Renegade Man (14 page)

Two cowhands,
two young, jeans-clad women who could only be coeds and a thirtyish man in a
business suit, who Soren introduced as Rolistof’s purchasing agent, were
hunched over mugs of beer, talking and laughing. They scooted around to make
room for her. She had expected Nelda to be with the group. And her next thought
was, if Nelda’s not here, is she downstairs?

The thought
troubled her, because she knew a man like Jonah could find comfort in the other
woman’s arms. Nelda wouldn’t demand more of him than he was willing to give.

A man like
Jonah. She tried to tell herself that he was just a man like any other. No
better, no worse. But that wasn’t true. Time and experience had made him
stronger in spirit than others, larger than life. Kinder than he would have
people know.

“What are you
thinking?” Soren asked at her side.

“Oh, nothing,
just watching the dancers.”

She could tell
he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t make an issue of it. “Don’t you get lonely
out there at Tomahawk Flats, Rita-lou?”

She stared into
the eyes of a man who was trying to understand her and, yes, who wanted her.
“No. I like the solitude.”

“But tonight you
came to one of the last places on earth where you’d find solitude. So if you’re
looking for company, I’d like to offer mine. Dance?”

“Yes, I’d enjoy
that.”

The music was
slow, romantic. Most of the couples were dancing the two-step, but Soren moved
her around the sawdust-covered dance floor in an old- fashioned waltz that made
her feel ridiculously sentimental. If only the man holding her so close were
Jonah. To combat such foolish dreams, she asked, “How is RolistoPs battle with
the city going?”

“None too well.
The Silver City councilmen are forcing the water issue to an election. Despite
our ad campaigns, the Rolistof people are seen as foreigners—Englishmen without
the same civic interests as other industries—which just isn’t true. How’s your
search for Renegade Man going?”

She tilted her
head back and smiled at him. “None too well,” she said, echoing his own answer.
“Several days ago a cattle stampede wrecked two weeks’ worth of work. I think
C. B. Kingsley was behind it. I’m going to pay a call on him when I decide the
time is right.”

“You have a real
fight on your hands.”

“I can handle
it,” she said, wishing she felt as confident as her statement made her sound.

His hand at her
back pressed her against him again, and she fitted her temple against his
jawline. At her ear, he said, “You know, for a long time after my wife died I
tried dating, but it was so damned difficult to change my life-style, to adjust
to the single life and single women. But you’re different from other women,
Rita-lou. An independent soul, that’s what I’ve decided you are.”

“I’ve heard that
the Scandinavian women are war rioresses,” she said, trying to tease him out of
his somber mood.

“My mother was.
But I think that, like her, you have a softness at the center. A mystery that
would take a lifetime to divine.”

She tilted her
head to smile up at him. “And I believe you have a poetic soul, Soren
Gunnerson.”

“No, I’m
fascinated. By a lovely American wild-West Valkyrie.”

“Soren . . .
I’ll be leaving when I find my Renegade Man.”

“Not if I can
help it.”

She stared into
his impassioned, Nordic blue eyes, and she thought about Jonah, who refused to
take any chances at relationships. She smiled up at Soren, a smile that
couldn’t be interpreted as anything more than platonic. “Will you take me home
tonight?”

“There isn’t
anything I’d like to do more, Rita-lou.” He grinned down at her, his eyes
dancing. “Well, something else I’d like to do even more. Kiss you.”

She wrinkled her
nose at him. “I’d settle for a ride home, thank you.”

* * * * *

Nelda sat in the
pickup next to Jonah. After flicking the radio dial to another channel, she
rested her hand lightly on his denim-clad knee. He knew he’d had just enough
liquor to make him reckless. He felt almost cheerful—or rather, he had felt
almost cheerful until Ritz had appeared at the downstairs bar and informed him
that Soren was taking her back to Tomahawk Flats.

Nelda’s
breathing was still rapid from the kiss he had given her before he started the
engine. She snuggled against his side, rested her head against his shoulder and
sighed. “Jonah?”

“Mmhh?”

She tilted her
face upward to brush her lips along his jawline. “I know I can take the sting
from you, keep you contented.”

“I don’t doubt
that.” But there were other needs, mirages of colored fancies, floating through
his mind. Needs only one woman could satisfy.

“I know you,”
she said confidently. “You’re the sort of man who always thinks there’s
something be¬ond the next river. One day you’ll cross enough rivers to find out
that there isn’t anything on the far side that isn’t on this one.”

“I think I’ve
run out of rivers,” he said, knowing he’d had too much to drink. He parked the
pickup down the street from Livingston’s food store, in front of one of several
timber- and-stone duplexes that had been built on the site of a razed drive-in
theater. The spring of his sophomore year, he had brought Ritz to that drive-in
in a borrowed car. He had been foolishly content to lie on the hood alongside
her and munch buttered popcorn while they watched a horror flick. The speaker
had been out of order, but he hadn’t cared.

He tried to fix
his attention on Nelda, and wanted to curse when Orbison began to wail over the
radio. “Crying.” Her arms closed around him, quick as a trap. Her kiss was hot and
hungry, but then she pulled away abruptly. “Think of that, Jonah Jones. And
when you see her and think you see something wonderful, remember she’s made
just like me.” She got out of his pickup, her manner light and cheerful.

He didn’t have
to ask who “her” was.

Chapter 9

L
iving in Jonah’s
camping trailer was taxing Rita- lou’s self-control. Electricity charged the
air. She and Jonah were uncomfortably aware of each other, and a casual
brushing of a hand against a sleeve, an accidental exchange of glances, had a
strange, tense and unanticipated significance.

She and Jonah
were both exhausted from hours of uninterrupted work, and she was trying hard
to guard against an isolated, fragile moment that could intensify the power of
their awareness of one another. But keeping their relationship on professional
terms, keeping it strictly asexual, was becoming very difficult, especially
when they had to change clothes. In the mornings Jonah left before she got out
of her bunk. In the evenings, after the dinner dishes had been washed and
dried, he always seemed to find a reason to take a stroll. She used those brief
moments of privacy to change into her night clothes—an oversized T- shirt now
that long johns were no longer necessary against the night’s cold – and brush
her teeth.

He obviously
wanted to keep their relationship dis-passionate just as much as she did.

Come the
weekend, they would escape into Silver City to go their separate ways.
Weeknights, however, they were too tired to do anything but retire after
dinner. Unhappily, physical fatigue did not necessarily induce mental fatigue.
So, after a week of stirring restlessly in her bed, she switched on her night
light and wrote in her field journal. The next evening Jonah switched on his
light and read a sailing magazine, one with a gloriously colored cover photo of
a large sloop, sails furled, slicing through high seas. For a while this became
the pattern of their evenings—her writing, his reading.

“What makes you
want to fool around with fossils and dead things?” he asked one evening without
looking up from his magazine—a business journal this time.

“I’m driven by
the intellectual excitement of what I learn.”

He didn’t say
anything. Forty-five minutes later she said, without glancing his way, “I
always thought sailors were jocks, not intellectuals who followed the economy.”

“You ever watch
a sailboat race? The America’s Cup, for instance? The skipper who wins has to
be a brilliant tactician. Psychological warfare and management ability are as
important as athletic skill.”

She didn’t say
anything.

The next
evening, after another silent dinner, he asked, “Do you know how to play
hearts?”

She focused her
attention on the plate she was washing so she wouldn’t have to look at him
looking at her. Her hands still in the dishwater, she shrugged. “Sure.” If she
had any skill at cards, it was the ability to lose strategically and
overwhelmingly.

She lost almost
every hand. Across from her, Jonah sat on the narrow bench, his back against
the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. He watched her with a
satisfied smile, that singularly crooked tooth of his gleaming irresistibly
among its perfect companions.

Disgusted at
having been bested, though not su¬prised, she stopped by a discount store in
Silver City the following weekend. “You ever play Trivial Pursuit?” she asked
Jonah innocently later that night. On the Guatemalan dig, the students and the
Earthwatch team had played the game whenever bad weather or darkness prevented
them from working.

“A little,” he
replied laconically.

The first night
she amassed five of the six wedges necessary to win before he collected his
first, then went on to take the game. The next night he suggested they play
again. “What’s the matter?” she taunted merrily. “Don’t like losing?”

“Damned right I
don’t.” He slung the dish towel over his shoulders and grinned amiably at her.
“But let’s make it a little more interesting this time. Say for every wedge one
of us gets, the other one gives up an article of clothing.”

She raised one
brow. “Sort of like strip poker, only without the poker?”

“Yeah.”

She cocked her
head to one side and scrutinized him. He looked so smug. She knew he was
baiting her, but she had confidence in her ability to win. She had played this
game too many times. “You’re on, buddy.”

She had an early
run of luck and had Jonah down to his cutoff jeans and one white sock that
drooped around his ankle. Then he began reeling off answers, reducing her to
her front-clasp bra and denim shorts.

“Is all your
underwear lacy?” he asked, his smile guileless.

“None of your
business. Do you want to try for this wedge or not?”

“Fire away.”

“My pleasure.”
She reeled off the question, one she was sure he couldn’t answer.

He drummed his
fingers on the table, rubbed his stubbled jaw, studied the overhead air vent
for a moment, then shocked her by responding correctly. “How did you know
that?”

“Your choice,
Ritz—the shorts or your bra.”

Her gaze
narrowed on him. “You said you’d only played this a little!”

“A little
compared to what?” He held out his cal- lused hand. “Your bra, please.”

“You cheated!”

“You should know
better than to play games with a sailor,” he said calmly. “What do you think we
do all day long when we’re off duty?”

“Seduce the
local maidens.”

His cocky smile
mocked her iritation. “Is that what you’d like? To be seduced?”

She grabbed her
blouse, socks and tennis shoes off his bunk and dropped them on the end of
hers. “I’m not the naive kid I used to be, Jonah Jones. And I’ll tell you what
I’d like. I’d like to... to..

“Yeah?”

“Get ready for
bed, if you don’t mind.”

“You look just
about ready. Of course, the shorts have to go.”

She stared at
him, and he held his hands up, palms out. “All right, I admit it. Lusty
thoughts are definitely dancing through my head, but I get the hint. This ancient
mariner is on his way out the door to chart the stars.”

So it was back
to her writing and his reading. But she knew that the tension was building
steadily toward an emotional explosion. They were both taut, tight, wound up.
Things couldn’t go on much longer.

* * * * *

Frontier Days
was Silver City’s version of the Fourth of July: fireworks, rodeos, parades,
bazaars and barbecues. The week before Soren had asked Rita- lou to the
celebration that July 4th, and she had accepted, glad for an excuse to take off
from work, to relax. At Tomahawk Flats she felt all breathless and panicky. It
was stupid of her to let Jonah affect her like that, but when had she ever made
anything easy on herself? How could she have let herself fall for the Captain
Kidd of Silver City?

The best thing
she could do was acknowledge it, try not to make a fool of herself—which she
had been doing lately—and ride the thing out. By summer’s end they’d both be
going their separate ways.