The Girl with the Golden Spurs

He laughed. Within minutes her expert hands had stripped him of his jeans and boots. Soon she lay on top of him, her mouth licking, circling, wetting his tanned flesh everywhere. She started kissing somewhere beneath his ears and worked down across his chest and stomach and then his belly, her tongue dipping into his navel and then moving lower, trailing up and down between his legs…back and forth, and around and around until he burned like a wildfire. When he was breathing hard, she lowered her head, her long silver-blond hair tickling his stomach as she began to nip and nibble at the most erotic places.

Her damn mouth was like a vacuum. He was rock hard. His blood thrummed. His heart pounded. He felt wonderful, too wonderful for words, until the nagging pain began in his right temple.

Then it struck as viciously as a hammer blow. He felt an explosion in his head like his brain had come out of his skull, and then the pain stopped, and he felt different…numb…not in touch with himself…as if he were floating above them. He’d had the same out-of-body sensation when he’d been bucked off a bronc once and suffered a spinal injury. Only those symptoms had cleared after a day or two.

Like before, he couldn’t feel his hands or his legs. Only this time he couldn’t move anything, not even his lips or his tongue. It was as if his entire body were dead.

With total clarity he wondered what would happen when she figured out he wasn’t all right. Who would she call first—the police, or an ambulance? Would this make the papers and cause still more scandal?

Cherry kept licking him, unaware of the change in him for a while, but he couldn’t feel her tongue anymore. And he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything. Not the ranch. Not Mia. Not Electra.

Her platinum head bobbed back and forth over his hard dark body for what seemed an eternity. Finally she stopped and looked up at his face, and her eyes grew so startled, they blazed in her white face.

With her fists, she pounded his chest. “Move! Say something! Do something!”

But he was made of petrified stone.

“What’s wrong?” He knew she was shouting, but her voice was dim. “What’s wrong with you?”

She slapped him hard across the face.

He didn’t feel her hand, either, or her nails when they dug into his cheeks a little.

She slapped him again. “Say something!”

All he could do was stare at her as she slapped him again and again.

When she began to cry, he thought about Lizzy.

Would this bring her home? Would she finally realize she had to come home? Would she ever forgive him for the disgrace and scandal he’d brought on her name? Or for Cole?

Vaguely he was aware of Cherry sliding off him and reaching for the telephone. To his surprise she didn’t call an ambulance or a doctor or even the police.

When he heard the name of the person she called, a chill went through him.

“You got me in this!” she screamed. “You made me hit on him! What do I do?”

He had been set up. When Caesar remembered who’d suggested that first night at the strip joint, his next thought was for Lizzy.

First Electra. Now him.

If Lizzy did come home, would she be next?

Cherry hung up and dialed another number. “You wanna know who I’m calling, I bet.” She flashed him a hateful smile. “Well, I’m calling your wife!”

“Hi there—Mrs. Kemble.” Brash as she was, even Cherry hesitated for a moment. “It’s me—Cherry. Your husband’s fianceé.”

Joanne must have had plenty to say on that score because it was a long time before Cherry could get another word in.

“Y—yes, well, I—I don’t care about any of that. He’s in my bed…not yours. And he’s as still as a stump. Somethin’s bad wrong with him. If you don’t send somebody to get him out of here, and send him fast, I’ll call an ambulance, and, and the newspapers. And if I do that—all hell will break loose.”

Another long silence.

“No, he’s not dead, and I don’t want no corpse in my bed! Do you hear me? No! I didn’t do anything to him. We were making love.” Another long silence. “No. No drugs. A stroke maybe… I’m not a doctor. I don’t know. Just hurry!”

Lizzy—he had to warn her.

Why in the name of God had he told everybody he wanted her to succeed him? By doing so, he’d signed her death warrant.

He fought to say her name, but his lips felt like cold concrete.

Imprisoned in his own body, he could only stare helplessly at Cherry, who was watching him, too. Her pretty face beneath her straw-white mane was a mask of disgust. Her eyes were cold and soulless. His throat tightened.

She got up slowly. Lifting her sequined cowboy hat off its nail, she put it on. Then she twirled round and round for him just like she had the first night.

“What’s going on in that mind of yours, big daddy?” Spreading her long legs, she made a faux bow.

She pitched her hat toward the bed and went to her mirror where she made up her mouth with vivid red lipstick and combed and fluffed her hair.

When she turned around again and smiled at him, she looked more ravishing than ever.

But it didn’t matter. He felt nothing, absolutely nothing for her.

Only Lizzy mattered.

And Electra. She would always matter.

He remembered the day he’d stood in the rain and scat tered her ashes under the Spur Tree because she’d written in her will that that was her final wish. She’d chosen to be with him in death at least.

Joanne had been furious when he’d had a bronze marker placed beneath the tree with Electra’s name on it.

“Jack’s spurs are there, aren’t they?” he’d said to shut Joanne up.

Electra. Always Electra.

He had to stay alive to save their daughter.

Four

Manhattan

Too much was happening to her.

The phone was ringing, but Lizzy ignored it. She was too busy watching the two naked men writhe on her television screen with a total absorption that would have embarrassed her had she been of sound mind, which after the catastrophic events of today—she was not.

The late-afternoon sunlight was still red and sparkling outside her window, and the air was crisp and cool. It was a gorgeous evening for a walk. The smart Lizzy had known she should have gone with Walker and Vanilla when Walker had been nice enough to invite her, but the self-destructive Lizzy had been depressed at the thought of an activity that might cheer her up. That Lizzy had wanted, no, needed, to indulge in her very own pity party.

How could such a gorgeous day have been so terrible?