Renegade Man

by Parris Afton Bonds

She didn’t answer him, but she wanted to cry out, Yes, but I need to be loved and cherished. As she had been by Robert. She missed that sense of belonging, of mattering to someone, and she knew she would never settle for less.

  * * * * *

  Steadily, grimly, Jonah worked beneath the water’s surface, moving the rocks, chucking them behind him as he prowled the riverbed in search of his golden dream. It had long been one of man’s obsessions. Because of gold, Coronado’s conquistadores had marched to the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola in what was later to become New Mexico. Fool’s gold was all they had found—seven Zuni villages whose adobe dwellings glowed with a golden light at sunup and sundown. Just so much mud to Coronado and his warriors.

  Another obsession had taken hold of Jonah. An indomitable woman whose warm brown eyes burned like the welcome fires of the home he had never known. Why was his need to be foremost with this woman so overpowering, so unreasonable? Without wanting to, he thought about yesterday, about seeing Rita-lou in Soren’s arms. Soren was his friend, but the vision of Rita-lou in the man’s embrace smite Jonah like a plague of locusts. No, worse. Bibically speakng, he was consigned to the belly of a whale.

  His anger, gathering like thunderheads over a peak, almost caused him to miss a large black crystal. Not pnly was a garnet of that size valuable, but it signified the likelihood of a heavy gold deposit.

  But any satisfaction he might have felt was dampened by a vague discontent. No, it wasn’t vague. It was as obvious as the nose on his face. But how had a purely physical lust for Ritz changed into this yearning to be the only man in her life? It didn’t make sense to him, and he didn’t like it.

  When he returned to the camper an hour later, bushed from staying up all night and fighting the current all day, the domestic scene that met his eyes—Ritz putting away canned goods—all but destroyed his previous craving for her.

  “Making yourself right at home, aren’t you?” he snapped.

  Slowly she turned to face him, and her hurt expres¬ion made him silently curse his inability to control his temper. “It looked to me as if we were getting low on groceries.”

  “Where are you going to put everything?” He waved a hand in the direction of the counter, his eyes stony. “Your boxes of relics take up every bit of space.”

  Her slender body stiffened. “It won’t take me fifteen minutes to get my things together,” she said quietly. Too quietly, too calmly.

  He felt like a son of a bitch for hurting her. He reached out, but she flinched away from his touch. “Hey, listen Ritz, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”

  Her oval face was pale, and when her wounded eyes settled on him, he bitterly condemned himself for his thoughtlessness. “You meant it to sound just like that, Jonah, because you don’t like anyone getting too close. Then you start feeling cornered, don’t you? And when that happens you’re not in control anymore, are you? You know, you were right last month—when you said we would have been a mistake together.” She turned away to pull her duffel bag from beneath the bunk.

  He felt as if he’d been run over by a tank. He mouthed an obscenity and spun her around by the shoulders. “Level with me! Did you ever care about me? Or was I just a stand-in until Chap took notice?”

  Her lower lip trembled, and she stilled it with teeth that left a thin, blood-red mark. “You never did understand, did you, Jonah? Don’t you see? Chap needed me. You didn’t.”

  She pulled away then and went back to packing her things. Dumbly he watched her. He wanted to stop her, to keep her with him for as long as he needed her, but a demon whispered, Caring...loving...they don’t last. It never did. Not with your father . . . not with her. You’ve been alone all your life, and the night will only be darker if you let her inside and then have to watch her leave.

  After she let the screen door bang shut behind her, he remained where he was, listening to her call Magnum, hearing the dog’s responding bark, hearing the sound of her Chevy’s engine dwindling in the distance. She was in the room long after she had gone. She was a heaviness around him.

  Then the silence closed in on him. He had lived for a long time with the silence of the underwater world, but this silence was totally different. It was an invisible sea beast that ate away at his heart.

  Ghosts of her chiming laughter and her dog’s frisky yelps rose to haunt him, and with another profanity he swung open the screen door and headed back to the dredger. He was in a temper. For the rest of the afternoon he worked furiously: cleaning the tailings from the dredger’s burlap-carpeted riffles; shoveling the fine sand concentrate through the screen into a tub filled with river water; then resieving the concentrate into a riffled gold pan.

  Sweat poured off his brow and ran into his eyes, but still he worked. Using the old forty-niner’s method, he shook his pan carefully, sweeping off the lighter sand with water. Sightlessly he stared at the pieces of lead and flakes of gold he found.

  When twilight made it too dark to work, he returned to the camper, heated a can of chicken noodle soup and tried to interest himself in a boating magazine as he ate.

  Where had she gone?

  He stared at the slick layout of a forty-five-foot sloop riding ocean waves the shade of desert turquoise. The boat’s sails, blindingly white against a cloudless deep blue sky, were filled by tropical trade- winds. The photo’s message was restfulness, adventure, freedom.

  To Soren?

  The image of Ritz facing down Buck at the Border Cowboy the other night crowded out the magazine’s words. What magnificent courage! She wore her intelligence as lightly as her golden-girl looks, and he was falling for her all over again, just like the schoolboy he had once been.

  With another muttered oath, he slung the magazine against the far wall. Diversion. That was what he needed. His thoughts veered sharply from burning memories to Nelda. She didn’t try to make something plain into something complicated. She knew—and understood—where he was coming from. Understood, too, that he’d be going away when he was ready. And it didn’t make any difference to her.

  He stalked outside to his pickup and swung into the cab. He drove for forty-five minutes. But halfway to Silver City the impulse sputtered, like hot coals suddenly doused by water. He wasn’t interested in instant gratification. But if not that, what?

  Weary, disturbed, disgusted, he turned the pickup back toward camp. He planned to drink himself into a sound sleep.

  But he didn’t do that either. Instead he lay in his bunk, staring up at the rain-darkened splotch on the camper ceiling and thinking about all those songs promising that love was forever.

  He had never believed them, anyway. Especially not Orbison’s “Running Scared.”

  Chapter 11

  It’s old, but well built.” Soren inserted the key into the lock and turned it twice, and the heavy door gave way to a wallwide window view of the juniper, pihon and ponderosa pine country to the north.

  Rita-lou inhaled the musty smell that always filled a place that had been closed up for a long time and surveyed the large room: adobe-walled, Mexican-tiled and with a beehive fireplace in one comer. The main room flowed into an open kitchen with a low beamed ceiling and only a few essential appliances. “The place is lovely.” The furniture—a dusty, burlap-covered orange couch, deep tufted chairs with worn upholstery and heavy tables—was all rustic handcarved pine.

  “Well, it’s yours for the rest of the summer.” He turned his eyes on her. “You sure this is what you want to do?”

  She thought of old man Livingston’s words... that being sure meant being bored. She knew now why women were drawn to men they couldn’t understand—because that meant they couldn’t control them. To control a man, to dominate him, would mean dying of boredom.

  “No, I’m not sure,” she began, but Soren misunderstood her.

  “Then stay in town with me.” He looked down at her ardently. Before she could protest, he hushed her unspoken words with fingers pressed caressingly against her lips. “I’m no
t asking you for anything you’re not ready to give. Only when you’re ready. . . then, if you want me, it will happen between us.” His hand tilted her chin up. “You see, Rita-lou Randall, I want to take care of you.”

  It was something she hadn’t until that moment considered. She had always fought her own battles; even Robert had let her bulldoze life’s problems on her own. The idea was appealing: to be taken care of. Wasn’t that what every woman was supposed to want? “I’ve been on my own too long, Soren. I just don’t know.”

  “Don’t think about it. Just let it happen gradually. You’ve gone completely to my head, you know.”

  Still holding her chin, he lowered his mouth to hers in a sweet, searching kiss. She tried to recapture the steamy, insistent desire she had felt all those nights when she had slept in Jonah’s camper—and couldn’t. She found herself conscious of the angle of Soren’s mouth on hers, of their noses mashing, of the smell of his expensive cologne and, most of all, of her own lack of involvement. She drew away, gently pressing her hands against his solid chest.

  “No, Soren.” She saw that she had hurt him. “It’s been a long time,” she added shakily. Two kisses in three years didn’t necessarily a white lie make, did it?

  Yes. Jonah’s kisses would make a liar of her.

  Soren would be a considerate, unselfish lover; she knew that instinctively. But, silly as it was, she felt terrible giving herself—even the smallest part of herself—to someone she didn’t love.

  Did that mean she loved Jonah?

  Now that really was silly! Sexual stirrings weren’t the same thing as love, for heaven’s sake!

  “But, really, Soren,” she tempered with a gentle smile, “thank you for the place. I’ll take it.”

  Soren stepped back, his smoky blue eyes showing that his confidence was undaunted by her reticence. “I’ll stop by later In the week to check up on you.”

  She spent the rest of the day and most of the next settling into the one-bedroom cabin. She wasn’t quite ready to go back to digging, to dealing with the sight of Jonah again on a daily basis.

  Magnum, apparently feeling as lost as she did, followed close on her heels. Even the blessings of a shower and a washer and dryer couldn’t mitigate her unrest. Whether she was clearing off her breakfast dishes or folding her freshly laundered clothes, she was constantly thinking of Jonah, of making love to him.

  Of being stroked and held and caressed. Of his hard body, rough and powerful and beautiful.

  She wrote in her journal:

  My sensuality has been reawakened after years of dormancy, and all because of Jonah’s careless kisses. The shower washing over my breasts.. .the silky material of my panties sliding over my skin... the mere crossing of my legs.

  Monday morning arrived, and with ambivalent feelings she turned her Chevy toward Tomahawk Flats. She parked where her tent used to be staked and took her tools from the car. For a moment she stood listening, and in the rapidly heating morning air she heard the soft rumble of Jonah’s dredger.

  Illogically reassured, she turned her attention to the excavation. The summer was slipping away, and she had barely more than a month left to produce her Renegade Man. She started trenching another pit, tossing away clumps of buffalo grass roots and briars. At last she reached the Folsom floor, but it offered up only corncobs and some turkey bones. After a two-day layoff she was already out of shape, and her back was beginning to hurt.

  Then, halfway through the day, she uncovered an outdoor clay fire pit in the dig’s northeast comer. From the red color of the earth, she knew that the find was older than anything she had yet unearthed—possibly by more than five thousand years—and she felt the excitement growing inside her. She retrieved her camera from the glove compartment and took several shots, then did a profile and a scale map of the finds.

  When the sun started slipping toward the western peaks, she called it quits for the day. Packing her tools and the objects she had unearthed that day so that she could take them back to the Rolistof cabin was a troublesome task, but she had no alternative. It was either the Rolistof cabin or buy another tent—and she wouldn’t risk that again. After her last run-in with C.B., when she had ruined his snake, she doubted that he would graciously leave the field to her. Even staying in the cabin might not be enough to protect her. The thought made her edgy.

  That suit C.B. had filed was another thing that troubled her. From her few exchanges with Ben Schotsky, she had come away impressed by his thoroughness. But C.B. was ruthless—and ruthlessness was often the most powerful attribute of all.

  After spreading the tarp over the pit, she was ready to leave, but Magnum had wandered off. She called twice, and when he didn’t appear, she began to worry. People still set traps in the Gila Wilderness, even though it was illegal. What if Magnum... ? But then she saw the dog coming across the flats toward her— happily trotting along behind Jonah Jones.

  He was dressed in jeans and a sweat-stained, raggedy shirt. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked exhausted—and angry. Inside her stomach, butterflies began doing gymnastics. Why did she have to be so damned glad to see him?

  His mouth curled in an insolent line. “Your dog seems to have taken up residence on my doorstep.”

  When would she learn not to let her guard down? Her damaged pride reasserted itself. “Magnum never has learned to distinguish the good guys from the bad ones.”

  He stared her straight in the eye and, hooking his thumb in his pants pocket, gave her a lazy smile, “That’s because his owner doesn’t know the difference, either.”

  Jonah’s panty-dropping smile didn’t negate his fierce scowl. Her stomach twisted in knots, and she could think of no reply scathing enough. Magnum yawned, expressing his boredom with the humans’ disagreeable attitudes. “Come on, fella,” she said, taking hold of the Lab’s collar. “Let’s go someplace where we’re wanted.”

  “From the very first, I told you you weren’t wanted here. You keep both yourself and your dog out of my way, sweetheart.”

  She turned back to Jonah. His face was set and hard and tough. She winced inwardly at that mean look, but she swallowed her uncertainty and said with a bravado she was far from feeling, “Yes, and if you remember, / told you that I had the right to this piece of la—”

  He wasn’t looking at her—at least not at her face. His gaze had drifted downward to settle on her soft, sweat-sheened breasts, exposed by the low neckline of her—or rather his—shirt. Suddenly she felt her confidence return, as if the balance of power had subtly shifted to her side.

  Her pride, a little worse for wear and tear, resurfaced. Recklessly her fingers slid up and down along her plunging neckline. “Your shirt.. .got mixed up with my clothing when I packed. But if you want it back...” Suggestively her hand dropped lower, to where she had knotted the ends at her waist.

  He studied her face, then said harshly, “Don’t play the tease with me, Ritz, because you’re only going to come out on the losing end.”

  She lifted a brow. “Tease?” She inflected the word with sarcasm. “What makes you think I’d bother to arouse your interest? After all, Captain Kidd, I rejected you once—twenty years ago.”

  That was all it took. His eyes narrowed, and his voice took on a harsh edge. “All right, sweetheart. You and I both know better. But if you say you’re not teasing, then let’s get on with it.” His hand shot out and yanked the knot undone before she knew what was happening. Roughly he pushed aside the fabric, and her breasts tumbled free. “That’s more like it. Now I can see what the gentlemanly side of me has been pretending not to notice all these weeks.”

  “Gentlemanly?” she cried, jerking the shirt together. “You never knew what it was to be a gentleman! Not all your travels, not all your education and knowledge of languages, can make a gentleman of you, Jonah Jones. It’s a quality a man’s born with, and you certainly—”

  “Like Chap?” His lids slid to half-mast, and he asked in a frighteningly quiet voice, “Was Chap bom a gentleman?�
�

  “Yes!” she shouted. “Yes!”

  Magnum whined. He sensed the tension and padded nervously back and forth at her side, glancing from Jonah to her with a quizzical look.

  “Oh?” Jonah drawled nastily. “Gentleman enough to marry you when he got you pregnant?”

  She swung with all her strength and the flat of her palm caught him squarely on the cheek, leaving his flesh mottled with a red handprint. “You bastard!”

  His hand shackled her wrist. At her side, Magnum growled warningly, but Jonah didn’t release her. His mouth had flattened into a grim line, but his eyes held a look that she might have identified as sad or weary or—she didn’t quite know. “You’re right, Ritz,” he said calmly, his steely self-control coming between her and his quiet wrath. “I’m no gentleman. What I said just now proved it. And proved you should stay away from me.”

  She could have pointed out that he had trespassed on her territory, but she saw the harsh lines of exhaustion around his mouth and the deep shadows under his eyes. She wrenched her arm away, rubbing at her wrist. “That’s something that will be very easy for me! Come on, Magnum.”

  Her dignity still somehow intact, she stalked across to her Chevy, ushered the dog inside with her and slammed the door. The dust she left when she roared away didn’t quite conceal Jonah’s image in her rear-view mirror. He had remained where he was, watching her, hands jammed in his back pockets.

  That image stayed with her for the rest of the day and through the night, so that she arose the next morning feeling thoroughly irritated at the bright sunlight that mercilessly revealed the dark circles beneath her own eyes. She only hoped that no one, including Popeye the Sailor Man, showed up.

  He didn’t. The day was long and boring, and she didn’t find much, only what looked as if it might have been a quarry, nothing to indicate that she was close to Folsom Man’s dates, much less the earlier period where she hoped to substantiate her belief in Renegade Man.

  She could hear Jonah’s dredger running. The low noise was distracting, and she fought the urge to even look in that direction. She concentrated even harder on her work and didn’t even take a break.