BREAKING THE RULES

by Ruth Wind

  She carried a small paper bag and a thermos. "I come here every morning to eat my breakfast," she said, and pointed to a small outcropping of rocks on the other side of the stream. A natural staircase led to the perch. "I won't bother you."

  "Maybe I'll bother you."

  "I doubt it." He saw that it took some effort, but she resolutely headed toward the perch, leaving her sandals at the edge of the stream to splash through the shallows to the stairs. When she reached the top, she settled herself primly with her bag in her lap. "You mind your business and I'll mind mine."

  Zeke half smiled. She probably had no idea he'd left his clothes in a pile at the edge of the water, or she wouldn't be quite so calm. The pool he stood in was deep enough to cloak his nakedness, but if he moved at all, the clear water wouldn't hide much. "Nice sentiment," he said, "but we've got a little problem."

  "What's that?"

  "Well, Miss Mary, all my clothes are over there on the bank."

  A flash of something crossed her face – satisfaction? She raised her eyebrows. "I guess you'll have to wait until I'm finished with my breakfast to finish your swim, then, won't you?"

  Zeke licked his bottom lip. It had been a mistake to underestimate this woman. She might look young and naive, but there was something hard as barbed wire running beneath it all. If he hadn't been so rattled by that mouth yesterday, he would have realized it, too.

  "Not necessarily."

  She shrugged, cracking open a peanut. Her composure was utterly unrattled this morning, and he wondered what had brought about the change.

  "I think you're pretty mad at me, aren't you?"

  "Why would I be mad? You deliberately tried to embarrass me at the restaurant, then you followed me home, dropped all these innuendos, then made it sound like I was the one who initiated things." A blaze of color touched her cheeks. "Not to mention the fact you stuck your nose in where it didn't belong."

  "All right, all right." He raised a hand. "You're right. I'm sorry."

  Sunlight angled through the high trees and over the canyon wall to strike her face. "I'll turn around if you want to get out."

  "Much obliged."

  She stood up, and Zeke frowned over her clothes – a dowdy pair of baggy shorts with an equally dowdy, baggy tank top. He winced at the waste of that body in those clothes as she turned around, putting her back to him.

  For a moment, he paused, struck by the tenderness of her nape. He followed the path of her spine downward to the barely visible outline of her rear end, down farther over the taut thighs and strong calves, tanned to a deep golden hue.

  "You'd better hurry up," she warned. "I'm not going to stand here waiting forever."

  Zeke pushed out of the water and dashed for the bank, feeling a little tightening of his muscles as he scrambled into his briefs and cutoffs. Much as he hated to do it, he tugged his shirt on, too. Cover the scars.

  He turned around and saw to his relief she was still standing with her back to him. "All right," he called.

  She settled once more on her perch. "Maybe you shouldn't be out here skinny-dipping."

  He waded through the shallows toward her, even though he told himself he ought to be moving in the opposite direction. "You're the first person who has ever come here."

  "There's not really room for two up here," she said as he began to climb up the slope.

  "Sure there is. Move your fanny over."

  She scooted like a little brown mouse, her mirth and bravado shrinking as he sat down next her. He chuckled. "What's wrong, Miss Mary? You scared of the giant?"

  "I'm afraid of falling off here."

  "You could sit on my lap."

  "I think not." To avoid his eyes, she dug in her bag and came up with a handful of peanuts in their shells.

  "Some breakfast," he commented and grabbed the bag to peer inside. Peanuts, another apple, a paper carton of orange juice and a small thermos. "Will you share?"

  "Help yourself."

  He held up the thermos. "Is this coffee?" She nodded. "But I'm afraid it has cream. I never did learn to like it black."

  "That's okay, Miss Mary. I'll drink it your way."

  She didn't make a response, just cracked open a peanut and picked out the nuts from within. As he poured a cupful of the still-steaming brew, he caught her sidelong glance sweeping over his bare legs.

  "So, what are you doing up so early?" he asked.

  "I have to be to work at five-thirty. Even on my days off, I can't sleep past four." A shadow crossed her eyes, and she was suddenly not with him here on the sandstone table, but lost somewhere inside herself. He narrowed his eyes and wondered again what she was hiding. A violent husband? Maybe. It was plain she was scared to death.

  He restrained himself from asking any more questions, however. Bad enough he'd crawled up here to sit with her. "I like early morning," he said, admiring the sky. "Private, quiet, peaceful."

  "I never knew I did until—" She broke off, bowing her head in consternation.

  "I'm not gonna pry this morning," he said quietly. "Promise."

  She raised wide brown eyes. "I never got up this early before I started working at the restaurant. I guess you do it all the time?"

  "Pretty much." He cracked a peanut and poured the nuts into his palm. "You ever wait tables before?"

  A small, rueful smile touched her mouth. "No. It wasn't a pleasant sight the first few days."

  He chuckled. "Roxanne train you?"

  "Yes. She was so patient, too. She never yelled at me once."

  "She's a good lady. Good waitress, too."

  Mattie looked at him, and he could see her weighing something in her mind. "She – um – rather likes you." She pinched an earlobe. "That's not really the right word, but you know what I mean."

  "Yeah."

  "It's not mutual?"

  "Are you matchmaking, Miss Mary?"

  With a little shrug, she tossed the stem of an apple into the water. "Maybe."

  He inclined his head, wondering why she would take that role when he'd been getting pretty clear signals that she "liked" him, as she put it. He touched her bare arm with one finger, liking the silky pale flesh and the jolt it gave her. "Why don't you matchmake me with you?" he drawled. "Might be more successful."

  She didn't look at him. "You aren't my type, and I'm not yours."

  Only yesterday, Zeke had told himself the same thing. Two different worlds, lifestyles, values, everything. But he found his gaze wandering over the smooth length of her long neck, down to the shadow he could glimpse between her breasts, over her smooth, pretty legs.

  "How do you know until you try?" he said.

  She turned her head, and now she was so close, Zeke could see the green and blue and yellow flecks in the brown irises. "I know," she said, but the huskiness in her voice betrayed her.

  Below their dangling feet, the water rushed merrily over the rocks. Birds twittered and cheeped. A soft breeze, smelling of all the best of the outdoors, swept a lock of her hair over her forehead. Zeke let his fingers trace her upper arm and fall into the hollow of her elbow, tracing the path his fingers took with his eyes. An abrupt and insistent heat spread through his groin.

  It would be so easy to disarm her, he thought. She was ready to fall right now. All he had to do was lean forward and press his mouth someplace that would surprise her – the sensitive hollow below her ear, the edge of her shoulder, her palm.

  She swayed just a little toward him, and the motion brought Zeke to his senses. Alarmed, he snatched his hand away and swore softly.

  He'd done it again.

  In one day, this soft little mouse of a woman had tempted him into all kinds of thoughts he didn't let himself have. He shook his head. Just hungry, he guessed. A man couldn't go without forever, after all. Obviously, he was getting to the end of his celibacy.

  But it would be a mistake to let himself go with this woman. A big mistake.

  "I gotta go."

  He turned and scrambled down the rock,
skinning his heel in his haste to get away from her.

  "Zeke?" She climbed down after him, running a little to catch up. "Wait a minute."

  He steeled himself and spun around, pasting an annoyed look on his face to discourage anything sweet coming from her.

  It worked. A little bit, anyway. She stopped a foot away, her bare feet sunk to the ankles in silvery water. She was still too close. He could smell her shampoo and see a gleam of that innocent hunger in her big brown eyes as she stared up at him. Way, way up, because she wasn't real tall and Zeke didn't meet many men bigger than he was.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to imply you were—" she shrugged. "I don't mean that you're not good enough or anything like that. I'm just not your type."

  He took a breath. "You're right. And I'm not yours." He stuck out a hand to shake. "Friends?"

  She smiled, and the expression was dazzling, innocent and sweet and damnably delectable. She stuck out her hand. Zeke caught sight of her burns again. It triggered that odd sense of déjà vu and as he took her hand, he turned it over quizzically. "How'd you get these burns, honey?"

  She sighed and lifted her hands in front of her. "A teddy bear," she said. "My parents were killed in a house fire when I was six. I was there, too, but the firemen got me out in time, but they couldn't get the bear away from me in time. It stuck to me."

  Ah, hell. Now if that wasn't just about the saddest story he'd ever heard—

  Irritated with himself, he frowned. "Why do I think I know you? It's driving me crazy."

  Her face drained of expression and she backed away. "I don't know. And I'm not going to talk about it again." She whirled and splashed back toward her rock.

  Good. That was that. He stalked through the trees without a second glance. Time to get out of town, all right. Trouble was brewing. He could smell it.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  «^»

  Late that afternoon, Mattie counted her stash. Sixty-seven dollars and forty-eight cents, including dimes and nickels. Not enough.

  Restlessly she paced the room, trying to come up with some plan. She had to get out of Kismet, and quickly, or Zeke Shephard was going to have her spilling her secrets like a bag of marbles. And that she simply could not afford.

  But sixty-seven dollars wouldn't carry her very far on the bus, and in spite of all the changes in her life the past few weeks, she couldn't see herself hitchhiking.

  There was no one to call for help, no one who might loan her money, no one with whom she could seek refuge. All she had was sixty-seven dollars, a passel of ugly clothes and her wits.

  She snorted softly to herself. Her wits. Right. Her wits – or lack of them – were what had landed her in this mess in the first place. If she'd used her wits, she would be happily typing letters and organizing the files of the English department at the university, taking night classes toward a degree in English poetry, instead of running for her life and working as a waitress.

  "Damn!" she said aloud and slammed a hand down on the table. Her neat stacks of quarters shivered and clinked into disarray.

  She cursed the day she had laid eyes on Brian Murphy, cursed the fact she had not seen the truth of him sooner, cursed her own silly weak hunger for a life and family of her own. Looking back, it was incredible that she had actually believed he could offer her anything. It was idiotic that she'd not questioned his wealth sooner, that she hadn't seen how shady some of his friends were. She'd even seen a gun in his glove box and hadn't thought anything of it.

  Stupid.

  She blew out a long breath and flicked aside the curtain to watch a family of tourists drag their suitcases inside the cabin next door. Three kids in shorts and good tennis shoes, a mother laughing and calling out cautions, a dad grumbling. So normal.

  That's what Brian had seemed to be. Normal. She'd met him at Mass, for heaven's sake. Every Sunday, he brought his mother, who had trouble driving. Mattie had noticed him a long time before they spoke. A healthy, tall redhead with a smattering of freckles and merry Irish eyes, he never seemed to mind his duty. Sat calmly with his mother, helped her to the front for Communion, kept her arm tucked in his when they left the church.

  Everyone at St. Pius loved Brian Murphy. He'd turned his father's failing trucking business around in a few short years and gave generously to the church from the profits. He had a big family and a sweet way with children, and he'd seemed to think Mattie was the prettiest woman he'd ever laid eyes on.

  Well, her hair, anyway. He had practically worshiped her hair.

  From the start, Mattie had fallen for his charm and his intention to make an honest woman of her. Like Mattie, Brian wanted many children. He wanted a wife who devoted herself to making a home, though he didn't object to her dabbling, as he put it, in poetry.

  Thinking of it now, it sounded so patronizing, but above all things in life, Mattie wanted a family of her own. People to love. Children to tend. Pets shedding hair she could vacuum. She wanted the wildness of the Murphy family holidays.

  Even now, the loss of those dreams ached.

  Had he ever intended for her to find out the true nature of his business? She didn't think so. The clues had been there all along, if she'd been less eager to dismiss the odd phone calls, the guns he kept everywhere – in his glove box and a drawer in his office and the cupboard at his house, the strange people with whom he sometimes did business.

  Once she had become suspicious for a little while. It was money that tipped her off – he simply had too much of it. Murphy Trucking was a successful business, but successful enough to support the purchase of a Jaguar? A rambling home in an exclusive neighborhood? Trips to exotic places on a quarterly basis?

  He convinced her he'd simply done very canny investing with the help of a good broker. A reasonable explanation.

  But a lie, as she now knew.

  She found out that Murphy Trucking operated on two levels – the upfront transport of all sorts of goods, from tomatoes to furniture, and the not-so-upfront transport of illegal goods. Mattie still didn't know exactly what. Guns or drugs, most likely.

  In the whole mess, Mattie was grateful for one thing: she'd learned in time. It made her sick to imagine herself marrying him, bearing his children and finding out ten years from now her husband was a criminal and murderer.

  The night that had changed her life, she'd seen what Brian was capable of – cold-blooded murder. She had also seen the rage in his eyes when she fled. If he found her, he would kill her.

  It was that simple.

  Sixty-seven dollars wasn't enough. Mattie stared at the quarters as if concentration might make them multiply.

  Jamie flashed through her mind – Jamie Andersen, her foster brother, the one and only person who'd taken even a passing interest in her at any of the series of foster homes in which she lived from the time of her parents' deaths when she was six until she found her own place when she was sixteen.

  Jamie. She chewed the inside of her lip. He'd learned every hustle there was in reform schools and in the streets of Kansas City. Some of them he taught to Mattie in order to keep her safe, so she'd never fall prey to the dark-hearted men of the world.

  Wryly, Mattie wondered if Jamie would have seen through Brian. Probably.

  To give Mattie something she could always use, anywhere, anytime, Jamie gave her a survival skill of her own. In the smoky dark rooms of riverfront pool halls, Jamie taught Mattie the secrets of the stick. "You never know," he'd told her, a cigarette dangling from his lips, "when your back will be against the wall. Stay in practice and you'll never be sorry."

  Her back was against the wall.

  "You were right, big brother," she said aloud, wondering if his spirit could hear her. "I'm not sorry." She scooped the money into her bag and slung the weight over her shoulder. There were a few things she had to do, the first being a ride to Flagstaff. Maybe Roxanne would take her.

  * * *

  That night, Southern rock and roll filled the stea
my kitchen, blasting from the jukebox at Bronco's. Flipping hamburgers, Zeke sang along with the Allman Brothers. With an artful twist, he tossed a patty into the air, caught it deftly on a big metal spatula and chuckled. Cooking wasn't something he'd choose for his life's work, but it could be kind of a kick at times.

  Onions sizzled in the grease, sending their fragrance richly into the air. He slapped cheese on three hamburgers, rescued the buns from their toasting on the other side of the grill and arranged them on a plate.

  "Hey, Ed," he called to the owner, who sat in a narrow office not far from the stove, "I'm hungry. You gonna let me go home sometime tonight, or have you just decided to keep me here forever?"

  Ed looked at his watch in surprise. "Sorry, man. Didn't realize it was getting so late. Finish up that order and I'll take over."

  The cheese was perfectly melted, and Zeke lovingly stacked the burgers onto the waiting buns. French fries from a basket filled the plates, and Zeke slipped the single onto the pass-out bar along with the ticket.

  "This one's mine," he said to Ed, lifting the double burger. He took off his apron. "I had a feeling it was time."

  He carried the overflowing plate out into the dimly lit bar, taking a place at the counter to eat.

  Over the jukebox, he heard the thin fussy cry of a baby. "Give me a beer, Sue," he said to the bartender.

  At her glare, he grinned. "Please."

  Sue fished a brown bottle from the cooler, and twisted off the top with a quick flick of her wrist. As she settled the beer on a napkin before him, she looked toward the line of tall booths against the far wall. "That poor mother. She's exhausted. Look at her."

  Zeke looked over his shoulder. A trio of tourists sat miserably in the booth. Mom and Dad and baby. The couple was young, no more than twenty-five. The mother's face was glazed as she stared at her husband eating the hamburger Zeke had just made. The dad, too, looked frazzled. His hair was uncombed and a smear of black grease stained his forearm. He ate as though he was starving.

  The baby, about six months old, just fussed in its mother's arms.