Renegade Man (25 page)

He stared at them
as if they were gold nuggets.  “My God, if you did, then it’s the discovery of
the century!”  His excited gaze flicked back to her.  “So what’s the problem?”

She stared out
the arched window, not really seeing the Sangre de Cristo peaks, but instead
visualizing Jonah’s face, alive with vitality and enthusiasm. His eyes had the
far-off look that other historic adventurers, like Lewis and Clark and
Christopher Columbus, had undoubtedly worn.

She couldn’t
watch that light go out; she couldn’t destroy that dream, not even at the
expense of her own. “I have a proposition for you, Ben. An opportunity you
would sell your mother down the river for.”

“His brows
climbed on his balding head.

“I’m willing to
give you and your office the credit for the discovery of the Renegade Man in
exchange for a promise that the discovery will be kept secret for the next
three months. At that time you may reveal the find to the press and your
colleagues.”

Schotsky’s eyes
grew round. He opened his mouth and closed it, then took a gulp of cold coffee
from the mug on his desk. He was beside himself, and she felt a deep, weighty
sadness. But that sadness would eventually pass. The regret she would have felt
at destroying Jonah’s dream—and with it the man—would have lasted forever.

After several
swallows he croaked, “You may be out of your mind to do something like this,
Rita-lou, but I’m certainly not so out of mine that I’d turn down such an
offer.”

After getting
Schotsky’s word on the deal, she checked into a modestly priced motel off the
plaza and spent two hours soaking in the tub. The hot bath should have made her
feel better, but it didn’t. She wished she was back in that cramped camper,
enfolded in Jonah’s arms, wished that he was kissing her until she lost all
track of time. Morning couldn’t come quickly enough. When it did, she wished
with all her heart that day had never dawned.

After paying her
motel bill, she stopped in front of the newspaper bins outside. Even as her
quarter dropped through the slot, she was staring in horrified shock at the
morning headline:

Major
Archaeological Find Outside Silver City

As she withdrew
her newspaper, she could feel a trembling begin deep inside her. “Dear God...
no!” Her heart felt as if it had frozen and would never again pulse with life.

All the way back
to Silver City, tears glittered in her eyes, and she kept wiping them away. Her
head ached, and she was agonizingly afraid. She wanted to believe that Jonah
trusted her, that he would understand and believe her when she told him that
she wasn’t responsible for the announcement.

When she turned
onto the road to the site, she knew that the sightseers had already started
coming. Three cars and an El Paso television truck were on their way back from
Tomahawk Flats. Farther ahead, rising swirls of dust announced additional
traffic. Tomahawk Flats looked almost like a stadium parking lot. A highway
patrolman was trying unsuccessfully to direct traffic. She found a space to
park and for a moment watched the people clustering around her excavation. Off
to her left, a film crew was busy setting up lights.

She sighed,
turned away and began to pick her way past the crowd descending on the site. It
was as if she were trying to swim upriver, but at least she wasn’t alone.
Magnum came bounding from the brush to lick her hand. Absently she patted him,
then, once they got away from the crowd, she lengthened her strides. She was in
a hurry to reach Jonah’s campsite. When at last she did, she could only stare
at the empty spot where Jonah’s trailer had been.

Her heart felt
as if something swift and sharp, like a vulture’s talons, was ripping it apart.
She burst out crying. Not softly, not in controlled, contained whimpers. She
buried her face in her hands and cried with great, shuddering gasps.

* * * * *

She really went
for the jugular.

Jonah stared out
through the salt-filmed window at the Pacific. That chilly September morning,
the ocean was doing nothing to live up to its name. Turbulent waves crashed
angrily against the Anchorage shoreline, almost drowning out his radio. He had
wanted to find a place with few people that was wide open for adventure. Well,
Alaska was certainly that. If he ran low on funds prospecting the Yukon, he
could always work the innumerable commercial fishing boats.

He tunneled his
hand through his rumpled hair. Man, he must have been out there in la-la land
to have thought that Ritz didn’t have her own best interests at heart. Always
had. She hadn’t been able to wait to hightail it up to Santa Fe and make the
world aware of her discovery.

He turned away
from the beach-house window. He wished to hell he had never let her back into
his life. And wished he didn’t love her so much. She wasn’t weak, the way he
was. She was strong. Like gold, she could be flattened, twisted, stretched by
life’s cruel tricks, but she would never shatter.

And she was
smart; she understood that he wasn’t cut out for the home-and-hearth bit. Could
he really blame her for playing the odds elsewhere? If he hadn’t learned
before, he sure as hell should have learned this time. Love made you weak. Love
made you vulnerable.

Well, twice
burned...

He would find
his romance in a windjammer’s wind-whipped canvas and cool spray. Yet hadn’t
she warned him once that though he had a girl in every port, she’d be the one
he would never forget? How could he?

He leaned his
forehead against the cold windowpane and closed his eyes. Behind him, he heard
the radio deejay announce, “And now a golden oldie for those of you who have a
few years on you, Roy Orbison’s ‘I’m Hurting’”

Then, with his
emotions ripped raw, Jonah sat down on the bed and cried for the first time
since his father died.

* * * * *

The nights were
the worst. She spent the days traveling aimlessly—a day in Juarez, two in the
Texas hill country of Goliad, three or four days in Port Isabel, walking the
beaches. But the Gulfs foaming waves reminded her too much of Jonah, and she
fled, at last returning home to Houston.

But in the heart
of the night she would awaken, finding her pillowcase wet with tears. She would
lie awake for hours, torturing herself with memories of Jonah’s mouth—of his
sensuously shaped lips, that crooked tooth and that cocky smile.

Sometimes she
would fantasize that he would come to her and take her in his arms and tell her
that he still loved her. But fantasies were for fools. Jonah hadn’t trusted her
enough to wait until she returned from Santa Fe to find out the truth. He
hadn’t loved her enough to stand defiantly against treacherous appearances.

The little girl
who had left Silver City twenty years ago was a woman now. Her body and soul
might be numb with agony, but she wasn’t destroyed. She wasn’t going to let
herself fall apart over anyone, not even Jonah. She would survive.

The day after
she returned home, Ben Schotsky called. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying
to call you for a week now.”

“Roaming.” It
was the best she could muster.

“Hey, Rita-lou,”
he said, “I’m sorry about that getting out. Honestly, I had nothing to do with
it. My secretary leaked it to one of the boys, and he talked to the governor’s
assistant, and before I knew it, I was on the six-o’clock news.”

“It’s all
right,” she said wearily. “I haven’t been losing any sleep over it.

“That’s good,
because what I have to tell you next will have you pacing the floor for nights
to come. Remember the mining claim you were protecting?”

“Yes?”

“Well, it held
up. And you won’t believe—”

She listened
apathetically to the news, muttered a few appropriate words of consolation and
replaced the receiver. Schotsky’s talk of Jonah’s claim had resurrected all the
memories she had been trying to exorcise. She faced another sleepless night, as
Schotsky had predicted, but not because of the to-do over the claim.

Well, she’d put
a stop to that. She’d go out more socially, find things to amuse her late into
the night, burn her candle at both ends until she fell sleep on the bed still
fully dressed.

It worked, too.
Some evenings she played bridge with the neighbors, others she went to the
movies alone or took in a museum opening. She had never needed a date on her arm
to validate herself as a woman. Mostly she read, or turned her field notes into
a final report, working until her eyes hurt and her lids drooped.

One evening
Trace called her from Intercontinental Airport. The football team was on its
way back from a scrimmage with Tulane and had a two-hour layover. Could she
meet him at the airport for a late dinner?

“Be honest, you
just want a free meal,” she told him, chuckling, but she was terribly glad he’d
called and changed quickly into a teal-blue jersey sheath, one of her son’s
favorite dresses.

Dinner at the
airport turned out to be costly and quick and not terribly good, but it didn’t
matter, because she enjoyed being with Trace so much. He had Chap’s shy smile,
but he was more inquisitive about his world. His dark eyes brought laughter—a
rare commodity for her these days—to her lips.

In turn, she
told him about Magnum’s misadventure, making it sound more like an accident
than deliberate cruelty. It would do no good to anger Trace long after the deed
was done.

At one point she
covered her son’s strong young hand with her own. “Tell me, did you miss never
knowing your real father, babe?”

He paused for a
moment, then smiled a little self-consciously. “I guess not. At least not very
often. I figured he had to be a pretty cool guy for you to fall in love with
him.”

She started to
tell him about the past summer. About Silver City. And his father. But the
plane had arrived at the gate and was boarding. Besides, she thought, I’ll
leave it to old C.B. to tell Trace about Silver City and Chap and the Split P
when the right time comes.

At that moment
it occurred to her that her own time had come—that the only person she really
wanted to prove her self-worth to was herself, not anyone in Silver City. And
she had done just that.

Unfortunately
she was still wound up after she left the airport parking lot. It was too late
to make other plans that late in the evening, and she returned home
reluctantly. A warm shower might make her sleepy, but she realized that she had
grown accustomed to those cold dips in the Renegade and missed them now that
she was back among the comforts of home.

Briskly she
toweled herself dry and pulled a faded, oversized T-shirt over her head. She
padded back into her bedroom and stopped short: Jonah was lying on the bed, his
hands behind his head, his cool green eyes watching her.

“How did you get
in here?” she demanded.

“Well...” he
began.

She held up a
silencing hand. “I know, I know. Don’t tell me. The window screen.”

He said nothing
more, and they stared at each other, neither one knowing how to behave. She
could tell that he had shaved within the hour—and that he had spent a certain
amount of time deciding to wear the trouers and dress shirt and blue striped
tie he had on.

“What do you
want?” she managed to ask at last.

Before she could
move, he uncoiled his powerful body from her bed and pulled her to him. “You,”
he murmured roughly in her ear.

She spoke
against his shirtfront, so he wouldn’t see her tears. “It’s not that easy,
Jonah. I’m not starting this over again. You and I aren’t suited for—”

Gently he
anchored his hand in her hair and tilted her head back. She stared up into his
face. Gone was the cocky smile. His eyes were open and vulnerable. “Don’t make
me go, Ritz. I’ve been alone for so long. So damned long. All my life. I love
you, Ritz! I’ll love you till the end of time.”

She wasn’t the
only one crying then. It tore her apart to see him laying bare his soul like
that, and she stood on tiptoe to press her tear-dampened mouth over his.

He crushed her
to him so fiercely that she thought her ribs would crack. His mouth closed over
hers in a desperate kiss that somewhere changed direction, taking on a
sweetness that she had never known, never tasted. She reveled in that kiss and
all that it offered her.

“Jonah, I didn’t
sell you out,” she tried to explain, “I went up to Santa – ”

“I know, I
know.  I’m a little slow, sweetheart. It took me awhile to read the newspaper
small print and learn the terms of the archeological discovery.”

At one point
that past summer she had reached the conclusion that Jonah lacked real
courage—the courage to face the mundane obligations of life for those he loved.
But now she realized that he was indeed strong, indeed courageous. Courage came
at different costs for different people. He had humbled himself, had put aside
his pride to come to her.

When their
breathing grew ragged, he set her away from him. She rubbed her face against
his shirt, drying her tears, and he chuckled. “That shirt cost me—”