A small mournful cry sounded in Mattie’s heart and she clenched her fists. She thought of her foster brother Jamie, and pressed her lips together.
The tone of Zeke’s voice flattened, but the Mississippi drawl thickened as he spoke, and she knew how he’d spoken as a child. The words came slowly, one agonized sentence at a time. “By day, the man was a carpenter, so he was strong. By night, he was a drunk and practiced being strong with everybody around him—the woman that he hated, and raped so often she got a dull look in her eyes and couldn’t hear anything around her, the dog.” The voice lost all emotion. “But he really liked to beat up his kids. They didn’t hit him back. Not at first.”
He took a long draw on the cigarette and Mattie saw the trembling in his hands. His back was so rigid, she thought he might break. “The man had a son first, the rest were girls. Six of ’em. The boy didn’t have too much trouble at first, not till the old man started on those girls.”
Mattie closed her eyes and dug her fingernails into her palm to force herself to stay where she was.
“I think the first time I fought him, I was six or seven. He used to hit my mom a lot, and I was afraid of him, but he didn’t pay me much attention. Liked to brag about me because I was big, strong—you know.” He moved his mouth, as if he tasted something bitter. “He went after my sister that night and I just couldn’t stand it.”
Unconsciously, Mattie was sure, he touched the hollowed scar on his eye. Or maybe not unconsciously. Maybe he still remembered it. “You can guess who won.”
For the first time since he’d started talking, he met her eyes. She nodded.
He shifted, stood up and went to the door to throw away the butt of his cigarette in an old coffee can he kept there. “It was pretty much war from that day forward. Sometimes he’d get to them when I was gone, and he had a lot of tricks to outsmart me and punish me—” His voice roughened so much, she had to lean forward to hear. “But I got him back sometimes, too. And most of my sisters made it out okay.”
Mattie heard that “most” and the howling in her chest started anew.
He rubbed viciously at his face and made a low, pained noise. “I told you before that I don’t ever intend to have a home and a family, and that’s why. I’ve felt that violence in me, Mattie.” His voice grew thick with self-loathing. “I felt it today.”
Mattie jumped up and nearly flew across the room. It was the most purely impulsive gesture of her life, but she ran across the boards, and flung herself around his rigid form, her heart screaming.
“Stop, Zeke,” she cried. “You didn’t hurt me. That wasn’t meanness.” She clutched him, putting her face against his chest, smelling the scent of the water, and the scent of his skin and realized they were one and the same. She found herself close to tears as she held him, feeling the brittleness of his vulnerability like a precious jewel. “I wish there had been someone there to fight for you.”
He unbent all at once, and she found herself swept up close, held gently and fiercely all at once.
Against her neck she felt the moist heat of his breath. “I don’t know what happened this afternoon,” he said. “I’ve never—it was so…”
“Don’t think about it.” She simply held him for long moments, until some of the rigidness left his body, until he took a breath. Terror. That’s what she felt from him. Horror. That he might be his father, that there was the same evil lurking inside of him.
The pain in her heart trebled, and Mattie realized with a sinking feeling that she was very, very close to falling in love with him. The dawning knowledge made her ease away, lead him to a chair. “Sit down,” she said. “Let me get you some coffee.”
She didn’t wait to see if he listened, but moved to the stove for the coffeepot and poured him a cup. His footsteps were nearly silent in bare feet, but she heard the chair creak a little under his weight. Mattie gave him coffee black and strong the way he liked it, and settled herself on the bed opposite.
“I had a foster brother once, named Jamie,” Mattie said. “He’s the one who taught me to play pool. He wanted me to be self-sufficient.” She smiled briefly, but it was a painful memory, not often told. “I lived with his family for three years, from the time I was thirteen until I was sixteen. Jamie—” she paused, her throat growing thick “—was the only person I ever really connected with in any of those foster homes. He felt like my real brother.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Mattie.”
“Yes, I think do.” She stared at him, and she knew he understood what was coming. “Jamie’s father beat him to death when I was sixteen, and Jamie was eighteen.” She couldn’t stop the tears that welled up in her eyes, but willed her voice to stay calm. “At least you got out,” she said on whisper.
“What a pair we are,” Zeke said, shaking his head. The smallest hint of a smile touched his lips. “Couple of hard-luck stories, huh?”
Mattie smiled ruefully. “Maybe we should run away and join the circus.”
The half smile became whole. “I ran away and joined the rodeo.”
“I ran to the ivory towers of the university life. It seemed so safe.”
A silence fell between them, filled with the things each had learned about safety and dreams. For once again, they shared something—the safe enclaves had betrayed each of them.
And now Mattie had invaded what she knew was Zeke’s sanctuary. “I think you should take me back to Pagosa Springs and let me catch a bus to Denver. I’m obviously causing problems—and I hate to repay your kindness like that.”
“It isn’t you, Mattie. It’s me.”
“Whoever it is, I think it’s plain this won’t work. I’m grateful for your help, but it would be best for me to just move on now.”
“Mattie, you can’t keep running. He’ll find you and kill you.” He jumped up, topped his coffee, turned around. “Why don’t you turn yourself in? I’ll even go with you if you want me to, stay with you until you get things together.”
“No.” Mattie said the word more loudly that she intended, and made a conscious effort to calm her voice. “You don’t know him, Zeke. You just don’t know.” A blinding flash of the blood on the floor of the warehouse gave her a nauseated feeling. “You just don’t know.”
“All the police want is some help.”
“If I go back to Kansas City, Brian will kill me.”
“There’s a warrant out for his arrest. He can’t go to Kansas City.”
“He doesn’t have to! All he has to do is pick up the phone.”
Zeke took a breath, hands on his hips. “I think you’re overestimating his power.”
“Maybe I am.” She shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”
“The police can take care of you, Mattie. They have experience—witness program, protective custody, all kinds of things.”
Mattie gripped the cup between her hands so hard she thought it might break. “No,” she repeated. “Just take me to the nearest bus station and I’ll get out of your life.”
“Have you given any thought to what this means, woman? Are you going to run the rest of your life, dashing from one little town to the next?”
“He’ll get tired of looking eventually,” she said with more certainty that she felt. “If Katherine Anne Porter could hide for all those years with FBI posters hanging in every post office in America, a little nobody like me can do it forever.”
“That’s no kind of life, Mattie. Don’t give him that much power over you. How can you find somebody to fall in love with and give you that family you want if you can’t ever tell anyone the truth about who you are?”
“It’s none of your business what I plan to do, Zeke! It isn’t your problem. It’s mine and I’ll take care of it, okay? Just take me down to Pagosa Springs and I’ll catch a bus from there.”
“I can’t do that, Mattie,” he said, carefully putting his cup down on the stove. “I won’t.”
“I’ll walk back down there if I have to.”
“No, you won’t
.”
She glared at him. He was right. With a sigh, she flung herself backward on the bed. “Fine. I’ll just stay here and drive you crazy.”
“Won’t matter,” he said without humor. “I’m already nuts.”
She glanced up, but he was lighting a lantern. Off to the barns, no doubt, or someplace else. To her surprise, he held it out. “Take this on down to the sauna and sit in there a little while. It’ll clear your head.”
“Like it cleared yours?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Sometimes nothing will do it, but I think it’ll make you feel better.”
Mattie took the lantern.
Much to her surprise, he was right. The sauna was far less primitive than she’d expected; in one corner stood a concrete incinerator where a fire burned. A two-by-two pool of warm mineral water—no doubt fed by the streams all around—sat in the middle of a wooden floor. Two benches, one high, one low, and wide enough for a person to lie upon comfortably, were nailed to one wall. Mattie stoked the fire and splashed water on the exterior of the incinerator as Zeke had instructed, and the experience was even more sybaritic than the shower.
Sitting in the comfortable dimness, her feet dangling in the small pool, her back braced against a bench, Mattie sighed. She was secretly relieved that he’d not agreed to her request to be taken to Pagosa Springs. Everything about this place was designed to please the senses—which said a lot, she decided, about the sensual nature of the prickly, beautiful Zeke himself.
Her debt to him was growing like a wild vine. He’d saved her life, opened her eyes to possibilities she could never have dreamed existed and had awakened something deeply passionate within her. Even now, there was a lingering, achy restlessness in her body, a longing only Zeke could quench.
But he wouldn’t. He was honorable. He thought he would hurt her.
Lazily, she splashed water on the incinerator, over and over until thick steam filled the small room. It rippled down in gray clouds, caressing her face, her body, with ghostly fingers. Her skin glowed with it, and her blood had slowed to a languorous steady thrumming.
What would he do if she seduced him?
The thought came from nowhere, and yet it must have been hovering nearby, for it was fully formed and solid. What would he do?
She moved her feet in the water, vaguely enjoying the sweep of water over her toes. He’d probably been seduced once or twice, and likely by women far more experienced that she in such matters. Would Mattie make a fool of herself? What if he resisted or didn’t want to make love to her?
Well, she amended, she was pretty sure he wanted to—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t resist. In fact, he probably would. If she tried it. If.
But wasn’t that lust? Where did lust end and something deeper begin? From the first moment she’d laid eyes on him, Mattie had wanted his body.
It shamed her. Zeke deserved better than the lascivious thoughts of tittering waitresses. He deserved better than a woman plotting to get him to make love to her against his better judgment. He had a right to the same respect a woman would ask of a man.
He’d been kind enough to bring her to his private sanctuary, give her shelter and feed her and entertain her, and she’d repay it by asking for the one thing he wanted to keep.
No. She wouldn’t. She’d dress demurely and stay away from mountain pools with him and make sure she did nothing at all to tempt him. And as soon as he’d let her, she’d get out of his life entirely.
The prospect gave her very little pleasure.
*
BRIAN PULLED OUT a map of Colorado. “Pagosa Springs,” he said, trailing his finger over the thin red lines. “Here it is. About four hundred miles. Maybe we can get there by tomorrow night.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Vince swilled a beer. “Whatever you say.”
Chapter 11
*
ZEKE HAD MADE a fire in the fireplace when Mattie returned, and the flames combined with the dancing light of the lanterns to create a cheery feeling in the room. He smiled at her when she came in. “How’d you like it?”
“You’d have to be dead to avoid appreciating that sauna.”
“Yep, pretty much.” He gestured toward the stove. “I made some supper. Nothing fancy, just some soup and biscuits, but I reckon it’ll fill the hole in our bellies.” He lifted the lid on the pot and stirred the contents, releasing a fragrant aroma into the air. “We should make a run to town tomorrow—get some supplies.”
Mattie, relaxed to the point of bonelessness, simply nodded her agreement.
They ate for a while in companionable silence. Zeke seemed to have found some measure of calm in her absence, because he treated her with his usual courtliness, though he was very careful not to touch her. Mattie found herself staring at the pictures on the wall, and wanted to ask again what the trophy was for, but didn’t dare bring up anything that might rock the fragile peace in the room.
Zeke, however, seemed to notice her gaze. “I built this place from the money I earned, with those people,” he volunteered, putting his bowl aside to stretch out his legs.
“What happened?” Mattie asked cautiously.
His grimace was wry, but it covered a lot of pain. “Woman trouble,” he said and shook his head. “Amanda happened. I should have known better.”
There was about him an almost amused attitude, and Mattie dared a question. “What should you have known?”
He lifted his eyebrows ruefully. “That women bred to that ritzy life don’t ever let you get away unpunished. She made up her mind the first minute we met that she was gonna have old Zeke, and I don’t think she ever considered any man might not want her.”
Mattie looked at the picture. The woman was beautiful and trim, with the understated elegance of money in every detail. “You didn’t want her?”
He shrugged. “She was a good-looking woman and all, but there was no real magic. Those were my wild days with women, anyway—and my partner had the hots for Amanda.”
Putting her own bowl aside, Mattie stretched out sideways on the bed, settling her head on her hand. “What kind of business did you have?”
“I bred horses. Appaloosas. John, my partner, and I met in Albuquerque at the rodeo, and over the years we developed the business. Just a few horses at first, but by the end we had quite a herd, and a lot of business. Damn near got rich—by my standards, anyway.”
“And woman trouble brought you down.”
“That’s about the size of it. Amanda’s daddy has racehorses—big-time money, too. He wasn’t real crazy about her hangin’ out with a two-bit operation like ours, but she honestly loved those horses, and she knew we needed her knowledge and her cash. She underwrote some of the stallions we bought, and a really fine mare.” He looked at her meaningfully. “She gave me Othello as a present.”
Mattie glanced at the photo and wickedly guessed, “As long as you gave her your body in return.”
Zeke laughed. “More or less. It wasn’t giving her my body that was the problem, though. We had worked that out at the start—I told her I wasn’t ever gonna settle down and raise babies, but she refused to believe me. When it finally sank in, she was fit to be tied.”
Hearing the reiteration of his intention to stay footloose, Mattie smoothed a hand over the stallions printed on the blanket. Wasn’t there just a little bit of that belief in Mattie, too? That the right woman would settle this man, make him happy and see him father children? Chagrined, she bit the inside of her check. The right woman. Whatever woman happened to be madly in love with him. All of them probably had the same thoughts.
“Anyway,” Zeke went on, his mood still remarkably light, “she plotted herself a real nasty revenge. John always wanted her in the worst way, and she used that—and all her daddy’s money and connections in the horse world—to bring me down. I lost everything but this little cabin, but I had to sell Othello and the two other stallions that were mine free and clear to keep it.”
“When did all this happen?”<
br />
“Two years ago,” he said. “I’ve been drifting around the Southwest ever since.” He lifted his cup in her direction. “You woke me up, Mattie. I’d been feeling real sorry for myself for a long damn time, and you yanked me right out of it.”
She smiled, extraordinarily pleased that she’d been able to do something for him. “I’m glad.” She admired him lazily, without feeling the painful arousal from earlier. He looked exactly right in the pine-walled room, with firelight playing over his sharp, strong face, long legs crossed at the ankle. “What are you going to do about it?”
He frowned. “Good question. It’s kind of a quandary. To get the cash I need for horses, I’d have to sell the land. Without the land, I have no place for the horses.” He made a snorting noise. “It took me ten years to save the cash I needed the first time around. Good stallions are expensive.”
“Can’t you get a loan on the land?”
“Not without means to pay it back.” He shrugged. “I’ll probably hire on with a ranch somewhere, just spend my winters here.”
Mattie flashed on the sauna and hot springs under cover of snow. “I’ll bet it’s nice up here in the wintertime.”
“It is,” he said quietly. “Especially when it snows. Not everybody likes winters like that, but they make me feel like a million bucks.”
She smiled. “It’s nice you got your dream, Zeke. That you got to grow up and have horses.”
“What’s your dream, Mattie?” he said, suddenly intense. “What did you want when you were a little kid in one of those foster homes?”
“All I really ever wanted was a family of my own,” she said. “The past few years, I took up poetry because I liked the safety of that environment—universities are very protected places. And it seems not very fashionable to want to have babies and make a home, so I felt like I should come up with something else.”
“Babies, huh?” Zeke said, and there was a strange tight sound to his voice. His gaze was focused on the fire. “I like babies a lot.”
Bad Boy Heroes Boxed Set Page 113
