Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“So we’re getting’ a sketch artist in from El Paso first thing tomorrow mornin’,” Willow said.
Jeremiah couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was sitting outside in one of the lawn chairs he’d found around the place. She had her long legs stretched out in front of her, and her head tipped back, so she could stargaze, he figured.
He’d made them sandwiches, toasting the bread and heaping on grilled veggies straight from the small fire he’d started in the firepit. They were damn good sandwiches, if he said so himself.
She hadn’t stopped talking about the case since she’d arrived, overnight bag in hand so she could make use of the bunkhouse shower while he finished cooking. She’d never worked with a police sketch artist before and was excited about it.
“You really like being a cop, don’t you?” he asked when she stopped for a breath.
“I really do,” she said. “I’d like it more if I were better at it, though.”
“You don’t think you’re good at it?”
She glanced his way and rolled her eyes. “I can’t even get the goods on the Barker boys, and everybody knows they’re guilty as sin.”
“Well,” he said, “maybe when you catch this window-breaker, you’ll feel better about that.”
“Maybe.” She took another bite of her sandwich. He’d quartered them once off the fire, because he’d used huge slabs of sourdough to make them. She was working on her third portion, but slowing down.
After she swallowed, she said, “This is the best sandwich I’ve ever had. You oughtta tell the cook over at Two Lilies how you make ‘em”
It was an odd request. “Don’t you want me to tell you how to make them?”
“Oh, I wasn’t put on the planet to cook,” she said.
“Really?”
“What? Why do you sound surprised?”
He shrugged. “The whole herb garden thing.”
“Oh. Yeah, those are for medicine, not cooking.”
“Medicine. Like ginger-tea-for-a-cold medicine?”
“Not exactly.” She pulled a small drawstring pouch from a jacket pocket then slid it right back in.
He’d caught a glimpse of intricate beadwork along the upper third of the pouch.
“Medicine,” she said. Then she handed him her plate, a half-sandwich still on it.
“I’m fixin’ to wrap that up and take it home. ”
“I’m flattered. And prepared.” He got up and went to take a square container with a tight-fitting lid off a flat rock nearby. “It’s one of your aunt Chelsea’s,” he said. “I figure it’s okay to re-lend, long as I keep it in the family.”
“I’ll make sure she gets it back.” She sat up in her chair to take the container and he brushed his fingers over her hand when she did. He saw the way her breath hitched, and it felt good clear to his toes.
She opened the container put the remaining half-sandwich inside and snapped on the lid.
He almost held his breath, then wondering whether she’d get up and leave, and for a moment, it seemed like that’s what she was about to do.
But then she set the container on the ground beside her chair, took a long sip from her long-necked brown bottle, and leaned back in her chair once again, tipping her head back. Stargazing.
He returned to his own chair strategically placed beside hers before she’d arrived, grabbing another beer on the way, and took a similar position. “It’s beautiful out here,” he said.
“It’s different than where you’re from,” she replied. “In a lot of ways.” Then she sat up and looked at him. “I’m gonna ask you something, and if you don’t want to discuss it, that's fine. I’m just…curious about you.”
He sat up too, and set his beer aside. “All right.”
“Will you tell me what happened to your mamma?”
He wondered if it was a test. It seemed likely, the way she was watching his face, awaiting his answer.
He’d been questioned by enough cops to know the look of someone watching for a lie.
But it was colored by something else. Something soft, something real.
And maybe hopeful. His answer was going to prove something to her.
“I don’t…talk about my mother,” he said. “Usually.”
“I’m sorry. Forget I asked.”
“She was great. She was, you know, everything. I guess moms always are, to a little kid. I was with her ‘til I was four, I think. She was beautiful. She had wavy blonde hair. She would sing and dance me around on her feet. And it was just the two of us. And then one day, she drove me to my father’s mansion, told me she loved me and would miss me and to be a good boy, and she drove away.”
He had howled, he remembered it. Standing on the front step wailing and trying to run after the car, as strong hands grabbed hold and brought him inside.
“Where did she go?” she asked, and her voice was more breath than substance.
“To the highest point she could find and right on over,” he said.
Willow gasped and pressed a hand to her chest. “‘Course, I didn’t know that ‘til later,” Jeremiah went on. “He’d somehow got custody of me despite being in prison. I had a nanny, Marianne, until I was ten, then she left and was replaced by Reggie. Reggie was fun, kind of an Alfred to my Batman…you know?”
“I don’t. I haven’t seen a single Batman movie.”
“Oh, you need educating.” He smiled but if it looked as fake as it felt, it wouldn’t fool her.
“That was it, then?”
“Well, we had a cook, had an excellent chef for a while, and there was always an assistant cook, a couple of maids, a driver, a gardener. My tutor for many years was a stern old goat called Mr. Ford.” Saying the name brought the man’s face to mind, long and narrow with a goatee that made it even longer.
“I never believed that was his real name. He was smart as hell, but cold as ice. Never expressed an emotion. For about six months in ninth grade, I seriously thought he might be a cyborg.”
“Jeremiah, that sounds like a terrible childhood.”
“Yes, it was. I was a poor little rich boy. And that is the first time I’ve ever told the whole truth to a peace officer, Deputy Brand. First time I’ve talked about my mother to anyone, too.”
He watched her face, wondering what she’d make of that. Her lips pulled into a slow smile and she got out of her chair and came closer.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m honored.”
“You believe me, then?” he asked, rising from his chair as well. They were standing very close.
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
He shrugged “People don’t believe ex-cons.”
“I do. I could tell you were being honest…about all that.” She pressed her palms to his chest, then slid them up a little higher, to his collar bones.
“How can you tell?”
“Cops have ways.”
He wanted to ask what they were, those ways, so he could use them himself. Instead, he said, “Will you be honest with me back?”
“Maybe.” Her fingers slid around his neck and interlocked behind it.
“What changed your mind about coming over here tonight?”
She gazed into his eyes. “I was drivin’. I was sleepy. A song came on the radio and the truck just sort of turned on its own.”
“Huh,” he said. “What song?”
She held his gaze a little harder. “Desperado. Ronstadt’s version.” She paused, lowered her eyes momentarily, visibly deciding to say a little more. “I think you’re a good person, Jeremiah Thorne. Don’t you prove me wrong, you hear?”
Then she pressed her lips to his, and he was gone. He wrapped his arms all the way around her waist, picked her right up off her feet, then carried her into the bunkhouse, kissing her all the way.
Willow’s voice of reason was drowned out by the demands of her body. She wanted this man, had wanted him since she’d laid eyes on him, even when he’d been hiding behind a full beard and sombrero.
He kicked the bunkhouse door closed behind them. Willow shucked her blouse as he shuffle-walked her back to the bunks, fully supported by his arms around her, guided by his thighs pushing hers. When her legs hit the back-most bunk, she bent her knees and sat on its edge.
He followed her down, pressing her back. She put her hands on his shoulders and applied the smallest amount of pressure.
He stopped, braced above her on straight arms, blinking down at her in the near darkness of the bunkhouse.
“That little drawer.” She nodded toward the back wall, at the little drawer he’d barely noticed, that was built into it.
He opened it, and rifled through the packets in there. “Nice.”
“Never let it be said the Texas Brand Bunkhouse isn’t fully equipped.”
He closed the drawer, and pulled something from his jeans pocket. “But I, too, am fully equipped.”
“Get that much action, do you?”
He lowered his head. “I bought these the day after we kissed. When your mom interrupted and—”
“I remember.”
“I had no reason to carry ‘em around before that.”
“Noted,” she said. It was sexy, how nervous he’d become.
His body still above hers, he lowered his gaze to her chest, where she wore a lacy white bra, then he was touching her, his eyes on hers as often as they were on her breasts. He reached behind her to unhook the bra, took it off, gazed at her and exhaled.
Then he bent to use his mouth, and she lost her mind.
She pushed off his shirt, unbuttoning it partly, then wrestling it over his head, and then his jeans while he was undoing hers, and their hips were arching against each other, pressing their hands in between.
Naked, he cupped and fondled her in a way that sent delicious sensations from her core to her extremities.
And then it happened, he slid inside her, and held her so closely there wasn’t room for air in between.
He moved slowly, and he kept kissing her, then looking at her, and stroking her hair back from her forehead, and then kissing her again.
Those lingering looks between the kisses, those eyes tracing her face as if he had reached all the way into her heart and soul. His vivid blue eyes were still fixed on hers when she shattered. She kept her eyes open and let him see.