Ride the Thunder

by Janet Dailey

  Intent on her task, the brassy blonde didn't see him sitting at the dimly lit corner of the counter. "Hello, Trudie, " Brig spoke to draw her attention.

  She stopped and turned abruptly. Her widened eyes found him in the shadows, her look of surprise changing to one of delighted recognition. Then it became masked slightly with an attitude of coyness that bordered on provocative.

  "Well, well, well. The old lobo wolf has finally come down out of the mountains, " she declared and hurriedly set the liquor bottles on the work counter behind the bar. "I was beginning to think you had moved on to parts unknown. "

  "And leave my favorite girl behind? I wouldn't do that, Trudie. " His gaze was deliberately suggestive, running over her figure with a lusting look.

  "Favorite girl? Hah!" she laughed aside that remark, but it started a warm glow of pleasure that spread through her expression. "What'll ya have, Brig?"

  "Beer. "

  "On tap?" At his affirmative nod, she drew him a glass, letting a head form on the pale gold liquid.

  "How's tricks?" Brig sipped at the beer and wiped the foam from his mustache with the back of his hand.

  "Not bad since the tourists hit town for the summer float trips on the 'River of No Return. '" Her emphasis made fun of the phrase. She changed the subject then. "I suppose you're in town to pick up supplies. What's this—your last stop before heading back to the ranch?"

  "This is my first stop. I sent Tandy Barnes in last week for a month's supplies, " he explained, referring to his wrangler and all-around ranch hand.

  "What brought you to town then?" A puzzled frown followed the lines already stamped in her forehead. Immediately she added, "And don't say 'me, ' because I won't buy that. "

  "I'm headin' into Idaho Falls to catch a plane for New York. " He swirled the beer in his glass and watched the dissipating foam. For all the indifference in his tone, there was a flat, dry look to his eyes.

  "New York? What for?" Trudie breathed out a soft, incredulous laugh. "Most of the ranchers around here can't afford a glass of beer and you're taking a vacation. "

  "I can't afford this either. It isn't a vacation. It's a business trip, " Brig corrected in a brisk voice. His mouth quirked in an expression of cynicism. "I've gotta visit a rich cousin and see if I can't collect on a few favors. "

  "A rich cousin?"

  "Yeah. " He drained the beer from the glass and set it down. Picking up the cigarette burning in the ashtray, he let it dangle from his mouth, squinting one-eyed against the smoke. Standing, he reached in his pocket, "How much do I owe you for the beer?"

  "It's on the house. " She waved aside his attempt to pay and lowered her voice to add, "Everything's always on the house. You know that, Brig. "

  "Thanks. " A faint smile softened the usually hard line of his mouth.

  Brig was aware of her meaning. Every town, no matter how small, had its quota of local drunks and a whore or two, whether the respectable, church-going folk wanted to admit it or not. Trudie fell in the latter category. Except for the first time, he'd never had to pay for her services, so he'd gradually stopped regarding her in that light these last ten years. She was a warm, giving woman, who supplemented her income with the highest paying part-time job she could find. She wasn't a hard-core professional. Those were the kind he regarded with contempt.

  "Have another beer. " Trudie was pouring him one before he could refuse. With a faint shrug of his shoulders, Brig sat back down on the stool.

  The blonde walked to the work counter where she'd left the new bottles of liquor. "That was really some winter. It hit everybody hard. " From under the counter, she pulled out a set of wooden steps and took two of the bottles, tucking one under her arm. "Jake Phelps was in last month and said he ran out of hay in March. "

  "I had plenty of hay. That May blizzard hit me right at calving time. " The first beer Brig had downed to quench his parched throat. This second one, he nursed along. "I lost almost two-thirds of the calf crop. "

  "Oh no, Brig. " She glanced over her shoulder and gave him a commiserating look.

  "As you said, it hit everybody hard, " he said diffidently.

  Crushing his cigarette in the ashtray, he watched her climb the two steps and rest a knee on the counter to reach a high shelf on the wall behind the bar. The tight black skirt rode up to her thigh on one side. His attention began to dwell on her heart-shaped bottom and the shapely curve of her legs. Again he felt that stirring hardness growing inside of him.

  It was a full second before Brig realized Trudie had partially turned to look at him. Boldly he lifted his gaze. Something seemed to catch fire in her eyes. He noticed the way her breasts strained against the material of her blouse as she took a breath and appeared to hold it. Then she was climbing down the two steps.

  "This trip to New York, " she said, turning to face him once more, a soft, breathless quality to her voice, "is it necessary for you to leave right away?"

  "There's nothing to be gained by postponing it. "

  "Not even until tomorrow?" Without giving him a chance to respond, she glanced at the two men farther down the bar. "Do you guys want anything else?"

  The two men looked up from the figuring they were doing on a paper napkin. One shook his head and the other said, "No. "

  "I'm going in the back room for some supplies. If anyone comes in, holler, will you?"

  "Sure. "

  Her blue eyes made a silent appeal to Brig as she asked, "Would you help me bring out a keg of beer?"

  For an answer. Brig straightened his length from the bar stool and walked behind the counter. Trudie led the way through the door into the backroom, pausing to close it after Brig. She had positioned herself so he would have to brush against her as he went by. He felt the faint tremor in her body at the contact and smelled the cloying fragrance of some cheap cologne. Picking up her silent message, Brig could hear the thudding of his own heart. After a long winter in isolation, his desires were easy to arouse.

  "The keg is over there. " She pointed to a far corner of the dimly lit room and took a step in that direction.

  His fingers circled her elbows to halt her. "To hell with the keg, Trudie. "

  He allowed her a second to resist, although he knew she wouldn't, then turned her into his arms. He had forgotten how short she was as his head came down to claim the red lips already parting to receive his kiss.

  His blood ran hot as she molded her amply rounded curves against him. Her firm, round breasts were making an imprint against his flesh, a pair of hard buttons pressing through his shirt. He heard her moan and felt her eager hands clinging to his neck. Her tongue made a wet circle of his lips, then probed his mouth. Her show of aggression unleashed a fragment of savagery in his character. Brig reclaimed the dominant role, bruising her lips with his kisses, until the strain on his neck became too much and he lifted his head to ease it His breathing was heavy with passion. Trudie was quivering. Her trembling fingers separated the buttons of his shirt from the material, then slipped inside against his flesh and curled into the rough hairs on his chest.

  "You don't have to leave today, Brig, " she whispered in an aching voice. "Tomorrow is soon enough. I'll be through here in a couple of hours. "

  Her lips pressed moist kisses on his chest, her warm breath heating flesh already burning. The room was cool, but Brig felt perspiration beading on his skin. His hands were making random forays over her shoulders, waist and back, then pressing her hips harder against his thighs. He ached with a need that threatened to consume him.

  When Trudie lifted her head, he took one look at her soft red lips and covered them with a groan. "Please stay, Brig, " she begged under his demanding mouth. "It's been so long. "

  "I don't believe that, " he mumbled with harsh skepticism and tried to silence her needless words. He was beyond the point of caring who had gone before.

  "No, with you it's different, Brig, " Trudie protested. "It's special. I... You know it is. "

  "Yes, yes, I know, " he agree
d impatiently.

  Her token resistance ended and she seemed to melt against him. "Make love to me, Brig. Do it to me now, " she pleaded and began fumbling with the rest of the buttons of his shirt.

  Her tight-fitting clothes were unwanted obstacles. He had barely managed to tug her skirt up around her hips when a voice from out front called, "Trudie! You've got a customer!"

  She stiffened in his arms and Brig ordered, "Ignore it. "

  "No. " She struggled against his iron hold. "They'll just send someone back here to look for me. Let me go, Brig Please. "

  Swearing a savage string of oaths under his breath, he released her and took a step away. He was laboring under the weight of primitive forces that weren't so easily controlled once they had been aroused. Trudie was hastily adjusting her clothes and nervously smoothing her hair into place. She cast one apologetic glance in his direction before hurrying to the door.

  He couldn't walk back out there, not yet, not with this hard bone straining against the denim of his pants. Brig cursed again and wiped the perspiration from his chin. The back of his hands came away with a red lipstick smear. Pulling his handkerchief from his back pocket, he wiped his mouth and hand, then jammed it back.

  It was several minutes before he felt sufficiently composed to return to the bar. Locating the keg of beer, he hoisted it onto his shoulder and walked to the door. Trudie gave him an apprehensive but adoring look as he entered.

  "Where do you want this?"

  "You can set it right there for now. " She indicated an empty place under the counter near the beer taps. After setting it down, Brig walked around the counter to his stall and the nearly full glass of beer. "That's probably flat, " she said. "I'll get you a fresh one. "

  "Don't bother. " A beer wouldn't satisfy the kind of thirst he had. Brig started toward the front door.

  "Where are you going?" Trudie hurried out from behind the bar to catch him.

  "For a walk. " He knew he sounded curt and unfeeling. It hadn't exactly been her fault But he was still all twisted into knots and as testy as a grizzly out of hibernation.

  "Will you be back?" She searched his shuttered expression for some clue to the answer.

  "I don't know. " He shouldn't have stopped in the first place. He would have been thirty miles closer to Idaho Falls if he hadn't, and that much closer to New York, where fourteen years of work would either be saved or finally lost. At the moment, the importance of that had waned under the potency of baser needs. Trudie took hold of his hand and something hard dug into the center of his work-calloused palm. "Dammit, Trudie!" Brig cursed her for making demands that couldn't be satisfied now.

  "It's my house key, " she identified the object he had thought was her fingernails. "It's the only one I have. Will you wait for me there? I'll be off work soon. "

  His fingers closed around the key to make a fist. With a curt nod of agreement, Brig started again for the door. This time Trudie didn't stop him. Outside he paused to take a deep breath. The air was fresh and clean. He wondered if he had taken the key because he truly wanted to be with Trudie or because he wanted to postpone the trip to New York. Releasing a sigh, Brig decided it was a combination of both.

  Reaching over, Brig flicked the ashes from the tip of his cigarette into the ashtray on the bedstand. Blonde curls tickled the underside of his chin and he smoothed them against the head nestled on his chest Then his hand returned to the curve of Trudie's bare waist Trudie let her fingers explore the flatness of his stomach and follow the dark hairs upward from his belly-button to the scattered cloud of them on his chest She traced the white scar on his left shoulder, where no hair grew.

  "Why haven't you ever married, Brig?" Her voice was thoughtful as her stubby fingers continued to caress his skin.

  Women, he thought with absent annoyance; why do they always have to talk after they make love? He'd much rather smoke his cigarette in silence than listen to her murmurings. Containing a sigh, he roused himself sufficiently to answer.

  "I'm content with my own company, I guess. " He took a drag on his cigarette and let twin trails of smoke curl into his nose.

  "Haven't you ever been in love?"

  "I guess not" Not since he had discovered that he loved a woman more before he got her into bed than he did afterwards.

  "You told me once that you used to be a mercenary. Was that true?" she asked curiously, changing the subject.

  A frown briefly knitted his forehead. Had he told her that? Those years were something he rarely discussed with anyone. He considered denying it, but he wasn't ashamed of what he'd done.

  "Yes, it's true, " Brig admitted.

  "Why?"

  "Why is it true?" A pillow was propping his head up. He smiled at the brassy mop of curls, finding her question a little on the peculiar side.

  "No, silly!" Trudie laughed and looked up at him. There was little makeup left on her face. He had kissed most of it off and the rest had rubbed off on the sheets. She looked older without it, easily his age, but more attractive in a plain sort of way. "Why did you become a mercenary?"

  "I don't know. I suppose I fancied myself as some kind of soldier of fortune. " It had all been too long ago for him to remember what his motives might have been at the time. And it didn't concern him now.

  "But surely your family... " she began.

  "My parents are dead. " But Brig didn't tell her the circumstances of their death or his survival of the crash that had taken their lives. "My grandfather raised me—or tried. We never got along. I was too wild and rebellious and he was too strict. By the time I was fifteen, I'd run away from home seven times. At seventeen, I enlisted and did a tour of Southeast Asia —Nam, Cambodia, Laos. When I came back, nothing had changed. My grandfather still lived in a world that worshipped two gods—money and business— where a man is judged by the number of digits in his bank account and the influential people he knows, not how he got it or what kind of man he is. " He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, exhaling a last stream of smoke.

  "But why did you become a mercenary?" Trudie lifted herself on one elbow to see his face better. His expression told her little.

  The calloused tip of his finger traced a light curve from one side of her jaw, under her chin, and slicing across her throat to the other side. "Because I knew how to kill quickly and silently. I was proficient with almost every weapon that was manufactured at the time and could teach others how to use them. " Brig paused at the leap of fear in her eyes, the twinge of mistrust, and wished he'd kept his mouth shut. "It was all I knew when I got out of the service. It was what I did best. When someone offered to pay me a lot of money to do it, I took it. "

  "Is that why you did it? For the money?"

  "I thought that was why at the time, " he admitted. "But I was probably trying to get back at my grand- father. He was livid when I told him what I was going to do. As far as he was concerned, mercenaries were the scum of the earth. It didn't matter to him that the men who worked for him were little more man that They went across the country setting up his little discount chain stores and driving local merchants out of business. He hired respectable mercenaries, but he couldn't stand the thought of his grandson becoming one. He made a fortune and ruined a lot of good people along the way. "

  His voice became hard with remembered bitterness. While some had admired his grandfather's business acumen and others had envied his wealth, Brig had only felt disgust for the man whose given name he bore—Brigham Sanger, founder of Sanger Discount Stores.

  "Brig?" Trudie's voice was hesitant She was a little bit frightened by the cold look that had hardened his features.

  His eyes softened as they refocused on her face. Something like a smile touched his mouth, curving the corners into his mustache.

  "My grandfather is probably the reason I kept hiring out to fight on the losing side. I was always backing the little guy, trying to even out the odds. "

  "Wh... Where did you work?" Almost in spite of herself, she was fascinated by his pa
st, repelled yet attracted.

  "Central America, Africa, South America. I moved around a lot You've got to remember that I wasn't very good at picking a winner so the wars rarely lasted long. Either that or the money gave out, which meant I wasn't paid and there wasn't cash to buy ammunition or guns... or food. " Brig didn't go into details about comrades killed, food that wasn't fit to eat but had been consumed anyway because there was nothing else, or sleeping on the ground with no protection against the elements. And he didn't talk about the soldiers that fell under the bead of his gun.

  "Why did you quit? You must have been young at the time. " She stopped making any attempt to hide her curiosity as she scooted into a more comfortable position to listen to his answer.

  The sheet was draped around her hips. The heavy globes of her breasts drooped against her ribcage, the large rosy-crested centers swaying as she moved. Brig was momentarily distracted from her question. His hand reached out to caress the nearest breast.

  "There was an ambush. My patrol was caught in the middle of it. I remember a bullet tearing into my shoulder and then yelling at everyone to take cover. Then everything went black, " he said. "When I came to, there was a butchering doctor standing beside me. He had a scalpel and a pair of forceps in his hands. He was going to dig the bullet out of me. I was lying on the ground underneath a piece of canvas strung up as a lean-to. Flies were everywhere. This doctor jammed a bullet between my teeth and told me to bite it. The makeshift hospital didn't have any anesthesia. When he started probing and cutting into me, I realized that I didn't want their damned money or their war. Before I blacked out again, I swore if I lived through the so-called surgery, I was going to get the hell out of there. My life was worth more than the money they were paying me. "