A Mating of Hawks (7 page)

A cry rose in her throat as a figure loomed before her. Fingers clamped over her mouth. A steel-muscled arm dragged her against a hard, powerful body.

“Tracy!” came a startled whisper. “What the hell, honey? It's just me!”

As she quieted, Judd cautiously took his hand off her mouth. He kept his other arm around her, though it was loose now, no longer a pinion.

“I—I—” Swept back to the panic of that night six months ago, she couldn't talk.

Judd turned her about and marched her to the kitchen, a big room with all the modernities amidst dark-blue and sun-yellow Mexican tile, sculptured adobe niches and much bright copper. Installing her in Concha's rocking chair, he got a glass of milk, laced it amply with Tia Maria, and gave it to her.

“I'm sorry I scared you.” He spread his big square hands appealingly. “Just thought I could show you the moon.”

Restored by reality and the warming liqueur, Tracy managed a laugh. “All is forgiven. But please don't lurk around in the dark.”

He frowned, pulling over a low bench so that he could look directly into her eyes. “You were more than startled, you were terrified! Why, Tracy?”

She shook her head. The pulse throbbed sledgingly in her throat so that she seemed to feel again those strangling, brutal fingers. “I—I'd rather not talk about it.”

She would have risen but he imprisoned her, setting a hand on either arm of the rocker. “Something's happened. I don't remember much about you, but you were no scaredy-cat.”

“Please!”

The pupils of his eyes had dilated, leaving only a thin circle of gold around their blackness. “You were raped!”

She shook her head, beginning to tremble.

“Then what?”

Maybe it would help to tell. Stumblingly, eyes fixed on her tightly clasped hands, she explained. Judd was breathing heavily by the time she finished. Springing up, he gripped his hands behind him, paced the length of the room.

“So that pervert's being coddled by the shrinks till he can be turned loose!”

“I told you, he went berserk in Viet Nam—”

“That's an excuse?” Judd turned on his heel. “You wait right here.”

He was back in a few minutes. “Keep this.” He handed her a small gun.

She stared at the blue-black barrel, the carved ivory handle. “I don't shoot.”

“Then I'll damned well teach you.”

“But, Judd, I'm not in Houston!”

“You're safe enough in this house,” he agreed. “But if you're out driving or walking alone, you could run into some dangerous types on the ranch. Hippies running drugs, Commies running guns, illegals—”

“Oh, come on, Judd! Illegal aliens just want work. I never heard of their hurting anyone.”

“They sure have taken to robbery. Just ask anyone who lives along the border. Over around Douglas, where two ranchers were tried for defending their home, folks are ready to shoot to kill.”

“Weren't those ranchers on trial for torturing an illegal?”

Judd grunted. “They just wanted to teach him a lesson he wouldn't forget. Hell, they could have just killed him and dumped the body down an old mine shaft. He'd never even have been missed.”

Except by some woman, some old parents or children down in Mexico? Tracy shook her head, tried to give back the gun. “I don't know how to use it.”

He let out an explosive breath. “After what happened to you? You'd by God better learn!”

When she still held out the weapon, he took a deep breath, spoke more gently. “Tracy, the night that animal jumped you, if you'd had a gun, wouldn't you have used it? Been mighty glad to?”

She shivered involuntarily. “Yes.”

“Well, then?” he prodded.

She couldn't answer. Of course she'd have used any defense she could have that terrible night. But she didn't think the answer to violence was for everyone to start packing guns.

Judd said urgently, real concern in his voice. “Tracy, just keep the gun a while. Get used to it. Then let me teach you to shoot. I can't stand to think of you not being prepared if you needed to be and though I hate to say it, not even the ranch is safe anymore.”

She appreciated his caring. And it couldn't hurt to learn to shoot, though she wasn't going to carry a gun. Glancing down at the small weapon, she gave Judd a teasing smile. “You were lucky I wasn't armed and dangerous when you waylaid me in the hall, Judd.”

He shrugged. “You'd never have had a chance to shoot.”

“Then why learn?”

He chuckled. “Because, sweet baby, not many guys know all the tricks I do.” He tilted up her chin, fingers warm against the leaping pulse in her throat. “My God, have you ever grown up beautiful!”

“Is this a private party or may I have a drink?” As Vashti glided through the doorway, Judd stepped back.

“I thought you had a headache.”

“I did. I do.” She smiled appealingly. Her body curved voluptuously beneath a clinging dark-green panné velvet robe. “Be a love, Judd, and make me a Scotch and soda.”

Disgruntled, he moved over to the refrigerator. Vashti peered at the gun Tracy now felt sheepish about holding. “Darling! What on earth have you got that dreadful thing for?”

“She's going to learn to use it,” Judd interposed.

Vashti's eyebrows climbed. “Are you, Tracy? You don't seem the type. But blood will out, and from those sagas Patrick's so fond of repeating, your ancestresses thought nothing of shooting men.”

“They killed scalp-hunters who were murdering Apache women and children,” Tracy retorted. “In their place, I hope I could have done the same.”

Vashti's jade eyes gleamed with mirth and perhaps a touch of malice. “But, dear; we don't have any scalp-hunters these days.”

Handing his stepmother her drink, Judd snorted. “We've got more scum than ever, Vashti, and you ought to know it if you listen to the news.”

She lifted an elegant shoulder and patted his hand. “You men! Creating terrors and alarms if there aren't any! If you think it's so bad that we should all go around with sub-machine guns and bandoliers, why not sell to the Vistas Unlimited developers and move to town?”

“My dead body may move to town, but I won't.”

Vashti's laughter tinkled. “Judd, angel! You sound like John Wayne!”

He watched her moodily. “The cities are rotting. They're going to explode the way a putrid carcass blows up from trapped gases. That's when the maggots will scurry around for safety.” Insolently, he looked his stepmother up and down. “On that day, Vashti, pray you can still hide here.”

She made a face and yawned. “My father was a fundamentalist minister who loved to preach blood to the chariot wheels, the moon in sackcloth and the end of the world. Your notions are just as depressing, Judd dear, though they lack Biblical grandeur.”

Uncomfortable at their skirmishing and something else she sensed between them, Tracy put her glass in the sink and quickly said her good-nights.

Back in her room, she stared at the gun a minute, felt a wave of revulsion. What kind of life was it if you had to go in fear and suspicion, be prepared to kill? Tomorrow, she'd give Judd back his gun. Placing it on top of the armoire, she quickly got ready for bed.

As she settled gratefully between the cool sheets, a vagrant memory of Shea crossed her mind. Now that she thought of it, his pickup had been missing the almost universal gun rack. Maybe he hid his firearms. Or maybe he didn't agree with Judd.

Whatever his views on guns, he was one standoffish character! Far from offering to take her around, as Judd had hospitably done, Shea had as good as told her he didn't want her at El Charco.

Why? And why should it sting? She stretched, feeling her stomach muscles tighten sensuously, and smiled a bit vindictively in the knowledge that though, for reasons unknown, Shea seemed to be a woman-hater, he had most certainly responded to her physically—and she hoped he was thinking about her now and repenting his surliness!

What eyes he had! Like a summer thunderstorm charged with lightning. She sighed as her thoughts moved to Patrick. Let him be sleeping, forgetful of his troubles! At least, she could lighten his dreary confinement a little bit. And it was good to be home, back in her childhood bed. Hugging a pillow to her, Tracy drifted into sleep.

When she went up to Patrick next morning, a cranky Vashti was preparing to bathe and shave him. “He should have a nurse,” she complained to Tracy as if the blind man couldn't hear. “But he's run off everyone we've coaxed into coming out here.”

“A bunch of ninnies,” Patrick grouched. “That last old hatchet-face should've been thrilled to get a slap on the fanny!”

“Strangely enough, she wasn't,” Vashti snapped. “Really, Patrick, it's not fair that all this falls on me because you shock and intimidate the people I hire!”

Patrick chortled. “And what kind of nurses are they if a blind cripple can fluster 'em? Dammit, woman, I've told you to get one of the vaqueros up here. Any man of them would be glad to do it.”

Vashti's lips compressed. “It's bad enough for Chuey Sanchez to track in manure once or twice a week. Why he can't just report to Judd—”

“Chuey knows I'm still the boss.” The spunk faded from Patrick's voice and he sounded very tired. “You don't have to shave me, Vashti. Judd will, or hell, I'll grow whiskers!”

“I've always wanted to be a lady barber,” Tracy said, laughing as she took the razor from the older woman. “You'd look ravishing with sideburns, Patrick! Why don't we start some?”

“Why not?” he chuckled, relaxing.

Vashti, crisp in beige linen, paused in the door. “Don't spoil him too outrageously,” she warned. “I have a new nurse coming and if she doesn't stay, I'm going to be extremely vexed!”

Patrick made a rude sound and grinned up at Tracy. “Thanks, honey. Try not to cut my throat.”

“Keep still, then,” she begged nervously.

The shave didn't take long. She bathed Patrick's face and torso but he refused to let her do more. “I wouldn't mind a she-nurse if she was pretty and fun,” he grumbled. “But the ones Vashti hires are skinny as snakes or broad as hippos and talk like they broke a thermometer in their mouth!”

“Now, Patrick, how do you know they're not gorgeous?”

“I can hear even if I can't see,” he rumbled, then grinned wickedly. “I can feel, too. And believe me, honey, those old girls were tough as rawhide or soggy as a wet sponge!”

“Patrick!”

He gave his good shoulder a truculent hitch. “I'm only
half
dead, Tracy, not all the way. Now listen, you get over to the Sanchezes' today and see them and the vaqueros.”

“Is my singing that bad?”

“You can sing when you get back.” He winked his live eye. “Get along with you now! I've got to save up my strength for that new nurse who's supposed to show up today.”

Tracy gave her head a despairing shake and kissed him good-bye. She could imagine that he might be a real terror to a nurse, but surely it was better for him to be feisty and a bit lecherous rather than lie there as if completely paralyzed.

Downstairs, she went in search of Vashti to see if there were horses handy or if she should drive to the old ranchhouse. Vashti was sunning by the pool, an almost empty glass beside her. An emerald string bikini bared her seductively curved body and she glistened with tanning cream.

That magnificent body needed what the crippled man upstairs could no longer provide. Tracy felt grudging sympathy for the woman. Even surrounded by luxury, she was in a cruel position.

“I'm sorry, dear,” she said to Tracy's question. “I don't ride and when Judd does, he has a vaquero bring a horse. You can do that. Call Chuey, or take anything in the garage. The keys are labeled and hanging just inside the entry.”

Tracy thanked her and was turning away when Vashti swung long legs off the lounge and looked up at her through sunglasses. “Thanks for playing valet to Patrick. He just has no consideration for the trouble it puts me to when he provokes a nurse into quitting!”

“Maybe the new one will work out.”

“My God, I hope so!” Vashti drained her glass and sounded a bell that brought the young man who'd served them at table yesterday. Bowing to Tracy, he took the glass and went off without a question. Clasping her arms tightly about herself, Vashti said with drunken plaintiveness, “You know what's terrible?”

“What?”

“He—he wants me to lie down by him.” Vashti shuddered. “Without my clothes!”

“You
are
his wife.” Taken aback, sorry for them both, it was all Tracy could think of to say.

Vashti yanked off the sunglasses. Dark green eyes blazed and her soft mouth twisted. “That's the awful part! He's always been such a marvelous lover, even after he went blind. Now—now he's the way he is—oh, God! It's like lying down with death!”

“You must be life to him, and warmth,” Tracy pointed out. “Can't you, Vashti, knowing how it is for him?”

“I—I've tried! I just can't bear it.”

Grief for Patrick swept aside Tracy's pity for the woman. She said in a grim voice, “If that's how it is, then I think you should get a nurse who won't feel that way.”

Vashti took a long swallow from the glass the young man had quietly placed on the table. “It's all so silly! Apart from touching, he can't
do
anything.”

“Touching's mightily important.” Tracy knew. She often hungered for simple physical closeness, just holding and being held.

Vashti thrust on her sunglasses and lay back, the belly beneath her rib cage taut and flat as a girl's. Her fingers brushed nipples that pressed visibly against the bikini top. “You don't understand,” she muttered.

Tracy did, too well. Patrick's wife felt only revulsion for his helplessness, his longing to be warmed by a woman's body. At the same time, Vashti missed their former sexual passion. Maybe, tormented by that, she was as incapable of the nurturing Patrick craved as he was of the prowess of which she felt cheated.