Breaking the Rules (21 page)

It was dark in the room and a chill had begun to seep through the walls. “I’m hungry. Are you?”

“Starving,” Zeke said. “How about if you get something heated up and I’ll go get some firewood and start a fire?”

“Okay.”

He kissed her, lingeringly. “Don’t get too well dressed,” he said in that dark voice, brushing a palm over her belly.

A warm ripple passed through her. “You either.”

He climbed over her and stretched mightily, comfortable with his nude body in the way only a well-made man could be. His hair had dried in a tumble of waves on his broad, powerful shoulders, and Mattie admired the muscled length of his back, new desire stirring within her.

He shifted to tug a clean pair of jeans from a drawer, and the light of the lantern he’d lit caught the puckered scar on his back. “How did you get that scar, Zeke?”

Without looking at her, he lazily donned his jeans. “Which one?”

Intrigued by his tone, which was wary but not closed, she said, “Pick one.”

He tossed her a long thermal T-shirt. “Get my supper going, woman. I’m starving.” As Mattie sat up to put it on, he dived for her, tumbling her backward in the bed, kissing her tummy and breasts.

Mattie laughed, almost deliriously happy. She tickled him. “Get up, you big lug! I’m starving, too!”

He lifted his head and his eyes shone. “That’s how women stay around me.”

She lifted her head to kiss him and fell back, smiling. “Go get some wood so we don’t freeze.”

“If I tell you dark stories, there’s a price,” he said.

“Is it weird?”

He laughed. “No.” He got up. “But you might not like it.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

* * *

Curled on the braided rug before a roaring fire, they ate canned chili and biscuits from a mix that required only water. It was the best meal of Mattie’s life.

Afterward, they made love again. Lazily, without the edge of frantic and painful need that had marked their joining earlier. Now they took time to explore, talking softly, touching, playing, unfolding to each other.

As they lay together in the warmth of that unfolding, Mattie felt again the puckered scar on his back. “Tell me the story of this one,” she said quietly.

He shifted, to lean his head on his hand. He smiled. “Othello is responsible for that one.”

“What happened?”

“I was trying to break him and he wasn’t taking kindly to the process. He threw me and I smashed into a gate of the corral. Broke my arm in two places, and the gate latch just about tore my heart out from the back.”

She shuddered. “And you got right back on, didn’t you?”

“Well, not right away. It took me a month or two to get back on my feet, but we did come to an understanding eventually.”

“What understanding?”

He grinned. “I’m the boss.”

Made bold by his ready answer, she touched the thin white line by his mouth. “This one?”

He frowned, but it wasn’t a brooding expression. He touched the place and blinked. “You know, I can’t remember. I’m sure my dad did it, but I don’t remember the circumstances.”

“And this?” She touched his wrist.

“Cigarettes.” He brushed his hand over his torso, indicating the others. “All of the little round ones are cigarettes. It was what he used when I interfered.”

There was a lot less growling in his voice than there had been the first time. In fact, he told it matter-of-factly, as if it were all water under the bridge, which she knew wasn’t true.

“How did you interfere?”

To her surprise, he grinned. “Same way I have been since you showed up, Miss Mary.” He smoothed a lock of hair from her face. “It seems to be a habit of mine. Back then, I put myself between him and my sisters.”

“That was brave.”

His mouth turned down at the corners. “Nah. They didn’t have anybody else.”

“Neither did you.”

“I was stronger.”

And Mattie saw in the pale green depths of his gaze the truth of that statement. For all that he’d suffered, he’d survived. Almost whole.

“Where are your sisters now? Do you ever see them?”

“No,” he said. “Not for a while now. They all pretty much still live in Mississippi. One’s a lawyer in Jackson, the rest are just your garden-variety married ladies.”

“Six?”

He shook his head. “Only five sisters. One hung herself when I ran away that time, got my tattoo.”

There was another door, one closed so long cobwebs hung all around it. Mattie knew, looking into his eyes, that he felt responsible in some way for that death. “So you go around rescuing strangers to make up for it.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I reckon.”

“Do you have a lot of nieces and nephews?”

“None of us have had children.”

Mattie let that slide, too, sensing it led places he wouldn’t want to walk. And what more light would be shed, anyway? His father must have been a brutal, brutal man.

“So how,” she said lightly, “did you get to be so good with babies?”

“My mama has a lot of family. I probably had, oh, at least twenty, twenty-five first cousins.” He lifted a shoulder. “Even when I was little, I liked the little ones. They don’t talk back and don’t ask a lot. Just love. Used to like to make ’em laugh. It was so easy.”

“All that family and no one came to your rescue.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“Not all families are like the Waltons, Mattie.”

“But someone had to be kind to you somewhere, Zeke, or you wouldn’t be the man you are.”

“I had my sisters. We had one another. It’s a lot.”

Mattie thought of the cursory way most of the men of her acquaintance treated children. Most of them were afraid of babies. It seemed a cruel twist of fate that he would not have any of his own. Almost unnatural.

“Don’t do it, Miss Mary,” he said. “I see those rose-colored glasses you’re putting on. Don’t do it.” He squeezed her shoulder for emphasis. “I am who I am.”

Mattie looked at him, a deep pinch in her chest.

He touched her mouth, kissed her forehead, rested his hand on her stomach. “This is real nice, Mattie, but it isn’t gonna last. Don’t think it will.”

She swallowed the sorrow his words gave her and reached for him wordlessly, pressing her face into his warm, hair dusted chest, wishing there was something she could do, something she could say, to make him see—

See what? That she was the right woman for him? That she could give him the love he’d never had? That she could give him children to ease the past?

All those things.

But he could not accept such a gift and Mattie would not cause him more pain by extending it. “I know, Zeke,” she said against his chest. “I know.”

He held her tight, his hand clasping her head to him, his lips in her hair.

* * *

In the morning, Zeke made coffee. Mattie still slept, the sleeping bag tucked over her breasts, held close like that teddy bear she wouldn’t leave behind in her burning house. In the gilded light of morning, he could see the scars on her hands plainly, the rough, darkened skin over her knuckles, a couple of places where the flesh seemed stretched too tight.

They weren’t marring scars and she seemed not to think about them. Not the way Zeke did about his. He was fairly sure children had teased her, as they had teased him, or given her those long pitying glances that were even worse.

Watching her sleep, he wondered where she got her strength. She was like a willow branch, bending easily on the rough currents of her life, doing what was required without whining or wincing. Losing her hair had to have been a major trauma—and yet she’d had the courage to cut it off. She’d done what had to be done.

On her long throat were the marks of his mouth, the savage marks he’d made on purpose, if he were honest, because he wanted to have some claim. It was juvenile, but there it was. No woman in his entire life stirred the kind of possessive, wild need he felt for her.

He wasn’t the kind of man who thought himself in love often. There had been the painful, searing bit of first love when he was sixteen, but that had been it. Her family had moved away, and Zeke had joined the rodeo circuit as soon as he was able. Women were plentiful, and he learned early on how to give them what they wanted without giving up anything of himself.

For the most part, it worked. Every so often, he tangled with an Amanda, a woman who was bound and determined to housebreak him. Amanda had been the only one to extract vengeance, but there had doubtless been others who’d wanted to.

He felt no guilt. He told all of them he wasn’t the settling-down kind. Made it clear from the beginning that he wanted nothing to do with commitments, picket fences or—especially—babies. After his telling them that, if they still took him on as a personal challenge, just who was to blame?

He’d started this with Mattie just the same way. Clear. Up-front.

But this thing had been muddy right from the beginning. On day one, he’d started breaking his rules, the elaborate network of regulations he’d set for himself a long time ago.

In the big bed, Mattie shifted but didn’t wake. He could see most of her back the way she lay, and knew a sudden longing to kiss each tiny bone of her spine, all the way down to those generous hips.

He smiled sleepily, thinking of her unbridled passion. If anyone had told him two weeks ago that Miss Mary would make love outside, standing up, in a rainstorm, he’d have laughed.

Which only went to prove he knew less about good girls than he thought. Because she was: good, honest, upright and trustworthy. And a hellcat in bed. What more could a man want? That angel face hid the most delicious wickedness.

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, ignoring the insistent thrust of his overworked parts. She had to be sore by now. He wouldn’t bother her again.

The whole thing was out of control.
He
was out of control. He’d broken every rule he had. The first one about good girls. His second most important and never ignored: wear a condom at all times. Truth was, he’d gone into the drugstore for them yesterday and decided he’d avoid temptation if he didn’t have one. Or Mattie would stop him.

So much for that idea.

He had rules about what he could tell about himself, too. To women friends, he’d occasionally let the story of his childhood come out; he knew wounds festered if they never saw the light. But he didn’t tell that story to the women he slept with—the body/ emotion link would get too strong.

He didn’t let himself stay in emotionally dangerous situations, either. And yet, instead of finding ways to get Mattie away from him, he’d found a hundred ways to keep her here—against her protests.

He swore under his breath.

All those rules were in place for a reason, for protection, to keep him safe from emotional ties. He couldn’t stand being vulnerable to anyone, ever.

But looking at Mattie O’Neal in his bed, he knew he was vulnerable to her. Even more so because she’d never ask for anything for herself. She loved him. She wanted to tell him that, and yet she hadn’t. Not out of self-preservation, but to spare
him
.

There was a pounding ache in his heart, filling his chest. Another rule was that he would come here by himself, so he’d never get used to the feeling of having someone around, so loneliness would feel like solitude. As long as no other living, breathing human shared the space, the illusion was possible.

He would miss her when she was gone.

It was this last thought that propelled him across the room to her side, made him slide beneath the covers, jeans and all, and take her warm, soft body into his arms. She stirred sleepily, but did not awaken. Zeke was glad of it. She’d see too much in this moment. Far more than he wanted to show.

As if she were made of pieces torn from him, she flowed into his arms, her curves filling hollows, her heat covering his cold, her cheek fitting his shoulder exactly.

He closed his eyes and let himself feel her, knowing it was a pleasure that could not last.

* * *

They ate breakfast on the porch. Mattie kept hoping the raccoon would come, but he didn’t. As they drank the last of the coffee, Zeke said, “Mattie.”

She looked at him, alarmed by the dull tone of his voice. She said nothing, just waited for the other shoe.

A tic jumped by his right eye, near the scar. “You have to turn yourself in. I can’t keep you safe here and you can’t hide forever.”

She opened her mouth to protest. He held up a hand, turning to lean on the rough table between them. “Listen, all right? All the way through.”

Something wary and tired about him made her do as he asked. “I’m listening,” she said.

“The reward is for twenty-five thousand dollars, Mattie. If your information leads to Brian’s arrest, you’ll get the money.”

“I don’t care about the money.”

“I know, but you ought to. Twenty-five thousand clams would go a long way to building whatever kind of future you want for yourself, so you don’t have to depend on some job you hate or the security of a husband.”

“I’m a very simple woman,” she replied. “I don’t need the money.”

He sighed. “Then for one minute, I want you to think about what will happen if you don’t testify and old Brian Murphy gets off scot-free. Now, the people he killed probably had mothers and wives and maybe even kids, and they deserve some justice… And I want you to think about what’s going to happen five years from now, when Brian relaxes. When he’s got all his ducks in a row again. And he looks around for another sweet girl to marry.”

A small wave of dizziness passed through her. This was a possibility she’d never considered.

“What if she’s not as lucky as you were and she goes ahead and marries him and has a couple of kids. Who’s gonna lose when she does find out? Or when she doesn’t find out and they come and take him away to jail for the rest of his life? Who loses?”

Mattie bent her head, ashamed that her fear had overridden her ability to think about the consequences of her actions on people other than herself and Brian.

“Your boyfriend and his crony wouldn’t be looking for you if the police had anything else to go on, Mattie.”