A Mating of Hawks (10 page)

“Pelts are money.”

“He didn't have much more fur than a squirrel!”

Shea said with an angry movement of his shoulders, “For every valuable pelt taken, there are three ‘trash' animals. They're supposed to be released but that's dangerous and trouble. The trapper clubs them and hopes next time he won't be so unlucky.”

“I—I can't stand it!”

He said nothing to that but got out a handkerchief and wiped her face, made her blow her nose. His hands dropped to her bare shoulders. She glanced up at him, gave a soft cry at the lightnings flickering in his storm-gray eyes. His mouth burned hers. She flowed against him, trying to ease the pain in her breasts, the fiery yearning that swept away any need for words.

Pulling off his shirt and trousers, he spread them on the sparsely grassed bank and drew her down with him, unfastening her bra, stroking her nipples till she moaned and arched toward him, joying in his hard strength.

“You want this?” he whispered harshly.

“I—want this!”

He eased into her, slowly, for she was tight from having had no one. There was a moment of dread as her body remembered that futile assault six months ago. He caressed that away, filling her gently, then resting as she felt the magical wonder of his strong virility sheathed deeply, sweetly. She moved, questing. With a soft laugh, he began the rhythm that delighted and thrilled her, arousing her to a wild abandon. He restrained his pace, then, moving slowly, languorously till she gasped and implored him with her lifting thighs. Never, never had she felt anything like this, wanted a man so completely, longed so to be utterly his.

Then conscious thought ceased. He lifted her out of the world, into a spinning dizzying soft dark flame that kept exploding in deep, steady throbs of ecstasy.

Spent, she rested in his arms, loving the feel of his neck muscles beneath her hand, the sound of his heart beneath her ear. She sighed happily.

Now he'd say he loved her, explain why he'd been so horrid.

Instead, he put her from him, pulled on his underwear and stared down at Tracy so that she felt shamed.

Rising from his clothes at once, she dressed quickly, buttoning up her shirt though it was streaked with the ringtail's blood. He took the trap, thrust it on a ledge and crumbled sand over it. Picking up the camera gear, he looked at her as if they were chance-met strangers.

“Shall I walk you back to your pickup?”

“Oh,” she said foolishly. “Did you see it?”

“That's why I followed you.” Just the hint of a wry smile. “You seem to have a flair for getting into predicaments.”

There was no denying that both yesterday and today she'd been very glad to see him. But why was he behaving like this? Baffled and hurt, Tracy searched his unreadable face.

“Shea—” She couldn't go on.

He was leading the way, tan pants showing the muscles of his thighs. “What?”

“I—I don't understand.”

He stopped. Confronting her, he said flatly, “What's to understand? We wanted each other.” His mouth curved down. “I think you're honest enough not to pretend I seduced you.”

She blushed hotly. Certainly he hadn't coaxed or flattered or used force. But he had loved her with his hands, he'd pleased her, not just himself, and if there hadn't been tenderness and caring in his passion, then she'd give up on trying to sense any man's attitudes!

“Do you want me to say I'm sorry?” he continued in a tone of deadly soft ridicule.

“No! I just—”
Want you to say you love me
.

It was clear he wasn't going to do that. Fighting tears, Tracy reached for her pack. “I'm not ready to go home yet. And in the future, if you see my vehicle, you needn't worry about it. I'll be roaming around a lot for pictures.”

He didn't relinquish the camera. “Don't roam up in this area, especially on weekends. You might meet some of Judd's Stronghold pupils.”

“Stronghold?”

“He hasn't told you about his survival school?” Shea's voice was scornfully amused. “I'm sure he will. All I need to tell you is that one of the trainees probably set that trap, and even though they've got a hill behind their rifle range, it's smart to stay away when you get that many people playing sharpshooter.”

Questions buzzed through her head, but Shea was so biased against Judd that she preferred not to ask him. They moved along in silence for a few minutes, Tracy still unable to believe he could so casually dismiss the kind of rapture they had shared.

She thought angrily that he would have to be an unusually skillful lover to make up for his nastiness the rest of the time!

As if guessing her thoughts, he threw her a tough, challenging smile. “Don't make a big deal of plain sex, Tracy. Leads to unnecessary problems.”

“I don't make a big deal of ‘plain sex,'” she thrust back at him.

Was that dismay in his eyes? If so, he covered it quickly. “Maybe you'd rather spread a romantic haze over it. Sorry. I'm fresh out of moonbeams and hogwash.”

“Then you can have your simple, uncomplicated sex with somebody else!”

“With you, it was pretty fancy.” He gave an unamused laugh, eyes touching her so that in spite of her furious hurt, a melting, quivering awareness of him trembled through her. “Don't worry. I won't force my crude desires on you.” He put her pack in the truck and gave her a mocking smile. “Any time you'll settle for the basics, let me know.”

He strode over to his own pickup, moving with controlled grace. Tracy sat at the wheel a moment, achingly bereft, feeling used and cast aside.

Damned if she was! She stiffened her spine and started the truck, clamping her teeth tight to keep from crying.

She had started to fall in love with him but she'd put a quick halt to that! Or if it was too late, as she miserably suspected it was, she'd at least keep clear of his demeaning propositions.

As she drove home, she had to admit that he'd been honest. According to his lights, he hadn't tricked her. She had just been sure that he must care about her for their lovemaking to be so powerful.

Some of that golden, explosive warmth lingered within her, forcing her to admit, in spite of her humiliation, that the only thing she regretted about those ardent, wonderful moments was that they must not be repeated.

VI

The redtails were up there again. Might be some eggs in that relined nest this spring after all. Shea left the pickup by the gate and started to walk the fence along the leased land. He wanted to be sure it was in good condition. The next thing he expected Judd to do was drive cattle into these pastures but claim innocence, say the fences must be down.

Shea's smile was grim as he thought of how riled Judd would be when he found that his half-brother had a permit designating the lease as an experimental area. The permit left to Shea the decision whether to graze this land.

Though grazing leases were public lands, such leases were attached to ranches and traditionally were sold along with the ranch. A rancher paid so much per head and this lease money went into the state fund for schools and other public facilities. There were about nine million acres of these “trust” lands in Arizona, more than the combined acreage of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Grazing leases also took up some of the over thirty-one million acres of federal land. If one added to that about nineteen million acres owned by Indians, only about seventeen percent of the state was under private ownership.

Take away Phoenix and Tucson and the state was still pretty much frontier with the accompanying mentality. No one worried about what would happen when the water was gone. Developers, ranchers, agribusiness and mines were racing each other to the bottom of the aquifers, though the mines had started using recycled water.

Green, irrigated fields brought no joy to Shea. He got physically sick when he saw water running to waste along the roadsides. The groundwaters between Phoenix and Tucson had been pumped for alfalfa and cotton till the ground was buckling, scarred with cracks twenty feet wide, and it was the same story all over the state's arable lands. Make a bundle now and for as long as taxpayers foot the bill for bringing in water from far away. Get out when the water's gone or when it starts costing the grower what it should.

It was the same with the land. Overgrazed since the 1880's, a hundred years had turned grasslands to desert just as irrigating had sucked the rivers dry. The Socorro had been more careful than most about rotating graze and trimming herds to fit, but even before Patrick's blindness, Judd had been running more stock than the hundred thousand acres would support.

Shea looked approvingly at the way Boer and Lehman lovegrasses and plains brittlegrass were spreading over the pasture he and Geronimo had cleared laboriously of most mesquites. It took a bulldozer to knock down the trees and drag out their long taproots. But the hardy grasses were thriving despite the sparse rainfall.

A federal study Shea had cooperated with showed that if scrub and mesquite in southern Arizona was replaced with native grasses, the amount of groundwater saved over twenty years would be almost double what would come from the $2.5 billion Central Arizona Project in the same time, even if the heavily overcommitted Colorado River weren't sucked dry long before that. Revegetation would cost a fraction of that and would last as long as grazing was held to reasonable levels.

If Patrick could see, this grass would convince him. Shea had to hope the looks of the field would eventually penetrate even Judd's more impervious blindness, but he was braced for trouble when Judd came back from a fruitless chat with the land commissioner.

Judd. Shea frowned. His half-brother had a way with women; he'd give Tracy all the sweet talk and attention she could want. That ought to console her if the hurt in those wide-spaced dark amber eyes had been real.

Probably it had. As real as the tears she'd shed for the trapped ringtail, as real as the fiery sweetness with which she'd met him. A stab of desire went through him, hummed through his blood. In spite of what he'd said to her it hadn't been plain sex, though she was apparently inexperienced enough to believe him. He gave an involuntary snort. Did she think he went through those shenanigans when all he wanted was relief?

After Cele had ditched him, he'd left women alone for a while. Then he'd tumbled everyone who seemed agreeable and clean. Probably, when he was drunk, some of them were not so clean. But once he went back to school, he'd been less randy. He'd had arrangements of convenience with several women, which he'd broken off if they seemed to be forgetting their bargain. Since returning to the ranch, he hadn't bothered to establish a steady source of supply. Geronimo knew some obliging women in Nogales and that had sufficed.

Good, like a meal or drink when a man was hungry or thirsty, but nothing like Tracy. Nothing ever had been, not even with Cele.

That was small wonder. He and Cele had both been kids when they married. After all these years, he felt an ache like that from an old wound. She had been so pretty and new and sweet, so soft and yielding. Too soft and yielding to wait for him. Hadn't even had the nerve to write. Patrick had done that. Shea hadn't contested the divorce and he hadn't the faintest notion where she was now.

Patrick had understood. All too well, for his second wife, Elena, Shea's mother, had run off with a ranch foreman. Shea had been only three. One day there had been a beautiful, tender woman who hugged him. Then, suddenly, she was gone. It seemed like winter and the house went dark. The ranch women petted Shea and held him on their laps, but he had clambered down and run off to mourn.

Where was she? Why had she left him?

He knew now, of course, that the city-bred girl had detested the ranch and felt neglected by Patrick. She hadn't been evil. Nor was Cele. Both were sweet, appealing women.

Like Tracy?

Yes. Like Tracy. He could imagine both of them crying over a small trapped animal. But would they have risked themselves to help a stranger? Shea swore.

All right. Give the girl guts. It made her all the more dangerous. She had gotten to him, something he'd thought no woman could do. It was a good thing he'd made her so mad that she'd avoid him. A few more times with her and he'd be lost.

But he ached for her already, groaned under his breath as he remembered the sweetness of her flesh, the warm depths that embraced and held and urged him on, driving him crazy to have all of her, possess her as utterly as she had captured him.

If she came to him, he'd have to have her. The only hope he had was to make her believe it didn't matter, so that when she left at least she wouldn't take his soul.

Judd stalked into Patrick's room after dinner that night, while Tracy was playing and Mary was barbering Patrick's shaggy white curls.

With neither greeting nor acknowledgment, Judd burst out, “Dad! Did you know Shea's got himself a range research permit?”

“No,” said Patrick slowly. “That mean you can't get his lease revoked because he's not running cattle?”

“That's what it means. I raised hell but he pulled some pretty high-powered strings and he's got the right credentials.”

Patrick sighed. “Well, boy, sounds like you better sell some cows.”

“Don't you care?”

“I care,” snapped Patrick. “But I can't see! You tell me one thing and Shea says another! You'll just have to work it out between the two of you.”

Judd's breath sucked in heavily before he made an obvious effort at self-control. Shrugging, he said tightly, “Okay, I'll work it out.”

Patrick introduced him to Mary, then. Judd gave her the careless, charming smile he seemed to have for all women. “Hope you'll like it here, Mary. You're a blessed change from the other nurses.”

She thanked him with a calm, measured glance and went on with her task. Judd turned to Tracy. “Ready for the grand tour tomorrow?”