Shop Talk Page 22

  “When I’m done with you, you’ll wear my mark,” he answered, biting the top of her breast with passion.

  Mona peeked through passion-swollen lids just enough to see the blue intensity of Michael’s eyes, the thick honey-streaked brown hair that crowned his head and curled about his handsome face. Her fingers played across hard, swollen pectorals. As she reached around him, she felt lats that tapered to a narrow waist and the tight swell of small, perfect buttocks. She’d been right to abandon the emergency room and move to the docks for a new partner. It had been far too long since she’d had a specimen who could stand up to the rigors of her rodeo fantasy.

  She reached up and expertly uncinched the girth that had held her old rodeo saddle to his back. When she was a young girl she’d been Queen of the Mississippi Rodeo and All-Round Cowgirl of 1980. Since her rodeo days her saddle had seen a handful of talented studs, but none to match Michael Fornia. As the leather loosened, the saddle fell away, and Mona reached lower. Michael’s moan of pleasure made her smile. While he was lulled into oblivion, she rolled out from under him and scrambled across the room to the lariat she kept hanging on a hook.

  Fondling the rope, she smiled at him as he gained his feet, an expectant glimmer in his eyes. Mona loved the chase. Running her quarry to ground was the most delicious of all sports, but sometimes, when she’d met a worthy opponent, it was fun to be the one pursued.

  With an unexpected flick of her wrist, she tossed the rope to him. “Catch me, if you can.” She headed for the back door and the three acres of manicured gardens she maintained just for the purpose of her privacy and her games.

  Michael gave a whoop and took off after her, his bare feet slapping the hardwood floors of the hallway as he ran toward the sound of the slamming screened door.

  Lucille grabbed Jazz’s hand just as it fisted up and started to knock at the front door. “Listen!” Several wild cries came from the back of the house. “Maybe someone’s trying to rob her. Maybe we should call the police.” She stepped to the right and tried to peep through the window.

  Jazz hesitated. Lucille might be right. But then again, the cries sounded wild, exuberant.

  Sexual.

  Wantonly sexual.

  “Maybe we should just leave,” Jazz said. The idea of Mona in all of her glory was unsettling. The thought of Mona’s reaction to being disturbed in the middle of research was enough to send Jazz down two steps as she edged toward Lucille’s dirty Camaro.

  “Not on your life.” Lucille was already moving to the gate of the privacy fence that had turned a bleached silver in the bright light of the morning sun. “Let’s take a look around.”

  “Mona is very sensitive about her privacy.” Another loud cry made Jazz feel hot all over.

  “What if Mona’s in there? A captive?” Lucille tried the latch and found that it was locked from the inside. “We should do something. Like break in.”

  From the back of the house, Mona’s throaty voice rose in a high squeal of panic that turned into a low chuckle.

  “I don’t think Mona wants to be disturbed,” Jazz said. “She sounds busy.”

  Lucille turned to face her. “The motto of WOMB is one for all and all for one. Right?” She waited. When Jazz didn’t answer, she asked again, “Right?”

  “Right.” Jazz didn’t like the glint in Lucille’s eyes.

  “Well, if she doesn’t need our help, we need hers. That old fart blew up my apartment complex with my computer in it. He’s down there now, looking for something. Of all the members of WOMB, Mona is the only one who can find out what.” Lucille jiggled the latch of the gate. It seemed to give and she put her weight against it, pressing and rattling the latch.

  “You haven’t known Mona very long. She takes her research very seriously.”

  “I take my computer very seriously.” Lucille knelt down to peep through the keyhole. She saw a neat gravel path lined with vivid azaleas. The shrubs were as tall as a man and were planted close together so that the colors of lavender, fuchsia, pink, purple, coral, red and white were like an impressionist palette. Lucille whistled softly. “Either Mona has a green thumb or she’s keeping a colony of gardeners as love slaves in her back yard.”

  Grasping the black handle of the gate, Lucille gave it a mighty shake. To her surprise the latch slipped, and the wooden gate opened on hinges that were smoothly oiled.

  “Gotcha, you frisky little heifer!”

  The male voice came from the back of the yard and was followed by the sound of Mona laughing and gasping for air. There was the rustle of leaves and the splash of water and a long, pulsing moan of pleasure.

  “Oh, baby, I did the rodeo circuit all over Wyoming, but I never met a woman like you.” He laughed, a hungry sound. “You can’t get away from me.” A soft, tuneless whistle cut the air. “I’m pretty good at bull-doggin’ and when I finally get my rope on you, I’m going to truss you up and put my brand on you.”

  “You talk big, cowboy. Let’s see some of that fancy rope work.” Mona’s voice was a challenge.

  Lucille started down the path.

  “We shouldn’t go back there.” Jazz grabbed Lucille’s arm.

  “We’re going.” Lucille turned on her, head lowered. “Who’s back there with Mona?”

  “One of her research projects.” Jazz shrugged. If Mona discovered they were spying on her, she’d be furious with them. “Let’s go before she finds out we were here.”

  Lucille listened for the man’s voice. There was something about it, something that rang a bell. It wasn’t Bo or Driskell, but she had the distinct feeling it was someone she knew. As Jazz started to edge back toward the garden gate, Lucille grabbed her. “The whole idea of watching Marvin was yours. You and Andromeda. Now my apartment is blown up and my computer destroyed. It took me four years of saving to buy that computer, and now there’s not even a microchip left.”

  “Your book!” Jazz couldn’t believe it. As terrible as the apartment bomb was, something good had come of it.

  “Oh, I’ve got back-up disks tucked away in a safe deposit box in the bank.” Lucille turned back to the open gate. “But I don’t have a computer anymore. And someone is going to pay.” Before Jazz could make a move, Lucille started forward at a lope, gravel scrunching beneath her dirty sneakers.

  “Saints preserve us,” Jazz said, uttering the only religious invocation she could remember as she ran after Lucille’s retreating back.

  Lucille followed the gravel path that wound through dense walls of frilly foliage. Mingled with the azaleas were bridal wreath and hydrangeas, honeysuckle and jasmine. The gardens were a jungle of Southern colors and scents, and in the distance was the splash of what sounded like a small waterfall. She was brought up short on the path by an uncoiled lariat in the gravel. Beside it was a leather vest and a man’s worn leather glove. Lucille picked up the rope with a sense of impending doom.

  Rising rhythmically above the sounds of the water were soft moans, little cries, gurgles, and threats. Mona’s voice grew suddenly clear. “My God, you are one helluva cowboy,” she said. “I love your branding iron.”

  “I’ve never been thrown out of the saddle,” a laconic male voice answered, “but you’ve got more buck than any woman I’ve ever met.”

  “Ride me,” Mona urged. “Use the spurs!”

  The male voice was hoarse, passionate. “Now, baby, now! Ho–ly cow!”

  Lucille froze. It was not possible. It was totally impossible. But she knew that voice. She’d heard it hundreds of times before. She knew the quick wit and the way with words. The wonderful rhymes like now and cow. Dear God above, it was him! “Slade.” The name escaped through her pale lips. She veered off the path and charged through the flowers. A wall of azaleas stopped her cold. The branches were so thick they made an effective barricade against her efforts at penetration.

  “Mona, we’re here!” Standing in the middle of the path, Jazz bounced up and down as she cried out as loudly as she could. “Yoo Hoo! Mona, you have
company.”

  Lucille swung around. The sounds she heard were having a strange effect on her. A red tide was building behind her eyes, giving everything in the garden the color of carnage. And in the middle of it she saw Mona. Mona who had made a play for Driskell. Mona who had somehow slipped into the paragraphs of her book and was now bucking the stuffing out of the man of her dreams.

  “Lucille, don’t go back there.” Jazz reached after Lucille, who neatly ducked her hand.

  “After an encounter with Mona, Slade will never be the same again.” Lucille grabbed several large azalea branches and broke them, clearing a path as she spoke. “We have to stop him, Jazz. He can’t do this. Angelita was bad enough. Once Mona gets hold of him, he won’t be fit to be the hero of anyone’s novel!”

  “Mona!” Jazz cried even louder. “Lucille and I have to talk to you!”

  Lucille plunged forward into a wave of lacy lavender azaleas. She was halfway through the bush, the moans growing louder, faster, more wanton, when her foot caught in a blackberry vine growing among the azaleas. The thorny vine grabbed her shoelaces and held, throwing her to the ground. In the distance the moans abruptly ceased. In the sudden silence there was only the splash of water.

  Lucille struggled to her knees. “I’m coming, Slade,” she called out. “Don’t do it! Don’t lose your soul!”

  “What … in … the hell … are … you … doing here?” Mona came down the gravel path, her bare feet leaving little wet, shell-shaped imprints in the white pea gravel. Her skin glowed a pearly pink, and there were red marks on her bare thighs. A black towel bound her from chest to thigh.

  Lucille reared up out of the azaleas and stumbled to the path. “What have you done to Slade?”

  Mona looked at her blankly. “Slade? Slade who?”

  Lucille started toward Mona, her hands held out at chest level, the fingers working. “I heard him. I heard you. He’s a cowboy. I heard him. He made a poem.” The words rushed out, and she made no effort to link them. “Slade will never be able to love a normal woman after he’s had you!” She lunged at Mona.

  The bushes behind Lucille parted with a snapping of branches and the fluttering of azaleas. “Hold on, there, woman.” Michael Fornia reached out with long, brawny arms and caught Lucille just as her fingers clutched at Mona’s startled throat. “What in the hell is your problem?”

  Lucille swung around, ready to do battle. As she met Michael’s piercing blue gaze, she went limp. “Slade,” she whispered. “It’s you.”

  “Slade?” Michael looked past Lucille at Mona, who shrugged.

  “Slade Rivers. The hero of Forbidden Words.” Jazz shot Mona a scathing look. “You know, the cowboy-slash-poet.”

  Mona’s eyebrows shot up half an inch as she turned to confront Jazz. “Lucille is an idiot. I expect this kind of behavior from her. But what are you doing here?”

  Jazz lifted her chin. “Marvin blew up the Marina Apartments. He was trying to kill Lucille. We’re going to catch him and we need your help.”

  Mona pulled her towel tighter and started toward the house. “Well have to finish this another time, Michael. I have WOMB business to attend to.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Driskell pulled his cloak over his body and blended with the shadows cast by the big coral azalea at the beginning of the pea gravel path at Mona’s house. The scene he witnessed tormented him. He didn’t want to believe what he saw, but as an agent of the U.S. government he had to face facts. Lucille Hare was standing in the middle of the white gravel path nearly breaking her neck to get a look at the love tool of the naked man who held her. Lucille’s body blocked Driskell’s view, but he could tell she was mighty drawn to what she saw. That was not good.

  Mona, tightly wrapped in black terry cloth, started toward the house. And him. He considered hiding deeper in the bush, but one look at Lucille’s glazed face as she stumbled forward made him stand his ground. As the quartet closed the distance, Driskell stepped forward, the edge of his black cape catching an unexpected breeze and whipping around him in a spectacular billow of black and red.

  “Driskell.” Lucille stopped so suddenly that the naked man ran into her. Her eyes widened.

  “Lucille.” He had no interest in anyone except her. One side of her hairdo was crushed in. Bulges at the knees of her green striped leggings marked the bandages he’d taped on her lacerated flesh after the encounter with her uncle. Her knees looked like tiny, delicious, sugar baby watermelons. As he stared at her, she stepped away from the naked man, a tiny step toward him. Beneath the cape, Driskell’s heart fluttered like the silk lining.

  “Driskell,” she whispered, taking another unsteady step.

  “Lucille.” He moved forward to meet her.

  “Driskell.” She held out her arms and ran toward him. Limping on one leg, dragging a nasty looking briar vine on the other, Lucille fell into his arms with a sad bleat.

  Driskell folded his cape around her and bent to kiss her ear, to whisper that everything would be okay, to tell her that he could no longer ignore his feelings for her.

  Almost choking, Lucille clung to him. Her voice broken, she spoke with total abandon. “Now my dream will never come true. Mona has ruined Slade.”

  Sitting in the black leather of Driskell’s Caddy, Lucille felt cut off from the snapping waves of the Sound, the flash of traffic on the opposite lane of the highway, the flutter of clothes on tourist and American flags that marked the gaudy, two-mile, souvenir strip of the highway. She watched it all pass as if it were a movie. Two feet away, hands on the wheel and attention focused out the front windshield, Driskell drove. They had not spoken since he’d loaded her into the car at Mona’s.

  “Driskell?” Lucille felt his name fly across the car, crash into the invisible barrier he’d erected, and fall, a smoking heap, to the car seat. “Driskell, please. Talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing to say, Lucille. Bo was right. No living man can ever compete with the characters in your head.”

  “Bo doesn’t know everything.” Lucille’s remorse took on an edge of exasperation. “Bo and Iris go around talking about me like I’m some idiot child. They see what they want to see.”

  “They see what you project, Lucille.” Driskell started to look at her but caught himself in time and jerked his head back to face the highway. He didn’t have to see her flushed cheeks to know she was upset. She’d clung to him, the second choice, and wept because she’d imagined one of Mona’s lovers was her cowboy! Through all the tortures and agonies of school, through all the torments of the other children and the cruelties of the bullies, he’d never suffered so harshly as he had at that moment. Lucille had driven a stake through his heart.

  “You and Bo and Iris see what life has prepared you to see.” Lucille brushed a tear from her cheek. “The really bad thing is …” She paused to get her voice back under control, “I’m the victim of the way you see me.” She swallowed loudly. “I become what you expect.” She wiped a steady stream of tears from her cheeks. “Sometimes I fight really hard not to let that happen, but then I look into your eyes, all of you, and I see this reflection of a foolish woman, a pitiable creature who is a nuisance. And I believe it! I believe it because I see it there in the eyes of the people I love the most.”

  Driskell’s foot slipped off the accelerator. As the big Caddy began to slow, he reached across the seat and touched a single tear on her face. “Bo loves you, Lucille.”

  She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “I know he does.” Her laugh was short. “He doesn’t really have a choice, does he? I’m his little sister. He’s been told to love me from birth.” She ran her fingers through the stiff spikes of her hair. “Hell, he’s conditioned to love me.”

  “That’s not true. Not completely.” Driskell felt his anger melting. Bo and Iris loved Lucille, but they expected the worst from her. Perhaps … The total lack of emotion in her voice pulled him from his own thoughts.

  “Real love is something for characte
rs in a book who deserve it. For people touched by magic. It’s not for ordinary people. It’s not for people who do stupid things and make mistakes.” She looked out the window. “You know my first memory is watching Bo rise up out of his baby bed. He was sleeping and he just up and floated in the air. He hovered about a foot from the baby bed mattress. And all the time he just slept.”

  “Lucille–”

  “I was sitting on the floor. I can still remember the rug. It was a dark green with white leaf patterns in it. I loved that rug. I was pulling my fingers along the leaf patterns, sort of tracing them. I looked up and Bo was lifting off like a cloud. From that minute on, I knew he was the special one. I was just the other child.”

  “It was a dream.” Driskell finally found a place to pull off the highway that wasn’t jammed with goose-bumped beach bathers. “Think about it, Lucille, it had to be a dream. Bo is older than you. You wouldn’t remember him as an infant.”

  “Well, I guess he was just a slow developer. But I remember it. Clearly,” Lucille insisted. Now that the car was stopped she had nothing to look at except her hands. Or Driskell. “He was a strange baby. First of all, he was so small. So much more babyish than I was. I thought at first he was sickly. But it was more than that. He was special. Late at night Mama and Daddy would whisper about him. Their voices were … urgent.” She finally met Driskell’s gaze, surprised by the attention on his features. His lips were very red, and without thinking she reached up and touched them. “You were a special child, weren’t you?”

  “Being special isn’t always what you think. You are special, Lucille. The way you live your characters, that’s a gift.”

  Her smile was bittersweet. “Ah, but they don’t live me back. I learned that today.”

  Against the pressure of her soft fingers on his lips, Driskell spoke. “I’m not one of your heroes, but I think maybe I could love you, Lucille. If you wanted that.”

  His breath against her fingers was delicious. She took a long, shuddering breath. “I was a fool about Slade.” She looked into his dark eyes. “A big fool. He’s not half the man you are, Driskell. And I want to thank you for saving me from my uncle. Slade would never have done anything like that. He’d have been more interested in his old cows.” She lowered her hand.