by Tory Cates
“It’s interesting,” Malou said, her tone and the way she was leaning forward indicating much more than simple interest. It communicated that she was interested in Cam’s story because she cared about him. “So what happened when your father came home?”
“Ah, when Johnny came marching home. Of course, my mother went to him. My theory is that my father was convinced my mother’s family would turn loose of the purse strings and that he would finally begin living in a style to which he yearned to become accustomed. But that didn’t happen. When my mother went back, her father told her she’d never see another dime of his money and he was as good as his word.
“I’ve seen pictures of the two of them back then. My mother always looking like she was about to embark on some grand and romantic adventure. And my father . . .” Cam paused, his voice again shifting into a tone of residual bitterness as he spoke of his father. “My father always looking like the professional tough guy in his leather motorcycle jacket. But he was a handsome devil, and he could blow that horn in those days. So I suppose I can understand why the sheltered, romantic girl my mother was back then would fall in love with him.
“Anyway, I came along, and my father named me after my maternal grandfather, hoping that that would soften the old man up a bit. It didn’t work, though. Once my father realized that there wasn’t going to be any money, any easy street for him, he started drinking more and playing the sax less. Then my younger brother was born and things became all too real. The romantic adventure went sour. So my mother took her college degree and found a job as a sales clerk to keep us all fed since my father had lost any interest he might ever have had in his family.
“Through the years, though, my mother sort of tried to keep the faith alive. She was determined that, just because we lived in a tenement, she wasn’t going to lose her sons to the streets. So she read to us and wouldn’t let us talk like bums and made us believe that we could do anything and be anybody we wanted to be.”
“She sounds like a remarkable woman,” Malou said softly, feeling almost as if she were intruding on a very private reverie.
“She was that indeed. And still is.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“Working as a librarian in the small, very exclusive town where she grew up. I bought her a house there about ten years ago, right after I made my first big speculation deal. She played around with being the lady of leisure for a few years, making a career of going to lunch with all her old friends and reestablishing ties with what was left of her family. Then she announced she was either going to go back to work or off her rocker.”
It warmed Malou to see Cam’s open admiration for his mother. “What about your younger brother?”
“Joe College,” Cam laughed. “I sent him to a nice, safe Midwestern college, where he got a nice, safe degree in accounting. Married. Has two kids now and is supremely happy.”
“What about your father?” Malou almost didn’t want to ask, but curiosity drove her.
“Disappeared. Just walked out of the apartment one day when I was—what?—ten, eleven years old. Sax case under his arm. Said he had a gig. First one he’d had in longer than I could remember. Funny how clear it all was. My mother was at the sink peeling carrots, and she looked up, stared at him for a long time, then said, ‘Bye, Johnny.’ That was his name. I guess kids are like dogs, more attuned to the tone of a voice than to what is actually being said. Anyway, I knew just from the way my mother said those two words that my father was leaving. Never saw him again.”
Cam shrugged and looked down at his hands. Malou didn’t know what to say, how to tell Cam how remarkable she thought he was having done so much with his life when he’d started with so little. But something in his expression told her that he had never thought of himself as having been deprived and would resent anyone else thinking that.
“So, what about you?” he asked jauntily, whisking away all the old memories with the ease of a man who has had practice putting such things in perspective so they will not loom any larger than they must over his life. “Any dark and sordid secrets lurking in the girlhood of Mary Louise Sanders?”
“Just that name,” Malou responded. “It was my very darkest secret.” Though she made the reply into a joke, she realized it wasn’t far from the truth. The story of Cam’s young life had entranced her with its passionate upheavals. Her own life had been so neatly contained within tidy, ivy-covered walls. Her father, the esteemed professor. Her mother, the esteemed researcher. She laughed.
“Why the chuckle?” Cam asked, a grin teasing the corners of his mouth.
“I was just thinking about how radically different the houses we grew up in must have been. Your apartment, with your mother working and two young boys being two young boys, must have been chaotic.”
“Chaotic was the best we ever achieved,” Cam replied with affection. “That was right after we’d cleaned up. The rest of the time it was your standard disaster area.” With those words, Malou put away the pity she’d brought out for Cam, since it was clear that, whatever hard times Mrs. Landell and her sons had weathered, there had always been ample love between them.
“My house was the exact opposite. I never even realized that people hung things on their walls until I saw paintings and posters and bulletin boards in my friends’ houses. My mother was fanatically anti-clutter. A place for everything and everything in its place. Or else.
“My little rebellion was to clutter up my room with various collections of things that I’d found out in the woods and fields, where I spent most of my waking hours.”
“A little tomboy, eh?” Cam surmised.
“The worst,” Malou confirmed with a smile. “I don’t think there were more than three days running, from the time I learned to walk until I finally discovered boys at an alarmingly late age, that my knees weren’t a solid mass of scabs. I was always falling down chasing after butterflies, and dropping out of trees where I was investigating an owl’s nest or something.”
“Our younger years were radically different. The only birds I ever set eyes on were the pigeons in my friend Monty’s coops.”
Malou smiled, and Cam studied her face for a moment that stretched out, taking them both into the tantalizing territory that lay beyond polite conversation. As the moment lengthened, Malou became aware again of the rain drumming on the roof of the snug stone house, of the tangy scent of mesquite burning in the fire, of the warmth of the fire itself. It was a warmth that seemed to intensify along with Cam’s gaze.
Malou felt herself flush beneath its heat and her thoughts scattered. She asked inanely, “Why don’t you tell me about the pigeons?”
Her eyes strayed involuntarily to the flexing bow of his lips as they formed the answer that was so long in coming. “There’s something else I’d rather do with you than talk about pigeons.”
His desire was as palpable as the scent of the wood and the warmth of the flames. It twined around Malou with an inexorable seductiveness until she knew it as her own. Until there was no need for her question, “What’s that?”
“To kiss you again, Mary Louise Sanders.”
“I . . .” she started to protest, but her words fell away into the void that seemed to have opened around them, leaving them, only the two of them in the whole world, safe and alone on an island far beyond the reach of mundane cares. In a remote corner of her mind, Malou realized that, once again, Cam had dodged her. She wasn’t going to learn any more about the boyhood he had alluded to. Suddenly, though, she no longer cared.
The rain was a pelting curtain drawn tight around them, shutting off all that had gone before or would come after. Cam raised a hand haloed by golden hairs as it passed in front of the fire. He touched Malou’s cheek, the barest glance of his fingertips. In some odd way, the gesture reminded Malou of the teenage monkeys, of the way they had touched her tear-streaked cheek with that same combination of gentle curiosity and wonder. The effect, Malou noticed, was profoundly different.
Like a c
at leaning into a petting hand, she stretched toward the exploring touch. Cam opened his warm palm to the unimaginable softness of her cheek, sliding it from there up into her hair. Still with the barest, most electric of touches, he trailed the tips of his fingers, raking lightly with his nails, across the nape of her neck and around toward the area tingling beneath her ear. His hand stopped and spanned the fragile hollow of her collarbone. Malou’s pulse leaped, pounding against Cam’s palm.
“So delicate,” he whispered, marveling at the finely wrought structure of bone and honey-colored skin. “Yet so strong.” He was so close that Malou could feel his words as a deep bass rumble and a warm vapor against her skin. Passion coiled about Malou’s lungs, demanding to make itself known, felt. She could not deny it. Struggling for the breath that seemed to have been squeezed from her, Malou’s lips parted.
That nearly imperceptible parting was the signal Cam had been waiting for, searching for. Once he knew that Malou was not unaffected, the titanic pull of the attraction he felt for her surged through him with a power that he was hard-pressed to keep in check. But restrain it he would. With an aching slowness, he cradled the nape of her neck in his hand and drew her to him. For a moment he lingered, his lips almost touching hers, as he savored the exquisite bouquet, freshened by the drenching rain and warmed by the fire’s heat, that wafted up to him.
Malou thought he must be deliberately torturing her, keeping his lips less than a breath from her own. Yet she knew that, had he lunged at her in an overheated attack, she would have resisted. No, his coolness, his control, excited her far more than any grappling advance ever could. Within the loose but enticing coils of his passion, she was free to experience her own arousal. It came not as a pounding, grasping thing, but rather as an unraveling, a letting go. Bonds within her snapped, and knots slid apart. She felt herself untangling and all the loose ends seeking out a new union. She leaned toward Cam.
The feel of his lips obliterated all her thoughts. The ragged tear of his breath spilled over her as he took her mouth. A thrill of nervous pleasure skittered through Malou, half of her fearing, half of her yearning mightily for Cam to unleash his passion. She waited for his mouth to grind over hers, to plunder and possess it. Instead, Cam lightly played his lips over hers, teasing them even further as he flicked his tongue over their waiting ripeness. The light stab of his tongue drove her ever further into a pounding readiness.
He pressed her back against the wide bed of the age-softened leather couch. As he paused above her, the dancing flames bronzed his features. They flickered over the tousled mat of his dark curls. Twin blazes leaped in the impenetrable darkness of his eyes. His lips found the hollows of her throat. Tendrils of electric pleasure spiraled out from the touch of his mouth. The spiral widened as the warmth of his kiss moved down, drawn ineluctably to the gentle swell of her breasts.
The tissue-thin cotton of the dress was more provocation than protection; it heightened rather than hid the bounty beneath, just as it heightened Malou’s pleasure in Cam’s discovery as he brought the tips of her breasts to vibrant life. She was aching for him by the time his mouth returned to hers. The intensity of her need was a frightening surprise. For Malou, who had chosen the society of monkeys over men, that need was new and dangerous. Every atom of her being seemed to be rising up to reach out for completion, for a joining with the man beside her. A shimmer of panic passed through her as she felt control slipping away from her.
“Cam, I . . .” she gasped, betraying too much of the tumult raging within her. “We should stop.”
Cam looked at her with fond amusement, as if her words were a provocative tease like the thin material of the dress he’d found for her. No woman had ever before felt so instantly right in his arms. He couldn’t believe that Malou wasn’t in the thrall of the force that now possessed him. He moved to reclaim her mouth and felt her stiffen in his arms.
“You mean it, don’t you?” he asked, still not believing she could be serious.
“Yes.” Malou struggled for a grip on her rampaging emotions. “It’s not a good idea. Everything’s happening so fast.”
“Malou, darling, I can make it happen as slow as you are able to endure.”
Malou’s mouth went dry at the blatant sexual promise. She knew right down to her toenails that Cameron Landell could make good on that promise.
“No, Cam,” she began, her mind wheeling for excuses. But they weren’t needed. Cam was already opening a gulf between them as he backed away. The fire had died away. When the warmth of his skin left hers, a slight chill crept through the flimsy dress.
“You’re right,” Cam announced, all signs of arousal now scrubbed from his brisk voice. “You’ve got too much to gain here and I’ve got far too much to lose. The balance between us is all skewed. We wouldn’t want to start off our association with one of us taking advantage of the other.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Malou protested, but the flames that had danced only moments before in Cam’s eyes had already died.
“Nonetheless, that’s what it would have come to.” He rose and Malou was pierced by a pang of regret. She wanted to take back her words, her fears, her caution. But the moment had passed. “Take your pick,” he offered in a jarringly chipper voice. “The couch, or the bed in the other room.”
“I’m fine here,” Malou answered, no longer wanting the separation she had caused.
“Good choice. I had a look at that bed earlier, and it appears that Stallings slept on pinecones.” He reached for a thick log and settled it expertly on the fire, then tucked the quilt up around Malou’s shoulders. “There, that ought to keep you through the night. Need anything else?”
“Just you,” Malou whispered, but it was too late, for Cam was already out of earshot, striding out of the room.
It’s for the best, she told herself, wondering if she would have succumbed if Cam had not heeded her protest. But he had, she reminded herself, forcing her lids shut to seek inwardly for the sleep that would be a long time in coming.
Beyond the pool of light cast by the fire, Cam stopped and watched, marveling at how controlled Malou was. Only seconds after breaking off one of the most heated embraces of his life, she could calmly drift off to sleep while his heart was still thudding like a kettledrum. God, he couldn’t deny it, though, watching her lids flutter down on those sun-blessed cheeks. He wanted her. Badly. He issued himself a stern warning that in the future he would never again let his control come so close to slipping away.
Then each of them on their separate beds, in their separate darknesses, listened for several long, solitary hours to the rain pecking at the roof of the small stone house they shared.
Chapter 5
Even before she opened her eyes, Malou knew that she had not slept long enough. She burrowed farther underneath the quilt to escape the pounding sound that was dragging her toward consciousness. The creak of footsteps padding across the old wooden floor brought her fully awake. Her senses awoke before her mind did. They were alive with a pulsing awareness of Cam’s nearness even before Malou had time to completely recollect where she was and who was with her.
The front door scraped open. Shielded by the high back of the couch, she listened, seeking to learn the identity of the insistent early-morning visitor knocking at the door.
“Buenos días, Señor Landell.”
Jorge Maldonado.
Malou was surprised to hear such respect and deference in Jorge’s usually curt voice. Obviously, he had brought the Mexican peón’s fear of the almighty patrón with him when he crossed the Rio Grande. She was even more surprised though to hear his voice, in any tone, at such an early hour.
“Todo es—”
“You’ll have to try English, Jorge,” Cam whispered.
Haltingly, Jorge began again. “Everything is done as you ordered.”
The statement came out with an oddly formal finality. Before Malou had time to puzzle over its meaning, Jorge was asking, “But, why do you sleep here? I c
ame only by luck. Why do you not sleep at the ranch house?”
Malou was jarred by the question and strained for Cam’s answer. It was a whisper even lower than the one he’d been using.
“We can’t talk in here. Let’s go out onto the porch.”
The heavy oak door swung shut, cutting off any further possibility that she might pick up another scrap of conversation. Malou quickly slithered out from beneath the quilt and into her clothes, which had dried by the fire, then went to the front window farthest from the door. Cam was wearing only the jeans he had found last night. A bit too large, they rode low on his hips. Hard juts of bone protruded on either side of his flat stomach. He was gesturing decisively, his hand pointed and chopping like an ax. Jorge was nodding deferentially. Then the Mexican hired hand pointed into the distance, his brown finger snaking through the air. Malou followed it into a day sparkling with the rain’s cleansing.
Finally, Cam nodded a couple of times, then shook Jorge’s hand and patted him on the back. Jorge’s stunned, then pleased reaction was the only part of the exchange that Malou understood. He was quite clearly honored and delighted by the simple gesture. Malou backed quickly away from the window when Cam turned to come back in.
“Sorry we woke you. How did you sleep?”
“Not bad,” Malou lied, forcing her gaze away from the rugged contours of his chest, his stomach. He seemed so cheerily unaffected, she would have to make an effort to appear equally unperturbed, both by the events of last night and by the peculiar encounter she’d just witnessed.
“Apparently we made things unnecessarily rough on ourselves. According to Jorge, this isn’t the main ranch house at all. We turned off too soon. This”—he circled his hand around to take in the stone house—“is just some shrine Stallings maintained to his wife for the past half a century. She died giving birth to their first child here, and Stallings just closed the place up and moved. Not long after that he made his first big oil strike and built a new house, the house he wished he could have built for his wife. Anyway, he never remarried and kept this old place just as it was, with everything maintained and in working order.”
