by Cait London
“I did not” Uma reached for her telephone, punching in Pearl’s number. Pearl was obsessed with her post as manager of the thrift shop. When she answered, Uma tried not to let anger enter her voice; Pearl could be disoriented and pitiful, whining when faced with anger. Raised in a verbally abusive home, she had married a man who enjoyed tormenting her. “Pearl? I hear you collected Lauren’s things from Mitchell’s house.”
Pearl’s voice was at first confident, explaining that she didn’t want Lauren’s things to be where “that man could paw through them.” “Pearl,” Uma said carefully. “You are to put Lauren’s things in a box and not leave one of them out. I’m coming over there to collect them.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Pearl was immediately distressed. “I just didn’t want my friend’s personal mementos in that man’s possession. And I think she would like the idea of making money for the church thrift shop, some little girl wearing her old bead bracelets, that cheap stuff she wore.”
“I think Lauren’s things should stay in her house for the time being. I sense she would have wanted it that way.”
Alarm rang in Pearl’s hurried questions. “You don’t think that she’s a ghost now, do you? Haunting that house?”
“Pearl, just put everything in the box; I’ll know if anything is missing. I went through everything very completely the other night.” Uma replaced the telephone and met Shelly’s look. “Sometimes she can just make me—”
But Shelly was still thinking about Roman. “I can’t tell him.”
“You don’t have any choice, Shelly,” Uma stated softly. “I’d better go over to Pearl’s right now. She’s probably coming apart right now. I hate to be firm with her.”
“She needs us, that’s for sure. She always has. She’s a part of us and we’re a part of her since first grade. I’ve got to get home and start supper.” Shelly’s blue eyes were worried. Dani could be headstrong, just like her father. One more clash, and Dani could leave home…
Shelly heard her own sob. She’d do anything to keep Dani safe.
FIVE
Mitchell settled back in the stool at Clyde’s Tavern, named after Clyde Barrow. Memorabilia of the 1930s Oklahoma outlaw drenched the small, dark room, from the framed pictures of Bonnie Parker and Clyde, and the Jesse James and Ma Barker gangs, to hangers of reputed outlaws’ various coats and clothing, and guns all covered with a layer of dust. There were lipstick kisses on Pretty Boy Floyd’s glass-covered picture.
After treating Roman to a homecoming dinner at The Italian, it only seemed right to walk down the street to Clyde’s Bar. Roman had already centered in on a curvy blonde in a tight red sweater and tighter jeans, and the local boys standing at the bar weren’t happy.
Mitchell looked closer through the shadows. A Remington “Whipit” gun, similar to Bonnie Parker’s, was dusty. But the Browning automatic rifle, of the type favored by Clyde, lacked cobwebs, and gleamed in the shadows. If Mitchell had been the curious type, he’d wonder if the guns had been disabled. But then, he wasn’t looking for answers or for trouble.
Brewing trouble was something the Warrens knew how to do, Mitchell thought idly; they were bred to it. He sipped his beer from the bottle, rather than the uncertain cleanliness of the mug. The smells were the same, of alcohol and smoke, of old-timers’ stories of the Land Rush and the Dust Bowl.
The darker memories circled him: how many times had he hauled his father out of here?
He glanced around the dark, smoky shadows of the tavern, gauging Roman’s chances if he let his hands get any lower on the blonde’s jeans as they swayed to the jukebox music.
Mitchell didn’t like thinking about Uma’s bottom, the way it curved as she stood on the ladder, as she painted the ceiling trim; the way it tightened and swayed as she had paced on the ranch, the way her T-shirt pressed dose to her breasts when she put her hands on her hips.
She’d worn his clothes and the sight of that had set him off in a way he didn’t understand.
Mitchell sipped his beer and watched Lyle Nelson eye Roman and the girl. The men at the bar wore plaid western shirts and worn jeans and boots that had seen more than their share of manure and stomping fights. They were whipcord lean from ranch work, and he recognized most of them as going to Madrid’s schools.
“Hey, crip,” Lyle called to Roman. “That’s my girl. How’d you like that other leg tromped?”
Mike, the bartender, threw down his bar towel and reached for a baseball bat. He patted it into the palm of his other hand in a silent warning, but Lyle wasn’t watching. When Roman leaned close, nuzzling the girl’s ear, Lyle started to walk toward him.
“Outside,” Mike’s voice boomed over the music.
Mitchell shook his head as Roman leaned in to kiss the girl and then slowly walk past Lyle out to the back alley. Lyle’s three buddies sulked after him.
Lonny came in, spotted Mitchell and walked to his table; he slid into a chair Mitchell’s foot shoved at him. He slammed his book down on the table, The Smooth Moves List. “Nice quiet night.”
“Uh-huh.”
A big crash sounded against the back alley door. “Cats in the garbage cans again,” Mike said easily before he went back to the bar.
“Real big cats. ‘Cats’ means Mike thinks whoever is having a go at it should be left to settle it,” Lonny noted as another crash sounded. He took a deep breath and looked at the Indian peace pipe on the wall. Someone had hung a white plastic rose and purple Mardi Gras beads on it “Irma says I should try that Viagra stuff and read that. She wants us to have a relationship like in the book. I need to develop my feminine side, she says, and be more sensitive. She wants ‘intimacy’…we’ve got three grown kids, now she wants sex and intimacy. What the hell is that? Women. They stick together. I guess Uma recommended it to her.”
Uma. Mitchell thought about how she bit her lip when she was concentrating, how sweet and soft she could look, and wondered when was the last time he’d had sex—just good old-fashioned plundering until you couldn’t move, couldn’t think, temporarily blinding sex.
“Once a month is good enough for anyone, especially old married couples,” Lonny was brooding. “What do you think?”
“I think I appreciate you not telling everyone what I did for a living.”
“You left a hell of a high paycheck. Going back?”
If I had any sense I would. “Don’t know. I’m here now. That’s all I know.”
“Well, you’ll figure it out. You kids had a tough time, but I always liked your dad. He was honest, anyway. I don’t think he really wanted that land, the obligations it brought, but he thought he owed it to his family, to his sons, to keep it in the family. It was the right thing to do for you, buying those forty acres back, and the garage.”
“I’m not going to work that land,” Mitchell stated firmly, just in case Lonny had that idea.
“You’ll do what’s right.” As thunder rolled outside, Lonny got up to play the pinball machines and brood about Irma’s sexual expectations.
The crash in the alley sounded again and the blonde started swaying her hips to the jukebox music. She turned to Mitchell, and he shook his head at the sultry invitation.
He wondered what it would feel like to hold Uma close and tight. He wondered what it would feel like to press those gentle breasts against his chest, to smooth that long, swaying back, to be inside her, with her flowing beneath him, over him—
The hard throb low in his body was unexpected and unwanted.
With a rough sigh, Mitchell got up to see if Roman was holding his own and to maybe ease a little old-fashioned sexual tension.
Uma ran through the early morning mist brought by last night’s thunderstorm. The layers hovered over the neatly cut grass of the houses on Lawrence Street, and curled damply upon her skin. Bordering each side of the street, houses were draped in it, puddles shimmered and rippled as rain dropped into them from the leaves.
The first week of July, Mrs. Riley’s sun tea sat on her f
ront porch; Mr. Thompson had just let out his poodle for lawn duty. Looking as if he’d just gotten out of bed, his gray hair standing out in peaks, Lars Swenson was madly shoving a spike into the ground, cursing moles. Steel devices with spikes were placed in a row, poised to shaft into the ground, killing the “varmints.” In an hour, Etta Harmon’s boy would be sailing his bike down the street and tossing rolled papers into bushes.
Uma had met Roman at the hardware store last week. He’d been wearing a split lip and had winced when he’d shot her a charming grin. Mitchell had been wearing a scraped cheek and a scowl.
The brothers were bound to stir up Madrid, and everything had been quiet, except for the Warrens’ hammers and saws. She glanced at the well-trimmed hedge, at the spiderwebs catching the fog. Everything was the same, yet it wasn’t. Her shoes sounded rhythmically on the sidewalk; her heart was racing to keep up with her stride, her lungs sucking for air. She could feel Lauren against her, breathing with her, the loving hug, the sadness. What did Lauren want?
Lauren’s things were safely back in her old house—Mitchell’s house, now. It wasn’t time for them to leave, to be sorted and packed away in another place. Lauren wasn’t ready—then Uma felt the coldness, as if someone feared—feared what?
Returning from her morning run, Uma’s free stride matched the pounding of her heart. She caught a scent and it reminded her of Lauren, and then, just as the old gray tomcat ripped across her path, she saw Mitchell crouching beside his pickup. He stood in the layers of mist, coated by the half-light, his chest bare and powerful. The dark boxer shorts led into powerful legs planted far apart like those of a gladiator ready to fight. His dark, fierce expression seemed dangerous, predatory as the mist swirled around him, the rain still dripping from the trees when all else was quiet.
Perhaps Madrid was his arena, Uma thought, where he would face his battles and either win them or be defeated. He’d been here three weeks and even coming to his house, helping to select carpeting and paint colors, she knew little about him except that he fought the past.
She could have told him what he didn’t want to hear—the secrets of Madrid were in her keeping. But he wasn’t asking.
She had already fought her battles—and lost. She’d started with dreams and ended wanting only peace. She slowed and stopped, noting the four flat tires as she placed her hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath. “What happened?”
For an answer, Mitchell glared at her, burning her in the heavy fragrant mist. The look was long and intense and caused a heated tingle to shimmy up her body, despite the cool layers of fog swirling between them. His stare took in her body from worn shoes, up her legs to her loose blue shorts and damp, clinging navy tank top, up her sweaty throat and face to the red terrycloth headband.
She could almost feel the bunching of his muscles, the electric sizzle in the layers of damp air between them.
She straightened, placing her hands on her waist, breathing deeply—from her run and from whatever raw and primitive feelings quivered in the air between them. She didn’t understand the exact challenge of that narrowed, grim, penetrating look, but gave it back to him. Whatever rode Mitchell wasn’t going to upset her.
He opened his fist to reveal four nails. “Same old town,” he said quietly. He reached down to pick up a power nail gun, used by carpenters. “So much for the nail gun we missed the other day. I thought it was just misplaced, but someone had a better use for it.”
But Uma couldn’t look away from his arm, the muscles surging beneath the tanned skin, the leap of power that ran up to lift that flat dark nipple and the lightly furred power of his chest.
She swallowed as she followed that line of hair from his chest to his navel, the indentation marking the line that continued lower—
If she could just place her hand on that flat, muscled stomach—Uma rubbed her palm on her damp chest and forced her eyes to his face. There was no reason she should want to touch and smooth and curve her fingers around—
Mitchell nodded toward Roman’s Harley, lying as if it had been pushed down. “Sweet and homey. I get the message.”
The brooding clouds overhead matched his expression and Uma knew that he’d gone back to another bitter time. A woman who cared unselfishly about the pain of others, she leaned closer to touch his cheek and expected the flash of his eyes, his temper riding him. “I’m sorry.”
She jerked her hand back from the heat of his face, the hard bones pressing against his skin.
Whatever lay inside Mitchell now was too primitive to examine, and yet a part of her wanted to touch and to heal.
“Sure.” Mitchell tossed the nails into the truck bed and walked toward the house. The screen door slammed behind him.
Uma’s own edges rose and trembled and heated, like a hot wind causing waves across cool grass, stirring it. She walked up the front walk, around the new wood stacked there. She knocked on the screen door. “Mitchell?”
“What?” Roman’s sleepy voice preceded his pushing out of the house, almost knocking Uma aside. In his boxer shorts, Roman barely glanced at her as he came out to stand on the porch. Belatedly, he glanced at her. “Uh, sorry, Uma. Mitchell said that—”
He swung around to study Mitchell’s pickup, parked on the curb, the flat tires. The string of low curses followed him as he tramped across the yard in his bare feet to the Harley, lying on its side. He hefted it as if picking up a bruised baby, adjusted the kick stand, caressed the metal and the leather, and leaned back to study the flat tires. “Someone is going to pay,” he said grimly as he walked back to the porch. “Are you coming in or not?”
Past Roman, Mitchell stood in the shadowed hallway, his fists at his side. His body seemed coiled, the muscles defined in the dim light “I’m not in the mood to hear anything about the good people of Madrid, Uma. You’d better go home, back to your safe little tower where everything is sweet and good—”
“I don’t know that I like that remark. You’re not taking that bad temper out on me.” She loved Madrid, and Mitchell wasn’t painting evil over the entire town, just because—“I didn’t do it, Mitchell.”
But people weren’t happy about the Warren brothers back in town. The old bitterness had stirred in the gossip, wondering what revenge they were planning, what crimes, and more than a few people believed that Mitchell and Roman knew something about the dead man in the old ranch garage.
He disappeared into the kitchen. Roman shook his head. “It’s that punk kid. I’ll have to have a little chat about him repaying the damage. Mitchell is making coffee. You might as well come in.”
She shouldn’t enter their lives. She pushed away the challenge that Mitchell had thrown her out on the street, an unfamiliar taunt. But then, she couldn’t ignore that challenge either.
Or the call to soothe the surly males in their lair. She didn’t want a minor war, more back-alley fights, that could tear Madrid apart.
She stepped around the standing power saw on the front porch and came into the house, moving across the foyer and down the hallway. Roman followed her into the kitchen.
The sight wasn’t pretty—carpentry tools spread across a counter, wallpaper half stripped and the rest lying in a tangled mess on the floor. Kitchen toaster, microwave, and assorted pots and pan boxes lay tossed in one corner. Mitchell held the coffee pot, pouring it into two mugs. At the sight of Uma, he added another mug and stared at her darkly. “Don’t start on me.”
“Have I ever? What makes you think you’re worth the effort?”
He poured the third cup and replaced the coffee pot on its automatic holder with a click that sounded like a door ending all conversation. Mitchell picked up his mug, cradling it in his hands as he leaned back against the counter. Roman did the same, and Uma, faced with two brooding, unshaven men in their shorts, took the third cup.
“I hate it when you’re like this,” Mitchell said after a long, heavy silence.
“Hmm?” In peacemaking, she’d found it was better to let the other
person speak first.
“She’s a woman,” Roman stated darkly, as if her sex determined that she was illogical.
What was she doing standing between these men, trying to understand and soothe? “Yes, and I’m right here. Don’t talk over me.”
“We have to. You’re shorter than we are,” Mitchell said slowly as if explaining a basic fact to someone who should know the obvious.
“I may be shorter, and I may be a woman, but I am definitely smarter—” she began.
“You’re sweaty, and you are definitely a woman. No maybes about it,” Mitchell stated flatly, as if nettled.
Uma stared at him and fought to keep her control. “You are in a bad mood, Mitchell Warren. And you want to start a fight with someone. And for some reason, you’d like that someone to be me. Why?”
After a silence saturated by Mitchell’s brooding, Roman answered, “Because every time you run by here, he’s locked onto every move. Why do you think he’s up at this hour? To wait on me? I’m taking a shower and going down to the old garage. If I catch that punk kid or one of those guys, I’m going to get either some money or some new tires out of them.”
“Oh, fine. Start looking for fights first thing in the morning. That’s the way to make friends,” Uma said and reached for something to lighten the moment, the brothers’ childhood names. “Same old Hawk and Eagle. You really shocked very few people when you rode into town, bareback, and wearing only war paint and breechcloths.”
Both men stared at her darkly.
“I hate that peacemaking crap women do,” Mitchell murmured after a silence, ignoring her again. “I’ve been here just three weeks, and that’s long enough to find out just what Uma does—she’s part matchmaker, part town historian, protector of abused women; she writes newspaper articles, and does pro bono graphic work for civic clubs. In short, she runs this town her own way. She likes everything to be nice and sweet, and as for her life, she’s got enough to do managing other people’s. She comes in here, tells me I should make peace with Grace and a few other things. And I am not a bully.”
