t talked to his mother since she left.”
There was a stunned moment of silence before Victoria and Celeste scattered into action.
“I’ll call her and see if I can’t change the time,” Celeste said.
“I’ll go get Eli off the property,” Victoria added. She pushed her feet into her boots and grabbed a sweater from the rack by the door.
“Victoria?” It was Ruby, her tiny body casting a long shadow down the hallway. “Don’t tell him about his mom. I don’t think—”
“He’d like knowing the mother who left him was coming back to help turn his beloved ranch into a spa?” Hiring Eli’s mother would be a mistake, and she never should have
went along with it. Celeste had tried to talk her out of bringing Amy in for an interview, but she hadn’t listened. Bringing Amy here was only going to hurt everyone.
“No.” Ruby shook her head. “I don’t think he’d like it.”
“You think?” Victoria slammed the door behind her as she headed out into the morning, determined not to think of that kiss, or her own hand between her legs.
Or what happens to a little boy when his mother leaves him and never comes back.
chapter
9
The barn was warm and it smelled like horse poop and hay to Victoria, bitter and sweet all at once. A few months here and that smell suddenly wasn’t so bad. Imagine that. Poop didn’t smell so bad anymore.
Eli came around the corner from the office, a white bucket filled with feed in his hands, and beside him was her son, skipping to keep up.
They didn’t see her and she watched as Eli poured the feed from the bucket into a black canvas bucket thing hanging in front of a horse’s stall. A white horse pushed her nose against Jacob, who looked up at Eli as if he were telling him state secrets.
“Now, Lucky is a pig,” Eli said. “If she gets into the grain she’ll eat herself sick. Or worse.”
“Worse?”
“I had a pony once, got into the grain and ate until she died.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Wish to God I was. But that’s what you’ve got to remember. Hay is fine, but grain once a day.” Jacob nodded sagely and Eli kept talking, giving Jacob instructions on what to feed the barn cats and how to keep the dogs away from the manure pile.
Jacob listened carefully, trying so hard to seem older, responsible, all while his eyes glittered with gratitude that this man was taking him seriously, treating him like a person rather than a little boy or an afterthought.
And Eli recognized his gratitude and his need. And he handled it with sure hands.
Victoria stepped backwards into the shadows of an empty stall and pushed her fist against the pounding of her heart. Not fair, she thought. Not fair that he could be so kind to her son and so awful to her.
Not fair that he could be exactly what her son secretly needed and what she so secretly desired.
Can't Hurry Love Page 9