Renegade Man (23 page)

For a few
moments she luxuriated in his warmth and dormant strength; then she, too,
succumbed to the demands of her drained body and fell asleep.

It seemed only
moments later that he was awakening her with teasing kisses that tickled her
neck. Sleepily she opened her eyes. Dawn was pearling through the window above
the bed.

“Don’t you have
any respect for people who need their sleep?” she mumbled.

“Let’s find
something to eat.” He flashed her that cocky grin. “Besides each other.”

“You’re
positively indecent, Jonah Jones!” But she was laughing, letting him tug her
from the bed. With a fleeting thought for modesty, she grabbed the rumpled
sheet and knotted it around her. He paused only long enough to draw on his
briefs, then towed her into the kitchen to raid the refrigerator.

They devoured
leftover cold chicken and emptied the milk carton, laughing at the way the milk
coated their upper lips. They felt as if they were the sole possessors of a
secret that surely no other lovers had shared.

“How did you get
such a gorgeous body, Jonah Jones?” she teased.

He started on
another chicken leg. “Genes. The same ones that gave me thick hair and perfect
eyesight and a crooked tooth, I suppose.” He began to tell her dirty jokes that
made her laugh. Then, abruptly, he laid aside the denuded drumstick. “Let’s go
for a walk. I feel too full of energy.” She understood. She, too, was tingling
with excess energy. “We can watch the sun rise over Mangas Peak.”

She also
understood this. It was his one concession to her. Leaning forward, she placed
her hands on either side of his face and kissed him sweetly. “Let’s go back to
bed, sailor.”

Later they
slept, awoke to bathe together, foraged in the kitchen again and returned to
bed. He didn’t shave—and he looked fiercely handsome—and the only time he allowed
her to leave the bed without him was when she insisted on brushing her teeth.

And they talked
that weekend, really talked.

Lying on his
side, his head propped on one hand, Jonah spoke slowly. “Hell Week in the SEALs
was just that. Hell. But it still didn’t prepare us for Nam. The navy sent us
out into the muck of the swamps and jungle for days on end. You may not believe
this, but we wore panty hose.”

Her brows rose
in skepticism.

“No kidding,” he
said. “The panty hose made it easier for us to remove the leeches that clung to
us, sometimes more than a hundred per soldier.” His mouth curved in a slight
smile. “It was an amazing sight, watching us navy commandos, all camouflaged
and painted green and black, struggling to stuff ourselves into those damn panty
hose.”

It probably was
a laughable sight, but she could imagine Jonah, seventeen or eighteen,
unprepared for what he had walked into. She had seen Vietnam vets on the
University of Houston campus. They had come back with long hair, changed and
puzzled eyes and barely contained anguish.

“Why’d you do
it, Jonah?” she asked softly. “Oh, I know you had no choice about Vietnam. But
why did you choose such a tough branch of the services?”

He shrugged
expressively. “Because of the sea, I suppose. I loved it, its freedom, its
fury.”

And so she knew:
the sea was his mistress, her rival. It made no difference. She had these
moments, these days, and she would love him until she had no more time.

She talked, too,
her features earnest. “The anthropology books are all wrong, Jonah. They teach
that we evolved from brutal, grunting savages. But I don’t believe that.
Cro-Magnon man, given a haircut, a shave and a tailored suit, would be
indistinguishable from anyone walking the streets of Silver City today.”

She paused, her
eyes twinkling, and added, “Well, maybe Buck Dillard is a brutish throwback to
Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis.”

Jonah traced the
curve of her smile with one sensitive fingertip. “Sounds like you’re pretty
involved with this Cro-Magnon man. Should I be jealous?”

She chuckled.
“He’s too old for me. Thirty-five- thousand years old. And I think you’d like
my Renegade Man.”

“Renegade Man?”
His brow furrowed with perplexity. “Is that a new species?”

“No, it’s just
my term for a reassessed Cro- Magnon. The people from the Paleolithic period
were far more advanced than current evolutionary theory would have us believe.
My Renegade Man even developed the harpoon, sailor boy. He was your ice-age
seaman. There are caves in west Texas with twenty- five-thousand-year-old
murals of spouting whales, you know. I just have to prove that Renegade Man
made it as far as Silver City.”

He grinned and
pulled her against him. “I think I am jealous.” He dipped his head, his teeth
catching her earlobe, nipping lightly. “I can be a savage lover, too.”

Her eyes danced
with delight, but her body caught fire all over again. “Prove it.”

He rolled over
atop her, pinning her wrists above her head with one hand. “This time I shall
play the pirate with you, my love,” he told her with a fierce scowl of desire.

“Do you want me
walk your plank?” she teased.

“No, my lady, I
want you to suck it,” he growled.

In no time they
were simultaneously whirled downward through a whirlpool of pure, piercing
rapture. Much later, as she lay with him, their legs entwined, she asked that
question that no woman should ever ask. “You called me your love, Jonah—while
we were making love. Do you? Do you love me?”

A great sadness
claimed his eyes, darkening them almost to black. “Yes. Yes, I love you. But
not as much as I love my independence.”

Chapter 15

J
onah rose from
the bunk and gave one of those feel¬good stretches. His body was beautiful, she
thought. She was tempted to entreat him to join her again, but the days were
growing fewer, and they both had work that would keep them busy from dawn to
dusk. But not too busy for interludes of sensual play in the river or quick,
passionate encounters in the shade.

As a lover,
Jonah’s prowess was both masterful and playful, clever and considerate. He was
adventurous and innovative, mysterious and exciting. And if he didn’t love her
enough to want her with him always ... well, she would enjoy every wonderful
moment with him while she could.

Those were
halcyon days for her, and the small camper became a sensual lair.

Soon, too soon,
Jonah would be off on another adventure—the ultimate adventure for him, his
life¬long dream—if he succeeded in his golden quest. And, though she realized
now that she loved him, loved him with a terrible totality and wanted only
happiness for him, some infinitely small part of her soul dreaded the moment
when he would hit on his fabled mother lode.

She worked
steadily at the dig, but all the while a tune played in her head, and she
hummed it absently. The morning was half-gone before she realized what the
words were:
I was born under a wandering star. A navigator’s star.

She shivered,
feeling as if it were an omen.

A little while
later she uncovered something hard and lifted it gingerly in her palm. A spear
point glinted in the sunlight. It was thin, finely chipped and shaped more or
less like a laurel leaf, but grooved with distinctive fluting. A small seed of
excitement took root in her. What she held was a Clovis spear point, one of the
oldest artifacts ever found in North America.

She should have
been feeling more pleasure than she was, but something was bothering her, and
she knew what. She had found the spear point in a zone of ochre-colored
earth—sterile soil that accumulates when no one has lived on the site—in
contrast to black soil, a sign of organic material, indicating that a site had
once been inhabited.

Clearly the
spear point had been disturbed and moved from its original location. Often a
flood was the explanation; it could carry objects as heavy as mammoth tusks
from their sites. Sometimes a glacier or a similar upheaval could deposit an
artifact where it didn’t belong.

But why was this
spear point the only artifact that had ended up here?

Intrigued, she
concentrated her digging in that grid, anxious to uncover the next layer and
make some sense of the puzzle. But Jonah’s shout cut short her efforts.

“Ritz!” He was
crossing the flats toward her, his quick strides an eloquent testament to his
turbulent excitement. “Look! Look what I’ve found!”

She dragged her
gaze from his magnificent physique to fasten on the green stalks dangling
limply from his hand. “Grass?”

“Look closer.”

She did. There
in the roots, glowing in the sunlight, were particles of gold. Her breath
caught in her throat. “How did you find it?”

“I slipped
coming up the riverbank and grabbed at the grass. Do you know what this means,
Rita-lou? It means that there’s gold there after all! Right along the bend of
the riverbed. Lots of it!”

His excitement
was contagious. “Oh, Jonah, that’s wonderful! Will it be hard to get to?”

He swept her up
in his arms, leaving her feet dangling six inches above the ground. “Hard?
Nothing’s too hard for the amount of gold I just know is down there!”

He ducked his
head to kiss her gently. It wasn’t the right time, but she couldn’t help
herself. She took flame, responding to that kiss with quick little nips up and
down his muscle-corded neck. And in an age-old rite of celebration, he lowered
her to the earth and began to stake his claim to her. Clothes were strewn in
the dirt. The sun toasted their nakedness. The hot summer breeze played a love
song in the gamma grass.

Her fingers slid
into his thick tawny hair, holding his head against her soft breast. His
fingers slid between her legs to take possession of her in primitive passion.
He stroked her, and her nails dug into his flesh. “If you stop, Jonah, I’ll...”

His fingers
halted their tantalizing play. A dimple pitted his cheek. “Yes? You’ll what?”

“I swear I’ll
see you hanged.” She grinned, then gasped as he resumed plowing her furrow.

“Anything to
accommodate you,” he whispered roughly, and slanted his mouth over hers.

Piercing
currents of desire electrified her body. Just as she knew there could be no
sustaining the avalanche of unbearable pleasure, Jonah withdrew his fingers.
“No!” she protested weakly.

But he slid up
over her and took her, starting her all over again on her sensual climb. By the
time they had finished their loving, her hair was matted with twigs and dried
grass and dirt—and she didn’t care in the least. She wondered if her Renegade
Man had given his lover as much pleasure as Jonah gave her.

But then—and the
realization nearly staggered her—wasn’t Jonah her Renegade Man? Hadn’t he
always been? Silver City’s renegade. And yet she had never seen the obvious.

Casting secret
smiles of amusement at each other, they got dressed again. Jonah stepped behind
her and snapped her bra, then she stood in front of him and buttoned his shirt
while he studied her features in minute detail. She lifted her gaze to his
chiseled face. “My nose dirty or something?”

“No,” he
chuckled. “I was just thinking how hungry I am. You look good enough to eat,
but there’s not enough meat on your bones to satisfy my appetite.”

She feigned a
sigh. “I suppose you want to break for lunch?”

“That’s not a
bad idea,” he said, dropping a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Then it’s back to
work!”

After a
ten-minute snack break she prepared to go back out into the boiling sunlight,
but he surprised her by putting on clean clothes and telling her, “I’m going
into Silver City to have the gold content analyzed.” She watched him drive off,
feeling that the celebration of Jonah’s find was, for her, a bittersweet one.

She went back to
her digging, but hours went by, and she was no nearer to solving the riddle of
the spear point than she had been went she started. Then, even though the air
was broiling hot, she felt suddenly cold. Illogically, irrationally chilled.
She picked up a small brush and began dusting the ochre dirt from the irregular
mounds and indentations. A shape began to emerge: a skeleton.

She had
uncovered a burial ground. A human burial plot. But this burial had taken place
within the last hundred years. She could tell because the bones weren’t red, as
they would have been if the gravesite had been older. They would have leached
the color from the soil. Sitting back on her heels, she observed what was left
of the clothing and calculated that the burial was even more recent than she
had initially guessed—within the last twenty-five to fifty years, give or take
a few.

Then the hair
stood up on her arms, and a withering sense of fear seized her in its clutches.
She shook herself free of her morbid terror and, using her brush, gently pushed
back a remnant of a shirt from the skeleton’s breastbone, revealing a
dirt-encrusted object that looked frighteningly familiar. Careful not to
disturb the remains, she took her find in her trembling hand and stared at it,
her breath coming in deep, terrified gulps. Unsteadily she rose and somehow
made her way to the Chevy. She drove as mindlessly as a madwoman, tears
blurring everything beyond her windshield.