A Mating of Hawks (15 page)

Judd reddened. “Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder what the hell kind of a soldier you were!”

“If you'd been one,” Shea returned, “you might not get so turned on by guns and all this vigilante scene.”

His look included Tracy, who both wanted to explain why she was there and tell him it was none of his business. Mostly, she ached at the sight of him, a hunger deep beneath the quicksilver fire that ran through her at the flick of his eyes. Did he feel nothing of that?

He turned and moved toward his pickup. Judd got in front of him. “Shea, we need to run cattle on your lease.”

“Have you culled your herd?”

“Damn it, no!”

“Then we've got nothing to talk about.” Shea swung past his half-brother and climbed into his pickup. He didn't spare Tracy another glance.

Judd stared after the wake of dust, then shrugged, grinned down at Tracy and drew her back to the target. “One more round, doll, and then we'll eat.”

After lunch Judd and Pardo showed films and diagrams of how to convert a room or house into a citadel. During a break Tracy heard one of the men in front of her say, “If things do blow up, I hope the people in the cities are killed. Sure don't want to have to stand off mobs of starving animals.”

“We're from Tucson,” growled his neighbor.

“Well, you're getting prepared,” fumbled the first man. “Didn't mean you.”

The pansy-eyed young nurse had joined a coalition that was working for stiffer rape sentences and publicizing judges' attitudes on the crime. No one else Tracy interviewed had tried to work for reform or to change the laws, though most were fiercely against gun control.

“If we can't have guns, how're we going to defend ourselves?” several argued.

As Judd drove Tracy home that evening, he gave her an expectant smile. “So what did you think of it?”

“There's a lot of fear.”

“Stronghold replaces that with confidence.”

“Is that a good thing?”

His brow furrowed. “How can it not be?”

“If people who really aren't comfortable with guns start keeping them at hand, they may feel more confident but wind up thoroughly dead.”

“Shea's little speech brainwash you?” Judd asked incredulously. “After the stories you taped today?”

“If guns are the problem, and they are, then adding more guns seems like trying to put out a fire by dousing it with kerosene.”

“Sounds like an interesting tactic,” said Judd. Pulling off the road, he stopped the RV, pulled Tracy into his arms and closed her mouth with his.

IX

His lips were hard and eager. She pushed at him, resisting the tingling shock that coursed through her. After a moment he lifted his head, smiling, and murmured, “That didn't put out any fires for me. Tracy, sweetheart—”

“Please,” she said, averting her face. “Please, Judd!”

His hands tightened on her. “Tracy, you've got to get that Houston creep out of your head!” Judd's strong warm hand fondled her throat, seeking out the pulse. “You need a lover, someone to teach you how good it can be.”

I had one once. Shea
.

Drawing away, she tried to laugh. “You're mightily persuasive, cousin, but I'm old-fashioned.”

His eyebrows lifted and he grinned. “Tracy! Are you asking my hand in marriage?”

“No.” She met his ombre gaze steadily, feeling the magnetic flow between them even as she said, “I'm not in love with you, Judd.”

“My God, you are an infant!”

“All the same.”

Head atilt, he studied her a moment. “Maybe I can change that. Be interesting to try.”

“I'm in love with someone else.”

His eyes narrowed. “That makes it all the more interesting.” He started the RV and delivered her to Le Moyne's ecstatic welcome as twilight was deepening to night.

“I'll pick you up in the morning,” he said as he turned to leave.

“Thanks, but I've got my story.” She had also made a decision. Reaching into her bag, she got out the automatic and handed it to him. “I guess I have to put my chips where my bets are.”

“Now, baby, think it over!”

She sighed. “I have. Thanks, Judd, but no thanks.”

He loomed above her in the dusk. For a moment, crazily, in spite of Le Moyne's presence, she was afraid. Then Judd shrugged and dropped the gun in his pocket. “When shall we take that aerial tour of the ranch?”

“You name it.”

He thought a moment. “Wednesday's good.”

“Fine. I'll drive over and we can leave after I've seen Patrick.”

Brushing a kiss across her forehead, he pointed at the door. “Go inside with your behemoth and lock up.”

She did, grateful that he'd taken her rejection so well. She smiled as he tooted his horn in farewell and set about fixing Le Moyne's soyburgers.

That night she was grateful for the big dog's sprawling guard beside her bed. The training session and her talks with victims, especially the brown-eyed nurse, haunted her.

Had it come to that in this country, that so many felt compelled to arm themselves? Was it worth surviving a holocaust if you had to kill your neighbors? And what of the thousands of young men like Pardo who'd found no peace or homecoming in America?

Faces, voices, the sounds of firing all chased confusedly through her mind. Shea's ironic smile condemned and taunted her. If only he hadn't come while she was shooting! It was damned unfair. But so was he, drat him! He wanted to think all women were awful and he certainly wouldn't give her the benefit of any doubt.

She tossed restlessly. Maybe she was being silly. Maybe she should try to view sex as Shea did, not mix it up with love. Judd would serve very well in that case. She might even get over her useless longing for Shea.

But she moaned and her body tautened as she remembered the sweet wild way he'd loved her. It was a long time before she slept.

Geronimo appeared next morning in time to join her in a second cup of coffee. If Shea had told him about seeing her at Stronghold, he didn't bring it up. She helped carry over pipe and fittings for her shower, while Geronimo inverted a twenty-gallon tank and carried it across on his head and hands.

The tank was black-painted to absorb heat and had a black plastic cover. Tracy helped him rig the scaffolding and put up the bamboo surround for the shower, which enclosed most of a big flat rock.

“Come winter, you'll need something snugger,” he said, pausing to down three glasses of tea. He added with a trace of disappointment, “I hoped Mary would be here today.”

“I'll try to bring her when I go to see Patrick,” Tracy promised. “But I thought I'd give you lunch first.”

“Lunch?
Chica
, you go right now!”

So, laughing, Tracy changed into clean clothes and drove to the ranch. Mary, washing her hair after sleeping late, promised to be ready in an hour. Tracy went upstairs and drank coffee with Patrick, regaling him with the story of her new shower and Le Moyne's astonishing penchant for soyburgers.

He chuckled but when she stopped her bright chatter, he said in a halting voice, “Honey, those two bull-headed sons of mine! Is the grazing as bad as Shea says?”

Tracy hesitated. “I'm no expert, Patrick. But there are big stretches where there's no grass at all. None of it looks really good.”

“If Shea weren't so damn stubborn!” the old cowman rumbled, knotting his good hand into a fist as brown and gnarled as a mesquite root. “His land would carry a thousand head till it rains.”

“By then he might lose what gains he's made in restoring the grass.” Tracy hadn't intended to get mixed up in her cousins' feud. She had defended Shea instinctively and to her considerable chagrin, but once started she went ahead. “Patrick, it's going to take more than a good rain to help. Judd knows that. Doesn't he want to irrigate to grow alfalfa? Unless you want to turn the ranch into a giant feeding lot, it might be a good idea to sell down to the land's carrying capacity.”

Patrick grinned somewhat sheepishly. “You know what cow people are, girl. Give 'em a good year and ever after they want to think that was normal and calculate according. Damn it! Lyin' here like a rotten log, not being able to see for myself—”

He passed his hand violently across his sightless eyes. At a muffled sound from Tracy, he controlled himself. “You never knew my father, honey. Wish you could have heard him say grace. ‘Course, once would have done it because it never changed. ‘God bless the grass,' he'd say. ‘God bless the grass.'”

No better thing to bless; without green plants converting air, sunlight and minerals into food, there'd be no life. Patrick sighed. “I guess I'll have to talk to Judd. If we can't lease some graze, we'll sell down to what we can carry.”

Judd wouldn't take to that kindly. He was a tough opponent, even for a man in full health. Tracy felt a burst of indignation at Shea. If he were helping run the Socorro instead of withdrawing, holier-than-thou, to his own little kingdom, Patrick wouldn't have to fight these battles, at least not alone.

Mary came in to see if Patrick wanted anything before she left. Both young women kissed him goodbye and Patrick laughed. “Say, now, there are advantages to being old and helpless! Good thing for you I can't chase you around the bed, Mary
mía!
”

“I'd chase you right into it!” she teased, and hugged him with a sort of fierce protectiveness before she joined Tracy at the door.

“You're certainly good for him,” said Tracy as they went out to the pickup. She had been a bit startled, though, at Mary's kissing Patrick.

Mary offered no apologies. “He's a wonderful guy. That wife of his—”

She bit the words off. Tracy turned the subject. “There's another wonderful man waiting for you. And wait till you meet Le Moyne!”

Geronimo had finished rigging the shower. He showed Tracy how to attach the fitted hose to the pump nozzle when she wanted to fill up the tank. Then he took the first shower while the women made big open-faced grilled-cheese sandwiches with spiced mustard, crisp radish sprouts and sliced dills. Tracy retrieved a bottle of chablis from the concrete cooling trough, and dessert was sesame cookies and yogurt with crushed fresh pineapple.

When Tracy said Patrick had decided to sell some cattle, Geronimo looked skeptical. “Judd'll find some way around it.” He glanced shyly at Mary. “How'd you like to go to dinner in Nogales, maybe to a movie if there's anything good?”

“What's good?” asked Mary.

“A show where Apaches beat the white-eyes,” he grinned.

“If you find it, I'll buy the tickets.” Mary glanced at Tracy. “Sound fun to you?”

“Sounds like a date.” Tracy laughed. “Have a good time. And Geronimo, thanks for putting up the shower. Pure luxury!”

She felt deserted, though, after they were gone. She did the dishes, then collected a saw and baling wire. Going to the edge of the clearing down where the spring water began to run cool, she erected a blind, a concealment of dead boughs and brush, where she could set up her camera and wait for a good shot.

Hot and dirty after she was finished, she had a lukewarm soap shower, and then, in her terry robe, went to the rock basin to soak. Tossing her robe over a branch, she lay down in the smoothed stone, resting her head against the back of the bowl.

With Le Moyne drowsing nearby, she felt completely safe, drowsy after her troubled sleep of the night before. Late sun filtered caressingly down on her. She shut her eyes, lulled by the constant rippling of water over rocks.

Half asleep, wholly relaxed, she didn't respond for a moment to her sensing of a denser shadow. When she did, fear shot piercingly through her, sent her heart pounding.

What was there? What would she see when she opened her eyes?

Shea's face. Strange and grim, his long mouth severe. But his eyes were blue fire. He began to strip. How beautiful he was! Muscled shoulders and broad chest curved to flat belly and steel-sinewed thighs. She felt weak, a thick salty taste like blood in her mouth, as she saw the proud thrusting of his desire.

She closed her eyes again. He caught her shoulders, gave her a little shake. “Do you want me?”

Unable to speak, she held up her arms to him.

He took her at once, pace going from fury to gentleness, carrying her with him, controlling her with hands and mouth and gripping legs. When she cried out in sobbing rapture, he crested like a storm, sweeping her out of time and space, laving her in a swirl of soft exploding lights and darknesses.

When that calmed, she was content to lie in his arms, face on his shoulder and chest. Content till what he'd told her so scornfully that first time came crowding into her brain. But when she stirred, he turned lazily. He was smiling as he took her lips. She trembled and was open to his hands, then to his renewed force.

He was her man. She couldn't deny that. Just as surely, she was his woman. But after a second deeper, richer, less frantic time, he got up and began to wash himself.

Tracy got up from his clothes, which had again made their bed and pulled on her robe, not at all ready to wash his scent from her. She was totally unprepared for his sardonic query.

“Well, did you learn all about how to kill people?”

His juices stung her then. She ripped off the robe and washed herself, letting him see the repudiation. Certainly, she wasn't going to admit that she'd given Judd the gun.

“What I do is none of your business!”

He nodded his red-gold head. “Right you are. But any man who found you in that basin would make it his business.”

“Le Moyne would tackle anyone but you and Geronimo.” She belted on the robe and thrust her feet into her sandals, keeping her face turned so he couldn't see she was close to tears.

Damn him! How could he make her feel like a cheap whore when their loving was so wonderful? She started rapidly toward the house, but he didn't have to stretch his legs to keep up with her.