Renegade Man (17 page)

When twilight
made it too dark to work, he returned to the camper, heated a can of chicken
noodle soup and tried to interest himself in a boating magazine as he ate.

Where had she
gone
?

He stared at the
slick layout of a forty-five-foot sloop riding ocean waves the shade of desert
turquoise. The boat’s sails, blindingly white against a cloudless deep blue
sky, were filled by tropical trade- winds. The photo’s message was restfulness,
adventure, freedom.

To Soren
?

The image of
Ritz facing down Buck at the Border Cowboy the other night crowded out the
magazine’s words. What magnificent courage! She wore her intelligence as
lightly as her golden-girl looks, and he was falling for her all over again,
just like the schoolboy he had once been.

With another
muttered oath, he slung the magazine against the far wall. Diversion. That was
what he needed. His thoughts veered sharply from burning memories to Nelda. She
didn’t try to make something plain into something complicated. She knew—and
understood—where he was coming from. Understood, too, that he’d be going away
when he was ready. And it didn’t make any difference to her.

He stalked
outside to his pickup and swung into the cab. He drove for forty-five minutes.
But halfway to Silver City the impulse sputtered, like hot coals suddenly doused
by water. He wasn’t interested in instant gratification. But if not that, what?

Weary,
disturbed, disgusted, he turned the pickup back toward camp. He planned to
drink himself into a sound sleep.

But he didn’t do
that either. Instead he lay in his bunk, staring up at the rain-darkened
splotch on the camper ceiling and thinking about all those songs promising that
love was forever.

He had never
believed them, anyway.  Especially not Orbison’s “Running Scared.”

Chapter 11

I
t’s old, but
well built.” Soren inserted the key into the lock and turned it twice, and the
heavy door gave way to a wallwide window view of the juniper, pihon and
ponderosa pine country to the north.

Rita-lou inhaled
the musty smell that always filled a place that had been closed up for a long
time and surveyed the large room: adobe-walled, Mexican-tiled and with a
beehive fireplace in one comer. The main room flowed into an open kitchen with
a low beamed ceiling and only a few essential appliances. “The place is
lovely.” The furniture—a dusty, burlap-covered orange couch, deep tufted chairs
with worn upholstery and heavy tables—was all rustic handcarved pine.

“Well, it’s
yours for the rest of the summer.” He turned his eyes on her. “You sure this is
what you want to do?”

She thought of
old man Livingston’s words... that being sure meant being bored. She knew now
why women were drawn to men they couldn’t understand—because that meant they
couldn’t control them. To control a man, to dominate him, would mean dying of
boredom.

“No, I’m not
sure,” she began, but Soren misunderstood her.

“Then stay in
town with me.” He looked down at her ardently. Before she could protest, he
hushed her unspoken words with fingers pressed caressingly against her lips.
“I’m not asking you for anything you’re not ready to give. Only when you’re
ready. . . then, if you want me, it will happen between us.” His hand tilted
her chin up. “You see, Rita-lou Randall, I want to take care of you.”

It was something
she hadn’t until that moment considered. She had always fought her own battles;
even Robert had let her bulldoze life’s problems on her own. The idea was
appealing: to be taken care of. Wasn’t that what every woman was supposed to
want? “I’ve been on my own too long, Soren. I just don’t know.”

“Don’t think
about it. Just let it happen gradually. You’ve gone completely to my head, you
know.”

Still holding
her chin, he lowered his mouth to hers in a sweet, searching kiss. She tried to
recapture the steamy, insistent desire she had felt all those nights when she had
slept in Jonah’s camper—and couldn’t. She found herself conscious of the angle
of Soren’s mouth on hers, of their noses mashing, of the smell of his expensive
cologne and, most of all, of her own lack of involvement. She drew away, gently
pressing her hands against his solid chest.

“No, Soren.” She
saw that she had hurt him. “It’s been a long time,” she added shakily. Two
kisses in three years didn’t necessarily a white lie make, did it?

Yes. Jonah’s
kisses would make a liar of her.

Soren would be a
considerate, unselfish lover; she knew that instinctively. But, silly as it
was, she felt terrible giving herself—even the smallest part of herself—to
someone she didn’t love.

Did that mean
she loved Jonah?

Now that really
was silly! Sexual stirrings weren’t the same thing as love, for heaven’s sake!

“But, really,
Soren,” she tempered with a gentle smile, “thank you for the place. I’ll take
it.”

Soren stepped
back, his smoky blue eyes showing that his confidence was undaunted by her
reticence. “I’ll stop by later In the week to check up on you.”

She spent the
rest of the day and most of the next settling into the one-bedroom cabin. She
wasn’t quite ready to go back to digging, to dealing with the sight of Jonah
again on a daily basis.

Magnum,
apparently feeling as lost as she did, followed close on her heels. Even the
blessings of a shower and a washer and dryer couldn’t mitigate her unrest.
Whether she was clearing off her breakfast dishes or folding her freshly
laundered clothes, she was constantly thinking of Jonah, of making love to him.

Of being stroked
and held and caressed. Of his hard body, rough and powerful and beautiful.

She wrote in her
journal:

My sensuality
has been reawakened after years of dormancy, and all because of Jonah’s
careless kisses. The shower washing over my breasts.. .the silky material of my
panties sliding over my skin... the mere crossing of my legs.

Monday morning
arrived, and with ambivalent feelings she turned her Chevy toward Tomahawk
Flats. She parked where her tent used to be staked and took her tools from the
car. For a moment she stood listening, and in the rapidly heating morning air
she heard the soft rumble of Jonah’s dredger.

Illogically
reassured, she turned her attention to the excavation. The summer was slipping
away, and she had barely more than a month left to produce her Renegade Man.
She started trenching another pit, tossing away clumps of buffalo grass roots
and briars. At last she reached the Folsom floor, but it offered up only
corncobs and some turkey bones. After a two-day layoff she was already out of
shape, and her back was beginning to hurt.

Then, halfway
through the day, she uncovered an outdoor clay fire pit in the dig’s northeast
comer. From the red color of the earth, she knew that the find was older than anything
she had yet unearthed—possibly by more than five thousand years—and she felt
the excitement growing inside her. She retrieved her camera from the glove
compartment and took several shots, then did a profile and a scale map of the
finds.

When the sun
started slipping toward the western peaks, she called it quits for the day.
Packing her tools and the objects she had unearthed that day so that she could
take them back to the Rolistof cabin was a troublesome task, but she had no
alternative. It was either the Rolistof cabin or buy another tent—and she
wouldn’t risk that again. After her last run-in with C.B., when she had ruined
his snake, she doubted that he would graciously leave the field to her. Even
staying in the cabin might not be enough to protect her. The thought made her
edgy.

That suit C.B.
had filed was another thing that troubled her. From her few exchanges with Ben
Schotsky, she had come away impressed by his thoroughness. But C.B. was
ruthless—and ruthlessness was often the most powerful attribute of all.

After spreading
the tarp over the pit, she was ready to leave, but Magnum had wandered off. She
called twice, and when he didn’t appear, she began to worry. People still set
traps in the Gila Wilderness, even though it was illegal. What if Magnum... ?
But then she saw the dog coming across the flats toward her— happily trotting
along behind Jonah Jones.

He was dressed
in jeans and a sweat-stained, raggedy shirt. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked exhausted—and
angry. Inside her stomach, butterflies began doing gymnastics. Why did she have
to be so damned glad to see him?

His mouth curled
in an insolent line. “Your dog seems to have taken up residence on my
doorstep.”

When would she
learn not to let her guard down? Her damaged pride reasserted itself. “Magnum
never has learned to distinguish the good guys from the bad ones.”

He stared her
straight in the eye and, hooking his thumb in his pants pocket, gave her a lazy
smile, “That’s because his owner doesn’t know the difference, either.”

Jonah’s panty-dropping
smile didn’t negate his fierce scowl. Her stomach twisted in knots, and she
could think of no reply scathing enough. Magnum yawned, expressing his boredom
with the humans’ disagreeable attitudes. “Come on, fella,” she said, taking
hold of the Lab’s collar. “Let’s go someplace where we’re wanted.”

“From the very
first, I told you you weren’t wanted here. You keep both yourself and your dog
out of my way, sweetheart.”

She turned back
to Jonah. His face was set and hard and tough. She winced inwardly at that mean
look, but she swallowed her uncertainty and said with a bravado she was far
from feeling, “Yes, and if you remember, / told you that I had the right to
this piece of la—”

He wasn’t
looking at her—at least not at her face. His gaze had drifted downward to
settle on her soft, sweat-sheened breasts, exposed by the low neckline of
her—or rather his—shirt. Suddenly she felt her confidence return, as if the
balance of power had subtly shifted to her side.

Her pride, a
little worse for wear and tear, resurfaced. Recklessly her fingers slid up and
down along her plunging neckline. “Your shirt.. .got mixed up with my clothing
when I packed. But if you want it back...” Suggestively her hand dropped lower,
to where she had knotted the ends at her waist.

He studied her
face, then said harshly, “Don’t play the tease with me, Ritz, because you’re
only going to come out on the losing end.”

She lifted a
brow. “Tease?” She inflected the word with sarcasm. “What makes you think I’d
bother to arouse your interest? After all, Captain Kidd, I rejected you
once—twenty years ago.”

That was all it
took. His eyes narrowed, and his voice took on a harsh edge. “All right,
sweetheart. You and I both know better. But if you say you’re not teasing, then
let’s get on with it.” His hand shot out and yanked the knot undone before she
knew what was happening. Roughly he pushed aside the fabric, and her breasts
tumbled free. “That’s more like it. Now I can see what the gentlemanly side of
me has been pretending not to notice all these weeks.”

“Gentlemanly?”
she cried, jerking the shirt together. “You never knew what it was to be a
gentleman! Not all your travels, not all your education and knowledge of
languages, can make a gentleman of you, Jonah Jones. It’s a quality a man’s born
with, and you certainly—”

“Like Chap?” His
lids slid to half-mast, and he asked in a frighteningly quiet voice, “Was Chap
bom a gentleman?”

“Yes!” she
shouted. “Yes!”

Magnum whined.
He sensed the tension and padded nervously back and forth at her side, glancing
from Jonah to her with a quizzical look.

“Oh?” Jonah
drawled nastily. “Gentleman enough to marry you when he got you pregnant?”

She swung with
all her strength and the flat of her palm caught him squarely on the cheek,
leaving his flesh mottled with a red handprint. “You bastard!”

His hand
shackled her wrist. At her side, Magnum growled warningly, but Jonah didn’t
release her. His mouth had flattened into a grim line, but his eyes held a look
that she might have identified as sad or weary or—she didn’t quite know.
“You’re right, Ritz,” he said calmly, his steely self-control coming between
her and his quiet wrath. “I’m no gentleman. What I said just now proved it. And
proved you should stay away from me.”

She could have
pointed out that he had trespassed on her territory, but she saw the harsh
lines of exhaustion around his mouth and the deep shadows under his eyes. She
wrenched her arm away, rubbing at her wrist. “That’s something that will be
very easy for me! Come on, Magnum.”

Her dignity
still somehow intact, she stalked across to her Chevy, ushered the dog inside
with her and slammed the door. The dust she left when she roared away didn’t
quite conceal Jonah’s image in her rear-view mirror. He had remained where he
was, watching her, hands jammed in his back pockets.

That image
stayed with her for the rest of the day and through the night, so that she
arose the next morning feeling thoroughly irritated at the bright sunlight that
mercilessly revealed the dark circles beneath her own eyes. She only hoped that
no one, including Popeye the Sailor Man, showed up.