Delilah's Weakness (4 page)

She undressed him, clinging to her exasperation like an amulet and not lingering over the task. She left him in a soft blue pullover and boxers, and jerked the flannel sheet and quilts up to his chin. Only then did she realize her hands were shaking. Delayed reaction, she thought, draping his jeans over the rocking chair and arranging the boots under it. She gathered the blood–stained jacket and damp socks into a bundle and left him.

Surprisingly, the care label on the jacket proclaimed its washability, so she put it in a sink full of cold water to soak. How odd it seemed to be moving around the big, warm, familiar room that was a combination of living room, dining room, and kitchen, putting a CD into the player, taking a jar of peanut butter, an apple, and a pitcher of goat’s milk out of the refrigerator, and sitting down at the table, and opening her ledger books, just as she did every night.

There is a strange man asleep in my bed, and a crippled airplane in my pasture!

Delilah gave an astonished laugh and scooped a large spoonful of peanut butter out of the jar. As she nibbled absently at it, she ran her finger down the untidy column of numbers in the ledger, counting under her breath. The figures and notations were in several different types of ink as well as pencil and crayon, and were marred by frequent crossing–outs and margin jottings. They would have meant absolutely nothing to anyone else, but to Delilah they were confirmation of what she already knew—that in a little more than a week, give or take a couple of days, the first of ninety–five ewes would lamb. The latest lambs would have arrived at the end of a month’s time. The interim three weeks would be a nightmare of backbreaking work and sleepless nights. Could she do it alone? Last year she had sometimes wondered whether she’d make it, and she’d had only fifty ewes.

Pushing the ledger away, Delilah laced her fingers behind her head and stared at the wood–plank ceiling. She had to manage; that was all there was to it. This was the critical year. If she didn’t break even this year, she was finished. Her father would say, "I told you so," and Amos could have her land and her precious water rights. She would finally get the comeuppance a lot of people had been predicting for years.

There was some stomping on the front doorstep, followed by a rapping on the door. Delilah cast a quick glance out the window, where an official black–and–white car with a light bar on the roof waited, lights on and windshield wipers thumping, and called out, "Come on in, Roy."

A tall blond man in sheriff’s–department khakis, cowboy hat, and a fur–collared leather jacket stuck his head in the door.

"Evenin’, Delilah. I’m pretty muddy."

Delilah waved impatiently from her seat at the table. "Come on in here, Roy. You know I don’t get excited about a little mud. Come have a cup of coffee. Still snowing?" She got up to reach for the kettle, but the deputy waved her back as he came in and shut the door behind him. He took off his hat but stayed where he was, with one hand on the doorknob.

"Can’t stay. Yeah, it’s coming down pretty good—not sticking, though. Just wet and soggy enough to make a mess of the roads. Say, listen, I’m trying to run down a missing plane. Had a report from Mammoth. Thermodyne says one of their big shots is down, and was last heard from in this general area. I was just over at Amos’s, and he says he thought he heard a plane go over about chore time, flying low. Thought maybe you might have heard something."

Delilah smiled smugly and pointed with her peanut butter–coated spoon. "I can do better than that. The plane’s up in my pasture."

Deputy Sheriff Roy Underwood’s head jerked in surprise, and then he grinned. "Shoot. I mighta known. Pilot?"

Again Delilah used her spoon as a pointer. "In there."

"Well, I’ll be damned. Hurt?"

"Not much. Just a scalp wound. I sewed him up, but he’d lost quite a bit of blood and was pretty shaky. I didn’t want to try to drive him out in this storm."

"Dammit, Delilah, when are you going to get a phone?" The deputy was moving toward the bedroom door, his lawman’s paraphernalia clanking softly. He paused with his hand on the doorknob to give her a wondering look. "Sewed him up, huh?" He chuckled and stuck his head into the bedroom, looked for a long moment, then withdrew, pulling the door carefully shut.

"I’ll be damned. Guess I can take you up on that offer of coffee after all." He tossed his hat onto the table. "You know, some worried people are going to be awfully glad to hear about this. In fact—" He snatched his hat back and turned to the door. "I’ll go get this on the radio and then shut down. I’m about due for a break."

He disappeared into the snowflakes, and Delilah put a kettle of water on to boil. By the time Roy had returned, stamping his feet and shaking snow off his hat, the water was hot and the jar of instant coffee was sitting on the table beside two cups and the sugar bowl. She and Roy both liked their coffee black and sweet.

"Ah––looks good. Thanks." Rubbing his hands together, Roy hitched a chair back and sat down. "Sure is nice to have something like this turn out all right for a change."

"Who is he?" Delilah asked, trying to sound casual. "You mentioned Thermo… something."

"Thermodyne—the company that’s doing the geothermal drilling up near Mammoth Lakes. From what I gather, this guy’s the company’s founder, chief engineer, and president. Name’s…" He took a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, peered at it, and tucked it back. "MacGregor. Luke MacGregor." He grinned, jerking a thumb toward the bedroom. "Good–looking guy. I have to say, he looks right at home in your bed. Di."

Delilah made a face. "You’re as bad as Maura Jane. And don’t you start on me, either," she added warningly as he opened his mouth to comment. "I’ve heard all I want to hear about how this place is too big and the job’s too tough for me, and I need a man."

"Whether or not the job’s too big for you’s got nothing to do with it. And," Roy said emphatically, pointing a finger at her to silence her retort, "don’t give me that male–chauvinistic, Cinderella complex bullshit, either. That’s not what I mean, and you know it. People just weren’t meant to go it alone. A woman needs a man, just like a man needs a woman. That’s a fact of nature."

"Bull…feathers," Delilah said succinctly.

"Bull nothin’. Delilah, just look at Maura Jane and me. Now, you sure can’t say I’ve held her back or kept her from doing what she wants to do, can you? Hell, with Maura Jane always off to New York or L.A. for talk shows and writers’ conferences, I bet I’ve changed more diapers than she has.
And
I make better pancakes. Maura Jane’s had all the room she needs to be who she wants to be, and she still shares a pretty damn good life with me."

"You two are the exception that proves the rule. Let’s face it, Roy, any man with an idea of hooking up with me is either going to want to move me off of this place or take it over. And there’s no way I’m ever going to let anybody do either one. This is
my
place,
my
land, Roy. I’ve wanted to be a rancher all my life. Not the wife of a rancher—a rancher. I’m one–eighth Navajo, did you know that? Maybe that’s got something to do with it, I don’t know. I bought this land with Indian money—my mother’s, my grandmother’s, and my own share combined. I threw my whole stake into this land and the nucleus of my flock, and I figured I had enough money to support me through three building years. This is the third year. I figured with a hundred ewes I could break even, if the market holds steady and I’m very frugal and have a good crop of lambs. Well, I’ve got ninety–five ewes, thanks to that coyote trouble I had last year. So I’m on thin ice anyway, and I get very defensive when anyone tells me I shouldn’t be doing this."

"Yeah, I know." Roy drained his mug and stood up. "Lambing time coming up, too, right? Getting any help this year?"

Delilah smiled tiredly. "Now, you know I can’t afford a hired man."

"Amos Chappel tells me he offered you one of his men and you turned him down."

"And that surprises you? Good old Amos." Delilah gave a short spurt of laughter. "You and I both know what Amos Chappel wants. And you wonder why I get touchy on the subject of men. He wants this place for the water in that creek, Roy, and you know it."

"Sounds like a John Wayne movie," Roy said, laughing. "Why is it so hard to think he could be interested in
you?"

"You sound like one of Maura Jane’s books. Amos never cared for anything but a dollar in his life."

"Then, wouldn’t he be better off to let you struggle? Fall flat on your—"

"He’s sure that’ll happen sooner or later anyway, and he’s just dumb enough to figure I’ll be so beholden to him I’ll fall right into his arms."

"Delilah," Roy said, clamping his hat onto his head, "how did someone so young and so pretty get to be so cynical?"

"Try being young, pretty, and female sometime, Roy. That and a dime will buy you a lot of grief, and not even enough to telephone for help. All people do is use that as a reason to keep me from doing the things I want to do. Go home, Roy. I’m tired and I want to go to bed—on the couch," she added pointedly at his guffaw, and threatened to throw her cup at him.

L
uke MacGregor, founder
and president of Thermodyne, Inc., was still asleep in Delilah’s bed when she went out to do her chores at the crack of a cold, slushy dawn. In fact, it looked to Delilah as if he’d barely moved since she’d tucked the quilts under his chin the night before.

After graining the ewes in the holding pen, lugging three heaping loads of hay in the wheelbarrow to the pasture, carrying hay and water to the rams’ pen, and feeding, watering, and milking the two goats, Delilah went back to the house for breakfast and decided to look in on her patient again. She was beginning to worry about him. She didn’t know what constituted normal postplane–crash behavior, but she had never seen anyone literally sleep like a rock.

Well, he’s moved, at least, she thought when she entered the bedroom. He’d rolled onto his side, toward the wall, where an anemic March sunrise was crystallizing the moisture–fogged window. Delilah approached the bed timidly.

"Mr. MacGregor?"

There was no answer. She gazed perplexedly at the quilted mound, the feathers of chestnut hair, and gnawed at her lower lip.
Is he all right?

He wasn’t even snoring. For the first time she began to question the wisdom of her decision to keep him here rather than drive him to a hospital.

She hated to disturb him, but she needed reassurance. Bending over, she cautiously touched his shoulder and repeated softly, "Mr. MacGregor, wake up."

There was a prolonged exhalation—not quite a yawn, not quite a groan—and an arm emerged from the blankets to hook carelessly over her neck.

Caught off–balance and completely by surprise, Delilah gave a small squawk and collapsed onto the bed. Luke rolled toward her as his other arm came out of the covers, and he wrapped both arms securely around her. With a contented and completely unintelligible murmur he cuddled her close to his body, one hand cradling her head and tucking it firmly into the warm curve of his neck and shoulder.

Delilah held herself very still, half–suffocated with incipient panic. She told herself there was no reason to panic, that it was, in fact, an extremely humorous situation. Someday, probably, she would tell the story and chuckle heartily. At the moment, though, she was in no position to appreciate fully the comic aspects of her predicament. She was much too busy trying to remain calm enough to figure a way out of it.

Calm, reasoning analysis of the situation—that was what she needed.

Obviously, he’s asleep and doesn’t know what he’s doing.

He’s mistaken me for someone else.

She rather doubted that a man who looked as he did was accustomed to waking up alone. He could even be married.

All right. So far, so good.

But the question was, could she get loose without waking him up? She moved experimentally against the restraining bands of his arms.

No.
The answer to that was definitely no. His arms tightened, holding her even closer.

She relaxed, momentarily accepting defeat, and a very strange thing happened. She realized her position wasn’t at all uncomfortable. It was, in fact, extraordinarily enjoyable. There was something insidiously seductive about being surrounded by the vibrant warmth of a male body, the unfamiliar yet wholly pleasant scent of an essentially clean, well–groomed healthy man just waking up in the morning—a musky scent more intoxicating than the most exotic cologne.

His stubbly chin rasped across her forehead. "Mmm," a low, husky voice murmured. "Your face is cold. Whatcha been doing?"

Delilah clamped her teeth on her lower lip. She put her hand flat on his chest and managed to lever her head up. "Mr. MacGregor—"

Chestnut eyes fringed with black stared intently into hers. "I’ve died," Luke said in that gravelly voice, "and gone to heaven."

She was already only inches away; it didn’t take much for him to close the gap. His hand, already cupped warmly over the back of her head, exerted just a bit more pressure and he brought her mouth to his.

It wasn’t the usual first kiss between strangers. There was nothing tentative or exploratory about it. He simply kissed her with the casual familiarity and thoroughness of long habit, as if he were accustomed to finding her in his arms at daybreak. And maybe because of that quality of familiarity, or maybe because she was too shocked to resist, for one long, inebriated moment Delilah gave herself up to that kiss.

And then, like a diver surfacing, she broke free, spitting fury.

"What the
hell
do you think you’re doing!"

His eyes laughed at her, wide awake now. "Oh, well. Not heaven, then. That’s okay. I never expected to get there anyway. This’ll do just as well." Before she could scramble off the bed and out of range, he caught her again and rolled her under him, his hands pinning her shoulders to the pillows as his quilt–cocooned body trapped and held her helpless. He gave her a quick, hard kiss, then released her, laughing as she rolled away and lurched drunkenly to her feet.