Reuniting with the Rancher

After the attack, she’d been given a few weeks off and had come here to recover. The contrast had really struck her then, and it was striking her now.

Except this time Martha wasn’t here to listen, to advise, to sympathize. Another thing struck her right then: for all the tea, sympathy and advice, Martha hadn’t even hinted that she should find a safer job. Not once.

She lifted her eyes to the sky and asked, “What’s it all mean?”

Of course there was no answer. She turned from the tree and stared at the house. She could stay here. Martha had left her more than enough money that if she was careful she needn’t ever work again.

But that didn’t seem like something Martha would want for her, a dead-end existence without purpose. Martha had always been doing something for someone. A giver by nature.

And a great example.

So why don’t you bring some of them out here? Cliff’s question came back to her. Why not? She could imagine the red tape. Taking kids across state lines to spend a few weeks with her here? Not likely.

It was all too easy to imagine the hoops, then the structure she’d have to build. She couldn’t do it alone. She’d need help with the kids, trained help. She’d need things for them to do. Would they stay in the house or should she build a bunkhouse?

The next thing she knew, she was sitting in Martha’s rocker on the front porch, rocking steadily, staring out over wide-open spaces, feeling an oddly healing touch in the emptiness of the world around here.

Those kids deserved a taste of this, she thought. An opportunity to live for a short while without the hunger and fear that filled their lives. To be able to fall asleep at night to quiet instead of gunshots.

She tried to dismiss the idea as utterly impractical. The amount of work in just getting it rolling, all the obstacles and roadblocks she’d run into. And while she was working on that, how could she keep up with her job?

Nor did she want to be so close to Cliff. He’d been pleasant enough today, she gave him credit for that, but her tension around him was almost as bad as her tension on a dark city street. It was an incautious, overwhelming desire for him, every bit as strong as it had been all those years ago when she’d given in to it and caused some serious pain.

And while she had never let Cliff know, leaving him behind hadn’t been easy for her, either. No, she hadn’t wanted the commitment he was offering. Hadn’t been ready for it. Had been set on her goal to help kids to the point that she couldn’t imagine any other life.

So she had gotten what she really wanted, and now life had brought her full circle to deal with all the unanswered questions.

How could she best help those kids? And why did she still want Cliff?

Why don’t you just bring some of them out here?

Why had he asked that question? What had he been thinking? His face had revealed nothing, but he’d been quick to leave after that, as quick as he could.

Could she stand being this close to him for any length of time, which bringing kids out here would require? But as soon as she asked herself, she felt selfish. If there was some way to help kids with her legacy, then she needed to do it, Cliff or no Cliff.

But maybe bringing those kids out here for even a few weeks or months might not be kind at all. To give them a taste of a different life and then plop them back into their old messes? It would help only if she could make them see possibilities to work for when they got home. Dreams they could believe in.

Propping her chin in her hand, unaware that the afternoon was fading into twilight, she twisted the idea around in her head, half wishing Cliff had never mentioned it, half wishing she could find a useful way to do it.

The chill of the night penetrated finally, and she went inside to make herself a small supper. Once again the empty silence of the house hit her hard, making her eyes sting and her chest tighten.

Live here alone forever? No way. Somehow there had to be another way. A better way. A useful way.

* * *

Damn memory, Cliff thought. He’d given up all hope of sleeping. Again. Since he’d heard that he was going to have to see Holly again, he’d been an insomniac, and now the insomnia had grown to devour most of the night hours.

As for memory...there were all kinds of it, he was discovering. He wasn’t remembering the way Holly had looked all those years ago. No. Mental pictures had nothing to do with it.

Instead his mind was plaguing him with the sounds she made during passionate sex. His hands, indeed his entire body, were resurrecting the way her skin had felt against him, the way she felt beneath him. His palms itched with the certain knowledge of how it felt to caress her, how her breasts felt in his hands, the hard way her nipples pebbled, the dewiness of her womanhood.

And scents. They filled his nostrils almost as if she were right there, sated and content.

He even remembered exactly, exactly, how it had felt to plunge into her warm depths.

Much as he tried to banish the thoughts, they planted themselves and stayed like unfinished business. He couldn’t see Martha’s house from his place, but it didn’t matter. There weren’t enough hundreds of square miles in this county to make him comfortable when she was in it.

His body ached with a need to take her again, to touch her again, to fill her again. Not even his wife had ever awakened such a craving in him.

Damn Holly, damn Martha and, God, he hoped that she didn’t take that stupid thought of his seriously. Bring those kids here? He couldn’t imagine the scope of the undertaking, but even less could he imagine life with Holly nearby. This county wasn’t big enough for both of them.

He shoved out of his bed impatiently, aware that if he didn’t watch it he was going to make love to Holly in his mind. Maybe that had been part of the problem in his marriage with Lisa. Maybe at some unconscious level he had considered Lisa second best.

He didn’t know, but if so, he ought to despise himself. Staring out the window at a night as dark as pitch, he wrestled his internal demons.

Ten years later, even after the awful way she had treated him, he still wanted her as much as the very first time. Did that make him sick? He didn’t know that, either.

He just knew that seeing her had fueled a fire that had never quite gone out. Now what the hell was he going to do about it?

He’d thought he’d finally learned to roll with life, the good and the bad, but now he wondered. That woman out there had the ability to turn him into a kid again. He was randier than a goat, and it didn’t please him.

Sometimes, on rare, restless nights, he’d go saddle up Sy and take a ride. The gelding seemed to enjoy those nighttime rambles. He let Sy choose the course and the pace, and sometimes that gelding would open up his throttle wide and gallop hell-for-leather.

But it was a moonless, dark night, not safe for riding, and besides, he had a feeling that if he mounted up, he’d end up at Martha’s place like a lovesick dog.

So he stood there aching, remembering, knowing it had been a dream that could never happen again. He needed to get a grip.

But the grip kept slipping away, lost in dizzying sensual memories.

* * *

A few miles away, Holly wasn’t doing much better. She had fallen asleep only to wake twisted in her sheets and drenched in perspiration. She had dreamed of Cliff, which she hadn’t done in years, but it had gotten all twisted up in her dream with the guys who had attacked her last year.

How could she want something that still frightened her? That overlayering of the attack ought to be a warning. She’d avoided dating since then, because she couldn’t quite erase the memory of stinking breath and pawing, filthy hands. Any time a guy got too close, she headed for the door.

But she’d done the same to Cliff before then, and for the first time she wondered who she really was and what might be going on inside her.

All she knew was that Cliff still drew her as he had from the first. At least the years had made her considerably less self-centered. She’d hurt the man badly, and she wasn’t going to risk doing it again, whether she craved him or not.

She just wished she knew what it was about him. Nobody had ever gotten to her the way he had.

She took the teddy bear from the chair and pulled it over to the window. Even with the curtains open, she couldn’t see much, but she didn’t care. She lifted the sash just a bit, letting some chilly air into the room, hoping it would cool her down. Then she hugged the bear and sat, watching the impenetrable night.

Thinking about Cliff was the ultimate waste of time, she told herself. She’d hurt him badly, and while he’d been civil and even pleasant today, that had been common courtesy. It had been obvious to her at their first meeting that he ranked her somewhere near rat poison on his list of things he liked. Nor could she blame him. She had burned that bridge herself.

She tried instead to think about the little kernels of an idea he had planted today, but her mind remained stubborn. Even as her body dried off and began to feel chilled, Cliff persisted in dominating her thoughts.

A decade had passed and she still wanted him. That was surely crazy.