The Texas Blue Norther

by Lass Small

  He went on cheerily stirring the beans and dropping in the onions and peppers.

  She noted the beans had come from a can. They would be perfectly all right. He was a sham. She would figure something to pay him back for his sly humor.

  She looked in the cupboard and then the freezer and found tortillas. She thawed and toasted them. Then she cut cheese into bits with some of the onions and rolled those into one of the tortillas. Hot, the cheese melted, and she handed him one.

  It was perfect.

  Actually, it was normal. It was just that they were so hungry that it didn’t matter what condition the food was in, it would be good.

  Three

  In the pantry, Lauren found some dried fruits and washed the various kinds before she cut them up with an apple for a fruit salad. It was pretty and colorful on the plate with the yellow cheese on the tortillas, along with the brown beans and the red peppers.

  As they ate, she was leery of the peppers and her fork discreetly isolated them from the beans. The rolled tortillas substituted for bread. They were heated and the cheese melted just right. The milk was from a great glass canning jar. The substance tasted like milk.

  Kyle turned on the radio, and they got the weather station. The snow would be a three day deluge according to their information. Settle in and enjoy! That was their advice.

  Lauren asked, “Can you ignore the cattle?”

  He replied logically, “The beeves are drifting from the storm so the men are guiding them so that they don’t get piled up or fall off anything along the way.”

  Then he added with ease to explain himself, “The milk cows have to be milked but they’re here. The horses don’t mind a little snow. The Jeep doesn’t, either. You wanna go home?”

  She didn’t. Oddly enough, she didn’t want to go home. She said, “I’ll have to retrieve my car.” And she left the subject hanging. He could figure it out. She wasn’t of any mind to go off and leave there. She was going to have an adventure…with him. It would be a first time and with a stranger. If she loused up or quit in the middle of it, no one would ever know.

  How strange that a coward like she would come to this rash decision.

  Was it being twenty-seven? Was that what was making her so reckless? That and the fact he’d made no real intrusions, uh, he’d kept his hands to himself. Yes, he had. Other than those two times when his hand had slipped out from her armpit.

  Where would she sleep? Would he brusquely insist that she sleep with him? Maybe. And maybe she’d just find out what sex was like. She was old enough. She was beyond being old enough. Even Sid had had one.

  Lauren had noticed that the knowledgeable women’s eyes were smug and different. They giggled and whispered. Lauren felt out of it. The last women’s golf tournament at the club had been a trial until she was put in with three other women-and not one of them had mentioned anything about any man! It had been a surprise. It had been quite refreshing.

  If there were women who…didn’t and didn’t even talk about it, then why was Lauren Davie so anxious to experience something so private with a total stranger?

  She had no idea. But it was something to think about. Something to decide about. What would happen if she just up and told Kyle she was curious?

  Would he say, “Okay.” Or would he back off with his hands up to fend her off?

  She smiled at the idea of his fending her off.

  He asked, “What’s so funny?”

  And she raised her eyes to his and smiled.

  “What you thinking?” But he was a little tense as if she was thinking about him and laughing at him. That was interesting to observe. He was vulnerable.

  She said, “I was playing golf with some women and they were talking. It was just a joke I remember.”

  “What kind of joke?” He was serious.

  She was kind. “It was a woman’s joke.”

  And he asked, “About. men?”

  And she was gentle. “No. About another woman who couldn’t cook at all. Like I am.”

  His face changed. He was interested. He considered and told her seriously, “You could learn.”

  “I am really a peanut-butter woman.”

  And he complimented her. “You did nice with the tortillas and cheese.”

  She scoffed, laughing. “It was the onions chopped in the cheese that caught your taste buds. You like onions and hot pepper. You’re a chili man.”

  He nodded as he considered her with a nice smile. And he told her, “Yeah.”

  It was only then, with the exchange, that she understood he was vulnerable, and she couldn’t taste him without hurting his opinion of himself.

  It was a giant step forward for Lauren to understand that. She had never really thought about other people that way. They could be hurt. The realization of his being vulnerable was sobering.

  With the meal finished, Lauren sat back in her chair and sighed. “I was starved. You are a wonderful cook.”

  He said it quite nicely, “That fruit thing was nice. Pretty.” He appeared lost for words, so he declared, “You got a good appetite.”

  She assumed he meant her table manners. His elbows were on the table. Could she tolerate that? And she considered manners and mores.

  He’d saved her neck. He’d rescued her…and horses! The horses that had gone in the barn gate! He’d been rounding up horses! So that’s why he’d been out there! He had known about the storm and he’d gone out to get his horses!

  Of course.

  He hadn’t just been moseying along. He’d been there for a purpose. That’s why he shifted their course a time or two. He had been monitoring the horses.

  And by the greatest chance, he had ran into her out there, on foot. Alone. He could have just gone on and left her there. And she was not dressed for, nor capable of surviving, such a storm. But he’d seen her and been committed. He’d brought her back with him, there to the house where he was living.

  Anyone can learn manners. He had saved her very life. He was a good man.

  So, as any hostess or superior guest does, she asked questions to lure the people at the table into conversation. He was all the people she had around, so she asked him, “How long have you been here?” Then she clarified it, adding, “—at this place.”

  “About—’bout two years now.” He looked at her. Then his attention went back to his plate.

  He most assuredly had a good appetite.for food. What about women? Did he have any appetite forher? How could she nudge him into such a happening?

  Her eyes slitted and she studied him. He was apparently oblivious to her distracted, intense study of him. He was just busy with food. He licked his lips and shifted in his chair and-he ate everything left in sight.

  If she ate as much as he was devouring, she’d weigh a ton! The doors in their house would have to be widened. But he was lean. She looked at him seriously. His jaw was hard. He could quite possibly be stubborn. Most men were.

  The interior of the house was cooling. The storm was sounds of booms and shrill, shrieking winds. The storm’s cold was creeping into the house. It seemed as if the very house shivered in that storm’s onslaught.

  Lauren was aware of the chill. She figured it was just that she’d been starved. Now her blood had all rushed to her stomach to feast on the food she’d ingested. Such greed in a lady was crass.

  As she shivered, she crossed her arms to hold herself still. She had been so helpless since she’d met Kyle that she rejected mentioning it was cold in the house. To say so would be rude.

  He glanced up at her. “You cold?”

  She nodded in shivering jerks.

  “You don’t dress right. I’ll get you a jacket.”

  He left the table, crossed the room to the door and disappeared. He came back with his sheep-wool lined jacket. “Here,” he said to her. “Try this again.”

  She put it on with such a sigh that her released breath frosted in the kitchen air. The frosted breath proved she was not reacting to anything, it was cold i
n there!

  With the jacket around her, she went to the gas oven and relighted it, leaving the oven door open to heat the kitchen.

  He watched her. Then he asked, “How’d you know to do that?”

  And she replied carefully, “My momma used to do it when we were small and the morning air was cool. Daddy doesn’t like a hot house.”

  Kyle smiled. “Me, neither.”

  One of those. His rating fell about twenty points. And she looked at him with clearer eyes. He’d be hard and dictatorial. Well, he’d gotten her the jacket.

  However, he hadn’t taken off his flannel shirt nor the long underwear, the top of which showed under his chin. He’d adjusted her to his options. He hadn’t altered his own circumstances. He’d just adjusted her.

  Obviously, such conduct in any man was something for a woman to seriously consider.

  Lauren considered the whole situation with this stranger. She leaned more to a brief encounter than to a long view of a commitment. Brief with Kyle was probably better. She was learning. No woman could take on the entire man as Kyle was now. He was old enough to be set in his ways. Any woman would have to adjust to him.

  The way her mother had adjusted to her father.

  How interesting to acknowledge the fact that her mother bent her life, and those of the children, to her husband’s rules. She catered to his comfort, to his schedule and even to his variety of peculiarities.

  Lauren looked again at Kyle. All’s she wanted of him was a single experience. She was curious. He looked healthy and he could be a capable partner. She would leave him alone if he declined.

  It would probably be better if she allowed him time to be comfortable with her. She could be specific in what she liked and didn’t like so that, if he disagreed, he wouldn’t be lured to her, and she would leave him alone.

  They were very, very different. She liked San Antonio. It was a good, settled city. He was obviously comfortable out in the sticks.

  She liked the events of music, theater, civic doings and meetings. She was a city woman. She was not taken with living isolated on some plot of ground far outside the city limits.

  She would be firm in his understanding that any intimacy was simply curiosity and not a commitment.

  She would not lure him. He could be shy and unpracticed. She would be matter-of-fact. She would not accost him that very night. She needed to allow him time to get used to her.

  So it wouldn’t be that night? Another night? There had been too many lonely nights. She wanted him…now.

  That was crass. Just one life-threatening experience, and she’d turned hungry for a man. She’d known him how long? A couple of hours? They’d ridden silently along. They had been sharing a horse, with him holding her on, with his hand under her armpit.

  “Armpit” didn’t sound romantic. The word was so anatomically clinical.

  He sat back in his chair at the kitchen table, and she glanced around for Goldilocks. No one else was there, so Lauren got up and cleared the table.

  There was a dishwasher! It hadn’t occurred to her there would not be one until she actually saw that there was one. She was grateful.

  There were dishes in the washer…for how long? That would only invite ants, cockroaches…orshudder—mice. She rinsed off the dishes and tucked them back into the washer. Neatly assembled, they would wait for a soap wash.

  How strange it was that she had begun to review her mother’s marriage. She had lived with her parents for twenty-seven years and in all those years she had to have been aware for at least twenty of them. She had observed that it was her daddy who called the shots.

  Her mother adjusted. She had adjusted not only herself, but his daughters. With her daddy around, the daughters were quietened. And Lauren again remembered her mother listening to her husband rant and pace. And she remembered later, hearing her mother’s soothing voice.

  What had her mother done and said to soothe her agitated husband? That was information Lauren needed. How strange not to have inquired before then.

  Automatically, since no one else did it, Lauren took the broom and carefully swept the kitchen floor. One did that to avoid ants, cockroaches and mice. One did it precisely and after each meal. While her mother never lifted a finger, unless one of her flowers was ailing, she did see to it that the floor of the kitchen was pristine.

  Kyle sat sprawled and silently watched Lauren. What did he see? Or was he so tired that he would watch a fly?

  The exercise was good because she warmed enough to unbutton the fleece-lined jacket.

  Her mother had recommended and encouraged her children to exercise. That was done with golf, tennis, swimming and cleaning their own rooms. There were times when Goldilocks was not there and the girls had learned to cook. Lauren then learned about oatmeal and setting the table. And they’d learned to clean.

  They had complained. They had Goldilocks and her crews. And their mother had chided her children. “If you don’t know how it’s done, now, how can you see to it later that it’s done right when you’re on your own?”

  One of those irritating questions which was inarguably true. Her mother had a lot of questions which couldn’t be countered. The daughters had tried.

  What had her mother said to her tempered father in those times when he was upset?

  She would ask her mother.

  Kyle said, “I have to go milk the cows. I’m late as it is.”

  “How can I help?” She volunteered because she needed to know him. She needed their acquaintance to flower so that he wouldn’t be surprised when she lifted back the bedcover for him. Or if she got into his bed.

  He replied to her question, “Stay here. It’s warmer. I’ll be back.”

  And he shrugged into a greatcoat and put on the handy Stetson. He went out the back door, closing it quickly before the winds invaded. Then he went across the screened porch, down the snow-covered steps and off to the barn.

  What if he got on his horse and just…left? That would cancel her adventure entirely. Think how boring it would be if he just. left her there.

  He wouldn’t leave his animals. No man did that. He would be back. And she’d be there, waiting for him.

  How would he respond? She’d always been the one who’d stopped hands or chided or wiggled away. She’d locked doors when she was visiting. And she’d never replied to soft questions from the other side of a bedroom door. She’d been careful.

  How could she now be bold? Pliant. Coaxing. Available. She thought of the encounters in films. It seemed so easy. Of course. The films were of scripts and actors. None of the actors had the criminal court looming in the background.

  It was tough for a woman to seduce a man when he was forced to be cautious. She couldn’t criticize the cautioning. It had served her well. Men were more careful.

  But she was curious. While not the kind of woman who would tease and leave, she wanted to know what it was like. In this time, Kyle probably wasn’t a virgin.

  And she stopped, wide-eyed and startled. She had no condoms. Well, hell. That eliminated everything she’d planned. How could she have forgotten condoms? Well, she hadn’t planned to be there trapped in a damned storm!

  She sighed and looked out the window at the blowing snow that was eliminating the footprints he had left in the powdered covering. There she was, in the perfect place, with an attractive rescuer—and no condoms. Now that was a bucket of spit.

  It seemed no time at all until he returned with two buckets of milk. He put them into a canister on the porch and rinsed the buckets in water. He was precise and efficient.

  He came inside, removed his coat, went back to the table and sat down. He leaned back and tilted his chair onto its back legs. He seemed easy and comfortable.

  Disgruntled, she cast a glance at Kyle and caught him looking at her hungrily. Hungrily? He was! He might not be too difficult—

  No condoms.

  Just maybe he had one? How could she find out without him knowing what she had in mind?


  So she’d planned on sneaking up on him? He would have to know sometime. Why not now when the condom panic was vital? How was she to ask? How did a woman who’d not known a man for very long find out if he had any condoms without seeming. ready? Or aggressive? Or blatant?

  And she remembered Ginger, who just tilted her head to get the guy out of the crowd. He’d followed, and they weren’t seen again for two days. That was nine years ago. How strange for something like that to surface at a time like this.

  Ginger must have rung a bell in Lauren’s conscience because she still remembered the happening vividly. She probably remembered because she was so innocent that what she had seen then had been a puzzle and her mind had filed it under HUH? until now.

  But Ginger probably had had condoms in her pocket.her purse…her shoe…she was always ready. Prepared.

  Ginger now had three kids and had been twice divorced. Hmmm.

  What had Lauren’s mother said to Lauren’s father those times after he’d been shouting-angry?

  And the next morning, he’d be sleepily smiling at the breakfast table, and he’d be gentle and funny. What had her mother done about him?

  Kyle got up and turned on the radio. Not to the weather station as Lauren had anticipated, but to music. It was smooth and easy. It was familiar.

  Kyle held out his arms to Lauren and said, “Let’s try it.”

  Lauren hesitated. She had had so much dance training that she was leery of his feet. But she did go to him, and she lifted her arms.

  He looked down her body in his coat. He smiled. “If we dance, we might warm up.” He tilted his head and bit into his lower lip.

  What did that mean? He’d jog her around until she took off the coat and then the silks? Hardly. The silks breathed and were comfortable in heat.

  He could dance. Now that was a surprise. He released her, put the chairs against the wall, moved the kitchen table effortlessly and put the other chairs to the table before he came back to her. They continued to dance. He was really good. Some of the lyrics were rowdy.

  They danced to just about all the kinds of music, including a marvelous romp of TEXAS stomp. Every TEXAN knows how to stomp. The partners laughed.