Renegade Man

by Parris Afton Bonds

  He turned his broad back on her. She liked his back. Lean, with that sexy indentation along the spine, banked by rippling muscles. “The light switch’s on the far wall above the counter,” he mumbled again. “Turn it off when you finish.”

  With a “Hmmmph!” she tossed the towel back on the floor with its untidy companions—cutoff jeans, a black tank top, a ragged washcloth and another pair of briefs, red ones. By stretching, she was able to reach the light switch without getting up from her bunk. Darkness closed in on the camper, and she pulled the sheet and blanket up to her chin, then shut her eyes.

  She couldn’t sleep.

  Atop the camper’s aluminum roof, rain tapped out a steady beat. In the distance, muted thunder rumbled. The cool air, carrying with it the fresh, earthy scents of the rain, seeped through the open ceiling vent to make sure she stayed awake.

  “What are you going to do tomorrow?” Jonah’s deep voice reached her through the darkness.

  “Clean up the mess.”

  Jonah grunted. “SEAL trainees have to go through a mud-pit test. More than half of them drop out right there. I’d have second thoughts about tomorrow if I were you.”

  “Then the navy better end their practice of relying solely on male volunteers, because come sunup, I’m going to be out there wading through that muck.”

  “Look,” Jonah said, and she could hear the grudging respect in his tone, “you can hole up here until you can come up with something.”

  “Well, I can assure you it’s certainly not going to be another flimsy tent. I intend to find quarters that are a lot more stampede-proof!”

  A long silence, then: “You’re really going to tough it out?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Jonah. I’m not about to give up and leave. I’d never give C. B. Kingsley that satisfaction. I’m going to file a complaint on him. Not that it will do any good. He’s always had the sheriff and county commissioner under his thumb. Besides, it would be impossible to prove the stampede wasn’t a result of the thunderstorm.”

  When she drew a breath, she heard Jonah snoring. A low rumble like a far-off thunder. Her mouth twitched. She could picture him, eyes closed and mouth open as he snored with abandon.

  “You always did want to roam the seven seas, Jonah Jones,” she murmured into the dark. “I hope you remember what happened to your biblical name¬sake.” She paused, her heart skipping a beat as she thought of how she would feel if something happened to him. “And I sure as hell hope you’re careful,” she added softly.

  Chapter 7

  Achoo!”

  “Here. Drink this.” The rough, masculine voice snapped Rita-lou’s lids open. Jonah, sheathed in his snug-fitting black wet suit, stood over her, a mug in his hand.

  He was so well built, she thought, almost aggravated. She dragged her gaze from him to focus undue attention on the act of plumping up her pillow. “What time is it?”

  “Five-fifteen.” The soft half-light of dawn dusted the small cabin with gold. “Here. It’s hot chocolate.”

  She accepted the mug he handed her, feeling the quickening in her breath at his touch. She glanced up at him to see if he had noted her involuntary reaction. His eyes had darkened. She couldn’t explain it, but Robert had never made her feel this way. With Jonah she felt . . . different. The feelings were new to her, a woman who’d been married twelve years. “Do you always get up this early?”

  “The navy sort of made it a habit.”

  He turned back to the microwave, presenting her with a view of his muscular derriere, and she almost choked on the hot chocolate. She struggled to sit up and realized that the partially unbuttoned shirt was displaying a generous portion of her left breast. Quickly she clutched the halves of the shirt together, but not before he had turned to face her again. Her eyes lifted to catch the leaf-green glitter of his. She watched his gaze roam over her face, her throat, her breasts and back again, as if he were devouring her with his eyes.

  “Since when does a navy man drink hot chocolate?” she blurted. Anything to ease the sudden tension in the room. “I thought it was always strong black coffee.”

  “Wrong. Didn’t you know we’re all rum bums?” His grin was roguish, the old grin she recalled from years past. Except that now that grin initiated a sudden flash of overwhelming desire, a tingling deep inside her. I happen to hanker for chocolate in the morning.” He shrugged. “Okay, and noon and nightime, too.”

  “So you’re allowing a woman in your captain’s quarters,” she said. God, how banal could you get? “I thought that was bad luck or something.”

  He grinned again and nodded toward the pantry. “1 keep a bag of garlic—an old Portuguese sailor’s good- luck charm.”

  “Ohhh, achoo!”

  “Here.” He tore off a sheet from a roll of paper towels, and handed it to her. He folded his arms and leaned back against the counter. “You know, with that smudge of mud across your chin and your hair all tangled, you look just like you did when you were a little girl.”

  She swallowed the hot chocolate, savoring its warmth and wrinkled her nose at him. She wanted to touch him, to have him touch her. He titillated her senses with the promise of untold pleasure. Robert had kept her satisfied, but she sensed that Jonah would keep his woman excited. “I may look like that little girl, but I’m not her. I outgrew her twenty years ago.”

  “And I’m no longer Silver City’s whipping boy. Once I find that paystreak, I’m gone.”

  She canted her head and asked softly, “Are you warning me, Jonah Jones?”

  “Just telling you not to count on me in your feud with Kingsley. I’m not a team player.”

  “I suppose that explains the renegade side of your character.”

  He straightened. “It explains nothing. It tells you that you can stay here as long as you don’t get in my way and until I’m ready to move on.” With that, he stalked out of the camper.

  “You’re awfully good in the galley,” she called as the door banged shut.

  The door jerked open once more, and he thrust in his tawny head. “Don’t clean up anything. I like it just the way it is!” Then he was gone again.

  Her lips twitched with wry humor, but her good mood faded quickly. She recognized the demon Jonah was fighting. She had had Grandpops to love her. Jonah had had no one, not unless you counted an alcoholic father who didn’t know Jonah was around three-quarters of the time.

  Jonah’s childhood had made him into a solitary, separate man. Even as a child, he would flee when he felt tempted to open up, to reveal his true self to another. His face had passed from childhood rebelliousness to teenage arrogance, and now his usual expression was a statement of quiet confidence, still overlaid with that hard varnish of self-containment.

  With a sigh, she slipped from between the sheets. The hem of Jonah’s too-large shirt swished around her knees, reminding her that she had her own runaway emotions to cope with—emotions that seemed suddenly alien to her. How could just the mere touch of a man, this particular man, make her go all hot and wet, discharging that heavy feeling deep, deep, deep inside her?

  It wouldn’t do to get involved with Jonah Jones. For her, too many people had drifted out of her life: her father, mother and grandfather, Chap, and then her husband. Home, to her, was happiness. And the last thing Jonah wanted was a home.

  She perused the compact room, fitted with the two bunks, a pantry alcove and a drop-leaf table. Set into a linoleum-topped counter between the narrow sink and compact refrigerator was a four-burner stove. With the exception of the dirty clothes in one corner, everything was in its place. Apparently the navy had civilized Jonah more than he liked to admit.

  Her gaze alighted on her soggy long johns, lying in a tangle with his dirty jeans and black briefs. She shuddered at the unpleasant realization that she had nothing else to wear. Then she caught sight of a pair of navy sweatpants with drawstring waist.

  Why not?

  Clad in Jonah’s shirt, knotted at her waist, and the baggy sweatpan
ts rolled to her ankles, she looked almost presentable— except for her hair. Borrowing Jonah’s hairbrush, she tried to whip her matted curls into some semblance of order, but the wavy mirror on the back of the tiny bathroom door failed to reassure her of any fashionable success.

  She gave up and left the trailer. Magnum, happy at the sight of his mistress, rose from his place at the bottom of the stairs and trotted alongside her, his tail whipping like a police antenna. Every so often she stepped barefoot on a sharp stone or a prickly pine needle, and she yelped. From the river she could hear the drone of the dredger. Jonah was hard at work, pursuing his dream.

  When she stepped out of the brush onto the flats, her own dream looked hopeless. Shattered by what she saw, she stood there for long seconds, unable to move. The destruction made her physically sick.

  The picnic table was overturned, one bench fractured beyond repair. Cigar boxes littered the drying mud. The refrigerator was tilted on its side, the door open. Ravens were pecking at the food spilling out. Her clothing was strewn across the flats like autumn leaves on a windy day. Above her, mosquitoes buzzed warningly. Her task appeared monumental. She’d lost a good two weeks of work, and she’d only had the summer to begin with.

  There was nothing to do but plunge right in. She began with her clothing, washing the shirts and jeans and underclothing in the creek, then draping them over the bushes to dry. That would have to do until she could get into town for a visit to the laundromat. She was relieved to find her field journal unharmed but for a few mud splotches. Her other personal things—the card tables, refrigerator, lantern and similar items— she piled in one area, cleaning the mud from them as she went along. She would move them over to Jonah’s campsite until . . . until she could find some kind of camper of her own?

  Standing in the midst of the mud-baked flat, she had to admit that she didn’t really want to live by herself in the wilderness anymore. It wasn’t just the animals and the lonely nights. She could stay in town, although it would be impractical to drive back and forth every day.

  The truth was that she liked being in Jonah’s presence. The camper felt sort of like a home.

  The real truth was that he excited her.

  Of course, within the week the town tongues would be wagging.

  Was it true? she wondered. Are we doomed to repeat our past?

  After the shame of being labeled her mother’s child, of ending up unwed and pregnant herself, she had been scrupulously careful in her dealings with the opposite sex. Waiting tables in Houston, she had received a lot of flirtatious passes and requests for dates, and she had turned all of them down. For almost five years she had virtually lived the life of a nun—until Robert Whitehead had come into the club one evening.

  He had been with a date, and he had been fifteen years older than her twenty years, but that hadn’t stopped him. He had kept coming back. Even the fact that she had a four-year-old son hadn’t deterred him. With gentle persistence, he had worn down her resistance, and a year later she had married him.

  Now here she was, staying in a camper with a man. With Silver City’s ne’er-do-well, no less. Let them talk, she thought defiantly. She was going to stay until she found her Renegade Man. That would really give them something to set their tongues flapping.

  Determinedly she went back to work. The green woolen shirt was hot, and sweat trickled down her ribs and puddled between her breasts. By the time she had collected the last of her scattered belongings and cleaned them, the blazing sun was already past its midpoint and it was the hottest part of the afternoon. The search through the mire for all the items she had dug up and cataloged could take days. It was going to be an enormous undertaking.

  She would have to wait until tomorrow before she began that chore. Her confrontation with C. B. Kingsley would also have to wait until later. She wasn’t about to face him looking like the street urchin she used to be. And, covered with mud as she was right now, she looked just that.

  With only one thought in mind—a cooling bath— she trudged back to the river. Her fingernails were rimmed with mud, and her hair was matted with dust. The dirty feeling set her teeth on edge. Ahead of her the tops of the willow bushes swished gently, and she froze. More cattle? Maybe even C. B. Kingsley himself?

  Silently Jonah emerged from the brush. He still wore the wet suit, and he was carrying his fins slung over his shoulder. His diving mask hung from his neck like a bandit’s bandana.

  With a rush of relief, her hand went to her throat. “You scared me! Don’t you ever make noise like a normal person?”

  “I’d most likely be lying dead in the African bush if I did that,” he said dryly. “Stealth is the name of the game.”

  “Then how about whistling ‘Blow the Man Down’ to let me know you’re coming, like you did at the springs?”

  He cocked a brow. “How do you know I didn’t whistle it just to let you know I was already there?”

  Her breath suckad in. “You’d been watching all that time?”

  “Something to think about, isn’t it? But I wasn’t.”

  The breath went out of her in a relieved sigh. “I’m forewarned, then.”

  He shifted his stance so that the fins dangled from the fist planted low at his hip. “Hey, look, Ritz. I didn’t mean to be so grouchy with you this morning. I’ve been thinking that maybe you could use the dredger to suck up all those arrowheads and flints and whatever it is you’ve been digging up. The quarter-inch screen on the sluice box ought to catch most everything.”

  Aching, she flexed her shoulders, pulling his shirt tighter across her rounded breasts. “That just might work.” Without thinking, she wiped at the sweat beading her chest, her hand dipping low to catch the rivulets between her breasts. She leaned forward and waved the wool away from her body a couple of times, trying to catch the breeze. “But won’t you need the dredger?”

  He cleared his throat. “No. I—tomorrow I plan to spend some time dry screening. See how much gold I come up with.”

  Something in his tone, a curtness . . . her gaze shifted to his face. There was a rapacious glint in his eyes, which were hooded, dark with desire and focused unerringly on her throat and the soft mounds of flesh that rose above the low buttons of her borrowed shirt.

  She didn’t know what made her do it, but she let her head fall back, and splayed her fingers through her tawny hair so that the hot breeze wafted it away from her face. It was a calculated, provocative gesture. From beneath her lashes, she saw that it had achieved more than she’d expected. The skintight wet suit did nothing to hide his obvious arousal.

  She stole a peak at Jonah’s face. His full lips quirked in a knowing, sardonic smile. She met the fierce, compelling stare that challenged her. His green gaze burned with a longing so intense that a thunderbolt of desire jarred her all the way through. Desperate to escape the tangling sexual sparks jolting between them, she glanced down again. “I don’t know anything about that—that dredger thing.”

  “I’ll show you,” he told her, the fire of wanting roughening his voice.

  A curiously tight feeling grew within her. “That’s nice of you, especially considering the fact you really didn’t want me here on Tomahawk Flats to begin with.”

  “I still don’t. But I know you well enough, Ritz, to know that you’ll keep at it until you’re satisfied that what you’re looking for isn’t here.” He turned away from her and started back toward his camp. “The quicker you find that out,” he threw over his shoulder, “the quicker I get you out of my hair.”

  * * * * *

  It was the lacy bikini panties drying on the willow bush that had done it, Jonah told himself. Peach- colored lacy bikini panties. And the heady view Ritz had given him of her sloping breasts. Swaying breasts that would fit perfectly in his large hands—ripe fruit waiting to be plucked. He knew she had to be aware of the effect her actions had on him. The telltale hard-ening beneath his wet suit would have given him away even if his desire-thickened voice hadn’t.


  A bad desire. That’s what it was.

  Even as he turned the trout in the sizzling grease, he was aware of her next to him peeling the potatoes, aware of the way her small hands deftly wielded the peeler, aware of the scent he was beginning to reiden tify with her... a woodsy, fresh scent.

  They were both tired and aching, and they worked together silently, but with the compatibility of a married couple, taking turns with the chores—except that a husband and wife shared the assurance that their desire would be slaked sooner or later. Jonah knew better than to entertain that expectation about Rita- lou. He was damned well over her, and he certainly wasn’t going to start up something that could only mean misery later.

  She hummed softly as she sliced the potatoes pa per-thin. Sometimes she swayed against him as she reached for another potato. He was beginning to flinch every time their skin came in contact, every time his arm brushed her breast. He gritted his teeth. His mind’s eyes imagined her rose-tipped breasts pressed against his chest, her smooth, suntanned legs entangled with his hairy ones.

  Her golden mane cascaded sleekly over her shoulder blades, and he found himself fantasizing about how the satiny hair would curl around his fingers and tickle his lips and mingle with his mustache . . . and the hair on his chest. . . and his pubic hair . . . and he knew he was losing the battle he was fighting with physical desire.

  Her teasing for the past fifteen minutes had been keeping him in a state of aching arousal that bordered on pain. He should have known enough to keep his aching memories of her in the past, where they belonged. She had been like the mercury he worked with. Quicksilver running through his bleak life—changeable, impulsive but immalleable when she wanted to be—and lethal if you weren’t careful.

  Frustrated, angry with himself, he forked out the remainder of the trout he had caught that day, wondering all the while how on earth he could keep from touching her. Just one day, and it had been hell.