San Antonio Rose

by Fran Baker

  Rafe turned back toward the witness stand and moved in for the kill. “Officer, would you please show the court where the victim’s fingerprints were found on the neck of this bottle?”

  Jeannie shivered, realizing what a sheltered life she’d led when the policeman wrapped his fingers around the neck of the bottle, picked it up, and held the broken end of it out in front of him. And seeing the judge wince and rear back slightly when the policeman swung that jagged maw in his direction, slashing the air between the witness stand and the bench, she also realized that Rafe had made his point about the bottle’s potential as a lethal weapon in the most effective manner possible.

  “No further questions,” Rafe said as he relieved the officer of the broken beer bottle, replaced it on the evidence table, and resumed his seat with a triumphant smile.

  Eight

  “You love it, don’t you?”

  “What—winning?”

  Jeannie smiled as Rafe sped under the freeway overpass, following Commerce Street as it led into the heart of the West Side. They’d just left the hearing, which had lasted a little over an hour. When all was said and done, the charges had been dropped and his client had walked out of court a free man. Now it was back to his office for him and, as soon as they decided how to get him and Tony together, back to Bolero for her.

  The windows were down, and Jeannie’s senses were assaulted by the sights and sounds and smells of Rafe’s home ground. A cluster of people in their gimme caps and work shirts sat fanning themselves on a wooden bench, waiting patiently for the bus. A guitar player stood in front of a souvenir shop, strumming up tourist business with melodies of Old Mexico and new merchandise. An open church door emitted the faint aroma of funeral incense.

  “I’m sure you love winning,” she said as the building where he lived and worked came into view, “but I was talking about the practice of the law.”

  He turned into the side lot and nosed the Corvette into his parking space. “Win or lose, I’ve always enjoyed a good fight.”

  Jeannie started to laugh, then stopped as a memory crept in, one she had almost forgotten. Rafe, returning to the ranch after running into Bolero to pick up some cattle feed, his face bruised and his knuckles bleeding. She’d known without being told that someone had either called him a terrible name or simply called him on his right to be there, and that he’d struck back. Her heart had ached for him, as if she’d been attacked as well, but he hadn’t wanted her sympathy.

  “Well, you were wonderful in that courtroom today,” she said in all sincerity.

  He gave a self-effacing shrug and killed the engine. “Just doing my part to keep the system honest.”

  “You know what really burns me about the system?”

  “What?”

  “When a judge releases someone who’s obviously guilty—a confessed criminal, for instance—on a technicality.”

  “For your information, judges don’t make the laws. Or the loopholes either. So it’s your state senator and your representative—”

  Jeannie laughed and held up her hands in surrender. “I sense a political speech coming.”

  Rafe chuckled. “Point taken.”

  She tucked her sandaled foot under the opposite thigh and turned in the low-slung seat. Her denim skirt modestly covered her knees, but her thin bra and tank top did nothing to hide the shape of her firm breasts. “Seriously now, what made you think to check and see whether the victim in this case had a record?”

  “Alleged victim.” He squared around in his seat to face her and crooked an elbow on the wheel, causing his suitcoat to fall open. Red silk suspenders added a touch of pizzazz to his high-powered appearance, and the platinum face of his watch peeked out from beneath his shirt cuff.

  Jeannie ceded his point with a nod, remembering now how surprised she’d been when, with the alleged victim on the stand and sworn to tell the truth, Rafe had produced a rap sheet as long as her arm detailing other instances of violent behavior on his part.

  As it had turned out, he’d even served a jail term for attacking someone else with a broken beer bottle. That information, coupled with the policeman’s demonstration and the defendant’s testimony, had convinced the judge that it was a cut-and-dried case of self-defense.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” she reminded him.

  A slow smile teased the corners of his blue eyes. “Would you believe it was a lucky guess?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “I’d say it was more like good detective work.”

  “Goes with the territory,” he said with a verbal shrug.

  “It also goes to show you how deceiving appearances can be,” she declared.

  A pair of creases formed between his eyebrows. “Because my client was black?”

  Both her back and her voice stiffened. “Give me a break, will you?”

  His slumberous eyes locked with hers across the console before lowering to her mouth. “I’d rather give you a kiss.”

  Jeannie’s pulse kicked into overdrive at Rafe’s sensually gruff statement and right-of-possession gaze. She studied his face, sculptured in bronze, forced to admit that in spite of everything she wanted his kiss, wanted him.

  Still, she shook her head, trying to apply the brakes to her racing heart, hoping to slow the momentum of her rushing blood. Until three days ago their lovemaking had been a memory gilded by time and distance and a wonderful boy named Tony. Now it felt as if she were careening toward the sheer cliffs of those youthful transgressions again.

  “What is it they say?” he asked huskily, reaching over to tug on a wisp of silky blond hair that had escaped its banana clip confines to curl upon her cheek. “To the victor belong the spoils.”

  Instinct warned her to back up before he moved to kiss her, but as the door handle poking at her spine pointedly reminded her, there was no place to go.

  Except forward …

  She felt herself being inexorably drawn to him and dragged air into her lungs to tell him that too much water had passed under the bridge. But when he cupped her face between his lean brown hands and let the warm mist of his breath caress his lips, she found herself drowning in the treacherous sea of today’s desire.

  “Jeannie … Jeannie,” he murmured, her name on his lips blotting out the loss of time, the river of tears, the years of torment.

  His scent filled her nostrils—musky, mixed with the woody essence of his aftershave and the starchy smell of his shirt. Her eyes drifted closed as his lips glided over hers, rubbing her mouth softly, repeatedly, seductively, until her lips parted of their own volition.

  “Rafe …” she whispered against his hungering mouth, welcoming him home at long last.

  He took his time, teasing and tasting, sampling and savoring, whetting her appetite for more. She wrapped her hands around his neck and drew his head down, demanding all of him. He deepened the kiss, the liquid fire of his tongue igniting heat waves that spread like velvet ripples inside her chest.

  The Corvette enclosed them in a cocoon of preserved leather and passion renewed, but the console prevented them from making the reunion complete. Just as they had so many times in that ancient Studebaker, though, they made do.

  Rafe flattened one hand on the center of her back and let it coast down to the sensitive shallows of her spine. His other hand rode up the delicate birdcage of her ribs to the outer curve of her breast, reshaping the soft mound of flesh to fit his palm, rediscovering the hard pearl at its peak.

  Jeannie gave a start as his flicking thumb set off electric sparks inside her. She reveled in the feeling, exploring the back of his neck, tunneling her fingers through his hair, reacquainting herself with that virile thickness, that springy texture. Tentatively then, because this was a new experience for her, she touched his earring.

  They had always communicated well on a sexual level. Once he’d reached over and playfully pinched her nipple, and she’d slapped his hand away with a pained “Ouch!” Another time she’d run her nails lightly up
the inside of his thigh, and he’d laid back in the spring grass with a pleasured “Ahhh.” Now, much to their mutual delight, they found the lines were still wide open.

  Emboldened by his low growl of approval, she fondled his silver earring, turning it, toying with it, warming it to her touch. Encouraged by the tremulous, catchy sound she made in her throat, he fed his hunger for her with tender love bites, nipping his way down her neck, lipping his way back up, leaving her trembling in his tongue’s wake.

  “This is crazy,” she scolded in a strangled voice. “Making out like teenagers in a car.”

  His answering laugh warmed the hollow of her ear. “Ah, but think how much we’ve learned since then.”

  Rafe’s huskily spoken remark stung Jeannie like a whiplash, reminding her that while he had probably learned all kinds of things in the last eleven years, the full extent of her knowledge was limited to him.

  Her hands dropped to his shoulders; her fingers dug in. “I have to go.”

  “Stay in town tonight.” He drew away, just far enough to be able to take her face into both hands.

  “I can’t.” She shook her head, denying him. Denying herself in the process.

  He kissed the throbbing pulse at her temple. “We’ll have dinner on the Riverwalk—”

  She cut him off at the pass. “Tony will be home from school in a little—”

  “And then later—”

  “You’ll show me your collection of empties?”

  “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

  “You’ve seen mine,” she said in a constricted voice.

  He nuzzled her cheek and the corner of an eye, sending shivers along her skin. “Not lately.”

  “And not now,” came her sharp reply.

  Rafe got the message then, loud and clear. He let her go and laid his head back against the leather seat, staring out the windshield at the solid brick wall in front of them as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

  “We did it all backward, didn’t we?” He rolled his head her way, the regret in his blue velvet eyes echoing in his voice as he answered his own question. “Made a baby before we ever even had a real date.”

  Jeannie breathed in but couldn’t breathe out past the tight little pain in her throat. She swallowed and looked down at her lap, blinking back the tears that threatened to spill.

  “I wanted to take you places—to the movies, to the Dairy Queen, to your senior prom.” He chuckled bitterly. “But good little Anglo girls didn’t go out with big, bad greasers. So instead I took you to the backseat of my car.”

  “You took me into your arms.” She reached over and smoothed his wind-rumpled hair back from his forehead, erasing his pained frown with her tender ministrations. “And that was the only place on earth I wanted to be.”

  Rafe captured her hand, linking their fingers over the console. “Believe me when I say I never meant to hurt you.”

  Jeannie looked down at their joined hands. “Nor I, you.”

  “If I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have let it happen.”

  “It wasn’t all your fault.”

  “But I was older. I could have controlled things if I’d tried.”

  “And I could have said no if I’d wanted to.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Too bad we can’t go back and start over.”

  She saw her opening and jumped in with both feet. “Maybe we can.”

  That got his attention. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “Walk me back to my car, and I’ll tell you how.”

  He grinned. “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “Don’t I, though?” she agreed saucily.

  Rafe rubbed Jeannie’s knuckle with his thumb, wondering how she would react if, instead, he just scooped her into his arms, carried her upstairs to the loft over his office and took her straight to his bed.

  For eleven years she’d been off-limits, forbidden to him first by her father and then by his own innate respect for the marriage vows he’d been led to believe she had taken. Now he wanted to make up for lost time.

  He wanted to touch her again. See his hands on her ivory skin, feel her naked and quivering with need beneath his questing fingers, trail fire paths along her breasts, her ribs, her belly, and lower. He wanted to taste her again. Sip at the taut sweetness of her nipples, feast on the banquet of her femininity, lap at the honey of her. He wanted to make love to her again. Bury his face in the curve of her shoulder, his body in her creamy warmth, and take her all the places he’d never taken her before.

  But what he wanted to do and what he did were two different things. He released her hand, one slender finger at a time, and said, “Deal.”

  Jeannie experienced a small pang of regret as she reached down to pick up her purse. For a moment there she’d thought she’d detected that old flame burning in Rafe’s blue eyes. The one that had always ignited a torch in her. But when he got out on the driver’s side and came around to open the passenger door, the fire was gone and only the remembered glow of friendship remained.

  Hand in hand, the feeling so natural that neither of them stopped to think that this was how it had all started between them, they left his Corvette behind and headed for her car.

  “So,” he said, “what’s this grand scheme of yours for getting Tony and me together?”

  “As you may remember,” she began, “spring break and branding always start at the same time.”

  He remembered, all right. Remembered that he’d busted his butt for Big Tom while the rest of his college class had busted kegs in Palm Beach or on Padre Island.

  Other memories, better ones, canceled out the bitter. He remembered gray eyes and a rancher’s daughter, her jeans skin-tight and her leather jacket gaping open to reveal a snip of white lace camisole that made warm, moist air climb down his chest. Remembered, too, that he’d gone back to school with more dreams in his head than dollars in hand.

  “They start pretty soon, don’t they?”

  “Next week.”

  He was one step ahead of her now. “And you want me to come out to the ranch and work with—”

  “You wouldn’t have to work,” she hastened to assure him. “I just thought you might want to get acquainted with Tony on his own turf.”

  “How’s he going to feel about some stranger—”

  “You’re an old friend, remember?”

  He smiled ruefully and rolled his eyes as if to say, “Get serious.”

  She gave him a gentle, none-of-that-now nudge in the ribs. “Tony’s nothing like Big Tom—”

  “Thank God for small favors.”

  “He loves company,” she continued earnestly. “And I just know he’ll love you too.”

  Rafe found himself breathing easier at the news. For some time now he’d been aware of a growing sense of dissatisfaction. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but it felt as if the walls were closing in on him. Part of it was the weather, the way the spring air just breathed of life renewed. And part of it was the dawning realization that the trappings of success were, to some degree, simply traps with solid-gold teeth.

  Jeannie had been only partially right when she’d said he loved the practice of the law. What he really loved was the promise of the law. Truth and justice were admirable goals, but trying to right all the wrongs within the system was beginning to take its toll. He was frustrated because it was such a slow process. And when things bogged down, as they often did, he had to wonder if he wasn’t tilting at the proverbial windmill.

  Running helped, but that restlessness stayed with him as he pounded the inner-city streets. It was a crazy in-the-craw feeling of being incomplete, of having nothing to show personally for all he’d accomplished professionally. And now that he’d found the missing links, his son and the mother of his son, he would do everything in his power to keep from losing them.

  “What if I want to work?” Rafe asked now, the thought of saddling up
and riding with Jeannie and Tony dulling some of the resentment he felt toward Big Tom.

  “We can always use another hand.” Jeannie smiled. The idea of seeing Rafe and Tony together at long last, of the three of them living and working and laughing just like the real family she’d dreamed about so long ago lifted her heart to a new high.

  He told himself that it was none of his damn business, that she was free to see anyone she wanted to, but he was driven to ask, “What about Webb Bishop?”

  “We’re friends.” At least she hoped they still were.

  One down, and one to go.

  She looked up at him inquiringly then, turnabout being fair play. “What about you?”

  “Nobody recently—and never anybody as special as you.”

  For a moment neither of them said anything more.

  “Is it going to be hard for you to get away on such short notice?” she asked finally.

  “Monday shouldn’t be much of a problem, but I’ll have to check my calendar—”

  “You could come on Sunday then and—”

  “Commute the rest of the week if I have to.”

  Jeannie squeezed his hand, hard. “You’ll do it?”

  Rafe returned the pressure. “Try and stop me.”

  When they got to her car, they found that her meter had expired over an hour ago. They also found a parking ticket under the wiper blade.

  “Thank heavens I know a good lawyer,” she said, handing the ticket to him.

  He tucked it into his jacket pocket, then backed her up against the hood, his eyes gleaming with laughter. “Are you sure you can afford my fee?”

  Between the hot metal behind her and the hard male against her belly, Jeannie was stuck. And happily so. As she lifted her face to smile back at him, all the grief and the heartache of the last eleven years dissolved like mist under the warmth of the sun. She knew then that she loved him. That she’d never stopped loving him. She knew, too, that she would stay in town tonight if he would only ask her again.

  She tilted her head in age-old invitation and answered his challenge with a throaty, “If I can’t afford it, I’m sure we can work something out.”