Desperado (26 page)

“Compromise? When a woman says compromise, she usually means something different from a man. I'm a lawyer. I know these things.”

She squeezed his hand. “If you'd be willing to have a baby to please me, why wouldn't I be willing to
not
have babies to please you? Love goes both ways, you know.”

Rafe went still. “You wouldn't be happy.”

“I wouldn't be happy without you, either.”

“So what's the answer?”

“You're a lawyer. I'm a military leader. The answer's obvious.”

He thought a moment. “Negotiate?”

“Yep.”

“Sounds like a stalemate to me.”

“No, it sounds like a beginning,” she whispered, swaying closer.

“What are you doing?” he choked out.

“Negotiating.”

“Uh uh. That's kissing. Negotiators don't kiss. Did you ever hear of John Kerry kissing Putin? Stop that! Remember my rules, Helen. No kissing. I distinctly said—”

“Shut up, Rafe.” Her lips pressed against his lightly. “The first rule in negotiating is to forget the rules.”

“That must be an ass-backwards Army rule,” he muttered, dropping back to the ground and pulling her on top of him with a muffled curse of surrender. His legs were still in the water, up to his calves. “I've never seen
that
in a legal text. Kiss the negotiator. Nope.”

“Shush,” she coaxed against his mouth.

“Oh, God, oh, God, I've missed you.” Rafe moaned, adjusting her body on top of his. Surrender was so damn sweet.

With one hand on the back of her waist and another at her nape, he kissed her deeply with all the pent-up passion of the past weeks. When he closed his eyes, he saw a kaleidoscope of bursting colors behind his lids.

He should resist.

He couldn't resist.

Rafe's lust-crazed brain fought hard to wipe out his conscience, but it lost. Just barely. He had a clear image of St. Augustine and God up there playing a moral tug of war with Satan.
Over him
.

The good guys won, by a hair.

He lifted Helen off him and over to the side. Nuzzling her neck, he asserted gently, “Not now, babe.”

She whimpered.

And his racing brain revved into high gear. No checkered flags in sight.

Groaning, he leaned over her and put both hands on her forearms. Despite his restraint, she raised her head slightly, and her tongue darted out, licking his lips.

His favorite body part just about jumped out of his pants.

“Rafe.” She sighed.

He was losing it fast.
Hey, God! Yo, Auggie! You better call in a herd of angels for backup
.

Springing up abruptly, Rafe dashed into the cold stream and sat down. The shock just about killed him. Then he lay back fully in the shallow stream, counting to ten under the water. When he came up, dripping wet and testosterone
battered, he looked to the left. Helen sat on the bank, blithely panning gold as if she hadn't just set off an explosion in his body.

He splashed toward her and grabbed his pickax, planning to put some distance—and hard, mind-numbing work—between the two of them. That was when he noticed she wasn't as cool and calm as she pretended. Her breathing was uneven, and her hands trembled around the pan. Even worse, her nipples peaked noticeably under the T-shirt.

Helen was a deadly adversary.

He stomped away with his axe and shovel. That was when she did the worst thing of all. She started whistling.

He was sure the devil made her do it.

D
espite Helen's calling him several times for dinner, Rafe worked until dusk. For his efforts, he managed to add about a pound of dust and flakes to his small cache. Not a bad day, but Helen, not gold, had been the inspiration for his obsessive efforts. When he finally set his tools aside for the day, he thought seriously about lying down on the spot and falling asleep. His body was numb with exhaustion—his goal, of course.

Just to be safe, he plodded wearily to the lagoon for a bath. On the way, he grabbed some clean clothes from Helen's makeshift clothesline. He entered the frigid water like a prisoner about to undergo water torture. “Br-r-r-r!” It was definitely torture. Any parts of his body that even considered rebellion gave up the fight with a shudder.

He could face Helen now, he thought, and marched up the incline to the cabin, carrying his dirty clothes. The minute he opened the door, he was catapulted back to step one.

Helen was sitting before the fire on a low stool with a basin
of soapy water. She was shaving her legs with Zeb's straight edge. And she was wearing only her T-shirt and his black silk boxers.

Rafe said a silent Hail Mary and headed straight for the bed.

“Don't you want to eat first?”

He dropped down onto the bed, face first, with a groan. “I'll eat extra for breakfast,” he mumbled into the quilt. Luckily, he fell asleep immediately.

The next morning, he awakened to the sound of driving rain. Instead of being upset, he gave a silent prayer of thanks. He would put in another grueling day, even in the rain. It would be muddy and miserable. There was no way he would get turned on by Helen under those conditions. Right?

Wrong!

Helen insisted on working with him. And neither pelting rain, nor icy stream, nor sliding mud could dim his pleasure in ogling her in a wet T-shirt.

He threw down his shovel after only an hour.

“Where are you going?” Helen asked.

“To sharpen Zeb's razor.”

“Why?”

“To slit my throat.”

He was sitting by the fire, nice and dry, reading Zeb's Bible, or trying to—he kept hearing a snickering in his head—when Helen came in carrying a dead rabbit from the root cellar. She was sopping wet, from plastered hair to squeaky boots. He put the Bible aside and rocked back and forth, watching her dry her hair and take off her boots and lift the hem of her T-shirt. He felt like a time bomb was ticking under his skin—tick, tick, tick.

“Why don't you do some meditating now?” he suggested.

“I meditated this morning.”

“Well then, gargle or whistle or say something really irritating.”

She grinned and licked a drop of rain off her upper lip.

“I'm sick of rabbit,” he growled, shooting up suddenly from the rocking chair. “I think I'll go check those fishing lines of Zeb's.”

“Coward,” she called out after him.

An hour later, she followed him down to the stream where he was hunkered on the bank, shivering with cold.

“Come back to the cabin,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I won't tease you anymore. I'll even sleep on Zeb's pallet tonight.” When he said nothing, she asked, “Did you catch anything?”

“I don't know. I haven't checked yet,” he admitted with a laugh.

“Oh, Rafe!” She sighed, dropping down beside him. She put an arm around his stiff shoulder. “I love you so much.”

“Yeah, ain't love grand,” he said wretchedly, then grinned at her. “You're killin' me, babe. You know that, don't you?”

She nodded, laying her head on his shoulder. “I'll make it easier for you from now on. I promise.”

“Hah!” He shot her a skeptical glance. “You could begin by not parading around in that T-shirt anymore.”

“Oh.”

“I have visions of champagne breasts dancing through my head.”

“I think that's supposed to be sugarplums.”

“Whatever.”

She shook her head at him. “Are you okay now? Why don't you come up and have some rabbit soup?”

He grimaced. “I'm going to start hopping pretty soon.”

“As long as you don't develop a cotton tail,” she said as he stood and helped pull her to her feet.

“It's definitely not cotton.”

“Oh, you!” She jabbed him playfully in the side with her elbow. She was just as sick as he was of rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.
Looping her arm in his, she joked in a Bugs Bunny voice, “What's up, doc?”

“You know damn well what's up, darlin'.”

It was a sweet, companionable moment. Helen wanted to cherish the feeling, the love that enveloped them. She wanted to tuck away the memory of that instant out of time so she could bring it back over and over to cherish in the dark days to come.

The dark time came way too quickly, despite the fact that the rain had stopped and the afternoon sun was peeking out from behind the clouds.

They had a visitor. Again. But this time Big Ben had brought his wife, Big Bertha, with him.

Helen and Rafe raced away, crossing the stream, and scrambled up a tree. Of course, neither of them had bothered to bring a gun with them. Huddled on a limb together—not that a tree would daunt those two beasts—they watched the animals approach the cabin. Without even knocking, Ben, the social clod, shoved at the door with a paw the size of a hubcap, pulling it off its leather hinges. Bertha waddled meekly behind him, growling something that probably translated to, “Way to go, cowboy!”

They heard loud slurping noises.

“Guess we don't have to worry about eating any more rabbit stew,” Rafe commented dryly.

“Let's hope they don't crave
crème de la people
for dessert.”

“Good thing I left my bag of gold back by the diggings,” Rafe noted. “Otherwise, they'd probably eat that, too.”

“It's just like you to think of money at a time like this.”

“What do you want me to think about? Sex in a tree?”

She darted a quick scowl at him. “Surely you aren't still thinking about
that
.”

“Honey, I'm always thinking about
that
, especially when you've got your hand on my crotch.”

She glanced down quickly. “You rat! I do not.” Her hand was resting on his thigh.

“Close enough.”

For a long time—about fifteen minutes—the two bears lumbered around inside. When they heard the sound of splintering wood, Rafe joked, “Do you suppose they're making out on our bed?”

“At least someone's making good use of it.”

It was Rafe, this time, who elbow-nudged her. “Behave, or I'll show you how Tarzan did it, hanging from a limb with Jane.”

“I assume this is the X-rated version of Tarzan.”

“Super-X.”

“I'm glad you've still got your sense of humor.”

“Is that what it is? Seems more like deathbed ramblings.”

“I love you, Rafe.”

“I love you too, Helen.” A short silence ensued. “So, how about taking off your T-shirt? If I'm gonna die, my last wish is to feast on your breasts.”

She reached for the hem of her shirt.

“Are you crazy?” he yelled. “I was only kidding.”

A mighty roar rippled over the small valley as Big Ben stood on his hind legs, bellowing his rage to them. While they'd been chit-chatting, the two bears must have come out of the cabin.

Bertha was coming up out of the root cellar through the slanted wood door, which she'd already bashed in. Bertha apparently had no social graces, either. In one paw she carried the remaining two skinned rabbits Zeb had left for them. In the other, she clutched a slab of salt pork.

Ben stared at Bertha liked she was Linda Lovelace offering him a treat.

Casting one last glance at Helen and Rafe, Ben and Bertha loped off into the trees. With a sigh, Rafe said, “We are never, ever again going to leave that cabin without a gun.”

Three hours later, after a massive clean-up effort, they assessed the damage. A broken table. Little food. Shredded blankets. Bear shit.

“Phew! It still smells like bear in here,” Rafe complained.

“Rafe, you're going to have to go hunt some game.” Helen was seriously alarmed about the lack of food now, especially since Zeb and Hector wouldn't be back for at least another seven days.

“Like what?”

“Rabbit. Deer. Elk. You know, wild game.”

He laughed. “Helen, the only wild game I've ever caught was cockroaches. Of course, some of them were big as rabbits.”

She tapped her foot with impatience.

“Helen, I don't even know what an elk looks like. Is that the animals in
Alaska: The Last Frontier
?”

“No, that's a moose.”

“Geez! See what I mean?”

“You're a good shot. You shouldn't have any trouble.”

“You're a good shot, too, Miss Equal Rights. Why don't you go shoot Bambi? I'll stay and dig for gold.”

“Okay, but if I go hunting, you have to gut and skin whatever I kill.”

“What? Oh, hell, I'll go hunting. But I'm not killing Bambi, I'll tell you that right now. A rabbit, I can handle—I think. Even an elk maybe. But no way am I going to look one of Santa's helpers in the eye and shoot.”

“That's reindeer, you goof.”

“Reindeer. Regular deer. It's the same family.”

He grabbed a rifle off the mantle—luckily Big Ben hadn't eaten it—and stormed off, muttering something about how Daniel Boone had probably been nagged to death by some woman, too.

“My hero!” she said with a rueful laugh.

“I heard that,” he said from outside.

Less than ten minutes had gone by when Helen heard a rifle shot. Then silence.

She stopped in the middle of sweeping up the remaining broken crockery. “What could he be shooting so soon?” she wondered aloud, then, “Oh, my God! Rafe must have shot himself.”

She rushed out the door and across the yard, then came to a skidding stop. Her mouth dropped practically to the ground.

Rafe was dragging a ten-point buck across the stream, swearing some blue words, a few of which had her name attached to them. When she came up to him, he just glowered at her and continued to drag the dead deer—a bullet hole showed clean between its wide open eyes—up the incline toward the cabin.

“You actually shot a deer?”