WAGERED WOMAN

by Christine Rimmer

  She said, "Oh, Sam, I never thought, I never imagined…" and she couldn't finish. There were no more words.

  Her eyes, drugged at last with her own mounting, expanding bliss, drooped shut. Her head fell back. She cried out something feral, something triumphant. Her body rose and fell in wild crescendo, gleaming in the fireglow.

  He held her hips to stay with her and found he himself was caught up, rising, going over the edge of the world along with her. They cried out in unison. He thrust the final time into her and felt himself spilling, releasing, a last eternity of pleasure that went on and on, as her softness held him, took everything he had and gave it back to him ten thousandfold.

  She fell across him, spent, her magnificent soft breasts crushed against his chest, her breath sliding over his skin, warm and sweet, one hand unconsciously stroking him at first, then lying limp as a fallen flower in the crook of his shoulder and his neck.

  He touched her hair, a black tangle all around her head, smoothing it, and then idly caressing it, as he slowly came back to the world.

  For a while he merely lay and memorized the feel of her body, limp and satisfied, on his. He heard the rain on the roof and the wind blowing wild outside. And then, lazily, he rolled his head toward the bubbling sound coming from the stove. The pots she'd set out were boiling. The big window, he noticed, was covered over with steam.

  He chuckled then. "Sweetheart, we've really fogged up the place."

  "Hmm?" She began caressing him again, touching his arm in long, trailing strokes. And then burrowing her fingers in the hair on his chest, making little cooing sounds.

  Sam chuckled.

  She asked, softly, "What?"

  "Nothing. You."

  She sat up on him, then. And she was smiling. "What about me, Sam Fletcher?"

  "I just never thought I'd see the day, that's all." He grinned back at her, thinking that he'd wanted her to smile for him for how long now? And now she had.

  "The day that what?" she prompted. Her full breasts tempted him. He touched one, a feather-light caress. She hitched in a kindled breath.

  "This day," he explained. "You and me, together."

  She bent and kissed him. "Well, Sam Fletcher. You have seen it. And guess what?"

  "Yeah?"

  "So have I."

  "Surprised?"

  She tipped her head, considering. "A month ago, I never would have believed it. But lately…"

  "What?"

  "It started to seem…"

  "Yeah?"

  "Inevitable, I guess." Her expression changed. The firelight licked across her skin, picking up the sheen from the sweat of their lovemaking. Her hair foamed out around her face, a veil of tangled ebony. She looked wild and pagan—and far away from him.

  Sam, watching her, found he didn't like that faraway look. He didn't like it at all. "What's wrong?" he demanded. "What is it?"

  "Nothing." The look was gone. She smiled down at him once more. She bent her head and kissed him, a sweet, soft brushing of her lips on his.

  Then she slid to the side. He sat up for a moment, to get rid of the condom. Once that was taken care of, he went to the bed and came back with the spare blanket. After that, he opened his sleeping bag and laid it out on the rug for them to lie on. He stretched out again. She lay beside him, between him and the fire and he settled the blanket over them. For a while, neither spoke. There was the rain and the fire and the occasional caress, a smile and an answering look.

  Finally, across the room, a pot bubbled over, the water hissing and popping as it hit the scorching stove top.

  "We can have our baths," she remarked. "The water's boiling."

  He reached for her. "The water's not the only thing that's hot. Come here."

  Eventually, they got up from the floor and went to bathe, a wholly enjoyable process now that there was no need for either of them to go outside in the storm and wait until the other was through.

  They mixed the boiling water with cold, and took turns washing each other, a marvelously sensual experience—not to mention revitalizing.

  After that, they both realized they were starving. They prepared dinner, and sat down to eat in a shared mood of quiet congeniality. They cleaned up afterwards, as darkness fell. They turned on the light and Sam set up his improvised woodworking shop and began boasting the head of the mountain lion.

  Delilah at last allowed herself to ask the thousand and one questions about his woodworking tools and the whole process of carving that she'd been dying to ask these three days. He answered them all.

  And then, later, as they spread his sleeping bag on the bed for a sheet and laid hers over it as a blanket, Sam suddenly went still.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Listen…"

  "I don't hear anything," she said, and realized it was true. The wind had died down, and the rain seemed to have stopped some time ago. She couldn't have said when exactly.

  He prompted, "Yes. Yes, you do. Listen." She listened—and she heard it. Like a whisper, like a coat made of feathers, drifting slowly down… "Snow."

  He smiled and held out his hand.

  They went to the big window together. Sam took a towel and wiped away the steam and like eager children they pressed their faces to the glass.

  Delilah saw it, falling steady and thick.

  Sam turned to her. He spoke with great solemnity. "Miss Jones, we are being snowed in."

  She turned to him. "We might never get out."

  "Oh, we'll get out. Eventually."

  She looked at him from under her lashes. "But what will we do with ourselves … until then?"

  He reached out and ran a finger down her neck, over the collar of the clean shirt she'd put on after their shared bath, to the soft swell of a breast. "I have an idea or two of how to pass the time."

  "You do? Show me…"

  "I'll be glad to." And he did.

  They woke the next morning to a world of white, and found it no hardship to remain in the cabin—except for necessary sojourns into the trees—the entire day, and all of Friday as well.

  They ate and slept and made love when they felt like it. Sam worked on his carvings. Delilah whipped through that mystery novel which previously hadn't been able to hold her interest at all.

  They avoided, by tacit agreement, talk of what would happen when they returned to North Magdalene. They talked instead of their pasts, of what had shaped them, made them each who they were.

  Sam had been a preacher's son, the rebel of his family, the black sheep who left home the day he graduated from high school and never went back. His father had been dead for fifteen years, but he still had a mother and a sister somewhere down around San Diego.

  Delilah confided what it was like for her, to lose her mother at eleven and be left with a houseful of troublesome males.

  She confessed that things had not gotten really bad until her mother died. Before her mother died, the boys smiled a lot. They'd always made trouble, of course—that was bred into the Jones boys from their rapscallion father. But somehow, Bathsheba could always work the troubles out.

  That was what Bathsheba Jones had been: a miracle-worker. Doing wonders daily that no one ever knew about—until she was gone. Oggie had always been a borderline case, but somehow Bathsheba made their lives work. And then she died. And nothing was the same. Delilah had tried in vain to take her place. But she'd only botched things up, ending up in screaming battles with her brothers, who weren't about to be told what to do by anyone, let alone their bossy sister.

  Sam interrupted then. "Your brothers worship you." He chuckled. "Usually from afar, since you won't let them get near you anymore."

  "Well, what can they expect? Look what happens when I do get near them—I end up wagered to you for a week." She playfully punched his shoulder.

  He grabbed her and wrestled her to the rug. Then he kissed her and she kissed him back, and neither of them felt much like talking for a while.

  They did the chores together smoot
hly, as they'd done before, but now they both wore smiles and the words they shared were tender ones. And they each took pleasure in doing little things for the other. She repaired the rag rug that had come partly unbraided. He gave her the coyote and the mountain lion to add to what they'd both started to think of as her "menagerie."

  Delilah admired both carvings and stroked them with loving hands. She marveled that less than a week ago she'd told herself she wouldn't keep the wooden creatures he'd left on her windowsills. It seemed impossible to imagine such a thing now. She would never give those beautiful animals up. Never in a million years…

  Saturday morning dawned crystal clear. By noon, the temperature was in the high sixties in the sun, and most of the snow from Wednesday's storm had melted away.

  Though neither of them spoke of it, their looming departure seemed to hang in the air between them. Tomorrow was Sunday, and they would be heading home.

  After lunch, Delilah washed Sam's hair for him, trickling the water gently over his scalp, working up a good lather, and then rinsing it thoroughly and rubbing it dry.

  She teased him, as she combed it out. "I don't know, Sam Fletcher…"

  "What don't you know?"

  "I don't know if I could ever get too serious about a man with longer hair than mine." She bent over and nuzzled his ear. "I'm a conservative woman."

  He caught her arm, and kissed her, a kiss that lingered so long she almost forgot what she'd been saying by the time she went back to work on him with the comb.

  His next words reminded her. "There are certain things a man won't do, sweetheart. Even to snare the woman of his dreams."

  Delilah's heart leapt at that. To think that he—once her worst enemy—now called her his dream woman. And more amazing, that she delighted in hearing it. She teased him some more. "Right. As if getting a haircut were some major concession."

  "For me it is."

  "But why?"

  "My hair's my freedom. I grew it long when I left home and it's been that way ever since."

  "Because?"

  "My father used to shave my head."

  Her comb paused in midstroke. "Come on. You're exaggerating."

  "No." His voice was flat. "He shaved it. With an electric razor, like they do to recruits in boot camp. He thought long hair was the devil's business. Once I pointed out to him that Jesus had long hair. I didn't sit down for a week after that, let me tell you."

  "Oh, Sam. I'm sorry…"

  "Why? It's not your fault." He said nothing for a moment. Then he seemed to shake himself and added, "Anyway, I left there as soon as I had my eighteenth birthday and a high school diploma."

  She didn't want him to stop. "And then what?"

  "I went to L.A., got a job as a janitor."

  "And?"

  "I worked for two years, living in a residence hotel in East Hollywood, taking classes at City College and saving every penny I could."

  "What did you study? At college?"

  "Shakespeare and jewelry making—with a lot of time out for partying hearty on cheap wine that wouldn't deplete my slowly growing nest egg." He chuckled. "I wasn't a real ambitious guy. I realize now I was suffering from a whopping case of low self-esteem. But back then, we didn't know a lot about self-esteem. Back then, they called guys like me losers—at least that was what my old man had been telling me I was for eighteen years. A bad boy, with Satan in his heart."

  Sam's hair now lay smoothly on his broad shoulders. Delilah set down the comb and sat across from him at the table. He smiled at her.

  She said, "You were twenty when you showed up in North Magdalene."

  "Yeah."

  "So. What happened. How did you get there?"

  "Well…"

  "Honestly, Sam. Don't tease me. I want to know."

  "It's nothing exciting."

  "Just tell me. Please."

  "I never could say no to you when you say please. You say it so seldom…"

  "Sam!"

  "All right, all right. I bought myself a present for my twentieth birthday—you remember that old van?"

  Delilah nodded.

  "Well, I bought the van, and I took what was left of the money I'd saved from working, and I got in that van, and I started driving. I drove north. And ten hours later, I came to this little bend-in-the-road town."

  "North Magdalene."

  "You got it. I parked on the side of the road and I went in the bar, where I met an old geezer named Oggie Jones." He gave her a telling look. "He did ask for my ID, by the way. And when I gave him a phony story, he threw me out. But. As luck would have it, I met a guy on the sidewalk right away, a guy named Jared Jones, the bar owner's son. Poor Jared. He was depressed because his wife had just kicked him out—"

  "For the umpteenth time," Delilah couldn't resist pointing out.

  "Jared had a bottle," Sam went on without missing a beat. "He didn't ask for ID. And he was willing to share."

  "How heartwarming."

  "Ah, Delilah. You have no idea what it's like when a lonely man at last finds a friend."

  "I can imagine… So you remained in North Magdalene."

  He nodded. "Why would I leave? I found my substitute family in your dad and your brothers. And I found my dream."

  "And exactly what was your dream?"

  "Well, first it was gold. I got a taste of gold fever."

  Delilah made a scoffing noise. Except for college and her stint as a student teacher, she'd lived in the gold country all her life. She knew that gold fever was mostly an affliction of greenhorns. Men who hung around the hills a little knew better. Few people got rich anymore mining for gold.

  He smiled, and shrugged. "Hell, I was a kid," he said, in explanation of his own innocence then. "And it was damn good to have a dream at last. I bought my dredger—"

  "And staked your claim at my special place."

  "I know." He looked appropriately contrite. "I never gave the tender feelings of a motherless fourteen-year-old a thought. I was obsessed with the idea that I was going to make my fortune. And by the time I realized I wasn't going to find any nuggets the size of my fist, I was already making jewelry and selling it out of the van."

  "You found another dream," she said softly.

  "That's right. One I could really live with. I opened my store eventually, and I built myself a house. It is a fact that for a few years, I drank a lot. And I got in fights. I made trouble."

  He reached across the gouged surface of the rough table and took her hand. He gave it a squeeze. Delilah squeezed back. He continued, "But slowly, as the years passed, as I built my business and started to feel like I belonged where I was, I began to believe my father just might have been wrong. I wasn't a loser, and the devil had no permanent claim on me after all." He paused then. "You hear what I'm saying, Lilah?"

  She nodded, wondering why he suddenly seemed so intent.

  "I own a store and a house and this ten acres by the lake that my father left to me when he died—along with a note saying I was still his son, in spite of my devil ways."

  "Oh, Sam…"

  "I'm a man of property, a respected member of my community."

  "You are. I know you are."

  "I'm not a bad catch, if you know what I mean."

  Delilah looked at him, at his handsome face and his long red-gold hair, at his powerful torso and his muscular bare arm that was stretched across the table to her. And she knew, with equal parts joy and despair, exactly what was coming.

  "I'm good enough for the schoolmarm."

  "Sam…"

  His hand tightened on hers, until his grip was almost painful. She winced. He held tighter. "So marry me, Lilah. Marry me tonight."

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  « ^ »

  Delilah stared at him, across the table. She hadn't expected this, she hadn't expected anything, really. She'd been purposely living for the moment only, not letting herself think what might happen next week—or even tomorrow.

  "Well?" he dem
anded, still crushing her hand.

  "Oh, Sam…"

  "What?"

  "Well, Sam, I…"

  He waited, his fervent expression fading.

  "Sam, I just think…"

  "You think what?" He released her hand, then, and pulled his own back to his side of the table.

  She faltered on. "This is so sudden—"

  "It isn't sudden to me."

  "Well, I mean, we haven't talked about marriage before."

  "I know. So let's talk about it now. Marry me. Tonight. We can pack up and head out right away, be in Reno before sunset. We'll get married, spend our wedding night in a good hotel, and then go back to North Magdalene in the afternoon tomorrow just like we planned so you won't have to miss even a day of school."

  Delilah bit the inside of her lip, as it came home to her that the wagered week really was coming to an end. She'd be behind her teacher's desk at school just forty-eight hours from now.

  Of course, she'd known they were going back tomorrow, but she'd purposely not been thinking about it. Her life back home seemed far away, almost unreal, eclipsed by the immediate reality of the special and secluded world she and Sam had created since the day on the mountain.

  She winced as she thought of home, of what it would be like, when they returned to North Magdalene together—that crazy Sam Fletcher and the schoolmarm, Miss Jones. Of Nellie and Linda Lou, and how they loved to burn up the phone lines at even the slightest hint of scandal.

  Sam said, "Forget about them. Think about us."

  Delilah blinked. "What do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean. You're thinking about home. About what people will say. I can see it in your face."

  She shook her head, and felt the guilty flush that turned her cheeks hot. "No…"

  His gaze was level. "Don't lie to me, Lilah. We don't need lies between us. We've got something better than lies."

  Delilah looked down at her hands, ashamed. "All right. Yes. I was thinking of what it will be like, going home."

  "Look at me."

  She lifted her head and met his eyes.

  He said, "You'll find that out when we get there."