Trilby

He chuckled. “McCollum,” he said simply. “It pays to have an anthropology professor for a friend. He’s very good at his job. He stays with me when he’s exploring ruins in the area. He comes several times a year when he’s teaching.”

“I like him. I didn’t realize he was an educator,” she said.

“Yes. He teaches anthropology and archaeology at one of the big colleges up North.”

“It must be interesting. Do you go with him when he looks for ruins?”

“When time allows.” He shoved one hand in the pocket of his slacks and slanted a look down at her from under the wide brim of his hat. “Do you like archaeology?”

“I know very little about it,” she admitted. “But it’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“Very.” He put out a lean, tanned hand suddenly and stopped her in her tracks. “Be still a minute. Don’t talk. Look there.” He pointed toward the bushes, and she felt her heart racing. Was it a rattlesnake? She wanted to run, but just as her feet got the message from her brain, a funny, long brown bird went scampering from under the bush to dart across the road.

She laughed. “What is it?” she exclaimed.

“A roadrunner,” he told her. “They hunt and kill snakes.”

“Well, bully for him.” She chuckled.

“Snakes are beneficial, you silly child,” he chided. “Bull snakes and rat snakes and black snakes don’t hurt anything. They eat rats and mice. And a king snake will kill and eat a rattler.”

“I don’t want to look at one long enough to identify it,” she informed him.

He shook his head. “Come on.”

He led her off the trail eventually, and into a shady area where a stream cut through the forest floor. Huge, smooth boulders ran up from the stream toward the mountains.

“This is an old Apache camp,” he told her. “It isn’t on the reservation, of course, but they still come here sometimes. Naki likes to camp here when he’s rounding up strays. He’s marvelous with horses.”

“Does he wear war paint and headdresses?” she asked innocently.

He glared at her. “He’s Apache,” he said. “Apaches don’t wear feathered headdresses like the Plains Indians. They wear a colored cloth band around their foreheads and wear their hair shoulder length. They don’t live in tepees like the Plains Indians, either. They live in a sort of round or oblong lodge called a wickiup.”

“Do people out here hate the Indians?” she asked.

“Some do. There have been times when we were allies with them, and even with the Mexicans, to fight off the Comanches when they tried to come south and conquer us.”

“Oh, my!”

“And the Confederate flag flew over Tucson once, during the Civil War,” he said, chuckling at her. “A lot of Southerners settled out here in Arizona. You should feel right at home.”

“I wish I did,” she replied quietly, and meant it. She stared down at the soil. “There aren’t any cacti right here.”

“Plenty out on the desert, mostly saguaro,” he told her, “and organ pipe. Those saguaro are huge and heavy. They have a sort of woody skeleton inside. One can kill a man if it falls on him.”

“What are the tall, thin ones?”

“Ocotillo,” he said. “Mexicans use it to build thorny fences.”

“We have prickly pear cactus in Louisiana,” she said.

“Do you?”

“Not in Baton Rouge,” she said, grinning.

He stopped walking and turned to look at her. “Do you speak any French?”

“Just a little,” she said. “Mama is fluent.” She searched his dark eyes. “Do you?”

“I speak Spanish fluently,” he said. “And a smattering of German.”

He didn’t look away, and neither did she. For moments that stretched with sweet tension, he looked down at her. Her lips parted as her heart began to race. He had the most decadent effect on her, she thought.

His dark eyes dropped, as no gentleman’s would, to her bosom. She caught her breath.

“Limits,” he murmured. “You Eastern women can’t live without them. Out here, a man sees something he wants and he just takes it.”

“Including women?” she asked huskily.

“It depends on the woman,” he replied. “My wife was like you, Trilby,” he added bitterly. “A hothouse orchid transplanted into hot, sandy soil. She hated it, hated me. She should never have married me. She wouldn’t have,” he added, with a cynical smile, “but she did like my money.”

The thought irritated him. He didn’t like remembering Sally. Trilby brought it all back.

“You…loved her?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said harshly. “I loved her. But she wanted poetry and roses every morning and maids to wait on her. She wanted a gentleman to escort her to social functions. She hated my roughness, hated the loneliness. She grew to hate me. Everything about me,” he added, averting his eyes. “I don’t need telling that I’m a savage. Sally told me twice a day.”

Incredible that she should pity him, she thought, watching his rigid features grow even harder. How terrible, to love someone who hated you…

He looked down and caught her compassionate stare. It made him furious that she should feel sorry for him. It made him more furious that he’d begun to like her, to enjoy her company. She was a tramp, and he was letting himself be drawn into her sticky web. He was a fool!

He threw the cigarette down in the dirt and reached for her.

“I don’t need your pity,” he said curtly, staring at her mouth. “Not when you’re more contemptible than I’ll ever be!”

His mouth bit into hers, twisting, hurting her. She gasped and tried to fight him, but he was much too strong. His arms were like vises, his mouth tasting of tobacco and pure man. He used his body like a weapon to humiliate her. His lean hands slid quickly to her hips and ground them against his thighs.

The intimacy was staggering to a woman who’d barely been kissed before. Her body seemed to flush all over at the shock of feeling the changed contours of his body against her stomach. She cried out, furiously outraged and embarrassed by the unspeakable liberties he was taking, beating at him with her fists and trying to kick him.

Surprised at her show of fury, he let her go. She stood glaring at him with a red face, her hair escaping from its tidy bun, her gray eyes blazing. She reached up and struck him across the mouth as hard as she could.

“You savage!” she cried, shaking all over. “I knew…you were…no gentleman!” she raged.

“And you’re no lady, you Louisiana tramp,” he said, without flinching from the blow. His eyes were like death as he looked at her. “If I were a little less civilized than I am, I’d throw you down in the dusty road and ravish you where you lay.”

Her face went even redder. Her mouth trembled, tears formed in her eyes at the blatant insult. To think that dear, courtly Richard had never done more than touch her hand, and this savage had—had…

“You lay one hand…on me…and I’ll hit you with a tree limb! How…dare you?” she choked, almost sobbing with rage. “I shall…tell my father!”