She nodded, not knowing what else to say.
He glanced at his watch. “I can tell we’re going to get out of here late. Nine o’clock for drinks? You can find my house okay, can’t you? I don’t think you’ve ever been there.”
Laying it on a little thick. Victor was right; she should have gone to the barbecue. She nodded. “I’ll be there.”
“See you then.”
Something in his smile told her that the audience was over.
When the door shut behind her, she felt as if she had been processed through the county jail—her wallet, shoelaces, and belt gone. Folded, stapled, and mutilated.
She found herself staring at the wall of photos again. Noticed that most of them included Nick Fialla, the University of Arizona football coach who had led the Wildcats to a Rose Bowl win two years ago. It amazed her how the prominent people of Tucson, the movers and shakers, flocked to get their picture taken with Nick Fialla.
He should rent himself out, she thought sourly. Like the burros in Nogales that the tourists pose with to prove they’d been to Mexico.
21
The sun had just gone down behind the Tucson Mountains when Laura reached the Vail exit. The lights of oncoming cars were already snapping on, strung out across the pink-purple hills east of Tucson like a necklace of diamonds.
As she drove across the overpass, she spotted a scrawny woman sitting in the open hatchback of a Chevy Vega parked near the off ramp, holding up a cardboard sign that said BLOWJOBS $2.00.
Everyone had their price.
Laura’s price was giving in to Let’s Go People! Galaz. No way she could get out of going to this party; she’d already missed the barbecue—apparently the only person in the whole department who did.
As she pulled up in front of her house, she spotted something pale in the darkness of her porch. It materialized into a white long-sleeved shirt as she approached.
“Tom?" Her heart quickening.
“Hi, Bird.”
“When did you get back?”
“This morning.” He stood up from the steel glider near the door. It creaked loudly—sixty-year-old springs.
He was close enough that she caught the scent of his shirt, a combination of starch and the fresh smell of line-drying. Tom didn’t own a dryer. He didn’t own much of anything.
“I heard about the girl who got killed—thought you might need me.”
“Who’d you hear that from?”
“Mina.”
“Mina called you?”
“I called her. I was checking on Ali.”
Referring to a famous bareback bronc named Old Yeller. Ten years ago, before Old Yeller took the inevitable downward spiral to the dog food factory, Tom bought him, changed his name to Ali (“because he was The Greatest”) and towed him around from job to job. Ali was twenty-three years old, sway-backed, and deeply suspicious of Laura.
She inhaled the night air, soggy and laden with the odors of creosote and manure. She was glad Tom was here—really glad. “How long have you been waiting?”
“I wasn’t waiting. I was sitting.”
Zen and the Mystic Itinerant Wrangler. He reached out and touched her lightly on her cheek, which sent her thoughts whirling like sparks from a kicked-up fire, her mind buzzing on and off like an old neon sign. He was aware of his effect on her, but had the good sense not to say anything. “I thought we could go by the cantina and get a drink. Mina’s beginning to wonder if you’re avoiding her.”
Mina, the proprietor of the Spanish Moon Cantina on the Bosque Escondido, liked to micromanage the lives of the people who lived and worked here. Laura wondered if she’d weighed in on the living-together issue yet.
“I’d better not drink anything. I have to be somewhere later.”
“Oh?”
“A party at my lieutenant’s house—it’s mandatory.”
“Mandatory?”
“For me anyway. I didn’t go to the last one, so I’ve got to go this time.”
“What’ll he do if you don’t?”
She shrugged. “Probably nothing. It’s politics.”
“Sounds to me like he set you up.”
Great insight from a man whose only possessions were a truck, a saddle, a horse trailer, and one decrepit horse.
Here she’d found a man who was perfect for her in every way except one. In the currency she valued most, the currency that defined her life—career—he didn’t even have pocket change. He had no ambition. Thirty-five years old and he wrangled horses on a guest ranch.
He said, “Did you get my note?”
“Of course I got your note. I have to eat, don’t I? Lucky for you, you didn’t leave it in the cleaning closet.”
He had both hands on her shoulders now. “Have you thought about it?”
“I haven’t had time.”
If she thought he’d be heartbroken, she was wrong.
“Okay, I can wait. If you can’t drink, can we at least eat?”
“I was going to have mac and cheese.”
He smiled. “Not much food in those little boxes.”
“I’ve got two of them.”
Laura drifted in and out of sleep, her body one long smile. Naked in the cool swirl of sheets, the boat-oar ripple of the ceiling fan playing over her body, legs entangled with Tom’s long, lean ones, the feel of his skin against hers … times like these, she felt young again. Young in that innocent romantic way before life started cutting away at her. Before Billy Linton blew her romantic ideals out of the water. Before she learned that no matter how strong a bond you had with your family, it could be ripped away from you at any time.
Lying here, she felt like the college kid she once was, infatuated with life, absolutely certain about her future. All she had to do was succumb to her feelings, and she could hold it again, that hope. Allow herself to be swept away by this incredible lover whose touch shot through her like electricity.
Still drowsy, she found herself looking at the length of his body in the light from the bathroom. It was impossible to keep herself from touching him. She reached out and laid a finger on his skin. Felt a shiver, although it was warm. Traced a line down his muscled forearm, down along his rib cage, the bump where one rib had broken during a bull ride, then down into the hollow between his hipbones.
Another shiver.
Why shouldn’t we live together?
Because it could go wrong. That was the lesson she had learned from her marriage.
Marriage?, the hard-ass in her said. Whatever it was she and Billy had, you couldn’t really call it a marriage.
The fact was, love could go wrong. All those good times, feeling you were joined at the hip, that you knew the other person so well, as well as you knew yourself, and then something bad happens and all of a sudden you become enemies. You don’t even know how it happens, but one day you meet in the hallway and you skirt around each other, looking away, trying not to touch. Because all of a sudden touching is impossible, you can’t stand to feel him on your skin. How does that happen? Just bad luck? Did it happen to everyone who went through a tragedy? She didn’t know.
Tom stirred and his arm fell across her.
She couldn’t deny how good it felt to be with him. Logically, she knew she couldn’t judge Tom by the Lintons. Besides, Tom didn’t have a rich family.
She pressed her lips to his, and he stirred again.
The sudden thrill of absolute wanting always caught her by surprise. Undeniably needy … and he always responded.
Now he rose up on one arm above her, settled his lips onto hers.
She cupped the back of his head, and they kissed long and slow.
Exquisite.
But something not so good insinuating itself into her mind—
“Shit!” She sat up, grabbed the bedside clock and turned it so she could see.
Tom, his dark eyes cloudy with sleep and desire and questions, “What’s wrong?”
Eleven ten.
“Dammit!”