Breaking The Rules Part 19

As if she were made of pieces torn from him, she flowed into his arms, her curves filling hollows, her heat covering his cold, her cheek fitting his shoulder exactly.

He closed his eyes and let himself feel her, knowing it was a pleasure that could not last.

They ate breakfast on the porch. Mattie kept hoping the racc.o.o.n would come, but he didn't. As they drank the last of the coffee, Zeke said, "Mattie."

She looked at him, alarmed by the dull tone of his voice. She said nothing, just waited for the other shoe.

A tic jumped by his right eye, near the scar. "You have to turn yourself in. I can't keep you safe here and you can't hide forever."

She opened her mouth to protest. He held up a hand, turning to lean on the rough table between them. "Listen, all right? All the way through."

Something wary and tired about him made her do as he asked. "I'm listening," she said.

"The reward is for twenty-five thousand dollars, Mattie. If your information leads to Brian's arrest, you'll get the money."

"I don't care about the money."

"I know, but you ought to. Twenty-five thousand clams would go a long way to building whatever kind of future you want for yourself, so you don't have to depend on some job you hate or the security of a husband."

"I'm a very simple woman," she replied. "I don't need the money."

He sighed. "Then for one minute, I want you to think about what will happen if you don't testify and old Brian Murphy gets off scot-free. Now, the people he killed probably had mothers and wives and maybe even kids, and they deserve some justice... And I want you to think about what's going to happen five years from now, when Brian relaxes. When he's got all his ducks in a row again. And he looks around for another sweet girl to marry."

A small wave of dizziness pa.s.sed through her. This was a possibility she'd never considered.

"What if she's not as lucky as you were and she goes ahead and marries him and has a couple of kids. Who's gonna lose when she does find out? Or when she doesn't find out and they come and take him away to jail for the rest of his life? Who loses?"

Mattie bent her head, ashamed that her fear had overridden her ability to think about the consequences of her actions on people other than herself and Brian.

"Your boyfriend and his crony wouldn't be looking for you if the police had anything else to go on, Mattie."

She stood up abruptly. "All right!" she shouted. "All right. I'll do it. But you take the money and buy Oth.e.l.lo back. You make the call and have the police come get me here."

"Mattie, that's ridiculous. You need the money it's you making the sacrifice."

"I don't want you to have the money for you, Zeke. Oth.e.l.lo loves you."

Hurt, afraid, angry, Mattie slammed the chair into place under the table and stormed into the cabin.

Chapter 15.

In the Creede surveyor's office, Brian hit pay dirt. Zeke Shephard had purchased eighty acres of mountain land four years before. Brian found the lot numbers on a map, then traced the roads. It might be a little bit tricky to find entrance, but they were close now.

Mattie O'Neal would be a corpse by sunset.

* * * Mattie sat on the bed, her back propped against the wall, her legs crossed, watching Zeke get ready to go. "You don't want to come with me?" he asked.

"I'll just wait here. Get my things together."

He took his keys from the table. "Suit yourself. I'll be back in an hour or so. I'll call from the tackle shop down the road."

"Fine."

"Mattie, you don't have to do this alone. I'll go in with you, make sure you're taken care of. I'll even show up in court if you want me to."

She gazed at him impa.s.sively. "No."

For an instant, he met that gaze, his face reflecting nothing. Finally, he shrugged and grabbed his helmet.

Without a word, he went out the front door and Mattie heard the bike start up and roar down the hill.

With a peculiar pain, she gazed around the room. They'd only been here three days. Two weeks ago, Mattie had never seen Zeke Shephard . A little over a month ago, she'd been living a quiet life as a secretary.

No wonder she felt dizzy.

But in many ways, this had always been the pattern of her life. Upheaval. Change. She'd become comfortable in a foster home, and find herself in another one, just that fast.

A person could get used to almost anything.

Resigned, she began to gather her things together, stuffing socks and rumpled clothes into her duffel bag without much thought. She had no idea where the police would take her, where she'd spend the night or live her life the next few weeks. Her apartment was likely still waiting for her. Her job was less certain.

The thought of returning to Kansas City sent a rigid, screaming resistance through her. She knew too much to go back. She'd seen another kind of life, and she wanted it.

Settling her book of poetry on top of the rest, she tugged the drawstring closed. She still had some gum and crackers to tide her over. Of the two hundred and thirty-three dollars she had taken with her from Kismet, more than two hundred remained. Enough to get her out of Kansas City once her business there was finished.

Zeke had left the door open upon his departure, and a soft wind blew over the threshold, calling to her.

It carried a warm scent of drying pine needles and the song of birds. Seduced, Mattie wandered out to the bright summer morning and gazed around her in wonder. From the front of the cabin, the wide vistas of the valley were no longer visible and Mattie let her gaze wander up the mountainside, to the trees and stony outcroppings. The wind that had seduced her outside now caressed her face. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, letting it blow away the tightness in her shoulders, the achy feeling in her chest.

Even now, knowing the brief, exciting, enthralling days she'd stolen with Zeke were over, she felt a promise in that wind. A sense of expectation, a sense of deliverance.

That was what she'd felt with Zeke. Deliverance. It was the unfulfilled promise of it that hurt so much this morning.

Last night, she had believed she'd broken through to the real Zeke, to the man who hid inside the sh.e.l.l. Even after he said there was no future for them, even when he warned her to take off her rose-colored gla.s.ses and insisted he'd ruin whatever came up between them, Mattie had only half believed him.

That washer own foolishness, though. It had nothing to do with Zeke. He played by his rules and Mattie had known what they were.

Thinking back to that morning in the Kismet diner when she had first seen him, it seemed impossible it had only been two weeks. He had changed her life.

If only she'd been able to do the same for him.

A glimmer of light on the side of the mountain caught her eye, and with a grin, she shaded her eyes with one hand. It was the hot spring! She hadn't realized it was visible from here, and she supposed it wasn't, unless you knew it was there.

Suddenly, she dashed back inside and dumped the contents of her tote bag on the bed. She tossed off her clothes, and quickly slipped into a pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt. Zeke said he'd be gone an hour or so. She'd just go take a dip in that pool while she waited for his return. It certainly beat brooding.

Unfortunately, walking proved conducive to thinking, too. As she followed the slim path up the hill, she remembered the hike with Zeke and his great pleasure in showing her the pool he'd dug. She thought of the way he felt in front of her on the bike, and the way his eyes could lighten to that brilliant pale emerald when he was teasing.

When she reached the pool, she remembered the way he had kissed her here, so desperately hungry, with such wild need.

G.o.d, she would miss him!

Was it possible to fall in love in so short a time or was she just dazzled by the presence and size and sheer charisma of him? She had, after all, thought herself in love with Brian. Now she barely thought of him at all.

Would the same thing happen a few months from now when she thought back on Zeke? She didn't know. She didn't see how it was possible that she'd ever stop thinking about him. It felt incomplete, for one thing. She had learned only a tiny part of him, and wanted to know everything. All the things it would take a lifetime to learn.

Annoyed with her brooding, she waded into the pool.

How did a person ever answer these questions? She tipped back and floated in the warm, buoyant water, staring at the blazing Colorado sky above her. At last she found respite from the whirl of her thoughts. Floating in the mineral water that reminded her of Zeke, and smelled of earth and musk and the elements, she emptied her mind and simply floated between the bowl of the sky and ground below.

Until the wind carried the sound of Zeke's motorcycle to her. She scrambled up and swam to the far side of the pool, finding a toehold in a rock below the water so she could see the driveway in front of the cabin. When he parked the bike and cut the engine, Mattie cupped her hands around her mouth and called his name. He paused, looking around perplexed for a moment.

"Up here!" Mattie yelled. When he glanced up, she waved. He lifted a hand and moved toward the path that led to the pool.

Mattie watched him cross the clearing with long-limbed ease, his movements loose and calm. His hair shone in the sunlight. Her heart caught. Strider.

Yes, she loved him. It wasn't logical or sensible or anything of those other things. He was not the kind of man she'd daydreamed about all of her life, safe and stolid and dependable, but he was the one. The One.

When he emerged from the bend around a boulder a few minutes later, the pinching in her chest trebled, expanded, stole her breath.

Safe and solid and dependable were not the words most women would use to describe Zeke Shephard . They'd see his tattoo and wild hair and his big mean motorcycle and words like s.e.xy and exciting and dangerous would come to mind. Mattie knew, because they'd been in her mind.

He was s.e.xy. And exciting and vivid. But it was the dizzying combination of exciting and safe that made him dangerous, not anything inherent in him, just that simple fact that he would always protect and care for the small and defenseless, the babies and children and beleaguered women of the world.

As he stood on the edge of the pool, Mattie saw something else. In his beautiful, deep eyes, she saw how much the loss of her company would cost him. He looked like a man whose dog had just been hit by a truck.

It nearly broke her heart. He needed her, wanted her as much as he ever had, but last night they'd grown too close. To protect himself, to survive, he thought he had to push her away.

He needed her, and she knew nothing on earth would make him admit it.

She stared at him without speaking, letting that painful knowledge reverberate in her chest, and finally said, "Is it done?"

"Yeah." He kicked a rock on the edge of the pool. "They'll be coming for you shortly."

Mattie nodded. "I guess I'd better get out and get ready, the."

"Probably be a good idea."

She tipped back in the water, wishing... "I'd like to stay just a few more minutes, if you don't mind."

"No. I don't mind."

"All right." Mattie paddled around the pool a little, feeling a little awkward that he wasn't joining her. He

sat on a flat piece of pink granite at the edge of the pool and tossed pine needles at her.

After a little while, he asked, "Are you still mad at me?"

"No. You were right. I need to get this settled before I can move on." She swam a few strokes, reveling

in the soft feeling of the water on her body. "I'll miss this place, though. It's like heaven."

He tossed a pine cone and it splashed in the water next to her. "You're welcome tocome visit anytime." Mattie looked at him.

His eyes were sober. "I mean it, Mattie. If I'm not here, you just go on in and make yourself at home." She smiled ruefully, knowing she'd never take him up on the offer. "Thanks."

"You sure you don't want me to go with you?"

"I'm sure, Zeke. It's time I stood on my own two feet." To change the subject, she splashed water toward him. "Why don't you come in for a swim with me? Last chance."

He inclined his head. "I think I'd better wait out here."

Mattie shrugged, and kicked backward into a float. "Your loss."

She felt his gaze on her, hot and sharp, touching the curves exposed by the water and she was glad.

She hoped it was desperately hard for him to let her go.

"Mattie," he said. "About last night-"

She pulled herself upright. "Zeke, you said it best. It was great but it won't last, so let's just let it go. I can't stand to go through some mournful parting scene, okay?" She could see that wounded him. His face went dark and he stood up. "Fine." He paced the side of the pool and glanced through the break in the trees. "I just thought it would be-"

He broke off, shoved his hand through his hair. "I don't know what I thought."

Mattie knew. "Let it go, Zeke," she said, suddenly weary. Wiping water from her face, she waded to sh.o.r.e. Picking up her towel, she echoed his words from the night before, "It was nice while it lasted, right?"

He didn't look at her, just stood at the break in the trees that looked down to the cabin, his jaw stern. "Yeah."

She looped the towel around her neck. "I'm going down."

"Mattie-"