by Ruth Wind
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?"
"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."
Mattie couldn't resist. "Is that an invitation?"
He glanced up, and Mattie saw the conflict in him. "You know, Miss Mary, if I were another kind of man, there'd be nothing I'd like better than to give you those babies."
His words, spoken in that low drawl, pierced her so deeply her breath fled. Oh, yes.
"Trouble is," he said, head cocked to one side, "I'd find some way to blow it all up before we were through, and you sure deserve better than that."
Mattie nodded. "Yes, I do."
He stood up by the fire a minute, seemingly undecided about something. Then he crossed the room and stopped by the bed, taking her hand to tug her upright. Mattie stared at him, bewildered by the swings of his moods.
He touched her cheek. "I like you better than any woman I've ever met," he said. He bent and pressed a warm kiss to her forehead. "Go on and get some sleep. We'll go into town tomorrow morning."
"Where are you going?" Mattie asked as he grabbed the sleeping bag from the floor.
"Just out to the porch, Miss Mary." His grin was wicked. "I think it'll be easier for me, if you don't mind."
"Won't you be cold?"
"I'll be fine."
* * *
And fine he was. In the cool mountain air, Zeke slept like a child, and awakened just as dawn tiptoed into the valley. Dew misted the pine trees around the porch and jeweled the grasses growing in stubby clumps all around the steps. A sprightly bevy of sparrows bounced in the yard, digging in the damp earth and chattering among themselves.
He listened. No cars. No planes. No electric wires humming. Only birds and the soft whisper of a morning breeze moving through the flat coins of aspen leaves. The silence gave him a powerful sense of well-being.
Something had shifted within him yesterday afternoon. So many painful emotions had torn at him, he thought he'd go insane with them. The old voices of derision and fury sounded like jackals in his brain.
While they'd been at their loudest, Mattie had flown across that cabin, surrounded him with herself, ignoring the fear he'd seen in her face, to hug him. Soothe him. In all his life, no one had ever done that. As a child, there'd been no one to do it; as an adult, he'd never let anyone close enough.
He'd never dreamed how good it would feel. How much sorrow and pain could drain so abruptly from him, like poisons spilling from a broken bottle. Maybe it was just the simple comfort of knowing there was someone who understood, who'd been there. The kind of childhood he'd known made most folks want to hide their heads.
His mind this morning was not so much on his childhood, as on the business he'd lost to Amanda and John. Losing it, the only thing he had, had nearly killed him. It had made him bitter and cynical.
This morning, what he wanted was to have his horses again. He missed the business and the money – that money had been mighty nice, and he was damned good at what he did – but he missed those horses with an almost physical pain.
Mattie had teased him about the books on his shelf, but she had him rightly pegged. He'd been horse crazy from the first time he'd laid eyes on one at the age of seven at a county fair. It had been a Tennessee walker, black and proud. Looking at it, with one arm in a cast from the second of his furious battles with his father, Zeke had believed in something beyond himself for the first time in his life. Tentatively, he'd reached up to touch that velvety nose. The horse had allowed it, and gazing into the big brown eyes, it seemed as if the horse understood.
What Zeke had learned was that he had a way with horses. When fairs and rodeos came to town, Zeke skipped school to spend his days and nights at the stables, hanging out until someone took pity on him and let him feed the creatures or clean the stables or whatever else needed doing. Didn't matter. He'd have gladly shoveled manure with his hands to get close to the horses.
And over the years, it became plain he knew the heart of horses. He knew when things weren't right with them – when they were
in pain or feeling restless or whatever – more, he seemed to know what to do for them, without even thinking much about it.
It was a gift, the old stable hands maintained. Said he was half horse himself.
Yesterday, when he'd accused Mattie of allowing Brian to chase her into the shadows, when he'd asked her if she'd let Brian force her to give up her dreams, he'd been shocked to realize that was just what he'd done. Like a dog kicked once too often, he'd tucked his tail between his legs and come up here to hide, too weary to even want anything anymore.
He wondered if Mattie had ever seen a real horse. The thought made him smile. She'd loved absolutely everything about the country life he'd shown her – not once had she complained about the lack of electricity or plumbing facilities. She was blooming up here. He bet she'd like horses one hell of a lot.
* * *
Riding behind Zeke on his motorcycle in the clear of a summer mountain morning counted as equal parts pure pleasure and deepest torture. Mattie had no idea where they were going, only that he smiled over it, and that they needed some supplies. If they were going to get supplies, Mattie thought, he wasn't going to get rid of her just yet, and that was good.
In a way.
The bike sailed over the narrow highway like some liquid beast from a fantasy story, so fleet and easy she felt as if she were flying. Zeke's shirt billowed in the wind, against her fingers, and she could feel the freedom in him, in the easy play of muscles beneath her hands.
He was different this morning. Lighter somehow. The boiling was not entirely gone from his eyes – she doubted it ever would be – but there was mischief and light, too.
They stopped the first time in a little town, bigger than most along the little highway, with a proper square boasting drugstores, a grocery, filling stations at either end and several churches. "I need to see about getting some propane delivered," he said, pointing to a storefront office on the corner. "Why don't you go look around in the grocery store and pick out some food."
"I don't really know what to pick," she said, suddenly shy.
"Sure you do." He pressed several twenties into her hand. "Cans, mainly. Get some stuff with meat in it – I've got a propane cooler, but it's not hooked up at the moment, so we can't have any fresh meat. I'd like to have some fruit, too. Maybe some jerky."
"I have money," she said, and pressed his bills back into his hand. "Let me buy the groceries."
He gave her a half smile. "All right." He tucked the money into his shirt pocket. "It won't take me long. I'll meet you inside."
"How will we carry things back?"
He winked. "Trust me, Miss Mary. This ain't my first rodeo."
She laughed and went into the store, thinking it an intimate and pleasant act to be shopping for both of them, for the food they would consume. It was also deeply satisfying to be doing something as normal as shopping for groceries after such a long time. In Kismet, she'd had little storage space and only bought food a day a time, wary of spending more than she needed to spend for fear she'd have to leave at a moment's notice. Which she had.
Now she chose food for meals carefully. Good meals, balanced and varied, even if most of it had to come from cans. Idly, putting cans of chili and macaroni and cheese into the cart, she wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this all the time. Curious, she looked at the people in the store, wondering how their lives were different from the one she'd known. They were a tough-looking lot, with leathery skin and sturdy clothes. Even the young girls, in their shorts and tube tops and carefully applied makeup, looked strong, as if they could—
With a smile, Mattie realized she didn't even know what made them so strong. Taking care of animals? Weathering the elements? Braving such a rugged environment?
She didn't know, but she liked the strength she sensed. It felt important.
Zeke found her when she was dithering over the fruit. The oranges might last better, but they were more expensive than the apples. He smelled an apple. "Go for the oranges. These are last year's crop – they'll be mealy as hell."
She grinned. It was just the sort of thing he was always saying, as if everyone knew the names of mushrooms that grew in circles, or that foxes made a particular track or that apples had a certain undernote when they were old. "I've never met anyone who is as smart as you are," she said, lifting the apple to her nose.
"Smart?" He picked out a few of the apples and put them in a bag. "That's one thing I haven't been accused of on a regular basis."
"Well, you are." She grabbed the five-pound bag of oranges and gestured at the rest of the goods in the basket. "I tried not to get too much to carry, but I might have overlooked something."
He picked through the basket, lifting one or another of the items in his long-fingered hands, and Mattie liked the sureness of his movements. Cooking or shopping, chopping wood or riding a motorcycle, he was always utterly at home. It would be so strange to feel that confidence, she thought.
"Let's get the bigger size on the chili. I can eat two by myself. Other than that, you did just fine."
They loaded the groceries into a big leather pouch Zeke took from the compartment below the bike's seat and attached to the sissy bar on the back. "I'd like to stop at a friend's place on the way back, if you don't mind," Zeke said. "It's a little out of the way, but I think we have time."
A friend. It was the first time he'd mentioned such a creature. "I think I can fit it into my schedule."
His eyes twinkled, and without warning, he bent and brushed a quick kiss over her mouth, in full view of anyone walking by. "Come on, then."
Mattie climbed on, bracing herself for more delicious torture. This time, she sat a little closer, unable to resist his extraordinary heat, or the smell of his skin. She snuggled against his back, wrapping her arms around his stomach. Her thighs straddled his lean hips, and his hair touched her face.
Wicked thoughts pressed into her mind. It would be so easy to touch his thigh, to press her palm to that hard, jean-clad leg; so easy to explore his stomach and chest as he drove. It would be simple to unbutton his shirt, just enough to slip her hand inside, and feel that sleek, beautiful chest, touch his nipples and—
Her breasts felt heavy and needful and there was an ache low and deep, an ache that grew as she imagined even more wicked things she might do with her hands – if only she was brave enough. Some of them, she conceded, might cause a wreck.
She forced herself to sit upright again, tried to imagine the dance chaperon's hands between their bodies.
Zeke let go of the handlebars with one hand for a moment and touched her leg. He rubbed her thigh, just above the knee, as if he understood, as if he was not unmoved. Then he took her hand from his side and tugged her close again.
Mattie settled against him and went back to her wicked thoughts. Somehow, she didn't think they were in vain. Not anymore.
* * *
Chapter 12
«^»
The ranch was situated on a parcel of land in the high, flat valley floor. As they pulled into the driveway in front of a simple farmhouse, surrounded by outbuildings of various sorts, Mattie realized this was part of the land she could see from the hot-spring pool on Zeke's land. In the waste areas between the square, sturdy house and the barns grew wide clumps of the orange flowers that provided the splashes of color patchworking the valley.
She slid off the bike, hanging on to Zeke's shoulder for balance. He caught her around the waist, his green eyes alight with a clean, wild desire. "I want you, Mattie. We won't stay here long."
"I thought you said—"
He cut her off. "That was before."
She smiled, and dared to touch his neck, slipping her hand below his collar. "Before what?"
"Before I knew what I was getting into," he said, his voice low and seductive, his hand making circles on her tummy. One wide brush came very close to the lower swell of her breast and her response was instantaneous – her nipple lifted, as if to touch him. He lifted his gaze. "Do
you want me, Miss Mary?"
She simply looked at him.
His fingers moved on her sides, skimmed upward in a subtle way. No one watching would have seen what he was doing. "Why don't you kiss me," he said, lifting his head. Waited.
Mattie swayed forward, holding her helmet in her hands, and pressed her lips to that irresistible mouth. He opened to her instantly and Mattie let herself drift for one tiny moment, let her herself explore again that unknown territory. She ended the kiss and straightened.
Zeke smiled. "One more time like that and I wouldn't give a rat's ass about anybody watching."
She winced and slapped his arm. "Your language!"
He sobered. "Just remember, Miss Mary, there are no roses and lace at the end of this path."
"I read you loud and clear, Captain," Mattie replied and slipped from his grasp to look around. Why did he always go out of his way to ruin the best moments?
The corrals here were not empty. Spotted gray and white horses, strong and muscular-looking, stood around a metal watering trough. "What kind are they?" Mattie asked.
"Appaloosas," Zeke said behind her. "The best workhorses around."
A man emerged from the barn, leading a graceful, high-stepping animal, all black, with a tossing head. The man spied Zeke and Mattie and grinned. "Finally broke down?" he called.
"I reckon," Zeke returned, but he was already moving forward. Mattie followed.
The man was in his late thirties, with coarse black hair and a powerfully angled face. The horse with him made a sudden noise, a high whining sound, and its graceful head tossed, jerked. The man let the reins go, and the horse galloped to the fence where Zeke stood waiting.
Mattie glanced at him. He'd climbed onto the fence and leaned over the top, softly whistling a series of notes. On his face was an expression Mattie had never seen – equal parts joy and sorrow. The horse hurtled forward, still making that strange sound. It reached Zeke and reared with a wild noise, then dropped and came forward, snuffling close to Zeke's neck, his hair, his face.
Zeke laughed, touching the horse on the neck, the nose, the chest. "Yeah," he said quietly, "I missed you, too, you old lug."
