by Kate Sheperd
II.
I exited I-10 onto I-19 in Tucson and then exited again onto Arizona 86 headed southwest. I could still feel his kiss and his touch, but I also remembered what an ass he had been when he left. I’d been a conquest, entertainment, something to brag about to his SEAL buddies and nothing more. About the only useful information I had gotten out of him was that he had a ranch southwest of Tucson, but that and his name, which had stuck in my head because of the stupid joke that I’d made about it, had been enough for me to finally track him down.
Twenty miles out of Tucson, I turned south on Arizona 286, which wasn’t one of the best highways I’d ever been on, but it was certainly much better than the one that I came to a little less than an hour later; washboards and gravel were the more pleasant features of what passed for a road in southern Arizona. There were pits from hell, which appeared out of nowhere and threatened to swallow my Lancer.
Thank God for satellite imaging and GPS coordinates, because there was no flashing neon signs announcing the turn to the Sexton ranch, nor was there even a piece of crap, wooden one. In fact, what I saw when my GPS instructed me to “turn right in 100 feet,” caused an argument between me and the device. Maybe they called the two dirt ruts with grass, rocks and brush between them a road in Arizona, but where I come from it looked like two parallel jogging trails. What the hell else was I supposed to do? I turned onto the road and was soon regretting yet another decision.
The scraping, bumping and crunching that was going on underneath my car should have been enough to make me give up on my pursuit, but two factors quickly came into play. I was determined to make certain that bastard knew that I was pregnant with his child and there didn’t seem to be any decent place, which wouldn’t completely destroy my car, to turn around. So, I pressed forward all the way up until I heard a very loud thump and my poor little Lancer came to a very sudden and permanent halt.
I say that it was a permanent halt, because when I tried to start the car again, it refused to even give it a try. I popped the hood and got out, quickly realizing that my choice of footwear, although quite attractive, was not really suited for the Arizona desert. The only pair of “boots” that I owned were fringed, knee-highs with 4 inch heels, which, at the time, I considered to be “western wear”. The heat that engulfed me as I stepped out of the car reminded me of a sauna, which I enjoyed at the spa, but not particularly out in the middle of nowhere. It goes without saying that I wasn’t in a very good mood.
Why I popped the hood is another mystery. I know absolutely nothing about fixing cars. I guess I did it because that’s what you do when your car stops running and won’t start again. Struggling through the brush and rocks to the front of the car, I lifted the hood and looked at the motor. It didn’t really look any different than it did the half a dozen times I’d seen it before, but I thought maybe I should look at it really good. That didn’t really help. I closed the hood, got back inside and tried to start it again, but without any luck.
“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” I screamed at the dashboard and beat on the steering wheel. The heat inside the car rose quickly without the air conditioning and I realized that I was going to have to make a decision. The GPS placed me about halfway between where I’d left the bad gravel road and the coordinates that represented the location of the ranch. I had a decision to make: walk back to the gravel road on which I hadn’t seen any cars or walk forward to the Sexton ranch.
Opening the car door and stepping out once more, I voiced my decision to the surrounding desolation. “He got me into the fucking mess, so he can get me out of it.” I started walking down one of the parallel jogging trails on my way to what I hoped would be Dan Sexton’s ranch.
Saguaro cactus and sagebrush provide plenty of romance to a western movie, the few that I’d actually seen, but up close and personal, with thousands filling up the surrounding landscape along with at least a dozen other species of cactus, tend to lose a great deal of their romance rapidly. The tall, statuesque cactus does, however, provide decent shade from the scorching sun; not that it matters a lot where the temperature is concerned. At over a hundred degrees, the difference between 120 and 110 doesn’t really matter. After about 15 minutes of walking, every inch of fabric on my body was soaked and clinging to my skin.
I was sitting on a rock in the shade of one of the tall cactus when I noticed movement on the shimmering horizon. I continued to watch the blurred shape until it finally began to resemble a man riding a horse. “Oh great,” I said aloud. “I’m about to be shot down by a Mexican bandit.” The ridiculous thought or delirium from heat stroke plunged me into a rather strange fit of laughter.
I’d finally gotten better control of myself by the time the rider came closer. I recognized the shape of the man on the horse long before I could make out the features of his face. There was a mixture of joy and anger when I saw the features of Dan Sexton’s face, shaded by the brim of a cowboy hat, take shape not far from me. What followed afterward were controlled giggles as recognition began to come to him.
“Sara?” he said with one eyebrow cocked and confusion all over his face. “What the fuck?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, standing. “Surprised, huh?”
Evidently, the shock of seeing me was too much for the big, badassed SEAL, because he couldn’t seem to be able to form any words.
“What am I doing out here?” I helped him with the question.
“Uh, yeah?”
For a few moments, I struggled with exactly how to answer that question. Part of me, the part that was pissed off, wanted to just be blunt and lay it all out on the table, but the more rational side of me told me that I might need to be nice to him. I was probably going to need his help getting my car out of hell and back into civilization. We hadn’t parted on what I would consider the friendliest of terms. Okay, yeah, the term “fuck off” was probably used by one or both of us, maybe multiple times during the conversation. So, whatever I said was going to be awkward. Finally, something came to me.
“I just sort of wanted to apologize for the way things ended up in Vegas.” It was lame as hell, but what else was I supposed to say? I couldn’t just lay into him for being an asshole, getting me pregnant and being an asshole; yeah, an arrogant asshole.
“You drove from L.A. or wherever the fuck you live to apologize?”
“Fresno,” I responded. I had to fight down the anger and remain rational. If I pissed him off, he might just leave me out there in the desert. I raised my hands, cocked my head to one side and shrugged. What else could I do?
III.
He might have been a trained killer and an arrogant bastard, but he was slightly above leaving me stranded out in the desert to die. However, the worst part of the whole ordeal for me was sitting on the back of his horse and wrapping my arms around that firm body of his. Needless to say, remembering all of those wonderful things that he’d done to me that night in Vegas added another type of moisture to the sweat that already covered every inch of me. In fact, had it not been for the circumstances, I might have enjoyed that short ride.
What surprised me more than anything that had happened up until that point, was our arrival on the small rise above the long, narrow valley nestled quietly in those desolate, cactus and sage covered hills. The green grass and cottonwoods that lined the meandering stream were in such stark contrast to the hell that I had been driving, walking and then riding through that it made me gasp.
“Oh my god, Dan,” I said, unable to control what suddenly escaped my lips. “It’s gorgeous.”
Dan shrugged. “I like it.”
It was a completely uncommitted response; something I was pretty sure was regular fare with him. I was more used to the urban setting, but I didn’t really have an aversion to nature and its beauty. I wasn’t particularly comfortable in the middle of nowhere, but beauty is beauty wherever it’s found.
We didn’t speak as we descended toward the ranch below; not that there had been an overabundance of conversati
on up to that point. Other than explaining that my car had broken down and wouldn’t start and him giving instructions on getting onto the back of the horse, there hadn’t been much said between us. It had given me plenty of time to try to figure out how I was going to break the news of my real reason for being there. By the time we reached the ranch, I still didn’t have a way to do it that wasn’t going to strand me in the desert.
I decided that since he’d been nice enough to give me a ride to the ranch and agreed to see if he could get the car running again, that he was at least a partially decent human-being, so, I thought that keeping it cool until my car was able to limp its way back out was the best bet. I could always tell him just before I sped away, right? It seemed like a cowardly approach, but being around him sober was a great deal different than it had been when I was plastered off my ass. Sober, he scared me.
There were plenty more surprises awaiting for me once we were down in the valley. The first surprise was that there was no electricity and no phone service. That explained why I wasn’t able to track down any phone number connected to him. Dan wasn’t really much of a host either, which wasn’t really a surprise whenever I really think about it, but I guess I expected some of the common courtesies extended to a guest rather than dropping me off of the back of the horse in the ranch yard, pointing toward the rundown adobe shack and saying, “there’s the house.”
“I’d kind of like a shower,” I responded.
“Don’t have one,” he said curtly.
“What am I supposed to do about this?” I stood in front of him and swept my hands from my chest to my hips, making certain that he saw how my clothes clung to my body from the heat and sweat.
“Pool in the creek out back,” he said.
“Clothes? Robe? Towels? Soap?”
“Towels and soap are inside. Clothes?” He shrugged and turned the horse toward the corrals and barn.
“What an asshole,” I said under my breath as I walked toward the house. I was pretty sure he didn’t hear me, but I really didn’t care whether he did or not. I was considering going ahead and laying everything on the line and letting the chips fall where they may. I started to turn toward him to do just that, but rationality got the better of me and I just kept walking toward the house.
Judging from the outside, I wasn’t surprised when I saw the inside. It was livable, but there wasn’t much else that could be said about it. It was tidy and organized, which wasn’t exactly what I had expected from an arrogant bad boy, but everything was plain and there wasn’t much in the way of décor. I found the bathroom behind one of the three doors along one wall of the long, rectangular room, which had a kitchen at one end and a living room at the other. The bathroom was basically a toilet and sink with deep shelves against one wall and the remnants of what looked like the frame and walls of a closet that were recently removed. The shelves were empty except for one, which held three folded towels, a bar of soap in one of those plastic boxes that you get at the Dollar Store, and a cup with a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste in it.
I snatched up the soap and a towel, left the bathroom and then tried one of the other two remaining doors in search of something that I might wear. If worse came to worse, I’d put on one of his shirts. That was sort of a sexy, girlfriend thing and I didn’t want to give him any wrong impressions, but I had to be practical. “Besides,” I smiled as I spoke to the empty room. “I might as well tease him with it a little before I refuse to have anything to do with him.” It was a devilish thought, but I wasn’t in an angelic mood.
My next surprise came when I opened the closet door in the first bedroom that I entered. The clothes hanging there were not fashionable by anybody’s definition of the term, nor were the collection of boots and pair of slippers that were on the floor below, however, the jeans and shirts that were hanging on hangers or folded up on the shelves beside them, were pretty close to my size. The mystery that was Dan Sexton had just deepened. Whose clothes were these? They obviously belonged to a woman, though it was only the size and the fact that there were some granny panties mixed in with the lot that created any sort of differentiation. Whoever the woman was or had been, she certainly didn’t care how she looked. “Bastard probably had a wife or girlfriend and killed her,” I smirked while gathering clothes to take with me to the “pool in the creek out back.”
That particular location for bathing wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind, but given the choice of sweaty clothes sticking to me and feeling clean and fresh, even in someone else’s ugly clothes was the better alternative, so I stripped down and stepped in. The pool was in the shade of some cottonwood trees and had one hell of a picturesque view down the valley. It had been dug out and lined with stones with what felt like a concrete bottom to it. The creek spilled into the pool from above and retreated over a spillway below and returned back to its winding path through the green meadow of the valley.
Not only was the cool water and the shade refreshing after my trek through hell, but I was forced to admit that it was actually a very nice place to take a bath. Away from the heat, the cactus, the rocks and the sand, I was relatively content, though admitting that I would ever want to stay there for longer than it took to get my car fixed and to tell Dan that I was pregnant with his baby would have been stretching the truth.
My relaxation ended whenever Dan came around the corner of the house and sat down in one of those chairs like they have in the Adirondacks, which was only a few paces from the pool. “You found some clothes.”
“Yes, I did.” Only an asshole would have sat down there to watch me bathe. What should I have expected?
IV.
“Don’t get too comfortable here,” he said, pushing himself up out of the chair after having watched me bathe, towel off and get dressed.
Though I wasn’t thrilled with his invasion of my privacy, I had decided to go ahead and give him his thrill. I’ve been known to be a pretty good tease and I brought out my A game for him. Torturing him the way I was, was a means of revenge, but that last comment had taken all of the thrill out of it.
“I wasn’t,” I snapped back.
His eyes penetrated straight through me. Those eyes that had made my insides do flips and caused me to give my body to him in Vegas were icy cold. To be honest, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had pulled a Rambo knife from behind his back, jerk me to him by my hair and slit my throat.
“Good, because as soon as your car is fixed you’re leaving. I didn’t invite you and I don’t want you here.”
“You were singing a different tune back in Vegas,” I retorted.
He shrugged and then turned to walk away.
There are some insults that just dig in too deep for rationality to overcome and that was one of them. “You were hell on wheels to have me around when you got me pregnant,” I yelled at his retreating back.
“What the hell did you just say?” When he turned around, I saw Satan and all his demons in the eyes of that one man. I’d heard stories about how ruthless SEALS were and how they killed with deadly precision, but it wasn’t until I saw him turn back toward me in that moment that I believed any of them.
“I’m pregnant,” I said in a soft tone. I wasn’t sure where I was going to run to, but I was certainly thinking about it.
“Came here to apologize my ass,” he growled. “You came here to pin your fucking problem on me. How do you know it wasn’t one of the other half-dozen guys that you fucked in Vegas?”
I’m not very big, a little over 110 when I have my clothes on; okay, 120. For the most part, I’m pretty even tempered. I work hard and am considered a pretty serious, dependable and good natured person. One thing that I’m not, is a slut and having him suggest that, no matter how cold blooded he was and no matter how he dwarfed me with his muscle packed body, I wasn’t going to stand for that. I went on the attack.
“Look, asshole,” I said, moving toward him rapidly, standing toe to toe with him and pushing my face up toward his as closely as I coul
d. “I only made one stupid mistake in Vegas and that was fucking you. The baby is yours!”
The frozen moment that passed after that was excruciating. I was standing my ground against a trained killer who could snap my neck like a toothpick and bury me somewhere out in the desert where nobody would ever find me. I stopped breathing and listened to my heart thundering in my chest as I realized that it was likely the last moments of my life. His ice cold eyes cut through me as he studied my own and then with a grunt, he turned and walked away.
What the hell was I supposed to say? What the hell was I supposed to do? Following him and engaging in an argument that might get me killed didn’t seem like the right thing to do, but that voice of rationality that I had ignored only moments before came back and reminded me that I still needed him to help me get my car fixed so that I could return home.
“You hungry?” he said, turning before he went around the corner of the house.
What the fuck? I had just told the guy that I was pregnant with his baby and his only response was to ask me if I was hungry. I just stood there and stared at him.
“Come on, we have shit to do.”
That was certainly a better response. But, again, I know I’m repeating myself, but what else could I do? I’d gotten myself into one hell of a fix and I was far from getting out of it, but if I was going to see the light at the end of the tunnel, then I had to survive to get there. “Sure, what the hell,” I muttered, going back to gather up my sweaty clothes, the towel and the soap.
I’ll have to hand it to him, he was a decent cook. It wasn’t anything fancy. It was pretty damned simple, really, but it tasted really good, or maybe I was just really hungry. Though it wasn’t my usual choice for lunch nor my usual portion size, I cleaned up my plate, even soaking up the last of the juices with the tortilla. “That was surprisingly good,” I commented, mostly just to break the thick silence between us.
