Walk in Beauty (22 page)

All at once Jessie felt the sleek warmth of his thighs against hers, and then he plunged with a single, sharp thrust, joining them. Jessie cried out, grasping him as he moved inside of her, fiercely, roughly, their bodies rocking against each other with bruising intensity. She felt his hands on her shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh. His face was dark with hunger when she looked at him.

They roared into the height of the moment, crying out, clutching each other closer, closer. It was like the windstorm, endless and violent and clearing. When together they rolled to their sides, neither had the breath to speak. They kissed, hands still roving, bodies still pulsing, hearts pounding. Jessie put her palm on his chest to hear the racing beat of his heart and grinned. “That definitely qualifies as making love.”

He laughed softly, curling his fingers in her hair. “And that’s only the beginning, honey.” He brushed her cheek. “Only the beginning.”

* * *

Luke didn’t question her sudden change of heart. In the darkness and the cold, on the hard metal bed of the truck, he was happier than he had been in many years, holding her warm body next to his in the sleeping bags they’d zipped together.

Tonight, she was different. Almost insatiably hungry for him, almost unbearably giving. He gave as clearly as he was able, trying not to think of tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow, or anything past. Just now, for them, for what had been.

When they lay together, sated at last, he thought there had been a healing. The resistance had gone from her, and the fear. She nestled her face in his chest, her hand draped around his waist, and made a soft sighing sound of contentment.

He closed his eyes, just holding her. In the morning, she might not remember why she had done this, why she had decided it would be all right to make love with him, one more time. He was prepared for her to be cold and distant once again.

But surely she would not be able to remember this night, and last night, and not want to work to overcome what lay between them. Surely there was some answer. His fingers tightened involuntarily against her ribs. “I love you,” he whispered, his face in her hair.

He thought she was asleep, but at his words, she pressed close, her forehead to his chest, her fingers almost painfully fierce on his side. Abruptly, she lifted her face and kissed him hard on the mouth, and he tasted her tears once more. He chuckled gently. “I have seen you cry more in the past few days than I did in the whole time we were together.”

Unabashedly, she wiped at them. “I feel so emotional. Like everything is too big for me, too much for me.” She touched his mouth. “When I doze off and wake up and you’re still here, it seems like a miracle.”

“I’m here,” he said. “Yours for the asking.”

A wicked grin spread over her face. “Oh, really?” Her hand slipped down and cupped him boldly. In seconds, he was half-ready again. “Are you Superman?”

“Looks like I just might be, under the right circumstances,” he said, and groaned as she moved her hand deliciously. “Ah, Jess,” he moaned, his hands in her hair.

She laughed, the sound throaty and warm. “You think there’s a record for the most times in a single night?”

He could not reply, not with words. He reached for her, touching the silk of her breast as her hands worked their magic, awash in the wildness, the passion, the power that was Jessie.

* * *

He must have slept finally, rubber-boned with lovemaking, for Tasha’s bark startled him awake. He blinked, disoriented for a minute, then heard an odd scrape on the outside of the truck. In the cab, Tasha growled low in her throat.

Stealthily, he eased free of Jessie’s embrace and slipped into his jeans, hearing again an unidentifiable noise on the body of the truck. Quietly as he was able, he turned the handle of the window on the back of the cab, lifted it and eased his body through the opening.

Outside the night was freezing and his feet were unaccustomed to the rough terrain. He had to pause to pick a burr from his big toe before he rounded the side, cautiously.

Crouched by the passenger door was a man, smearing something dark over the door. “Hey,” Luke said, “what the hell are you doing?”

The man looked up and dropped the jar in his hand, bolting away from the house, through the dirt of the driveway toward a short bluff across the road. Luke ran after him.

Given the advantage of shoes, Luke might have caught him faster. As it was, he found himself leaping over yucca and praying he wouldn’t land in a patch of prickly pear. He couldn’t avoid the goat heads, though. One stabbed the ball of his foot. Cursing, he kicked it out with the other foot and kept running. Wind chilled his chest and arms. A stitch caught in his side.

All at once, the man tripped and went down with a strangled cry. Luke sprinted and tackled him before he could recover, feeling the air whoosh from both of them.

The light was eerie and cold, pale with the clouds overhead. Luke dragged the man to his feet, smelling whiskey as the youth—for he was no more than twenty—staggered uncertainly against the clutch of Luke’s fist on the back of his jacket.

Luke recognized him. It was the boy who’d been drinking with Mary’s son earlier in the evening. As he stumbled, he laughed, a high, whinnying sound that shouted of rabid drunkenness.

For a moment, Luke froze, staring into that face—that drunken Indian face. Revulsion swept him, deep and nauseating. It stole his breath. With a violent gesture, he shoved the youth away. The boy stumbled and fell in the brush.

Luke sucked air into his lungs, trying to calm himself. On the ground, the young man laughed and muttered something unintelligible, ending with, “Eh, Tonto?”

“Who are you working for?” Luke asked.

“The Meeker Galleries, man. They paid me and my boys big money to harass all you earnest Injuns.” He let go of a cackling laugh.

With a head-splitting sense of rage, Luke grabbed the youth’s coat front and hauled him to his feet. He smelled sour alcohol and a long stretch of no bathing. “Why?” he demanded, shaking him. “Why would you betray us that way?” He shook him again. “Don’t you know they just used you?”

The laughter had fled the young man’s eyes, leaving behind only a sullen, flat expression. He didn’t resist the shaking, but didn’t answer, either.

Jessie appeared from nowhere, wearing her jeans and sweater but no shoes. She grabbed Luke’s arm. “Leave him alone,” she said.

Abruptly, Luke dropped the youth and spun on his heel, almost physically ill with revulsion and disgust and other emotions he couldn’t even name.

At the road, he paused to look back, reason telling him he should not leave her alone with the drunken youth. From where he stood, he couldn’t hear what she said, but the tone of her voice was instantly, painfully familiar. It was gentle, quiet, reasonable—infinitely patient.

As she knelt to help the youth to his feet, Luke felt his nausea grow. Memories crowded in, memories of Jessie so gently helping him at moments like this; Jessie making coffee in the morning, giving him tomato juice and aspirin without a single word of censure.

He saw she would manage the youth without help—as she had managed himself, managed her mother—and limped toward the truck, remembering himself awakening in a park on a brilliant Sunday morning.

* * *

The youth slumped on the ground, making no move to run. In the dim, cloudy night, Jessie could see little about him except that he was very drunk. His hair was long, tied back from his face in a ponytail, and an earring shone silver in the night. He looked up at her dully, swaying a little even in the sitting position. She knelt beside him. “Can you walk?”

“I can do anything, lady,” he said, the words slurry, and laughed like a hyena before he tumbled over sideways.

There was probably nothing Jessie hadn’t learned about drunks at one time or another. This one was a long way gone, maybe even dangerously so. Gently, she took his arm. “You can’t stay out here. And I can’t carry you. Let me help you up.”

He swayed upright and managed to find his feet. Up close, he smelled bad. Jessie caught her breath as she steadied him. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Hey, baby,” he said, reaching for her, “mebbe—”

Jessie shook her head, intersecting the grasping hand before it did any damage. “It’s cold,” she said, urging him along.

He wasn’t tall and that made it easier. She flung his arm around her neck and walked him toward the house, feeling a moment of doubt as she saw the darkness all around. Finally she opted to go in the back door. They were less likely to awaken anyone that way.

Once she rounded the house, the youth mumbling incoherently beside her, she saw the kitchen light was on, and Mary Yazzie was visible through the window. Good—she would have some help.

“Come on,” Jessie said. “There’s stairs here. Careful.”

But in spite of her warning, the boy went down, cracking his head against the concrete. He made a sharp noise of pain. Jessie swore, realizing she should have seen it coming.

The back porch light came on, and Mary came outside. In the yellow light, Jessie could see blood gushing from the wound on the youth’s forehead. She also realized who it was—the quiet friend of Mary’s fighting son.

In a harsh voice, Mary said, “Let’s bring him inside.”

“What’s his name?” Jessie asked as they propped him in a chair.

Mary’s lips were tight. “Rudy Salazar. He’s one of my son’s friends.”

“I remember seeing him this afternoon.”

Jessie wet a dishcloth with cold water and pressed it to the bleeding cut. Rudy knocked her hand away with a profane curse.

She lifted her hand and bent close. In a dangerous voice, she said, “If you do that again, I’ll drag you back outside and let you freeze to death.”

He glared at her, but didn’t move when she pressed the cloth to the cut again. Jessie looked at Mary. “We need to keep him here. He may not be acting alone, but he’s one of the ones disrupting the project.”

Mary nodded. Her gaze slipped away, and Jessie guessed her thoughts. If this was one of her son’s friends, was Joaquin responsible for the leak of information that made it possible for the culprits to undermine the project?

Respecting her privacy, Jessie said nothing. She lifted the cloth from Rudy’s head and saw that most of the bleeding had stopped. “Pretty nasty cut, but I guess he’ll survive.”

“He’s lived through worse.”

Jessie looked at him, feeling a pluck of sadness that one so young should have such an intimate knowledge of that “worse.” His face was dirty, but in the midst of all the grime, his mouth was young and vulnerable. It made her sad.

Mary brought in a sleeping bag and dumped it on the floor. “I’m going to go back to sleep,” she announced, leaving Jessie alone with the youth.

Jessie kicked the bag into a semi-straight line, hanging on to Rudy with one hand so he wouldn’t fall over, then tipped him forward in the general direction of the bag. He landed more or less straight and crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes closed.

Suddenly weary, Jessie sank down in the chair and glanced at the flower-shaped clock on the wall. Three a.m. In a few hours, it would be light and the house would be stirring. She wondered if she ought to go back to the truck and try for a few more hours of sleep or just sit here, in case.

She heard her thoughts with a slight shock. In case of what? She stared at Rudy.

In case his breathing stopped. In case he started to be sick and wasn’t turned the right way. In case—

With a crushing sense of depression, she buried her face in her hands. Would she never learn?

How often had she led her mother quietly to her room, washed her face, taken off her soiled clothes and put her to bed before her father got home? How often had she done it for Luke?

All at once she realized she had thrown on her clothes without undergarments, and her feet were stinging with goat heads. She should go back to the truck.

No.

The expression on Luke’s face had been terrifying. She didn’t want to face him right now, didn’t want to hear what was behind an expression like that. No. She would slip into the other room and stretch out on the couch. It was the best solution—she wouldn’t wake up with Luke, and she could keep an eye on this boy, too.

A school counselor had once told Jessie she couldn’t stop her mother from drinking, no matter how hard she tried. Jessie accepted the advice and went to the next step—she took care of her when she was drunk. It wasn’t a job most people wanted, but Jessie always found a sense of relief in it. It was something real, something concrete. No, she couldn’t keep anybody sober, but she could tend them when they were drunk. She knew what to do, how to minimize the damage drinking wrought.

Co-dependent. The word whispered through her mind as she crept through the sleeping bodies in the other room and fell into a vacant chair.

Co-dependent. That’s what they called it. But did that word still apply to her? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anymore how far she’d go in trying to shoulder the pain of an alcoholic she cared about, since it had not been an issue in so many years. She felt her actions tonight had been simply compassionate—who would leave a young man outside to freeze to death?

Shifting restlessly in the chair, she crossed her arms over the ache in her belly. Co-dependent actions or not, it was far, far better to stay here and make sure some young man didn’t die in his alcoholic stupor than go out there and face Luke, who knew her, who needed her, who would engulf her tonight if she went to him.

It was better this way.

L
uke went to the house a little before dawn broke and saw Jessie slumped in the chair. Her hair, mussed from their lovemaking, tumbled around her like a wild cape, chestnut and gold, with tendrils that clung to her porcelain cheek. Her feet were bare and reddened in spots from her run through the field. Below her sweater, he could see she wore no bra, and the gentle slope of her breasts, so vulnerable to other eyes, made him take a blanket from the couch and toss it over her.