Part of the Bargain

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Hello,” she said when the dark eyes turned to her in dour question. “My name is Libby, what’s yours?”

  “Jimmy,” the little boy responded, but then he must have remembered the majesty of his ancestry, for he squared his small shoulders and amended, “Jim Little Eagle.”

  Libby made a hasty note in the corner of his sketch. “I wish I had a name like that,” she said.

  “You’ll have to settle for ‘Barlowe,’” put in a familiar voice from behind her, and a lightweight hat landed on the top of her head.

  Libby looked up into Jess’s face and smiled. “I guess I can make do with that,” she answered.

  Jess dropped to his haunches, assessed the sketch she’d just finished with admiring eyes. “Wow,” he said.

  Libby laughed. “I love it when you’re profound,” she teased. And then she took off the hat he’d given her and inspected it thoroughly. It was a standard western hat, made of straw, and it boasted a trailing tangle of turquoise feathers and crystal beads.

  Jess took the hat and put it firmly back on, then arranged the feathers so that they rested on her right shoulder, tickling the bare, sun-gilded flesh there in a pleasant way. “Did you wear that blouse to drive me insane, or are you trying to set a world record for blistering sunburns?” he asked unromantically.

  Libby looked down at the brief white eyelet suntop and wondered if she shouldn’t have worn a western shirt, the way Becky and Cathy had. The garment she had on had no shoulders or sleeves; it was just a series of ruffles falling from an elasticized band that fitted around her chest, just beneath her collarbone. Not even wanting to think about the tortures of a sunburn, she had liberally applied sunblock to her exposed skin. Not wanting to give Jess the satisfaction, though, she crinkled her nose and said, “I wore it to drive you insane, of course.”

  Jess was going to insist on being practical; she saw it in his face. “They’re selling Tshirts on the fairway—buy one.”

  “Now?” complained Libby, not wanting to leave the splendors of the recreated Native American village even for a few minutes.

  Jess looked down at his watch. “Within half an hour,” he said flatly. “I’m going to find Ken and the others in the grandstands, Rembrandt. I’ll see you later.”

  Libby squinted as he rose against the sun, towering and magnificent even in his ordinary jeans and worn cowboy shirt. “No kiss?”

  Jess crouched again, kissed her. “Remember. Half an hour.”

  “Half an hour,” promised Libby, turning to a fresh page in her sketchbook and pondering a little girl with coal-black braids and a fringed buckskin shift. She took a new pencil from the case inside her purse and began to draw again, her hand racing to keep up with the pace set by her heart.

  When the sketch was finished, Libby thought about what she meant to do and how the syndicate that carried her cartoon strip would react. No doubt they would be furious.

  “Portraits!” her agent would cry. “Libby, Libby, there is no money in portraits.”

  Libby sighed, biting her lower lip. Money wasn’t a factor really, since she had plenty of that as it was, not only because she had married a wealthy man but also because of prior successes in her career.

  She was tired of doing cartoons, yearning to delve into other mediums—especially oils. She wanted color, depth, nuance—she wanted and needed to grow.

  “Where the hell is that T-shirt I asked you to buy?”

  Libby started, but the dream was still glowing in her face when she looked up to meet Jess’s gaze. “Still on the fairway, I would imagine,” she said.

  His mouth looked very stern, but Jess’s eyes were dancing beneath the brim of his battered western hat. “I don’t know why I let you out of my sight,” he teased. And then he extended a hand. “Come on, woman. Let’s get you properly dressed.”

  Libby allowed herself to be pulled through the crowd to one of the concession stands. Here there were such thrilling offerings as ashtrays shaped like the state of Montana and gaudy scarves commemorating the powwow itself.

  “Your secret is out,” she told Jess out of the corner of her mouth, gesturing toward a display of hats exactly like her own. The colors of their feather-and-bead plumage ranged from a pastel yellow to deep, rich purple. “This hat is not a designer original!”

  Jess worked up an expression of horrified chagrin and then laughed and began rifling through a stack of colorful Tshirts. “What size do you wear?”

  Libby stood on tiptoe, letting her breath fan against his ear, delighting as that appendage reddened visibly. “About the size of the palm of your hand, cowboy.”

  “Damn,” Jess chuckled, and the red moved out from his ear to churn under his suntan. “Unless you want me to drag you off somewhere and make love to you right now, you’d better not make any more remarks like that.”

  Suddenly Libby was as pink as the T-shirt he was measuring against her chest. Coming from Jess, this was no idle threat—since their new understanding, reached several weeks before on the top of the hill behind his house, they had made love in some very unconventional places. It would be like him to take her to one of the small trailers brought by some of the cowboys from the Circle Bar B and follow through.

  Having apparently deemed the pink T-shirt appropriate, Jess bought it and gripped Libby’s hand, fairly dragging her across the sawdust-covered fairgrounds. From the grandstands came the deafening shouts and boot-stompings of more than a thousand excited rodeo fans.

  Reaching the rest rooms, which were housed in a building of their own, Jess gave an exasperated sigh. There must have been a hundred women waiting to use the facilities, and he clearly didn’t want to stand around in the sun just so Libby could exchange her suntop for a T-shirt.

  Before she could offer to wait alone so that Jess could go back and watch the rodeo, he was hauling her toward the nest of Circle Bar B trailers at such a fast pace that she had to scramble to keep up with him.

  Thrusting her inside the smallest, which was littered with boots, beer cans and dirty clothes, he ordered, “Put on the shirt.”

  Libby’s color was so high that she was sure he could see it, even in the cool darkness of that camper-trailer. “This is Jake Peterson’s camper, isn’t it? What if he comes back?”

  “He won’t come back—he’s entered in the bull-riding competition. Just change, will you?”

  Libby knew only too well what would happen if she removed that suntop. “Jess…”

  He closed the camper door, flipped the inadequate-looking lock. Then he reached out, collected her befeathered hat, her sketchbook, her purse. He laid all these items on a small, messy table and waited.

  In the distance, over the loudspeaker system, the rodeo announcer exalted, “This cowboy, folks, has been riding bulls longer’n he’s been tying his shoes.”

  There was a thunderous communal cry as the cowboy and his bull apparently came out of their chute, but it was strangely quiet in that tiny trailer where Jess and Libby stood staring at each other.

  Finally, in one defiant motion of her hands, Libby wrenched the suntop off over the top of her head and stood still before her husband, her breasts high and proud and completely bare. “Are you satisfied?” she snapped.

  “Not yet,” Jess retorted.

  He came to stand very close, his hands gentle on her breasts. “You were right,” he said into her hair. “You just fit the palms of my hands.”

  “Oh,” said Libby in sweet despair.

  Jess’s hands continued their tender work, lulling her. It was so cool inside that trailer, so intimate and shadowy.

  Presently Libby felt the snap on her jeans, and then the zipper, give way. She was conscious of a shivering heat as the fabric glided downward. Protesting was quite beyond her powers now; she was bewitched.

  Jess laid her on the narrow camper bed, joining her within moments. Stretched out upon her, he entered her with one deft thrust.

  Their triumph was a simultaneous one, reached after they’d both traveled
through a glittering mine field of physical and spiritual sensation, and it was of such dizzying scope that it seemed natural for the unknowing crowd in the grandstands to cheer.

  Furiously Libby fastened her jeans and pulled on the T-shirt that had caused this situation in the first place. She gathered up her things, plopped her hat onto her head, and glared into Jess’s amused face.

  He dressed at a leisurely pace, as though they weren’t trespassing.

  “If Jake Peterson ever finds out about his, I’ll die,” Libby said, casting anxious, impatient looks at the locked door.

  Jess pulled on one boot, then the other, ran a hand through his rumpled hair. His eyes smoldering with mischief and lingering pleasure, he stood up, pulled Libby into his arms and kissed her. “I love you,” he said. “And your shameful secret is safe with me, Mrs. Barlowe.”

  Libby’s natural good nature was overcoming her anger. “Sure,” she retorted tartly. “All the same, I think you should know that every man who had ever compromised me in a ranch hand’s trailer has said that selfsame thing.”

  Jess laughed, kissed her again, and then released her. “Go back to your drawing, you little hellion. I’ll find you later.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Libby tossed back over one shoulder as she stepped out of the camper into the bright July sunshine. Almost before her eyes had adjusted to the change, she was sketching again.

  Libby hardly noticed the passing of the hours, so intent was she on recording the scenes that so fascinated her: men festooned with colorful feathers, doing their war and rain dances; women in their worn buckskin dresses, demonstrating the grinding of corn or making their beaded belts and moccasins; children playing games that were almost as old as the distant mountains and the big sky.

  Between the residual effects of that scandalous bout of lovemaking in the trailer and the feast of color and sound assaulting her now, Libby’s senses were reeling. She was almost relieved when Cathy came and signed that it was time to leave.

  As they walked back to find the others in the still-dense crowd, Libby studied her cousin out of the corner of her eye. Cathy and Stacey were living together again, but there was a wistfulness about Cathy that was disturbing.

  There would be no chance to talk with her now—there were too many distractions for that—but Libby made a mental vow to get Cathy alone later, perhaps during the birthday party that was being held on the ranch for Senator Barlowe that evening, and find out what was bothering her.

  As the group made plans to stop at a favorite café for an early supper, Libby grew more and more uneasy about Cathy. What was it about her that was different, besides her obviously downhearted mood?

  Before Libby could even begin to work out that complex question, Ken and Becky were off to their truck, Stacey and Cathy to their car. Libby was still staring into space when Jess gently tugged at her hand.

  She got into the Land Rover, feeling pensive, and laid her sketchbook and purse on the seat.

  “Another fit of creativity?” Jess asked quietly, driving carefully through a maze of other cars, staggering cowboys and beleaguered sheriff’s deputies.

  “I was thinking about Cathy,” Libby replied. “Have you noticed a change in her?”

  He thought, shook his head. “Not really.”

  “She doesn’t talk to me anymore, Jess.”

  “Did you have an argument?”

  Libby sighed. “No. I’ve been so busy lately, what with finishing the book and everything, I haven’t spent much time with her. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t even notice the change in her until just a little while ago.”

  Jess gave her a gentle look. “Don’t start beating yourself up Libby. You’re not responsible for Cathy’s happiness or unhappiness.”

  Surprised, Libby stared at him. “That sounds strange, coming from you.”

  They were pulling out onto the main highway, which was narrow and almost as choked with cars as the parking area had been. “I’m beginning to think it was a mistake, our being so protective of Cathy. We all meant well, but I wonder sometimes if we didn’t hurt her instead.”

  “Hurt her?”

  One of Jess’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “In a lot of ways, Cathy’s still a little girl. She’s never had to be a grown-up, Libby, because one of us was always there to fight her battles for her. I think she uses her deafness as an excuse not to take risks.”

  Libby was silent, reflecting on Cathy’s fear of being a mother.

  As though he’d looked into her mind, Jess went on to say, “Both Cathy and Stacey want children—did you know that? But Cathy won’t take the chance.”

  “I knew she was scared—she told me that. She’s scared of so many things, Jess—especially of losing Stacey.”

  “She loves him.”

  “I know. I just wish she had something more—something of her own so that her security as a person wouldn’t hinge entirely on what Stacey does.”

  “You mean the way your security doesn’t hinge on what I do?” Jess ventured, his tone devoid of any challenge or rancor.

  Libby turned, took off her hat and set it down between them with the other things. “I love you very, very much, Jess, but I could live without you. It would hurt unbearably, but I could do it.”

  He looked away from the traffic only long enough to flash her one devilish grin. “Who would take shameful liberties with your body, if it weren’t for me?”

  “I guess I would have to do without shameful liberties,” she said primly.

  “Thank you for sidestepping my delicate male ego,” he replied, “but the fact of the matter is, there’s no way a woman as beautiful and talented as you are would be alone for very long.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  Jess glanced at her in surprise. “Don’t say what?”

  It was his meaning that had concerned Libby, not his exact words. “I don’t even want to think about another man touching me the way you do.”

  Jess’s attention was firmly fixed on the road ahead. “If you’re trying to make me feel secure, princess, it’s working.”

  “I’m not trying to make you feel anything. Jess, before we made love that first time, when you said I was really a virgin, you were right. Even the books I’ve read couldn’t have prepared me for the things I feel when you love me.”

  “It might interest you to know, Mrs. Barlowe, that my feelings toward you are quite similar. Before we made love, sex was just something my body demanded, like food or exercise. Now it’s magic.”

  She stretched to plant a noisy kiss on her husband’s cheek. “Magic, is it? Well, you’re something of a sorcerer yourself, Jess Barlowe. You cast spells over me and make me behave like a wanton.”

  He gave an exaggerated evil chuckle. “I hope I can remember the hex that made you give in to me back there at the fairgrounds.”

  Libby moved the things that were between them into the backseat and slid closer, taking a mischievous nip at his earlobe. “I’m sure you can,” she whispered.

  Jess shuddered involuntarily and snapped, “Dammit, Libby, I’m driving.”

  She was exploring the sensitive place just beneath his ear with the tip of her tongue. “Umm. You like getting me into situations where I’m really vulnerable, don’t you, Jess?” she breathed, sliding one hand inside his shirt. “Like today, for instance.”

  “Libby…”

  “Revenge is sweet.”

  And it was.

  Shyly Libby extended the carefully wrapped package that contained her personal birthday gift to Senator Barlowe. She had not shown it to anyone else, not even Jess, and now she was uncertain. After all, Monica had given Cleave gold cuff-links and Stacey and Cathy planned to present him with a bottle of rare wine. By comparison, would her offering seem tacky and homemade?

  With the gentle smile that had won him so many hearts and so many votes over the years, he took the parcel, which was revealingly large and flat, and turned it in his hands. “May I?” he asked softly, his kind eyes
twinkling with affection.

  “Please do,” replied Libby.

  It seemed to take Cleave forever to remove the ribbons and wrapping paper and lift the lid from the box inside, but there was genuine emotion in his face when he saw the framed pen-and-ink drawing Libby had been working on, in secret, for days. “My sons,” he said.

  “That’s us, all right,” commented Jess, who had appeared at the senator’s side. “Personally, I think I’m considerably handsomer than that.”

  Cleave was examining the drawing closely. It showed Jess looking forward, Stacey in profile. When the senator looked up, Libby saw the love he bore his two sons in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “This is one of the finest gifts I’ve ever received.” He assessed the drawing again, and when his gaze came back to meet hers, it was full of mischief. “But where are my daughters? Where are you and Cathy?”

  Libby smiled and kissed his cheek. “I guess you’ll have to wait until your next birthday for that.”

  “In that case,” rejoined the senator, “why not throw in a couple of grandchildren for good measure?”

  Libby grinned. “I might be able to come up with one, but a couple?”

  “Cathy will just have to do her part,” came the immediate reply. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to take this picture around and show all my guests what a talented daughter-in-law I have.”

  Once his father had gone, Jess lifted his champagne glass and one eyebrow. “Talented is definitely the word,” he said.

  Libby knew that he was not referring to her artwork and hastily changed the subject. “You look so splendid in that tuxedo that I think I’d like to dance with you.”

  Jess worked one index finger under the tight collar of his formal shirt, obviously uncomfortable. “Dance?” he echoed drily. “Lead me to the organ grinder and we’re in business.”

  Laughing, Libby caught at his free hand and dragged him into the spacious living room, which had been prepared for dancing. There was a small string band to provide the music.