Renegade Man

by Parris Afton Bonds

  A little while later, Rita-lou sat in the pickup bed with Magnum. All the way to Silver City, she murmured meaningless phrases to the dog. While they might have been of no real use to him, they comforted her, at least a little bit.

  Jonah was driving at his usual breakneck speed, and by the time they arrived at the small red-brick clinic her hair was wind-whipped and her tears had dried, leaving tracks on her face. Reddish-brown splotches of blood marked her jeans and shirt.

  The veterinarian was a kindly-looking, plain sort of woman, with brown hair cut bluntly at chin level. Neither she nor her young male assistant seemed in the least surprised that Jonah was wearing a wet suit. He stood behind Rita-lou, and the two of them watched as the woman and her assistant went briskly to work, cleaning the dirt from the wounds, stitching the worst cuts and applying antiseptic and salve to the lacerated areas.

  Magnum had always been afraid of the vet, but now he seemed too numb to even notice where he was. “Oh, Magnum,” Rita-lou whispered, “I’ll never scold you again. You can chase field mice to your heart’s content. Just get well!”

  She continued stroking him, her tears wetting both her hand and Magnum’s fur. Jonah gripped her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly, but she couldn’t take the pain in Magnum’s eyes. It was as if he were pleading with her to do something. She glanced at the vet.

  The woman offered her an understanding nod as she prepared a syringe. “This should ward off any infection. Why don’t you leave Magnum here overnight for observation? I’d like to watch for shock. Now, don’t you worry, Ms. Randall. In a few weeks he should feel as good as new.”

  “Well, I know a cowhand who’s not going to able to make that claim,” Jonah muttered.

  Rita-lou glanced up at his vicious expression and understood his intention at once. When they reached the pickup she stopped him, her hand on his bicep. “No, Jonah. I know what you have in mind, but this is my fight.”

  More than that was bothering her, though. Buck would play dirty if he got the chance; he’d think nothing of pulling a knife or a gun on an unarmed man. She couldn’t stand it if anything happened to Jonah. She didn’t want anything to mar that roguish face, ruin that rakish smile, blight the sparkle in those devilish green eyes.

  At that moment, though, he had the cold eyes and cool hand of a Texas gunslinger. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’ve just appointed myself head of the Society for Retribution for Cruelty to Animals.”

  A forbidding set to his mouth, he drove back toward Mimbres Valley. She sat on her side of the seat, wishing she didn't care for him as much as she did, wishing that somehow she could dissuade him from taking on Buck.

  At the cutoff to Tomahawk Flats, she said, “Don’t bother to take me back to my car. I’m going with you.”

  “Like hell.”

  “I’ll just follow you to the ranch house in my own car, so you might as well let me ride along with you.”

  He shot her a blistering look, but she noticed with relief that he grudgingly passed by the turnoff to the flats.

  The entrance to the Split P was marked by a white wrought-iron arch with a centered stainless-steel P, its stem separated from its loop. A fifteen-mile drive took them to the two-story limestone ranch house, with its outbuildings and corrals. Inside one corral a vaquero astride a quarter horse worked a frisky calf. Jonah braked his pickup in front of a creaking windmill where several other road-roughened pickups, Jeeps and other vehicles were parked.

  “You wait here,” he told her.

  Her chin lifted at a stubborn angle. “I’m going with you.”

  “That’s w-r-o-n-g, wrong!” he spelled out. “Try it and you’ll be the first one I deck.”

  “Don’t pull your caveman tactics with me, Jonah Jones!”

  He ignored her and stalked to the front door. Without bothering to knock, he shoved it open and entered. “Buck!” she heard him shout. “Get your ass down here!”

  She wasn’t waiting another second. She flung open the pickup door and ran to the ranch house doorway. The place hadn’t changed any from her childhood impressions: smoke-blackened rafters; grease- splotched stone floors; a mismatched array of worn furniture. Her assessment of the room was fleeting, because her gaze was drawn straight to the hat rack on the wall beside her. A rope was looped over one peg. Blood, dried, but bright enough to indicate it was recent, crimsoned the lariat.

  Jonah grabbed it, looped it over one shoulder and took the wooden stairs two at a time. Above him, Buck appeared on the landing. Sleepily he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Hellfire! Can’t a man get a nap around—”

  “I’m inviting you to a party, Dillard.” Jonah’s face was about as inviting as a clenched fist. “A lynching party!” In one stride he took the three remaining steps.

  “Hey, now, just a minute,” Buck began, taken by surprise and backing off a pace.

  Jonah didn’t give him a chance to finish. He grabbed the cowhand by his rawhide vest. Then, after hauling Buck down the steps, Jonah shoved him past her and outside, where he sent Buck sprawling in the dust. “Ever been pulled behind a pickup, you bastard?”

  “Jonah, no!” she cried.

  Buck came up in a crouch—right into the lariat’s noose. Jonah jerked the rope, and the Kingsley foreman stumbled onto his hands and knees. “The party begins now,” Jonah said, tying the other end of the rope hard and fast around the ball of his pickup’s trailer hitch.

  Enraged, Buck struggled to his feet, but Jonah yanked the lariat again, and Buck floundered back to the dirt.

  Rita-lou ran across to Jonah and grabbed his arm. “No,” she pleaded, hanging on as he tried to shrug her off. “You’ll kill him.”

  “My God, Jones,” Buck blubbered. “You can’t be serious!” Sweat made rivers down his dust-streaked cheeks and sheened his high white forehead.

  Jonah’s look was fierce. “About as serious as you were when you put your twine on this lady’s dog.”

  “God, man, listen to what she’s saying! You’ll kill me for sure!”

  Jonah rubbed his beard-shadowed jaw as if he were considering what the cowhand had said. After a long, tense moment he replied thoughtfully, “I don’t have to drag you till you’re dead, Buck. Just till your hide is peeled off.”

  Rita-lou’s fingers dug into Jonah’s arm. “Don’t do this! You won’t be any better than Buck is if you do.” Jonah spared a glance at her upturned face, then returned his attention to the man groveling in the dust. “Course,” he drawled, “if the lady here is willing to accept an apology...”

  “Sure! Anything! Hey, look, Rita-lou, I’m sorry. Real sorry.”

  “It’s Ms. Randall to you,” Jonah said, his tone and look threatening. “Try again.”

  Buck’s balding head bobbed in acknowledgement. “That’s right, Miz Randall. I’m real sorry.”

  “And nothing like that will happen again,” Jonah prompted.

  “Right,” Buck said, his voice filled with a fervid desire to please. “I won’t go within a mile of you or your dog again. I promise, Miz Randall.”

  Jonah gave the lariat one last violent jerk. “I wouldn’t be forgetting that promise if I were you, Dillard. ’Cause if you do, I’ll knock you into next week. I’d take it kindly if you’d pass my warning along to Kingsley, too, if you don’t mind.” Then, with an easy twist of the lariat, he loosened it from the trailer hitch and said to her, “Come on, Ritz. This place is starting to stink.”

  Once the pickup was clear of the Split P entrance, she glanced sideways at him and said, “I thought you told me you weren’t a team player, Jonah Jones.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, of course. It suggested that he might be softening toward her. His jaw tightened. “That little bit of business back there was purely for my own pleasure. Don’t go getting any ideas that it was an invitation on my part to reestablish any kind of relationship.”

  “Any kind of ‘relationship’ I might need,” she snapped, “can be filled any day by any number of willing me
n.”

  He cast her a disparaging look. “That so? I don’t notice them beating a path to your cabin.”

  Her suspicious gaze collided with his. “Really?” She smiled. “Now, how would you know that? Have you been cruising by, keeping a check on my nocturnal habits?”

  He switched his gaze back to the road. “That’s easy, Ritz. You’re forgetting how people gossip. You always were the central topic, weren’t you? These days, Silver City’s booze emporiums say your nights are colder than mercury at thirty-two degrees. Apparently your electric blanket is doing a better job than your Swede at heating you up.”

  She was so angry that she was afraid she would lose control and make a fool of herself if she said even one word, so she kept silent.

  “What happened to the woman with the quick mouth?”

  At that moment she would gladly have gotten out of the truck, walked ten paces from him, turned and fired—except for the fact that she had no gun. When she didn’t make any kind of a retort, he clamped his own mouth shut and didn’t say another word until they reached her car.

  “See you around,” he said, and drove off, leaving her standing there watching his dust.

  “You louse,” she muttered. How could she be so weak-willed, so lacking in self-esteem, as to let herself hunger after a man who barely acknowledged her existence? Her life had been nothing but misery since she had let herself fall victim to his rebel’s charm.

  She tried telling herself that he was cold-hearted. But if he was a Titanic iceberg, she was the great San Francisco fire. She tried telling herself that he couldn’t ignore her for the rest of the summer. He had to care about her, whether he wanted to admit it or not. What he’d done to Buck—for her sake—proved it. Surely he would at least wander by her dig sooner or later.

  She held on to her optimism for as long as she could, but as the days slipped by and he kept his distance, she began to feel the first shaky breaths of despair. She didn’t even have the excuse of retrieving Magnum from his camp, because, after she brought the Lab back from the animal clinic, he was too weak to do much more than stir occasionally from his resting place beneath the cottonwood and pad down to the river to drink.

  Daily she applied sulfur paste, which the vet had given her, to Magnum’s abraded hide. The foul¬smelling mixture seemed to help speed the dog’s healing—at least on the outside. As far as his inner scars went, she couldn’t tell. Who knew how much, if ever, inner scars—even hers or Jonah’s—healed?

  One evening, Soren came by the cabin. He glanced over at Magnum, who was curled up on a braided rug in front of the hearth. “Just got back into town. Heard about the ruckus with Buck Dillard and your dog.” His eyes held a cheerless look for once. “I also heard that Jonah stepped in and read Dillard his rights, so to speak. I think that pretty well answers my question—about you marrying me, I mean.”

  She couldn’t stand seeing the dejection in his face. She lowered her head and nodded. “I guess so, Soren.”

  “Well, I just wanted to let you know that the cabin is still yours—at least through the autumn.”

  Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek. “You’re special, Soren.”

  He grinned down at her at last. “And don’t you forget it!”

  She decided to put Soren and Jonah out of her mind. But in bed at night, when she was trying to get to sleep, she couldn’t. Her thoughts wouldn’t let her. She found herself jumping if she heard a car go by in the distance. At times she thought it might be Kingsley come to do battle with her, and she thought she would almost welcome the diversion. The fact that he wanted her off his land so badly made her just that much more determined to stay. Ben Schotsky had written her a short note saying that C.B. had dropped the complaint against her for lack of sufficient evidence, but that didn’t mean the man might not have something else up his sleeve.

  At other times she found herself being afraid the passing car might belong to Jonah, then half hoping it did, so she could have the satisfaction of telling him just where to go.

  Yet those vengeful thoughts didn’t block the dark, erotic dreams that seeped into her subconscious during the hot nights, or numb a body that was burning up with the heat of desire. Her unbridled lust was driving her insane, and she couldn’t figure out what to do about it, short of taking a lover. And contrary to whatever opinion the good folk of Silver City might hold of her, she couldn’t bring herself to accept the casual standards of the stereotypical single life-style.

  Her weakness whenever she thought about Jonah made her furious with herself. Those longed-for hot showers at the end of the day were switched to cold ones taken both morning and night.

  And still the heat of longing burned in her.

  Chapter 13

  Wearily, Rita-lou let herself into the cabin, balancing the grocery sack on one hip, then jammed her key into her shoulder bag. This commuting back and forth to the site was leaching her energy. Tonight, bedtime couldn’t come quickly enough.

  The cabin had been constructed without any regard for the convenient location of such amenities as light switches, and she had to negotiate the darkened room like a blindfolded hostage.

  “Damn!” she mumbled when her leg caught the edge of the coffee table. Wincing at the pain, she groped her way to the dining table and set down both the sack and her purse so she could rub at the small but rapidly swelling lump on her shin. Old C.B. doesn’t have to worry about thinking up ways to plague you, she told herself. You seem to be doing very well on your own.

  As she put the milk and eggs away, Magnum padded over to the hearth to curl up for a snooze. The dog’s strength had been slow in returning, and what with the way his coat was growing back in some spots and not in others, he looked like a stray mutt with the mange.

  When she was finished with the groceries, she limped toward the bedroom, tugging off her tank top as she went. It was ironic, she thought, switching on the bathroom light, how determined C.B. was to run her off his grazing land. All his efforts had achieved was to make her even more determined to stay put. She had so little to show for her months of backbreaking labor that she might have given up weeks ago if it hadn’t been for her stubborn refusal to let him drive her out of the valley.

  No, she thought, stepping out of her shorts and turning on the shower, she wouldn’t have given up even if the Cattle Baron had left her alone. She still had something to prove to Silver City.

  The shower’s brisk spray revitalized her, at least enough for her to think about heating a can of chili for dinner. After a quick rubdown with baby lotion to ward off the drying effect of the high desert on her skin, she wrapped the terry-cloth robe around herself and started back toward the kitchen.

  At the sound of a snort, she whirled around. Stretched out on the bed, his usual impudent grin firmly in place, lay Jonah. He was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. Clasping a beer can on his chest, he stared at her with slumberous eyes.

  “Want to tell me why you snuck in here?” she demanded, still weak-kneed from the scare he had given her. She was absurdly, insanely happy to see him.

  “Well, I couldn’t very well just walk in, sweetheart. The door was locked. First I had to jimmy the window screen, and then—”

  “That’s not what I meant!” Her fists clenched, and she started again in a more reasonable voice, though her words were spaced and clipped. At least she wasn’t shouting. The fact was that she was angry—not with him, but with herself, with her body’s traitorous responses to his presence. “I want to know why you are sleeping in my bed.”

  He swung his long body over the edge of the mattress, set the beer can on the nightstand and stood up to stretch. “Certainly not playing Goldilocks. And while we’re speaking of games—”

  “I wasn’t speaking of games,” she said coldly, and crossed her arms.

  “I’m tired of playing them.” He started toward her, and she backed away, only to bump into a dresser. He closed in on her. “I want you so bad I hurt, Ritz, and I know you want me.”<
br />
  “The only thing I want is you out of here.”

  “Liar,” he breathed against her cheek. He braced his hands on the dresser top, fencing her in between his powerful arms. “Why don’t you have the guts to tell me you want me? This isn’t the Rita-lou Randall I used to know. Did married life make you go soft?”

  No, but she went all soft at his touch, God help her. She turned her face away. “Not soft in the head, which is what I’d have to be to crawl into bed with any man who asked.”

  Using his jaw, he nudged her cheek in his direction, and she smelled the beer on his warm breath. “We have a twenty-year-old score to settle,” he whispered against the edge of her mouth.

  She pushed at his chest. She might as well have been trying to bench-press three hundred pounds for all the good it did her. “Whatever happened twenty years ago is over and done with, Captian Hook.”

  “I don’t think so. Twenty years ago you were passing out your favors to Chap, and, if I remember rightly, I was standing in the same line. I’m here for my turn.”

  “Get out!”

  “Mmmm,” he purred against her compressed lips. “Do you think you could open your mouth a little more?”

  He lifted one hand and gently, easily, trailed a finger along the line of her chin. His touch was her undoing. She moaned softly, and helplessly parted her lips for him. His tongue prodded her teeth apart, and his hands pushed aside her robe and slid inside to cup her naked buttocks, pulling her hard against him. He ground his hips against her, and the cold snap of his jeans chafed the bare flesh below he rnavel..

  She knew she would regret what was about to happen, but as his tongue ravaged her mouth she forgot to think any further. His tongue probed deeper, as if he would leave no secret places untouched before he was finished. Like a flame-crazed moth, her tongue was drawn into a death dance with his.

  His thumb and forefinger found her nipple, teasing it with a roughened pressure that jolted her with unexpected pleasure. “Jonah...” she gasped, arching her pelvis against him.