Can't Hurry Love (11 page)

Once they got to the dusty, hardscrabble pocket of land on the flat edge of the desert, Mark and José Ontegna shook hands and discussed horseflesh.

Forgotten, Eli dozed in the truck, his hat pulled low over his eyes. It was tough ignoring the hunger making his stomach growl and even tougher to ignore the bitterness that ached in his muscles. Bitterness over his mom. Over the fact that they didn’t have enough money to stop at McDonald’s after the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Mark had made were gone, but they had money for horses.

When the passenger-side door was jerked open, Eli fell
out, barely managing to catch himself against the door before meeting the hard red dust.

“What’s going on?” He squinted up at Mark.

His father’s face was different. Not angry or sad, but blank. Like extra skin had grown up around his eyes and mouth, armor against showing emotion. He wasn’t going to smile. Or cry. Ever again.

“Come on out here. We’re gonna break these ponies before we put ’em in the trailer.”

The thick, sturdy Criollos stirred in the paddock as if they’d heard Mark’s words and started running the edges of the pen, their manes and tails black banners behind them.

Eli had watched his father break dozens of horses over the years and he stepped up to the split wood of the fence, climbing to the top rung, where he planned on watching.

But Mark put a hand in the collar of his denim jacket. “Come on,” he said.

“Me? You want me to break them?”

“That one.” Mark pointed to the only mare of the three in the paddock. “You’re big enough.”

Fear and excitement made his spit sour, his mouth a dry cave. That horse was huge and his body felt so small.

“Dad—”

“You a coward?”

This version of his dad wasn’t totally unfamiliar—he usually showed up after fights with his mom—but that blankness on his face was terrifying, and Eli knew he couldn’t admit he was scared. He couldn’t say he was only eight and that his dad was acting crazy.

The tough Mexican vaqueros lined the paddock, shaking their heads, but Dad ignored them.

“You don’t leave because something’s hard, Eli. You don’t get to walk away just because you’re unhappy.”

That day, getting the beating of his life from a strawberry
mare, Eli was given the first taste of what the next twenty years of his life would be like as a substitute for his mother.

His dad wasn’t abusive, but he was cold and unforgiving. The crimes he couldn’t pardon weren’t even Eli’s—they were Eli’s mother’s.

And happiness, starting that weekend, became a rumor. A ghost. A bedtime story other kids were read.

It wasn’t as if he was happier after getting fired by Victoria. But a week later, after the sting and the shock wore off and the shame was something he was used to, he did feel lighter. He could stand up straight without the weight of a hundred-year-old grudge on his back.

He owned his house and the ten acres of land around it. He had a barn full of strong, good-looking horses with excellent pedigrees and he still had money in the bank.

This was more than he’d had his entire life. He felt rich with possessions and purpose.

And for the first time in his adult life he could focus on the now. And the now was a lot of work. The now kept him pretty busy.

Sitting up on the roof of his barn, Eli took another nail out from between his lips and hammered in the last of the shingles. Twilight was turning purple around the edges and Eli knew he’d have to head inside soon, but he wanted to finish the roof on the barn tonight.

He had four horses he needed to pick up from Crooked Creek tomorrow. And if he stopped working he’d have to think about seeing Victoria again, about what he would say to try to make what he’d done right, so he just kept working.

Headlights sliced through the growing shadows as a pickup bounced down the gravel road toward his house. Soda, his collie, stood up from the porch and barked. The truck stopped and his Uncle John stepped out, looking
for him as he hitched his pants up over his belly. Soda went over for a pat, her tail wagging.

It was about time John came looking for answers. Eli had expected him sooner.

“Up here,” Eli said.

John took three steps toward the barn, peering up at him from under his hat. “Fired?”

“Yep.”

“Boy, you better get down here and tell me what the hell happened.”

“Give me a second.” Slipping the hammer into his tool belt, he crab-walked over to the ladder and climbed down. He hoped his uncle had a six of Shiner Bock in the truck. Because what he needed a hell of a lot more than his uncle giving him a hard time was six cold beers.

“You let that woman fire you?”

“Go ahead, make your jokes.”

“Boy, you are the joke!”

Eli sighed, preparing himself to weather his uncle’s temper.

“Your father drank himself into a stupor every day he worked in that barn and he didn’t get fired.”

Eli shrugged. “Clearly I have a special talent.”

“You hit her?”

“What? No!”

“Well, even that’s forgivable with certain women.”

Eli stared at his uncle. That had to be a joke.

“What I did was pretty unforgivable. And it’s all right that I’m not there anymore. It’s …” He laughed. “It’s fine, actually.”

“Fine?” His uncle stepped closer, his wide chest straining at the buttons of his dirty shirt.

Eli felt the bite of his uncle’s temper on the scruff of his neck and he stepped away rather than pushing John back. He was just starting to feel good about himself; he wasn’t going to go and hit the only family he had left.

“It’s not fine. You’re a Turnbull.”

Laughter burned like bitter medicine in his throat. “And what has being a Turnbull ever gotten me?”

“Don’t go ungrateful on me now, boy. We agreed you having that job was our best chance at getting the land back.”

“We’re not going to get it back, Uncle John! Victoria has leased most of the land.”

“Leased? What the hell are you talking about? Since when?”

“Couple weeks ago.”

Uncle John’s face went white and still, and his big chest panted. Eli grabbed his elbow, feeling him weave.

“Whoa, Uncle John, you need to sit down?”

“What rights did she lease?” he whispered. “Water? Minerals? Someone going to start drilling on our land?”

“I doubt it. She leased most of it to ranchers in the area.” Eli led his uncle, ready to sit him down on the wide bumper of the truck, but John slapped his hands away.

“You said she had no idea what she was doing.”

“She didn’t. But she went out and got one.” He told himself it wasn’t respect coloring his voice, but Uncle John heard it and gaped at him.

“You
like
her. A skinny bitch from the city and a Baker to boot? Boy, I never thought I’d see the day when you’d so spectacularly fail me.”

Eli gaped, feeling like a kid getting hit for the first time by someone he trusted. “I feel nothing for her. I feel nothing for any of it anymore.”

“You are giving up.”

“I got my own life to worry about; I can’t keep carrying the mistakes my family made. It was making me …” He thought about that kiss, of her arms pushing against him. The fear and desire in her eyes. The way he ground
himself into her softness, like a man without conscience. What kind of man takes advantage of that? What kind of man thinks it’s okay to use a woman’s desire to his advantage?

Not the kind of man he wanted to be.

“It was turning me into a man I didn’t like.”

“Who the hell cares?” John cried, sounding a lot like Mark thirty years ago. “Poor you. This is your home. Our home. All the home you ever wanted, remember? Jesus Christ, son, what have we been working toward all these years? This is for you!”

Eli shook his head, wounded by the look in his uncle’s eyes, by his words, by the injustice of his disappointment. “Not anymore it’s not. Even if I somehow could get my job back, no Baker will sell me the land. Not now. Between selling the herd and … this thing with Victoria …”

Uncle John rubbed a hand over his red cheeks. “You force her?”

It took him a second to catch on to what his uncle meant by “forced” and he instinctively recoiled, staring at John, wishing he could be offended, shocked at the thought.

But how far had he been, really, from something like that?

“No, but … I pushed … when I shouldn’t have.”

“Some women like that sort of thing.”

Jesus Christ, what kind of women was his uncle dating?

Eli thought of the prim Victoria, the pride she wore like another ugly shirt. She might have wanted him, but she didn’t want him like that. A woman like Victoria wouldn’t want something so coarse. So raw.

And she hadn’t.

“Not her. Trust me.”

“I thought we were a team, Eli.”

“Yeah, well maybe it’s time to realize we’re the losing team.”

“Bullshit.”

Eli couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t be under one more person’s boot heel.

“I don’t want all that land anymore, Uncle John. I’m done. If you can’t get behind me on this, then maybe you should leave.”

“You kicking me off your land?”

“Kicking you off? God, listen to you. No. But I don’t want to fight anymore.”

“I’ve lost enough to the Bakers; I’m not losing you, too. I’m still fighting.” That gnarled finger of his uncle’s jabbed his chest, sunk into his skin like a barb.

Uncle John pushed a six-pack of beer into Eli’s arms and then climbed back in his truck. Eli watched, shell-shocked, as the only man who’d been in his corner over the years drove away, leaving him to drink a six-pack all by himself.

It was too dark to keep working on the barn, much to his regret. He had nothing else to do but walk back into the house and wait for the morning to come.

And with it, Victoria.

He turned, the beer in his arms, and was brought up short by the sight of his house in the moonlight. It seemed so much smaller somehow. A toy someone could pick up and take away. He’d added a porch a few summers ago, while Uncle John had shouted advice at him from his seat under the poplars. The summer he turned fifteen, he rebuilt the stone chimney by himself after it had been ruined by raccoons. When his father moved out, he finally fixed the sagging floor in the kitchen that his mother had always complained about.

He’d lived alone in this house for fifteen years, systematically banishing the bad memories, and he’d never felt lonely.

But tonight the sky was so big and the stars were so far away.

Soda’s cold, wet nose touched his hand, urging him into action. He cradled the beer under his arm and practically ran up the porch, as if ghosts were after him. With a sigh of relief, he pushed open the door, letting the familiar golden light spill across his feet, welcoming him home.

Soda, all the company he’d ever needed, followed him into the empty house.

“You want this.” Eli’s breath skimmed over her skin, pulling her nipples into tight beads. She groaned, rolling her body against him, trying desperately to find relief, but her hands were tied over her head and he kept his skin away. His hardness just out of reach.

“Say the words, Victoria,” he breathed, licking her lips. “Like a good girl.”

His fingers toyed with the damp curls between her legs and she wanted to beg. She wanted to scream with lust and frustration, with the desire that she’d hidden away for fifteen years.

“Fuck …” She swallowed, the words so foreign, so ridiculous in her mouth, but she was dying. “Fuck me. Please. Eli.”

The callused edge of his thumb slipped into her mouth and she sucked him, arching hard against him, seeking that hand between her legs. Something hard and rough brushed her clitoris and she cried out, shaking.

“More. God. More, Eli.”

“No.”

She screamed in frustration, breaking the bonds around her hands, and sat up, only to find herself in her dark bedroom, tragically turned on.

Alone.

Again.

Grabbing a pillow from beside her she put it over her face and screamed, flopping backwards. Lust ran thwarted circles in her body, making her crazy. Frustrated. But mostly, embarrassed.

It was just a dream. Just another sex dream wherein Eli debased her and she loved it.

Conscious, there was no way she wanted to be treated that way. But somehow when she fell asleep every night, all she wanted was to be forced to feel something. Forced to admit that under her clothes, under her skin, she was a woman who’d long been neglected.

Between her legs she was wet and sore with frustrated desire, and she curled over onto her side with a moan.

Early morning sunlight pushed against the yellow curtains, filling the room with a dim, milky light. She was going to see Eli today. He was coming to get his horses. It had been nearly two weeks since he’d kissed her and she felt like a different woman. The spa, Celeste’s support, Ruby’s eagerness—all of it had somehow changed her, given her more of herself than she’d had before.

But that kiss …

She knew in her heart that he hadn’t kissed her because of any desire he had for her. He didn’t
want
her like that.

But that didn’t change the fact that she wanted him exactly like that.

The cotton of the tank top she wore to bed was warm under her hands, her nipples ached against her fingers, her breath hitched. It had been years since she’d done this. When she was young, before the ice age of her marriage, she’d taken care of her small aches, the most persistent of her desires, instead of falling into shallow casual relationships.

Marriage to Joel, however, had proven her desires were not that persistent after all. And within a few years
she’d channeled all that lonely desire into finding the perfect drapes for the den every spring.

But now it was back with a vengeance; she felt empty and her skin hurt with its need to be touched.

What she liked—the soft touch, the firm squeeze—came back to her in a flood.

Don’t do this. Don’t think of that man and touch yourself. You’re better than that. Better than him
.

But in the end she couldn’t stop herself. She slipped her hand between her legs and thought of all the dangerous things Eli made her feel.