Mittman, Stephanie (14 page)

"It's
all right," he told her, his eyes finding the source of the noise.
"Look over there."

A
herd of pronghorn antelope played in the distance, looking somewhat like
popping corn as they jumped over each other. Mary Grace sighed behind him, her
breathing warm against his back as she took in the sight.

"Show
Paddy," she told him. "Can he see them?"

Sloan
looked down at the baby against his chest. He was comfortable, not crying,
fiddling with Sloan's buttons and gurgling to himself.

"He
sees them," Sloan lied.

"His
first antelope!" she cried. "You should write this down. You know,
keep a record." Her voice faded out.

"Don't
worry," he said. "I won't forget."

She
nodded behind him, her head against his back, and he felt a momentary wetness.
Women! They cried at anything!

Ben
Westin's stallion
knew the way back to the Bar W Ranch without his
guidance. He let the horse set the pace, an easy trot that would get him home
before dark, but no sooner. He wasn't looking forward to facing Anna. He had no
news for her on Sloan's whereabouts, though he knew in his heart his son was
alive.

It
was the strangest thing. He and Sloan had never been very close. In fact, the
closeness in the family had been between Anna and the boy, leaving him out in
the cold for all the boy's growing-up years. Yet since Sloan's disappearance,
Ben had felt a tugging at his soul so strong that it had made him search every
corner of the territory for his son.

It
so unsettled him that he'd finally given in to Anna's wishes to go back east.
Anything to get away from the constant calling of a voice that wasn't there.
And the fact that Anna couldn't hear it, didn't leap from their bed at night
and run to the window to see an empty meadow stretched out in the moonlight,
only made matters worse for both of them.

"What?"
she would ask as he bolted toward the doorway. "What do you hear?"

"Nothing,"
he would respond, while his ears still rang with the sound of his son calling
out to him.

The
ranch was in sight, the corral empty, someone smoking a cheroot on the porch.
Anna didn't permit smoking within the confines of the house. She claimed the
odor stayed in the curtains and furniture, but Ben believed that she simply
wanted him out of her house. He never objected. Of late he found himself
smoking more, perhaps just to get away from her.

The
man on the porch raised his hand in greeting. Sunny. Only one of so many things
Ben would miss when they left Arizona. But Sunny had to stay behind. What if
Sloan should make it back? Someone had to be there for his son. Someone who
believed he would be coming back.

"Long
trip?" Sunny asked, grabbing the horse's reins and throwing them over the
railing for Ben. His eyes begged for news, but he knew, after so many trips and
so many disappointments, that it was better not to ask.

"No
longer than all the others," Ben sighed. "And no shorter,
either."

"Sorry."
Sunny offered him a cheroot, which he declined.

"How
is she?" he asked, inclining his head toward the house.

"Sure
she's dyin'," Sunny said, his eyes rolling. "Doc came out yesterday.
Told her to get some sun, go into town, but she ain't been outta that chair
'cept to go to bed."

"She
eating?"

Sunny
nodded. "You didn't hear nothin' that might change her mind about going to
St. Louis? Nothin' that might give her a little hope?"

Ben
shook his head. "Checked with the ladies in the cribs, this time, like you
suggested. There ain't a paid-for woman in the territory I didn't ask, and
while they all knew him, not one of them has seen him in over a year."

"Heard
the Tate girl, Emily, got herself planted," Sunny said, glancing out over
the field, unable to look Ben in the eye.

"I
still don't believe all that, Sunny," Ben said, shaking his head. "My
son was too smart to get mixed up with the Tate boys. It can't be the way they
said."

"He
threw away his life over some woman," Anna Westin said as she came slowly
onto the porch. God, she'd aged in the last year. "That's your fault, Ben
Westin, and I'll never forgive you."

Ben
rolled his eyes at Sunny and grimaced. Here it came again. How he'd never
taught his son to respect women, how he'd taken him to the cribs when he was
barely old enough to be out of his own.

"Sloan's
a good-looking boy. He can't help it if women just naturally take to him. So he
maybe sampled more than his share, Anna," Ben began.

"And
it cost him his life," she yelled. "His life!"

"He
ain't dead, Anna," he said quietly.

"What?"

"I
said he ain't dead."

"Did
you find something?" she asked, her hand on his arm. She turned her face
toward his, and he could see for a moment the woman he married so long ago, her
eyes glistening with tears, her lip quivering slightly, the tip of her tongue
caught between her teeth, and those deep dimples she shared with Sloan.

He
nodded. "It's too soon to be sure," he said. She could take it however
she wanted. It didn't matter to him. Not much did, anymore.

***

Mary
Grace had no feeling left in her legs. They had gone through discomfort, then
pain, and now they had slipped into the numb state she currently found herself
in. She felt nothing below her waist anymore, not the need to relieve herself,
not the soreness of her bottom, not even the intimacy of Sloan Westin's seat
pressed against her most private of places.

Her
arms weren't much better. The only thing that had kept them from going to sleep
was that she could, every now and then, let go of Sloan and shake the feeling
back into them. But since the baby had fallen back to sleep, she'd been afraid
to move and disturb him.

So,
when Sloan finally stopped the horse, she wasn't sure she could trust her legs
to hold her up.

"Where
are we?" she asked, stalling while she tried straightening her legs and
bending them again, testing whether they would support her when Sloan lowered
her to the ground. They were surrounded, for the first time since they had met,
by cacti. While the exposure on the open desert frightened her, here among the
strangely shaped trees, behind any one of which the Tates could be lurking, she
was even more afraid.

"Welcome
to the Joshua-tree forest," Sloan said, gesturing with his hand at the
contorted plants around them. He breathed in deeply himself. "Take a
whiff."

Perfume
filled the air around them. Mary Grace inhaled and shut her eyes to savor the
pleasant aroma.

"Sweet.
Like you," he said, shifting to lower her off the horse and place her
gently on the ground.

Mary
Grace had no illusions about her condition as she leaned against the horse to
keep her balance. "I wish I smelled so sweet," she said to the
horse's rear. Miraculously, she managed to keep her footing. She
looked down at
her feet as if to make sure they were touching the ground and cried out. There,
at her feet, were the remains of a dead snake. She knew it was dead. She could
see the luster gone out of its pebbly black and orange skin.

Sloan's
gun was out of his holster, and he was looking for a place to aim it.
"What?" he asked her. "What is it?"

She
pointed, and he squinted his eyes to make out the snake in the dark.

"Ain't
nothin' but a dead old coral snake," he told her. "I'd hate to hear
you if you saw a live one!"

"Oh
God! If there's a dead one there could be a live one, couldn't there?" She
moved closer to Sloan and the horse.

"They
ain't nothin' to worry about," he told her in a voice so calm it was
almost unnatural. "You hear me, Sweet Mary? You ain't got nothin' to worry
about. A coral snake can't hurt you."

She
shook her head at her own ignorance. What a silly fool she was becoming, scared
of her own shadow. She reached up to take the baby from Sloan, but before he
put Ben in her arms she stumbled and wound up on her hands and knees.

"Jeez,"
Sloan said, moving the horse slightly so that he had room to swing off.
"You all right?" he asked, leaning to help her up.

"Don't
you get tired of asking that?" she said, straightening up with as much
dignity as she could muster. "Aren't you just sick of taking care of me?
It's like having two babies along with you."

He
grabbed at her arm, but she pulled away and headed off into the bushes,
stamping to warn any creatures that might think of her sore bottom as a tasty
meal.

"Take
your time," he yelled after her, and she could hear him moving around
through the brush. What she wouldn't give for the privacy of a little bathroom
now. She'd sell her soul for a piece of toilet paper. Her stomach ached, no
doubt objecting to the new foods it was getting. Apparently, cactus pear didn't
have quite the same effect on her as it did on little Patrick.
Ben, Mary
Grace. The baby's name is Ben. Sloan's baby. Sloan's baby's name is Ben. That
wasn't so hard to remember, was it?

And
they weren't a family, the three of them, no matter how good it felt to
pretend. At this point in her life, she thought she knew better than to play
that dangerous game. Men weren't built that way. They didn't have that need for
family, that desire to take care of their own. Even the men who kidnapped their
children were doing it to hurt their wives. They certainly weren't doing it
because they loved their babies and had a need to be with them that was so
strong they would risk their very lives to hug them to their chests and... She
stopped herself. Sloan Westin was a man.

Men
didn't take to heart the responsibility for their children the way women did.
That was why some women worked two jobs a day while their deadbeat husbands
shrugged off the child support. That was why some girls were left high and dry
and on their own to cope with a pregnancy that was as much or more the man's
responsibility.... She stopped herself again.

She
knew men.

She
knew what they were capable of. And what they were incapable of. She did. She'd
spent all her adult life painfully aware of it and learning from the lessons of
her youth. She knew men. She just didn't know Sloan Westin. "And
I don't want
to," she muttered to the bush she squatted by.

It
turned out he'd been right about the prickly pear. She stood on shaky legs,
sore from riding, sore from squatting, sore from the sheer effort of holding
her body away from Sloan's, and made her way back to where she thought she had
left Sloan and the horse, but there was no sign of him. In the distance a small
fire glowed, and she dragged her aching body toward it, hoping it was theirs,
half-ready to surrender if it wasn't.

The
fire was burning within a ring of rocks when she reached it, the familiar
poncho stretched out beside it, Climber's saddle at one end like a pillow.
Sloan and the baby were nowhere in sight.

The
canteen hung from one of the odd-looking trees, and she shook it. Full! She
fought the tree for possession, its spiky arms not willing to relinquish its
prize without a fight. Too tired to wrestle, she finally allowed the strap to
remain where it was, squatted some until she was low enough and treated herself
to some fresh water. Hot, minerally, and a far cry from Evian, it was still the
sweetest thing she had ever tasted.

She
tipped her head back to indulge in one more small sip, not wanting to drink
more than her share, when a shot rang out.

"No-o-o!"
she screamed, running in the direction of the noise. She could hear the baby
crying, and she pushed her skirt up into her waistband to give herself more
freedom to run.

Her
eyes down to make sure she was on firm ground, she nearly ran right into Sloan
and the baby. "Whoa!" he said, stopping her in her tracks with two
firm arms against her shoulders. "If the Tates don't get me, sweet lady, I'm
afraid you will."

"Get
down, you idiot," she hissed. "Didn't you hear that shot?"

She
tried to pull at him, but he was immobile. In the
moonlight she thought she saw
him smiling. What was the matter with him? Why was he letting the baby cry?

"Supper,"
he said, holding up a small brown animal she didn't recognize. "I got us a
real supper."

"Supper?"
She didn't think she even wanted to know. "The shot?"

"And
a good thing, too, you little fool. What were you thinking to come running? You
coulda got yourself killed."

The
woman who faced him was more frightened than angry. Her breath was ragged, and
she was trying to keep her emotions in check. She seemed unable to calm herself
down, despite all his assurances, so he put one arm around her and pressed her
to his side. One of her arms was wrapped around the baby nestled securely
against his chest. The other clung to his back in a death grip. He waited for
her to calm down, listening to her sharp intakes of air and the shuddering way
she let each breath go.