New Way to Fly

by Margot Dalton

  Amanda nodded dubiously as Brock reached into the back of the truck and withdrew a couple of soft colorful Navaho saddle blankets, shook them out and spread them on the sun-warmed grass near a stand of oak trees.

  “Here, you just relax and enjoy the view,” Brock said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She watched as he strode off into the sunlight, his tall lean form surrounded with a nimbus of pure gold that made him shimmer and dance before her eyes.

  Amanda’s heart was in her mouth when he approached the big angry bull. But Brock paused, made an impatient threatening gesture and moved through the gate into the enclosure, leaving the animal backing up and glaring balefully at him through the rails.

  She saw Brock’s wide shoulders straining near the windmill, heard the rhythmic hum of a motor and the sudden gush and splash of a stream of water at the big trough. The bulls shoved and crowded around the trough, emitting strangled bellows that started low in their heavy throats and turned into shrieks, then sobbed into trembling silence in the rich autumn sunlight.

  Amanda relaxed into the softness of the thick blankets, smiling drowsily at the beauty all around her. Something nagged at her memory, something about this sun-warmed hillside, starred with tiny yellow autumn flowers. There was a familiar feeling to this scene, a sense that she’d been here before, enjoyed moments of overwhelming happiness in a setting just like this.

  But she couldn’t seem to isolate the memory, and she felt too sleepy to try. She closed her eyes in contentment.

  “You look so pretty up on this hilltop, Amanda. Just like a little Texas wildflower.”

  Amanda opened her eyes at the husky note in Brock’s voice. She moved over to make room for him on the blanket. “I don’t feel very flowerlike these days,” she said. “I feel more like a…a weed, or something, Brock. Some poor plant that gets blown all over the place, can’t find its proper setting and doesn’t really know where or how it should grow.”

  “Plants should grow where they do the best,” Brock told her soberly, leaning up on one elbow and looking down at her with a dark intent glance. “Where the light and temperature and soil conditions are just right for them.”

  “What if there isn’t any such place?”

  “There’s a right place for every plant,” Brock said firmly. “And every person, if it comes to that. It just takes some looking, that’s all.”

  “And how do you ever know if you’ve found it?” Amanda waited for his answer, surprised by how anxious she was to hear his reply.

  He lay back with his hands laced behind his head and gazed up at the drifting clouds. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I guess you just feel right, and your roots start to go down deep and strong, and you grow and bear fruit…that’s how you know.”

  “Do you feel that way? Here on this ranch, do you feel as if you’re planted in absolutely the right place?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I feel more at home here than I ever could anywhere else in the world. I really need this place, Amanda. This air and light and these fields around me…I need them to breathe right.”

  “You’re so lucky, you know that?” Amanda rolled her head and looked directly at him as they lay side by side in the sunlight. “It must be wonderful to know you’re in just the right place.” She paused. “You know, Brock, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way in my whole life.”

  “Oh, girl…” Brock reached out a gentle hand to touch her cheek. “My poor sweet girl,” he whispered in that same husky voice. “Did you ever think maybe you’ve been looking for happiness in the wrong place all these years?”

  She shivered at his touch and tried to dismiss his words and the tumult of feeling they caused in her heart.

  She moved closer, nestling against him, so bereft all at once that she was afraid she might burst into tears if he didn’t take her in his arms and hold her.

  She felt his body grow tense and start to edge away, heard him murmuring in anguish against her hair. “I can’t do this, girl. Don’t tempt me like this. I promised I wouldn’t touch you again.”

  Amanda reached over and covered his lips softly with her hand. She leaned up on one elbow, removed her fingers and gazed steadily down into his eyes, then bent to press her mouth to his.

  All her repressed passion went into that kiss, all the lonely nights filled with self-doubts and mounting sexual hunger, all the anguish and despair that came from feeling so lost and without focus.

  She pressed her body onto his, poured herself into the fiery sweetness of their kiss with a kind of desperate intensity, hardly conscious that her face was wet with tears.

  “Sweetheart,” Brock whispered haltingly against her mouth. “Oh, sweetheart…you feel so good….”

  After another endless, blinding kiss, he unbuttoned her shirt and snapped the catch on her bra, then leaned up to kiss her breasts while she moved above him, her tear-streaked face raised to the sunlight, her eyes closed in helpless ecstasy.

  She shuddered at the feel of his hands and lips on her bare flesh, the crispness of his dark hair against her breasts, the gentle pressure as he unzipped her slacks and rolled them down over her hips, then ran his hand under the soft elastic of her panties.

  “Tell me,” he pleaded in a husky whisper. “Tell me if this isn’t what you want, girl. God knows I can’t bear to hurt you. You’re the most special, wonderful woman in all the world. Tell me what you want.”

  Lost in the richness of sensation, Amanda heard nothing of his plea except that he considered her to be special and wonderful. For a fleeting moment part of her mind wondered if Edward had ever considered her special, but she couldn’t seem to hold on to any thoughts of Edward. There was nothing left in her world but sunshine and caressing breezes and the body of this man who lay with her.

  “Don’t talk,” she whispered urgently into the warm skin of his neck. “Don’t talk.”

  She reached down to flip the buckle on his tooled leather belt and tugged at his zipper, feeling a rising tide of excitement when she encountered his bulge of maleness.

  “Oh, wonderful,” she murmured shamelessly, lost in desire. “Oh, Brock, please. Please…”

  But she didn’t have to plead with him. Brock, too, had clearly abandoned his reservations and given himself up to sensation, to the tide of feeling that washed and pounded over both of them like a thundering tidal wave.

  He stood and stripped off his jeans and shorts rapidly, tossed them away and knelt beside Amanda. “Sweetheart,” he whispered, running his hands over her hips and thighs, trailing his fingers across her abdomen and up to her breasts, teasing the nipples and bending to kiss the pulse at her throat, then her lips, her cheeks and earlobes, her eyelids. “I wish you could see yourself now,” he murmured against her hair. “I wish you could see how you look here in the sunlight.”

  She smiled mistily at him and reached out to caress him, drawn by the thrusting hardness of him, aching with need. At her touch he groaned and lowered himself against her. His hand moved down the length of her body and became more purposeful, his fingers feathering against her with a gentle sweet insistence that warmed her, opened her, roused her to an intensity of desire that she was afraid she might not be able to endure.

  But he seemed to know when the feelings became unbearable and paused in his tender caresses, moving his hand aside and drawing her into a warm curving embrace, then arching above her and entering her body so gently and with such confident ease that she gasped, stunned by the way he felt inside her, the wonderfully satisfying richness of his body filling and covering her own.

  “Brock,” she murmured against his throat. “Oh, God, it feels…” She moved slowly beneath him, searching for the words to tell him how she felt.

  “What, darling?” he asked, covering her mouth with his own, murmuring against her lips. “What does it feel like?”

  “Like heaven. Like nothing I ever…Oh, God…”

  And then there were no words, no thoughts, nothing but pounding rich sensa
tion and a soaring flight that carried her so high she was frightened, lost, unsure of where she was being taken or how she would ever find herself again.

  A last she felt a shattering wave of pure pleasure, then a throbbing aftermath of fulfillment, of gentle quivering happiness that ebbed through her body in ancient tides, shifting and lapping quietly onto some distant sun-washed shore.

  Slowly Amanda returned to herself, became aware of the man who lay silent and content in her arms, of the soft blanket against her bare skin and the leaves rustling overhead, of the distant bellows of the bulls down at their crowded water trough.

  She stroked Brock’s rich dark hair, but her mind was already troubled as he began to stir and murmur in her arms.

  What have I done? Amanda thought, gripping him tightly and staring with blind panic at the cloudless arching sapphire of that calm Texas sky. Oh, dear God, what have I done?

  CHAPTER NINE

  MARY GIBSON MOVED quietly through the visitors’ room, looking trim and attractive in a tailored rust-colored jumpsuit that brightened the highlights in her hair. She wore a skillful touch of makeup and dainty gold earrings, and her slim waist was accentuated by a wide belt of tan leather.

  Her husband sat at one of the tables waiting for her, gripping a stained coffee mug. When Mary approached the table he stood clumsily and pulled out a chair for her, dropping his hand onto her shoulder in a brief awkward caress before he sank back into his own chair.

  “You look so pretty, Mary,” he said wistfully. “All them new clothes of yours, they sure do make a world of difference.”

  Mary smiled at him. “I know. I should have done this years ago, Al. I’m just ashamed that I needed a city girl to come along and teach me how to look after myself.”

  He nodded, falling silent as the young woman at the next table burst into a noisy storm of tears and her husband dragged his chair around the table, then leaned close to her and whispered urgently in her ear.

  Al cleared his throat awkwardly and glanced at his wife across the table. “I guess things back home aren’t any better, Mary?” he ventured, echoing her own gloomy thoughts.

  Mary looked up at him, trying to smile. “Not much better, Al,” she agreed dryly. “In fact, now there’s a deadline.”

  He shifted nervously in his chair. “A deadline?”

  “The end of November. Cody says that by the end of November, I have to present him with a financial plan for the next two years. He wants me to show him how I intend to double the income of the ranch, or he’ll have to call in the notes.”

  Al Gibson stared at his wife, aghast. “Double the income? Mary, he can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, he’s serious, all right,” Mary said grimly. “And I can’t do it,” she added, her voice taking on a note of despair for the first time. “Al, I just can’t do it. I’ve been over the damned books a hundred times, tried every way I could think of to cut costs and increase productivity, but unless beef prices go sky-high, it’s just not going to be possible.”

  “Well, then, I guess we have to live with that,” Al said gently, taking her hand. “We can just go ahead the way I told you, sell the place an’ let you move away, back up to Connecticut.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so all-fired anxious for me to move to Connecticut,” Mary said, keeping her voice deliberately tart so she wouldn’t break down and cry. “Are you that sick of the sight of me, Al, that you need for me to be thousands of miles away?”

  He gazed at her, appalled, his eyes suspiciously moist. “God, Mary, don’t say things like that,” he whispered huskily. “These visits of yours, they mean the whole world to me. You’re the sunshine in my sky these days, girl. In fact, it took a while in this place for me to understand what matters, but now I know what I’ve thrown away an’ just what a fool I’ve been. Wherever you go, Mary, I’m gonna be followin’ after you as soon as I can, beggin’ you to take me back.”

  Mary stared at him across the table, unable to hold back the tears any longer. “Oh, Al,” she murmured, her heart breaking. “Oh, Al, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anythin’,” he told her, taking a tissue from the pocket of his prison trousers and reaching over to dab clumsily at her cheeks. “Don’t say a word. I got no right to talk like that to you, girl, an’ I won’t do it anymore. You just go ahead an’ live your life, an’ try to find some happiness. I caused you enough misery for one lifetime.”

  Mary nodded and swallowed hard, still reluctant to trust her voice but anxious to steer their conversation out of these treacherous personal depths. “About the ranch,” she said finally, drawing a sheaf of papers from her handbag. “I brought these balance sheets, Al, and I thought you could go over them with me, see if you can think of anything I’ve missed that might squeeze a few more dollars out of the place.”

  He nodded his shaggy graying head and took a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of his blue shirt. With the steel-framed glasses in place he looked older and more vulnerable than ever. Mary’s heart began to ache all over again.

  “There’s no hired help there anymore?” he asked, glancing at her over the rims of the glasses.

  Mary shook her head. “A couple of them left right after you…went away. And the others I had to let go. I just couldn’t pay their wages, Al.”

  “And young Luke, here—” Al tapped the papers “—he just works for free?”

  Mary shifted uncomfortably and felt her cheeks growing warm. “Just for room and board and some pocket money on weekends. He needed a place to live, and I—”

  “Vern was up last weekend,” Al interrupted, his blue eyes fixed steadily on his wife’s face. “He says there’s some gossip around town about you an’ Luke.”

  Mary stared, appalled, and felt herself growing even more hot and flustered. “That’s just…that’s just so ridiculous!” she burst out angrily. “Luke and me…oh, Al, you have to know that there’s never been one single—”

  “It don’t matter, Mary,” he interrupted quietly. “It don’t matter at all. But Vern made me realize how it feels.” Al gave her a small wintry smile. “It sure don’t feel good, Mary, knowin’ people are gossipin’ about your wife an’ some guy who’s twenty-five years younger. An’ I guess it didn’t feel no better for you, did it? What I did, it was a real terrible thing, Mary. I don’t think I even realized until Vern told me that, just how awful it was. But now I do. An’ I’m just so sorry.”

  Mary brushed at her tears again and reached out to grip his hand, holding it tightly in both her own. Her knuckles whitened with the pressure, and her old wedding ring shone dull gold beneath the harsh fluorescent lights.

  THE COUNTRYSIDE swam by, bathed in late-afternoon sunlight that was blurred by Mary’s tears. She couldn’t seem to get her conversation with Al out of her mind. Or the gentle way they’d passed the time before she left, sitting quietly together in a silence that said more than words.

  She couldn’t remember the last time they’d shared one of those long eloquent silences, each understanding and accepting the other, knowing without words what the partner was feeling. Mary realized that this deep communion was a feeling she’d missed terribly in recent years.

  She gripped the steering wheel and swerved to avoid a raccoon scuttling across the driving lane. Mary brought her little car back under control and drove on, smiling grimly at the irony of her situation.

  There’d been a time when she and Al had everything a couple could wish for. The whole community had envied their solid thirty-year marriage, their beautiful daughter and bright happy grandchildren, their big prosperous ranching operation and warm circle of friends.

  Now, all that had turned to dust and ashes, crumbling in their hands and blowing away on the wind like a scattered handful of dried flower petals. Yet somehow today a new spark of intimacy had emerged, small and tremulous, incredibly fragile but nonetheless real.

  But what could they hope for? Mary thought in despair. They had to sell their ranch, she would ha
ve to find another place to live, and what would happen to her husband? Would he join her when he was released from prison, living with her in some small city apartment, walking down to the corner store in the morning to buy milk and pick up a newspaper?

  She couldn’t imagine her husband in a setting like that. Bubba Gibson, the good ol’ boy, the rancher and cowboy and colorful local character, was not a man to be confined to a few rooms in the city.

  Mary’s gentle face twisted in bitter frustration and she pounded her gloved hand against the wheel.

  Why did she feel so guilty? Why had everything somehow fallen to her, the need to save the marriage and the ranch and her husband’s happiness? Al was the one who’d made the mistakes, been unfaithful, even broken the law in his own wild urge to grab some fleeting image of youth and sexual excitement. So why was Mary left feeling responsible?

  Throughout her married life, Mary Gibson had wielded little power of any kind. Her husband had made the decisions, and though they usually discussed the important issues, it was understood that Al’s word would ultimately be law. Mary had been coddled, protected, shielded from the harsh realities of life, but she had also learned very little about the workings of the ranch and its financial affairs, and even less about the hidden mysteries of her husband’s private mind.

  Now, suddenly, everything rested on her shoulders. Mary Gibson was apparently the only person able to make decisions, to take charge and determine the course of events for all the future. Trouble was, she hadn’t the faintest idea of how to go about it.

  She felt a sudden wistful longing for Amanda, for the young woman’s proud independent spirit. Mary knew that Amanda had problems of her own, that sometimes her lovely blue eyes were full of doubts and even fears. Still, Amanda Walker represented a new kind of woman, a person fully able to take charge of her life and make firm decisions all on her own.

  I wish she lived closer to me, Mary thought in despair. I wish I could talk to her more often. Oh God, I wish…