Spirit of the Wolf (17 page)

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Authors: Vonna Harper

Tags: #Man-Woman Relationships, #Ranchers, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Erotic Fiction, #Erotica, #Fiction, #Love Stories

BOOK: Spirit of the Wolf
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“Sex?”
The word sounded foreign, almost as if Matt had never said it before; either that or he didn’t understand the meaning.
“What’s going on inside you?”
Don’t touch him. It’s too dangerous.
“Can you tell me that?”
When he didn’t so much as open his mouth, she wondered if he’d lost the ability to speak. Accustomed to parents whose interaction with their child was minimal, she couldn’t wrap her mind around the connection between her and Matt.
A frightening and maybe deadly connection.
About to remind him of her warning about calling 911, she stopped. He’d only laugh, if he was capable of laughing, and give her another vivid example of his domination.
How long had he been staring down at her, seeing and yet not seeing? Thinking thoughts she couldn’t grasp.
“I need to get up,” she informed him as calmly as possible.
“I don’t like feeling like this.” Could he guess how close she’d come to admitting her helplessness?
“No.”
“No, what?” Hearing his voice turned her inside out.
“You’ll try to escape.”
Escape was what a prisoner or captive did. Another wave of fear slammed into her, and she couldn’t speak. Her world compressed, and everything became about survival. Later, if she was still alive, she’d get Matt the mental help he needed.
Determined to focus on more than just surviving what was left of the morning, she forced herself to ponder what help was available. Sparsely populated as this area was, he’d undoubtedly be taken to Portland. He’d have to be locked up, of course, for his own protection as well as the public’s. Maybe he’d be given drugs. And therapy. Lots of therapy, during which a shrink would pull his deepest, darkest secrets out of him.
Movement ended the image of a shackled Matt lying on a couch. He was reaching for her, bending over her as he did. Once again his too-dark eyes sheltered his thoughts. His nostrils flared, and his teeth stood out.
“No!” She slapped his cheek with all her strength.
A howl rumbled out of Matt. Instead of attacking her as she fully expected, he stumbled back a step. His hand went to his cheek.
I didn’t mean . . . I only wanted . . . Matt, forgive me.
Spinning on his heels, he loped over to his clothes and boots, picked them up, and headed for the door.
It slammed behind him.
17
 
“
N
o, no, I don’t need to talk to him,” Cat told Addie when she phoned Coyote Ranch the next morning. “He, ah, was in a hurry when he left yesterday. I just, ah, was wondering if everything was all right.”
“Right?” Addie dragged out the word. “He’s working overtime if that’s what you mean. Headed out to the east pasture around dawn. Cat, do you mind if I ask you something?”
I’m not up to answering anything.
“All right.”
“Okay, did the two of you have an argument?”
“What makes you . . . I’m not sure what to call it.” She looked down at the cotton shirt and jeans she’d hurried into right after her shower because clothes provided a necessary shield.
“Sorry,” Addie said. “What happens between you and Matt is none of my business, except I couldn’t love him more if I’d given birth to him. He’s hurting—is that the right word?—and I hate seeing that. Is there anything I can do?”
About to tell Addie no, she reconsidered. Matt had come to live with Santo and Addie when he was a boy. In all likelihood, no one knew more about him than the woman who’d opened her home to him.
“Can I come over?” she asked. “You’re sure Matt won’t be back for a while?”
“Pretty sure. You want to come right now?”
“If it’s all right with you.”
 
Her rugged, physical life had lined Addie’s features and grayed her hair. She had a ranch wife’s permanently tanned hands with short, practical nails and a multitude of small scars. Like Cat’s, Addie’s forearms sported muscles. Cat had no doubt that the rest of the older woman’s body carried out the same message of strength. She wore no makeup, her shoulder-length hair looked as if she cut it herself, and her clothing was a clone of what Cat wore.
The house at Coyote Ranch was positioned so its shadow covered the front porch where the two women sat drinking iced tea. Cat had parked her truck near the porch so she could bail if Matt returned unexpectedly. What she hadn’t figured out was how she’d explain her exit to Addie if that proved necessary.
“I don’t know if I’d still be here if it wasn’t for Matt,” Addie said once the weather and hay price discussions were over. “Oh, I guess I could hire a foreman, but it wouldn’t be the same. This land has its tentacles around Matt’s heart, same as it does mine. As it did Santo.”
Cat figured Santo and Addie had been married at least thirty-five years. In that time, their separate selves might have essentially merged. If so, Addie had lost a key part of herself. Although she and Matt hadn’t had nearly that much time together, she, too, felt incomplete without him.
“Was it always like that for Matt?” she asked in an attempt to get the conversation going where she needed it to. “He felt connected to the ranch from the beginning?”
Addie laughed, and for a moment her eyes lost the grief buried in them. What was it like to love someone that much? “Hardly. He was too young to be a sullen teen, thank goodness, but he had so many of the symptoms that sometimes I wanted to shake him. Even though he knew he had nowhere else to go, he didn’t want to be here.”
“How did he come to live with you? I heard rumors—”
“I’m sure you did.”
“Is his father in prison?” Cat stared at her hands. “I never knew how to bring that up.”
“Prison,” Addie muttered. “Crazy how things get turned around. I take it you and Matt haven’t talked about his past.”
Or about mine.
Lifting her head, she met Addie’s gaze. “That sounds as if Matt and I don’t have much of a relationship. Maybe we don’t.”
“I doubt that. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t concerned for him.”
Concern barely touched at what she was feeling. Along with confusion over his inexplicable behavior was a lingering fear of him. And sexual energy. More energy than fear. “So Matt’s father isn’t in prison?”
Addie shook her head and leaned back in her chair. She stared at the horizon. “Maybe Matt doesn’t want you knowing his story, but I have the feeling you need to. One thing I’m sure of, it’s essential if you’re going to understand him.”
“I want to.”
I need to.
“Let me start by explaining why he came to live with us. His mother was my father’s second cousin.”
“Was? Is she dead?”
“No one knows. She hasn’t been heard from in years.”
The more Addie said, the more chilled Cat felt. Matt’s parents, who’d never married, had been in their teens when he was born. His mother had just turned fifteen while his father, a high school dropout and seasonal ranch hand, had been a month shy of nineteen. Matt’s mother, Heather, continued to live with her parents while his father, Kaga, often came to see his son. Heather’s mother took care of her infant grandson while Heather reluctantly went to school.
“Heather’s parents are deeply religious, absolute fundamentalists,” Addie said. “My understanding is that Heather wanted to have an abortion, and if they wouldn’t sign for her to go to the clinic, she wanted to put Matt up for adoption. However, Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t allow it. She’d sinned and was going to pay for it.”
“That’s all they cared about?”
“Apparently. How unfair that was to Heather and Matt. And to Kaga, who wasn’t in any position to support his son, a son he dearly loved.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Kaga? What an unusual name.”
Addie turned her attention to Cat. “He was Native American. Paiute.”
Shocked, Cat covered her mouth. “Matt never said anything about that.”
“I’m not surprised, because he was determined to put his past behind him. When he turned thirteen, he told me he considered himself reborn. Thirteen was when his life began.”
“What was so awful about his childhood?” She had to force the question. “Oh, God, was he abused?”
Looking pensive, Addie slowly shook her head. “As far as we know, not physically. I wish I could say the same about emotionally.”
Considering his grandparents’ religious beliefs, Cat thought she understood. However, as Addie continued, Cat realized she’d had no inkling what Matt had gone through.
When Matt was around three, Heather fell in love with a man fifteen years older than her, a man who wanted nothing to do with a small child. Heather had run away with the man, and although she resurfaced from time to time when the lover of the moment—the older one hadn’t lasted long—turned out not to be Prince Charming or she ran out of money, she never played the mother role. No one had seen or heard from her since Matt’s ninth birthday, which she’d celebrated by calling and talking to him for maybe five minutes.
In contrast, Kaga never missed a birthday or holiday. He lived a few miles from Matt’s grandparents and paid every penny of child support he could afford. As far as anyone knew, Kaga never had a serious romantic relationship, let alone got married or had other children.
“Kaga didn’t talk much, especially not to Matt’s grandparents, who resisted his every effort to be a father,” Addie explained.
“Why were they so hard on him? Didn’t they understand that a child needs parents?”
“To their way of thinking, Kaga’s sin in creating Matt was even greater than their daughter’s because he was older. Kaga—I’ve seen a picture of him and he was a rugged, handsome man—had no family.”
“None at all?”
“I’m just repeating what I’ve been told. Believe me, getting anything from Matt’s grandparents was like pulling teeth. They could do no wrong. Sinners were all around them, but they were saints raising a sinful child according to God’s law.”
“Sinful? He was a little boy.”
“An illegitimate child whose mother had abandoned her family and a father who didn’t go to their church, so of course was going to hell.”
Cat had come to Addie hoping to learn more about Matt. Now she’d give anything to know more than the little she’d been told about Kaga.
“Kaga tried to be a father to Matt because Matt was the only family Kaga had,” she said, on the verge of tears for a man she’d never met.
“Exactly.” Addie went back to her study of the distance. “When Santo and I went to pick up Matt, we talked to neighbors, teachers, even the police. We learned more about both Kaga and Matt’s upbringing from them than we ever did from his grandparents.”
“How did the police get involved?”
Addie sighed and closed her eyes. “Two reasons. One, Matt kept running away, and because there was nothing else they could do with him, the police kept bringing him back to his grandparents’ place. Two”—Addie’s eyes opened—“Kaga had problems.”
Instead of asking her to explain, Cat waited the older woman out. Learning so much in such a short amount of time was exhausting, either that or her sleepless night was getting to her. If she could, she’d wrap comforting arms around both of them.
With Matt, a hug would soon turn into something else.
“He went crazy. Insane.”
“Oh, no!”
Addie sighed again. “I don’t know how long things were bad for him before he took off but—”
“Took off?”
Addie stood, walked over to the railing, and faced Cat. Leaning against the wooden support, she rested her elbows behind her. “For a while. Then he came back but . . . I know it sounds as if both of Matt’s parents deserted him, but the circumstances and outcomes were entirely different. Heather was too immature and self-centered to understand what it meant to be a mother. Kaga gave his son, maybe the only person he ever loved or who ever loved him, as much of himself as he was capable of.”
Unable to ignore the need for movement, Cat joined Addie at the railing but didn’t turn her back on the setting because she needed to know if Matt returned—Matt whose innate sexuality still had a powerful grip on her.
“I wish he’d told me about his father,” she muttered. “I wonder why he didn’t.”
“He only rarely mentioned Kaga to Santo and me,” Addie said. “When he first came to live with us, we were up to our necks trying to learn how to parent a lost and closed-in kid. We told ourselves he’d talk when he was ready, but maybe if we’d pressed, he wouldn’t have had all those nightmares.”
Sick for the boy Matt had once been, Cat wrapped her arms around her middle.
“For the longest time, Matt didn’t want me to touch him,” Addie continued. “He was okay with Santo; they had a bond from the beginning. But I think he didn’t know how to relate to women, whether he could trust them.”
“Given what his mother did, I can’t blame him.”
“I know. Anyway, the first time I held Matt was during one of his nightmares. Afterward, I was there for all of them. The things he said . . . either he’d seen his father fall apart or he imagined what it must have been like.”
“What did he say?”
I’m sorry, Matt. I hate doing this, but what choice do I have?
Addie turned toward her; tears glittered in her eyes. “He kept calling out to Kaga. He’d beg him to relax and calm down, to stop saying the things he did. He, ah, talked about a knife.”
“Oh my God. Do you think Kaga tried to kill Matt?”
“If he did, he didn’t hurt him.”
“You’re right. He doesn’t have a knife scar.” Too late, Cat realized what she’d just revealed.
For the first time since she’d begun talking, Addie smiled. “Honey, you aren’t telling me anything I don’t know. Something I need to tell you. It might help you understand Matt better. Kaga committed suicide. With a knife.”
Light-headed, Cat gripped the railing. She couldn’t speak for thinking. Finally she said, “Do you think Matt saw? That that’s where his nightmares came from?”
Now it was Addie’s turn to hug herself. “I asked him. After he told me he loved me, I let him know he could tell me anything and I’d honor it. He said he wanted to but the words wouldn’t come out. He believed it was better for him to put the past behind him.”
Still light-headed, Cat faced the land that defined Coyote Ranch. She felt as if she’d come here knowing nothing about her lover. In a few minutes, Addie had opened a door to Matt’s past, maybe a Pandora’s box.
“What kind of mental illness did Kaga have?”
“Matt’s grandparents said it was the devil’s work, that he was being punished for, and I quote, ‘fornicating with a child.’ ”
“Damn them. Did they tell Matt the same thing?”
“What do you think?”
If the two were here right now, she wasn’t sure she could stop herself from slugging them.
“Apparently,” Addie continued, “Kaga never had professional help. From what the police told me, he withdrew more and more. He’d always been a good worker, but he stopped showing up at the several ranches where he worked part-time. He no longer paid rent on the cabin where he lived, and when they came to evict him, there were signs he hadn’t been there for a while.”

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