Breaking The Rules Part 14

"If I go back to Kansas City, Brian will kill me."

"There's a warrant out for his arrest. He can't go to Kansas City."

"He doesn't have to! All he has to do is pick up the phone."

Zeke took a breath, hands on his hips. "I think you're overestimating his power."

"Maybe I am." She shrugged. "Better safe than sorry."

"The police can take care of you, Mattie. They have experience witness program, protective custody, all kinds of things."

Mattie gripped the cup between her hands so hard she thought it might break. "No," she repeated. "Just take me to the nearest bus station and I'll get out of your life."

"Have you given any thought to what this means, woman? Are you going to run the rest of your life, dashing from one little town to the next?"

"He'll get tired of looking eventually," she said with more certainty that she felt. "If Katherine Anne Porter could hide for all those years with FBI posters hanging in every post office inAmerica, a little n.o.body like me can do it forever."

"That's no kind of life, Mattie. Don't give him that much power over you. How can you find somebody to fall in love with and give you that family you want if you can't ever tell anyone the truth about who you are?"

"It's none of your business what I plan to do, Zeke! It isn't your problem. It's mine and I'll take care of it, okay? Just take me down to Pagosa Springs and I'll catch a bus from there."

"I can't do that, Mattie," he said, carefully putting his cup down on the stove. "I won't."

"I'll walk back down there if I have to."

"No, you won't."

She glared at him. He was right. With a sigh, she flung herself backward on the bed. "Fine. I'll just stay here and drive you crazy."

"Won't matter," he said without humor. "I'm already nuts."

She glanced up, but he was lighting a lantern. Off to the barns, no doubt, or someplace else. To her surprise, he held it out. "Take this on down to the sauna and sit in there a little while. It'll clear your head."

"Like it cleared yours?"

He lifted an eyebrow. "Sometimes nothing will do it, but I think it'll make you feel better."

Mattie took the lantern.

Much to her surprise, he was right. The sauna was far less primitive than she'd expected; in one corner stood a concrete incinerator where a fire burned. A two-by-two pool of warm mineral water no doubt fed by the streams all around sat in the middle of a wooden floor. Two benches, one high, one low, and wide enough for a person to lie upon comfortably, were nailed to one wall. Mattie stoked the fire and splashed water on the exterior of the incinerator as Zeke had instructed, and the experience was even more sybaritic than the shower.

Sitting in the comfortable dimness, her feet dangling in the small pool, her back braced against a bench, Mattie sighed. She was secretly relieved that he'd not agreed to her request to be taken toPagosa Springs. Everything about this place was designed to please the senses which said a lot, she decided, about the sensual nature of the p.r.i.c.kly, beautiful Zeke himself.

Her debt to him was growing like a wild vine. He'd saved her life, opened her eyes to possibilities she could never have dreamed existed and had awakened something deeply pa.s.sionate within her. Even now, there was a lingering, achy restlessness in her body, a longing only Zeke could quench.

But he wouldn't. He was honorable. He thought he would hurt her.

Lazily, she splashed water on the incinerator, over and over until thick steam filled the small room. It rippled down in gray clouds, caressing her face, her body, with ghostly fingers. Her skin glowed with it, and her blood had slowed to a languorous steady thrumming.

What would he do if she seduced him?

The thought came from nowhere, and yet it must have been hovering nearby, for it was fully formed and solid. What would he do?

She moved her feet in the water, vaguely enjoying the sweep of water over her toes. He'd probably been seduced once or twice, and likely by women far more experienced that she in such matters. Would Mattie make a fool of herself? What if he resisted or didn't want to make love to her?

Well, she amended, she was pretty sure he wanted to but that didn't mean he wouldn't resist. In fact, he probably would. If she tried it. If.

But wasn't that l.u.s.t? Where did l.u.s.t end and something deeper begin? From the first moment she'd laid eyes on him, Mattie had wanted his body.

It shamed her. Zeke deserved better than the lascivious thoughts of t.i.ttering waitresses. He deserved better than a woman plotting to get him to make love to her against his better judgment. He had a right to the same respect a woman would ask of a man.

He'd been kind enough to bring her to his private sanctuary, give her shelter and feed her and entertain her, and she'd repay it by asking for the one thing he wanted to keep.

No. She wouldn't. She'd dress demurely and stay away from mountain pools with him and make sure she did nothing at all to tempt him. And as soon as he'd let her, she'd get out of his life entirely.

The prospect gave her very little pleasure.

Brian pulled out a map of Colorado. "Pagosa Springs," he said, trailing his finger over the thin red lines. "Here it is. About four hundred miles. Maybe we can get there by tomorrow night."

"Whatever you say, boss." Vince swilled a beer. "Whatever you say."

Chapter 11.

Zeke had made a fire in the fireplace when Mattie returned, and the flames combined with the dancing light of the lanterns to create a cheery feeling in the room. He smiled at her when she came in. "How'd you like it?"

"You'd have to be dead to avoid appreciating that sauna."

"Yep, pretty much." He gestured toward the stove. "I made some supper. Nothing fancy, just some soup and biscuits, but I reckon it'll fill the hole in our bellies." He lifted the lid on the pot and stirred the contents, releasing a fragrant aroma into the air. "We should make a run to town tomorrow get some supplies."

Mattie, relaxed to the point of bonelessness , simply nodded her agreement.

They ate for a while in companionable silence. Zeke seemed to have found some measure of calm in her absence, because he treated her with his usual courtliness, though he was very careful not to touch her. Mattie found herself staring at the pictures on the wall, and wanted to ask again what the trophy was for, but didn't dare bring up anything that might rock the fragile peace in the room.

Zeke, however, seemed to notice her gaze. "I built this place from the money I earned, with those people," he volunteered, putting his bowl aside to stretch out his legs.

"What happened?" Mattie asked cautiously.

His grimace was wry, but it covered a lot of pain. "Woman trouble," he said and shook his head. "Amanda happened. I should have known better."

There was about him an almost amused att.i.tude, and Mattie dared a question. "What should you have known?"

He lifted his eyebrows ruefully. "That women bred to that ritzy life don't ever let you get away unpunished. She made up her mind the first minute we met that she was gonna have old Zeke, and I don't think she ever considered any man might not want her."

Mattie looked at the picture. The woman was beautiful and trim , with the understated elegance of money in every detail. "You didn't want her?"

He shrugged. "She was a good-looking woman and all, but there was no real magic. Those were my wild days with women, anyway and my partner had the hots for Amanda."

Putting her own bowl aside, Mattie stretched out sideways on the bed, settling her head on her hand. "What kind of business did you have?"

"I bred horses. Appaloosas. John, my partner, and I met in Albuquerque at the rodeo, and over the years we developed the business. Just a few horses at first, but by the end we had quite a herd, and a lot of business. d.a.m.n near got rich by my standards, anyway."

"And woman trouble brought you down."

"That's about the size of it. Amanda's daddy has racehorses big-time money, too. He wasn't real crazy about her hangin' out with a two-bit operation like ours, but she honestly loved those horses, and she knew we needed her knowledge and her cash. She underwrote some of the stallions we bought, and a really fine mare." He looked at her meaningfully. "She gave me Oth.e.l.lo as a present."

Mattie glanced at the photo and wickedly guessed, "As long as you gave her your body in return."

Zeke laughed. "More or less. It wasn't giving her my body that was the problem, though. We had worked that out at the start I told her I wasn't ever gonna settle down and raise babies, but she refused to believe me. When it finally sank in, she was fit to be tied."

Hearing the reiteration of his intention to stay footloose, Mattie smoothed a hand over the stallions printed on the blanket. Wasn't there just a little bit of that belief in Mattie, too? That the right woman would settle this man, make him happy and see him father children? Chagrined, she bit the inside of her check. The right woman. Whatever woman happened to be madly in love with him. All of them probably had the same thoughts.

"Anyway," Zeke went on, his mood still remarkably light, "she plotted herself a real nasty revenge. John always wanted her in the worst way, and she used that and all her daddy's money and connections in the horse world to bring me down. I lost everything but this little cabin, but I had to sell Oth.e.l.lo and the two other stallions that were mine free and clear to keep it."

"When did all this happen?"

"Two years ago," he said. "I've been drifting around the Southwest ever since." He lifted his cup in her direction. "You woke me up, Mattie. I'd been feeling real sorry for myself for a long d.a.m.n time, and you yanked me right out of it."

She smiled, extraordinarily pleased that she'd been able to do something for him. "I'm glad." She admired him lazily, without feeling the painful arousal from earlier. He looked exactly right in the pine-walled room, with firelight playing over his sharp, strong face, long legs crossed at the ankle. "What are you going to do about it?"

He frowned. "Good question. It's kind of a quandary. To get the cash I need for horses, I'd have to sell the land. Without the land, I have no place for the horses." He made a snorting noise. "It took me ten years to save the cash I needed the first time around. Good stallions are expensive."

"Can't you get a loan on the land?"

"Not without means to pay it back." He shrugged. "I'll probably hire on with a ranch somewhere, just spend my winters here."

Mattie flashed on the sauna and hot springs under cover of snow. "I'll bet it's nice up here in the wintertime."

"It is," he said quietly. "Especially when it snows. Not everybody likes winters like that, but they make me feel like a million bucks."

She smiled. "It's nice you got your dream, Zeke. That you got to grow up and have horses."

"What's your dream, Mattie?" he said, suddenly intense. "What did you want when you were a little kid in one of those foster homes?"

"All I really ever wanted was a family of my own," she said. "The past few years, I took up poetry because I liked the safety of that environment universities are very protected places. And it seems not very fashionable to want to have babies and make a home, so I felt like I should come up with something else."

"Babies, huh?" Zeke said, and there was a strange tight sound to his voice. His gaze was focused on the fire. "I like babies a lot."

Mattie couldn't resist. "Is that an invitation?"

He glanced up, and Mattie saw the conflict in him. "You know, Miss Mary, if I were another kind of man, there'd be nothing I'd like better than to give you those babies."

His words, spoken in that low drawl, pierced her so deeply her breath fled. Oh, yes .

"Trouble is," he said, head c.o.c.ked to one side, "I'd find some way to blow it all up before we were through, and you sure deserve better than that."

Mattie nodded. "Yes, I do."

He stood up by the fire a minute, seemingly undecided about something. Then he crossed the room and stopped by the bed, taking her hand to tug her upright. Mattie stared at him, bewildered by the swings of his moods.

He touched her cheek. "I like you better than any woman I've ever met," he said. He bent and pressed a warm kiss to her forehead. "Go on and get some sleep. We'll go into town tomorrow morning."

"Where are you going?" Mattie asked as he grabbed the sleeping bag from the floor.

"Just out to the porch, Miss Mary." His grin was wicked. "I think it'll be easier for me, if you don't mind."

"Won't you be cold?"

"I'll be fine."

* * * And fine he was. In the cool mountain air, Zeke slept like a child, and awakened just as dawn tiptoed into the valley. Dew misted the pine trees around the porch and jeweled the gra.s.ses growing in stubby clumps all around the steps. A sprightly bevy of sparrows bounced in the yard, digging in the damp earth and chattering among themselves. He listened. No cars. No planes. No electric wires humming. Only birds and the soft whisper of a morning breeze moving through the flat coins of aspen leaves. The silence gave him a powerful sense of well-being.

Something had shifted within him yesterday afternoon. So many painful emotions had torn at him, he thought he'd go insane with them. The old voices of derision and fury sounded like jackals in his brain.

While they'd been at their loudest, Mattie had flown across that cabin, surrounded him with herself, ignoring the fear he'd seen in her face, to hug him. Soothe him. In all his life, no one had ever done that. As a child, there'd been no one to do it; as an adult, he'd never let anyone close enough.

He'd never dreamed how good it would feel. How much sorrow and pain could drain so abruptly from him, like poisons spilling from a broken bottle. Maybe it was just the simple comfort of knowing there was someone who understood, who'd been there. The kind of childhood he'd known made most folks want to hide their heads.

His mind this morning was not so much on his childhood, as on the business he'd lost to Amanda and John. Losing it, the only thing he had, had nearly killed him. It had made him bitter and cynical.

This morning, what he wanted was to have his horses again. He missed the business and the money that money had been mighty nice, and he was d.a.m.ned good at what he did but he missed those horses with an almost physical pain.

Mattie had teased him about the books on his shelf, but she had him rightly pegged. He'd been horse crazy from the first time he'd laid eyes on one at the age of seven at a county fair. It had been a Tennessee walker, black and proud. Looking at it, with one arm in a cast from the second of his furious battles with his father, Zeke had believed in something beyond himself for the first time in his life. Tentatively, he'd reached up to touch that velvety nose. The horse had allowed it, and gazing into the big brown eyes, it seemed as if the horse understood.

What Zeke had learned was that he had a way with horses. When fairs and rodeos came to town, Zeke skipped school to spend his days and nights at the stables, hanging out until someone took pity on him and let him feed the creatures or clean the stables or whatever else needed doing. Didn't matter. He'd have gladly shoveled manure with his hands to get close to the horses.

And over the years, it became plain he knew the heart of horses. He knew when things weren't right with them when they were in pain or feeling restless or whatever more, he seemed to know what to do for them, without even thinking much about it.

It was a gift, the old stable hands maintained. Said he was half horse himself.

Yesterday, when he'd accused Mattie of allowing Brian to chase her into the shadows, when he'd asked her if she'd let Brian force her to give up her dreams, he'd been shocked to realize that was just what he'd done. Like a dog kicked once too often, he'd tucked his tail between his legs and come up here to hide, too weary to even want anything anymore.

He wondered if Mattie had ever seen a real horse. The thought made him smile. She'd loved absolutely everything about the country life he'd shown her not once had she complained about the lack of electricity or plumbing facilities. She was blooming up here. He bet she'd like horses one h.e.l.l of a lot.

Riding behind Zeke on his motorcycle in the clear of a summer mountain morning counted as equal parts pure pleasure and deepest torture. Mattie had no idea where they were going, only that he smiled over it, and that they needed some supplies. If they were going to get supplies, Mattie thought, he wasn't going to get rid of her just yet, and that was good.

In a way.