by Lass Small
If the storm went on the predicted two more days, she just might find out.
After going along with the humans on their tour of the house, the dog felt quite at home. He was an alert, silent chunk of accommodation. If anyone wanted to do anything, it was okay by him. He was a watcher. Bored, he was interested in any kind of activity. So the dog had gone along on the tour. He’d been discreet, silent, tolerant and curious.
Kyle considered that the house was still shipshape. A strange word to use in the vast land space of cattleand oil-ruled TEXAS. However, in olden times, cantankerous budding men or hard nosed, difficult ones were shipped off by their families out to sea for a year or so of limited activity. Ships tend to be an island on the sea. Kyle knew it well.
Such an isolation generally happened when the males were about twenty.
Budding women never had to be disciplined. Or maybe, the families just didn’t trust defying women to get out from under the parents’ thumbs?
At any rate, that young male sojourn in the Gulf allowed some iron-willed ship captain to teach the recalcitrant sons-of-friends some manners. Or at least they were taught to listen to and obey orders.
It was either be disciplined or the Captain mentioned hungry sharks. He never had to actually thrash a difficult sailor under his command. But his mate didn’t mind doing it when his patience was spent. And there was the shark threat. Out on the sea, here and there, there were sharks.
Courtesy of his father, Kyle had had a year on the Gulf. His confrontation with reality was after he’d been back on the land. He was still lifting his face to the breezes and breathing the winds to tell which kind of clouds those were. It was almost seven years since his year long cruise after which he’d finished college.
That was when his parents had a special party, and one of the guests was. the ship’s captain! Kyle was startled.
The slow-moving, calm, block of a seaman smiled and said, “Hi, sailor.” He never remembered their names. Not those of the sons of his friends who had been sent to him on the sea. He’d harbored over twenty such problems by then.
That was when Kyle thought if ever a son of his was difficult, he would be sent to sea during his junior year. That was the year of revolt. That was the year when males particularly decided they needed to guide their own lives.
And that was why the U.S. services took recruits at eighteen. They still responded to directions at eighteen. By twenty, males wanted the control of their lives.
As the storm-trapped pair and the barn dog returned to the kitchen from their chilly venture through the house, Kyle asked Lauren, “Have you ever been to sea?”
“Only to fish in the Gulf. The boat was strange and had several decks. I thought it was top-heavy and dangerous. I wore a life jacket the entire time, carried a yellow flag and stayed on deck.”
Kyle nodded. “I was in a ship once that had a hull leak. They had to have the pump going all the time. No one else seemed to worry about it.”
“People are strange.”
Kyle blinked a time or two as he looked at the woman in sand-colored silks who had been out on the land, alone, looking for a gourd-pod with a cloth tail. She thought other people were strange?
Her eyes were cast down as she watched the dog. She seemed unaware of Kyle Phillips. He tried to think of a time when he’d been with a young, unmarried woman who hadn’t looked at him or been aware of him.
If there had been one, Kyle hadn’t noticed her.
He noticed this one.
If the circumstances they were in now were in a book, she would look up and ask, “Your room or mine?”
Sure.
This one was a flag-waving holdout. She wasn’t at all interested in a tangle with a stranger. She was of that ilk. If she ever gave in, it would be with gritted teeth and clenched fists, lying rigid on her side of the bed and being noble.
But as he thought that, her eyes slid up to him and she almost smiled as she blushed.
Kyle turned into vulnerable mush. And he had not one clue as to how to act or what to say to her. So he reached out his hand, palm up.
She hesitated, almost, then she put her cold small hand in his rough warm one. And he preceded her as they walked silently down the back stairs to the warm kitchen.
But he didn’t want to let go of her hand. So he walked her over to the back door. They stood, looking out at the storm roaring recklessly, indifferent to all the storm-trapped creatures who survived.so far.
Oddly, their reactions were parallel. They didn’t speak or even move, they were so delighted with what they saw. They were trapped there, together.
There was no way for anyone to come to them, or for them or even to contact them. They were Adam and Eve. Alone in the maelstrom of the beginnings of the world.
She asked gently, “How will you ever get to the barn for the cows?”
He grinned and sighed with great dramatic talent. “So you aren’t going to volunteer?”
She laughed, “In these?”
And under her opening coat, he again saw those soft, sand-colored silks. His body almost went into overdrive at the very idea of what they covered. The silks weren’t very subtle.
So he pushed his hands down into his pant pockets, and he said, “What sort of bribe do you need to slough your way out to the barn for the sake of other females in distress?”
She tilted her head as she raised her eyebrows a tad. She seriously considered the premise before she replied, “Nothing I can think of right now.”
His eyes sparkled and he bit his grin. “Consider it. That’s all I’ll ask. I’ll do the food and clean up and make the beds and feed the dog and let him out and wait for him, if you’ll agree to go out there through that blizzard and milk the cows.”
“What happens if the cows aren’t milked?”
“They’ll be very uncomfortable and miserable. They’ll moo endlessly and make a racket. The milk will finally leak or clot and they won’t give any more.” That was approximate.
“I do know how to milk a cow. My grandmother saw to it.”
“Your precious, fragile grandmother knows how to milk a cow?”
“She had a strident mother.”
He licked his grin. “You strident?”
“I think I could grow into it. quite comfortably. I find other people aren’t as skilled or knowledgeable as they seem. Incapable, they are simply ready to take over. I could do that.”
And he cautioned, “Don’t scare me.”
She laughed. Her eyes sparkled and her teeth were white. She didn’t smoke or chew or spit tobacco. She smelled like a woman. There was only her sweet essence. She didn’t need to wear a covering scent.
He told her nicely, “I like the way you smell.”
“Do gentlemen say that to ladies? I’m not wearing a perfume.”
He shrugged as he communicated something obvious, “Some gentlemen say it.”
Her head was down and she turned it a bit to look at him from the corners of her eyes. “Obviously, you are one who does that.”
He licked his smile again. But his eye crinkles betrayed his humor. Women are just so different. He wanted this one. Would she be appalled? Would she think he was gross? An animal?
He studied her movements carefully. He saw that she didn’t retreat from him. She stood her ground. He became aware of how she looked at him, and gradually, it came to him that if he was clever and smooth, she just might respond to his lusts. Yes!
He mentioned the storm to his guardian angel and congratulated him for contriving it so handily. In response, Kyle felt the guardian was bored, indifferent and rather killingly patient.
Well, Kyle was quite certain he could handle this episode by himself.
And as it does happen, Kyle’s thoughts were very similar to the thoughts inside Lauren’s head. And her guardian angel was over by the oven, bored out of her gourd and even less patient than Kyle’s.
The dog didn’t mind. He could smell the intense interest between the two humans. It wa
s just amazing to the dog that the two humans took so long.
With interest, Lauren asked, “What is on the entertainment agenda?”
Kyle’s ears perked up and his eyebrows lifted just a tad but his eyes danced with all sorts of lights. She found that fascinating.
He inquired, “More cribbage? Five-card stud? Dice a dollar a throw? Television?”
“How can the TV work without electricity?”
“Right. There’s one of the old telescopic doublecard viewers from long ago. Great three-dimensional visuals. See? There are all kinds of entertainment.” And, yet again, he licked his smile.
She was twenty-seven. She knew he was being verbally clever, saying things that were salacious—Well, maybe he was a gentleman and was not salacious. Maybe he meant exactly what he said, and it was only her own wild and wicked libido that was berserk:
How did one know?
She could ask him. Are you being salacious?
If she did, he’d probably not understand and be shocked by her assumption.
She was going to have to be clever and slow in order to lead him into allowing her access to his body.
That made her sound very like some disease. It was he who would do the invading.
Uh-huh.
Why was this time in her life suddenly so sexually greedy? Had such conduct been coming on in this last year? Was her restlessness and lack of direction a part of all this? Was it her body that was so rampantly hungry? She was rather shocked by her body’s animal conduct.
But she looked at him. He was waiting for her to decide what she wanted to do in order to spend useless time while they waited for the storm to go on past them.
She told him with some interest, “When I was little, I thought first that the rain fell all over the earth at the same time.”
He nodded in understanding.
“Then when it rained, and I saw rain in the distance and none where I was, I figured it rained there until the cloud was empty.”
He understood that.
“Now the TV shows us that the storms gather in the Pacific and go across there and clear across our country—never faltering—and on out into the Atlantic. That is incredible.”
“Yeah.” He watched her with some attention.
“This storm.” She gestured to the kitchen window. “It will go on up the East Coast and then into Canada or out into the Atlantic. Still being just the way it is now.”
He wasn’t especially fascinated but he was courteous. He gave her his attention and nodded.
She shared her observation: “The world is strange. How did we get here?”
“You were wandering around on the far side, and I took you up on my horse.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “I thought you might be an illusion.”
“Feel me.” His voice turned foggy. “I promise you that I’m real.”
With the invitation, she took advantage of the offer and she put her hand on his chest. She smiled into his hot eyes and said to him, “You’re real.”
He thought, Now!
She said, “Let’s play cribbage.” And she turned away from him to go over to the kitchen table.
The game was hell-bent and aggressive. Their cheerful competitiveness accelerated. They leaned forward, they watched the played cards avidly and they yelled! They whooped and hollered and they laughed. They sat back and just grinned at each other. It was great.
She said with curiosity, “Some people just play quietly and only occasionally make a sound. I’ve never played with such fun. Thank you.”
Kyle gathered the cards to shuffle them and told Lauren, “If you weren’t here, I’d be trying to train that dog to play cards. Look at his enthusiasm. Is he on that chair, watching, learning?”
The dog was asleep on an oval braided rug in front of the open door of the stove. The heat went up from, him. He wasn’t in the line of the heat pouring from the oven. Like all sedentary animals, he had gauged his nap place just right.
Their lunch was casual. She went through his refrigerator and found odd things. She would ask with interest, “What is this?”
He soothed in a wonderfully offhanded way, “It’s only been there a while.”
And she moved to pitch it.
“Hey! That’s still good.”
“Three days later? No.”
And he was astonished. He protested with indignation, “It’s good!”
“How much do you cherish the dog?”
“We have animal drop-offs as a continuing resource. People think farms and ranches need animals. That isn’t true. A lot of the animals try to get back home and they die doing that. The others aren’t as faithful. They’re probably smarter. They come and go. That dog’s been here about a year. He’s sturdy. He can handle a three-day-old, refrigerated piece of meat.”
Lauren made a face and pronounced the word precisely, “Yuck.”
And Kyle proclaimed in some surprise, “You’re just like my mother!”
“I doubt it.”
He shook his head. “I mean your attitude. She’s picky, too.”
“She has excellent taste,”
He grinned.
And Lauren explained drolly, “The skill I mentioned in your mother was in decorating a house.”
“Her daughters helped. The arguments I had would wobble you.”
And with curiosity, she asked, “What sort of things did you want that they canceled?”
He looked on her as if she’d turned into a conspirator. “The drapes, the rug on the stairs…I wanted the bare wood. The umbrella stand with all those weeds—”
She gasped in shock before she declared, “That umbrella stand with the perfect bouquet is outstanding!”
He mumbled, “The stand is outstanding?”
She was continuing, “The rug on the stairs will soften the steps of any wild and woolly kids you have here.”
“I’m a bachelor.”
She shook her head. “You’ll get around to kids eventually.”
He scowled at her. “I’ll get around to having kids? I need a woman, first.”
“Some strange female will come out here and love the blank countryside and will tolerate you in order to live in this perfectly furnished house. And she will happily give you children.”
Not her? Is that what she was telling him? He’d have to find another lost woman and harbor her there until she gave in?
“I have a town house.” Now why had he blurted that?
Lauren nodded thoughtfully. “That just possibly may save your wife’s sanity.”
He guessed, “You don’t like the open land.”
She considered and replied, “It’s nice to look at it as you drive through it.”
He’d run into that attitude before. Women tended to like cities. But there were some women who loved the countryside. He asked, “Do you know of any women who’d like living out here?”
She considered the premise thoughtfully. She regarded him as if she was wondering if any woman would have him. Then she said, “I’d have to research.”
“The land?”
She looked at him. “Women.”
“Oh.” She would let go of him and just find him a woman? His ego was singed. So he said to her, “I have some specifications for any contender to the throne.” He looked at Lauren.
“Throne? You think living here, for a woman, would be a superior opportunity?”
He had to shift his feet and considered his reply before he replied honestly. “Yeah.”
She looked around at the house. “I suppose it would be—for some woman. The house is excellent. But there are no other women around in this area.” She looked at him soberly. “Your wife would be lonely.”
“You want me to have a harem?”
And he loved the indignation that shadowed her face so briefly.
She turned away as if considering. Then she said in an instructing manner, “A woman needs a shopping center nearby with a small grocery, a beauty parlor, a bank, a nice dress shop
and a shoe store. It would be nice to have an ice cream parlor.”
He took her arm and escorted her into another room. There was another refrigerator and two deep freezers. There were shelves and cupboards, which were filled with canned goods, bags of beans and boxes of cereals.
He answered her gently, “Y- She wouldn’t starve.”
“What about neighbors?”
So he took her to another room and to that window and gestured in directions. “Over thataway are the Bigses. Down yonder are the Muellers, over there are the Quills and in that direction are the Yarboroughs and the Smiths.”
“You have Smiths clear out here?”
He shrugged as he lifted out his hand. “There’re Smiths everywhere.” He watched her, then he told her, “Y—She’d have a car of her own.”
She thought of her convertible filled with snow. Soberly, she agreed, “Just having one would be a link to civilization.”
“You don’t think this is a part of civilization?”
“Where?” She went to the window of that storage room. Her arms were around her silk-clad, shivering body.
He told her, “Everywhere. We have Rangers out here, and we have Sheriffs and we have good neighbors.”
“I’ll see what I can do about finding you a wife.”
“You’re cold.” He put his hand on her shoulder.
She turned up her face to see him. “I’m frozen.”
He looked into her brown eyes and saw yellow flecks. And he was so mesmerized that he didn’t do the logical thing and take her back into the kitchen. He just looked down into her eyes.
He was so serious that his eye crinkles were white in his tanned face. He was stunned by her.
She shivered. And he took off his shirt and gave it to her. He was then in a T-shirt and twill trousers. He wore boots. His hands were warm on her cheeks.
His hands were on her cold cheeks. She was watching him as he came closer. And he kissed her. She was so startled that her lips parted with her surprise and she almost didn’t get time enough to kiss him back.
So as he lifted his mouth from hers, her mouth followed his up. But in time he realized that and stopped and moved his head back down to really, really kiss her.
