Dynomite: A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance (9 page)

I’d never told Lawson about these occasional maulings from my uncle. I couldn’t. I had told Dad a couple of times a few years ago, and he’d brushed it off as being “nothing to get upset about.” I knew he didn’t want to rock the boat with Marcus, what with Marcus owning at least half the ranch, especially now. Cliff Pleasure had only actually come into ownership of half of Hardscrabble recently, when his wife passed away. Only then had it become official. But Marcus Seaver and his sister Hattie, originally from Oklahoma, had been the sole owners when Cliff Pleasure had asked for her hand twenty years ago. Now? I could understand why my dad didn’t want to cause trouble with Marcus.

There were other reasons why Marcus shouldn’t be touching me. But that was the most logical one to use against someone who saw nothing wrong with incest. Me being too young, and related to him by blood, well, those weren’t strong arguments to use against someone that twisted.

“I heard tell Lawson Willard was going back east to college.” He said “back east” as though he’d come from there. A Bostonian with an Okie twang. He was elite for no reason, having inherited half a ranch he didn’t even know how to run. I knew way more about the inner workings of Hardscrabble than he did. But we had to pay respects to him. He pinched my nipple. “Ah, hell, April bug. You just get purdier and purdier as you grow. You’re not going to be a little girl anymore.”

This time I did twist his arm away. “I haven’t been ‘little’ for quite a while,
uncle
. And it’s been wrong of you to touch me this whole time. I need you to stay away from me.”

There. That cloud, that darkness coming over his face. That told me something bad was going to happen, and the familiar doom sunk its tentacles into my entrails. I started inching toward the slider, but Marcus scooted between me and the door. Grabbing me by the upper arms, he twirled me around, slamming me against the sheet glass.

Now he was snarling. “Listen here, young missy. You know the drill. You’re not changing the rules on me this late in the game. You’ve let me do what I want for three years. You stop now, I tell your daddy what a slut you are. Then you
never
get in to your fancy college.”

I cried, “I’m
already
not getting into any damned fancy-pants college, you fucking hillbilly! And I’ll tell my daddy first—he’ll believe me before he believes you!” My dad wouldn’t. At least, he might believe me deep down, but on the surface he’d pretend to believe Marcus. I’d be the slut. I was always the slut. Everything was my fault. My dad blamed me for my mother’s cancer. If only she hadn’t given birth, maybe her ovaries wouldn’t have rotted.

Marcus wasn’t even listening to me. “Ah, baby doll!” he grunted, and buried his face between my tits.

Oh my God
. The more I squirmed, the more my boobs smashed his stupid face between them. He nuzzled and worried my cleavage like a coyote thrashing a rabbit. He seemed to be over the top with lust, muttering shit like, “I’m gonna git you, you young thang…I’m gonna bury my pecker in your hot box and hump the shit out of you.” Yanking down the U-neck of my tank, my tits were mortifyingly exposed to the light of day, and he pounced on them like a crazed carnivore.

He was hurting me, biting and licking my nipples and muttering crazy shit. At the same time, he leaned on me so heavily I couldn’t extricate myself. I had only one choice. I grabbed the sliding door handle and yanked.

I fell halfway into Sammy Davis’s room. The edge of the door stopped the bulk of the hillbilly horndog, and I was able to lithely twine around the door jam and sprint through the bedroom to the safety of the hallway.

“And don’t touch me ever again!” I shrieked, for later evidence in case anyone was listening.

Oh, God. Dyno was.

Had he been waiting the entire time down the hallway? Leaning against a wall with boots crossed, he looked like he was dying of boredom, wanting a smoke, but he’d made himself stay there. I just ran straight on past, pretending that tugging up the neckline of my shirt over my bared boobs was a thing I did every day, maybe on exiting the bathroom.

“Hey hey hey,” he called out, as though just waking up. He held out a hand as I rushed by, and I’ll never forget the silken feel of his fingertips as they brushed my arm. Although I’d just been mauled by someone creepy, his touch didn’t nauseate me at all. My psyche could tell the difference in the touch.

Still, I couldn’t bear to face anyone. I kept barreling straight through the house, past the dining room where Dad and Sadie still drank their drinks, directly for the front door.

Dyno caught up with me at the door, but he didn’t cross the threshold. “Hey. What happened back there? That’s your uncle, right?”

I went back only long enough to tell him, “Never you mind. Anything to do with Marcus, ignore it.”

“Now, I don’t like the sounds of this—”

I waggled a finger at him. “And
don’t
try to follow me.”

He obeyed. I had no car, so I jogged down the long driveway toward one of the main roads that led to various buildings on our land.

Dyno obeyed me and didn’t follow. I was completely disappointed. Crushed, almost.

DYNO

I
wasn’t born
yesterday. I can see shit happening a mile away. It’s one of my best qualities.

And there was something creepy about that uncle.

April obviously didn’t want me to pursue the issue, although I couldn’t get it out of my mind as I returned to the supper table. It was important to kiss Cliff Pleasure’s ass, so that’s what I’d do. Eventually the creepy uncle sat down, too. He ate only the beef tacos, none of the greens or beans that Josefina had prepared so thoughtfully for us. That was typical of Okies. They think Texans live only on meat. But we know better. We want to live long. We eat our vegetables.

I didn’t learn anything during the rest of the dinner. Other than Marcus thought we should deworm our stock, and I told him we’d done that last week. Showed how much he knew. Then he said “isn’t it time for you to head down to the ranch where you work?” So I did.

Only, I didn’t head to the corral. Javier knew I was still laid up with bruised ribs. He was fairly supportive of my rodeo bid and didn’t want me to mess myself up any worse than I already had.

I felt the open road before me as my Panhead purred between my thighs. What did Sal Paradise say in
On the Road?
I had “nowhere to go but everywhere.” I could go hit the Neon Cocktail, but the chances of getting into another bar brawl were pretty steep. Last time, I had left a local vaquero wearing a triangular ball rack like a crown, only to find out later he rode for a rival brand. Those fellows at Lone Palm Ranch were still trolling for me brandishing various hammers, cutters, and nippers, or so the rumor went. Maybe I’d started the rumor myself. But it was the sort of image I liked to project.

Where could April have gone on foot? I headed directly to Sequoia’s house. I didn’t want to harass her about her uncle’s secret. I just wanted to make sure she was okay.

When I’d seen her crying in that courtyard, that was the moment my heart took a sudden turn. I didn’t want to make life hard on her anymore. She already had a tough enough life, what with her mom just dying. I could see her point of view. Her dad married a stranger not six months after her mom’s death. She didn’t know my mother. She didn’t know how fun-loving and young at heart Sadie could be. April didn’t know any of her good qualities, and of course she wouldn’t open her mind to them. It
was
too soon after her mother’s death. I agreed with that.

Although a space opened in my heart, I wasn’t a complete philanthropist. The feel of her plush, nubile figure squirming against my hard-on was still as fresh in my mind as if it’d happened last night. I was playing a risky game trying to push up on her. If her father found out, I’d lose my job. But then I thrived on risk. Risk made life worthwhile. I was a man of highs and lows, ups and downs. The middle part didn’t interest me.

Sure as shit, Sequoia and April were out back of his shack doing target practice with a couple of pistols. They shot at paper targets fixed to hay bales. The bullets went right through the bales and pelted a rusty disc-mowing machine about sixty yards beyond the bales. They could easily ricochet off any part of the metal machine, and they did.

“Hey,” I bellowed, slapping my cowboy hat on my head. I marched through the acrid cloud of cordite, keeping a safe distance behind the shooting line, and the crazed shooters. “You’re gonna hit—”

Ping!
One of April’s rounds sliced off the mower’s blade with a crack of lightning. Who knew where that round had ended up?

“Listen,” I shouted, taking long-legged strides toward the dumb girl. I disarmed her easily. She was looking at me openmouthed, as though it was so unexpected to see me at my best friend’s house. I pointed the barrel at the ground. “Look. Those bales aren’t dense enough to stop those rounds. Find a berm or the side of a hill to shoot at. Until then, don’t let off a single round.”

Sequoia’s eyes wobbled in his skull. “Really? All right.” He’d do anything I said. But especially if it made sense.

I wasn’t sure whether to hand him back his own piece, but eventually I did. You couldn’t keep a man’s piece when he was standing right there. Besides, he had plenty more where those came from. He had a few gun racks in his house.

“I was wondering about that,” said April. “They did seem to be going right through the hay bales.”

“Yeah. And you shouldn’t be shooting with a shitfaced guy, either.”

Shrugging, April started meandering around the corner of the house. “Doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.” Her demeanor toward me had changed in the past hour. She wasn’t literally or figuratively pushing me away. For example, I wasn’t too worried about her hocking one down the middle of my face anymore. It hadn’t been too long ago I’d thought of her as a “bottle blonde filly.” Now our connection went deeper, and I could let my guard down with her a little. Just a little. “Don’t really care anymore whether I shoot myself.”

“Now, you don’t want to be going and saying that.” My words had the empty ring of platitude. Anyone would say that. I had to go farther, to prove we were blood now, sort of. “I’d stop you before you’d do anything like that, bless your heart. You’re just depressed because your mama passed. As anyone would be,” I quickly added.

She ignored my words. “Give me one of those cigs.”

I had a pack rolled up in the sleeve of my T-shirt. It was a way to show off my inked sleeve, but now I was glad I had them. Suddenly I wanted to satisfy her every need. I had somehow, somewhere along the way, started to fall for her. She wasn’t my type at all. I liked them gritty, street-smart, and sassy. This chick was an ice queen to the core. Miss Squarepants was hooky—handy with her horns. But now she’d softened up, pulled in her horns. I might be able to see a different side to her.

We smoked like the teenagers we were, and a cig had never been so satisfying. She blew out a stream of smoke, studying it. “Sequoia has nothing but good things to say about you. He seems to worship you.”

“That he does,” I had to admit. “Goes to show you. He’s studying to be a half-wit.”

She actually smiled at my description of the Cahuilla wannabe rodeo star. “I like him, always have. I wish he wouldn’t drink so much because it’s especially bad for Indians. I’ve seen him stay on a real tough honker for thirty seconds. He could be good if he’d just dial back the booze.”

“You can lead a horse to water…”

“Your mom’s a lush too. My dad never drank so much until Sadie moved in. Now there are vodka bottles everywhere.”

“No one’s twisting his arm. And you don’t know what goes on in other people’s hearts either, April. My mom’s a very unhappy woman.” I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. Telling this stranger—a somewhat rival of mine—vulnerable details about my mother? I instantly wished I could take it back. “I mean, she
was
until she married your dad. Let’s let them have their happiness. They have to have their reasons for marrying.”

She snorted smoke. “Yeah. To increase their ranching power, their names. Your mom got half your dad’s ranch, I presume?” I had to nod slightly. “You see? It’s all calculated. Everything’s a business concern.”

I said, “You
do
know they was fucking around together at the Heartland Pro Rodeo Championships in Waco before your mom even expired?”

Again, I was instantly sorry I’d said that. April’s eyes glazed over like donuts, and she dropped her lit smoke to the ground. I had to stamp on it to prevent her from starting a fire.

“Ah,” I said lamely, “I take it you didn’t know.”

“No,” she whispered. “But it makes fucking sense.”

I stomped on my cig, too. “Yeah. I actually ran across them doing it by the catch pens at Waco. Do you remember the steer roping championships in Amarillo? That’s when the officials had to warn them to stop macking on each other in public.”

“No…” she said distantly, looking at a spot about three miles over my shoulder.

I had to change the subject. “Look. I heard that Lawson Willard moron is going to Harvard.” I snorted. “Guess they’ll take anyone these days. But what’re you going to do?” I really wanted to know who her man would be once Willard split.