The Cattleman (Sons of Texas Book 2) (31 page)

“What’s a cistern?”

Was she serious? He gave her a look and opened his palms. “Water? Where you catch and store rainwater to drink?” Her face held a blank expression. “C’mon and I’ll show you.”

On the southwest side of the house, the fence dead-ended against the cistern that was a solid concrete cylinder,
over five feet high and four feet across. A heavy slab made of two-by-fours and plywood covered the opening. He walked over and slid the wooden cover to the side. Together they looked down into the deep hole. They could see the glister of the sunlight reflecting from the water.

“Oh. There’s water in it,” she said.

“It’s always had water in it,” he replied. “We maintain the gutters around the eaves so that rainwater—”

“Oh, my God. You mean this water
drains off the roof?”

Pic straightened and gestured around them. “Where else would it get water?”

“People drank this? It must be filthy.”

“No, it’s not.” He plucked a bucket, a roped tied to its bail, off a spike embedded in the side of the concrete cistern.  “I’ll show you.” He dropped the bucket into the water, using the rope to tilt the bail and let the bucket fill with water, then drew it back to the concrete edge of the cistern. He reached behind them again and plucked a metal mug off the wall, dipped it into the water and offered it to her. “Here, try it.”

She put up both hands, scrunched up her nose and turned her head. “Eww. No. I don’t want to be sick.”

“Darlin’, our cowhands drink this water every time they pass by here and they don’t get sick. When they’re out on the range in the hot sun, a drink of cool water tastes mighty good to them. I don’t know of anybody ever dying from drinking cistern water. Some of the old farms in this county still have cisterns.”

“Well,
I’m
not going to drink it.”

“Right,” he said, unable to hide his disgust. He poured the water back into the cistern and slid the wooden cover back over the opening. “Let’s go inside.”

Inside the breezeway, small trails of sand lay where the smooth stone floor joined the walls. Pic found a different key on his key ring, held the screen door open with his body and unlocked the solid door opening into the living room side of the house. The instant they stepped inside, he felt cooler.

Zochi rubbed her bare arms up and down. Gooseflesh covered her arms and shoulders, even the slope of her breasts. Nipple impressions suddenly appeared on her thin top. She looked up at him. “It’s, um, chilly in here.”

“Uh, these walls are solid rock,” he said, looking away from her. “About six inches thick. Plus, there’s the shade from the trees outside. And when Mom had the place re-roofed, she had the contractor add insulated board under the metal. She and Dad used this place.”

He and Mandy had used it, too, back when he’d had more time.
They had stayed here for two and three days at a time and used the cistern water. Mandy didn’t think it looked haunted. She was fascinated by it. Sometimes, they had spent weekends here. They’d had fun roughing it—heating the place with wood and cooking simple meals on the old cookstove. Once, Mandy had studied how to make an apple pie in a wood cookstove oven, which had turned out to be no easy task. They had bathed each other in the round galvanized wash tub that hung on the wall in the kitchen area. His six-feet-three-inch body barely squeezed into it. His memory zoomed back to one day when Mandy had used her phone to take a picture of him in the tub with his legs hanging over the side.

“Mrs. Lockhart is really smart,” Zochi said, reminding him that Zochi had been sent by his mother and why.

The inside of the living half of the house was one big, long room with a high ceiling of exposed wooden beams. A primitive stone fireplace had been constructed in the center of the back wall. A living room area took up one end of the room. A modern sofa, its cushions protected by clear plastic covers, a couple of chairs and some tables filled the space. A veil of sand and dust covered everything.

Zochi pulled off her sunglasses and hat. “It doesn’t look like mice have been in here. There are no holes in anything.”

“Poison,” Pic said, pointing to a nearly empty container of d-CON.

She glanced at the small cardboard box, made a
n exaggerated gasp, then turned toward him and gave him a sharp look.

He shrugged. “Hey, there’s lots of mice.”

She gave a little huff of disgust and strolled toward the kitchen end of the room where the wood cookstove stood alone against the wall. A long counter, a short row of rustic cupboards and a sink ran along an adjacent wall. She trailed her fingers along the varnished Masonite counter top. “There’s no plumbing.”

“Nope. No bathroom either.”

“So what did these people do?”

“The same thing all settlers did. They got water out of the cistern to drink and probably out of the river for other uses, though it’s a pretty steep trip to and from the river. As far as a bathroom goes, there’s a wooden privy out back.”

“Hunh,” Zochi said, continuing to look around. “I guess I should get my camera out of the Jeep.”

“I’ll get it,” Pic volunteered, not wanting to take a chance on her seeing something outside that would make her hysterical.

She looked up at him with those dark inviting dark eyes, her full lips parted and wet. About a million things could be read in her expression. His libido must not have gotten the message his brain had sent because suddenly, time stood still. Tension stretched so tightly between them that for a few seconds, Pic could hear his own heartbeat. Fortunately, she killed the moment by shrugging and looking away. “Thanks,” she said.

“I’ll go get it,” he repeated, letting out a held breath as he
quick-stepped out the door. At the Jeep, he planted his hand on the fender, drew in a gulp of fresh air.
Jesus Christ!
A few years ago, if he had been physically attracted to a woman this powerfully and in this isolated location, he would have already had her in bed.

But he was a different man now….Wasn’t he?

After taking a few seconds to compose himself, he snagged the camera bag and carried it back into the living room.

While she snapped pictures from several angles—the cookstove, the cupboards, the fireplace—Pic hung around, trying to stay out of her way. Apparently what he had taught her about the camera had stuck. After she had taken multiple shots, she moved back to the living room end of the rectangle and eased down on the sofa.

“A few minutes ago, it was cold. Now it’s so hot,” she said, bending forward and revealing sexy pendulous breasts. They would more than fill his hands. His imagination went off on a tangent of how it would feel to touch and stroke so much cushiony female flesh.

She untied her sport shoes, removed them and her socks, then lazed back against the sofa back and lifted her feet to the coffee table. “Much better.” Wiggling her bare toes, she grinned up at him and patted the seat beside herself. She knew she had him on edge.

Not wanting to appear juvenile, he sank to one end of the sofa and leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs.

She lifted a foot, cocked her head and studied it. “Do you like my red toenails? I like the color, but I’m not sure about the daisies. What do you think?”

Pic felt a stir in his jeans.
Jesus!
Even her feet made him think of sex. “They’re…uh, fine.” He looked back at her across his shoulder. “I don’t pay much attention to things like that.”

She cocked her head. “Yes, you do. Every time you look at me, you’re drinking me in from head to toe. You must see something you like.”

Johnnie Sue’s words zoomed into his thoughts:
…You look at her like she’s a big piece of chocolate cake….
God, was he that obvious? Then he gave himself an excuse. Hell, what normal man wouldn’t look at her? She was exactly what Johnnie Sue had said.

“I think you’re afraid of me,” she said.

Wincing inside, he gave a silly laugh without looking at her. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re afraid I’m going to come on to you, like I did yesterday.”

“No, I’m not.”

“And you’re afraid you’re going to give in.”

“I told you I’m with somebody. I assume you respect that.”

“But that’s between you and her. I’m talking about you and me.”

He finally looked at her. “This is a picture-taking mission, right?”

“She ran her tongue along her lower lip. “But it could be more if we wanted it to be. This is an even more private place than that guesthouse.”

He straightened and rubbed his damp palms on his thighs, doing his damnedest to will away the erection growing in his shorts. “Let’s finish up so we can eat lunch. I’d like to get back to the house in time to help Dad. He’s got a lot to do.”

Wrapping a black curl around her finger, she tilted her head toward the breezeway. “What’s on the other side?” Another slow, knowing grin tipped the corners of her mouth. “Bedrooms?”

Pic swallowed the ball of saliva that had collected in his throat. “Um, Mom fixed up a reading room in one of the rooms, if you want to take some pictures of that.”

Zochi laughed, stroking her fingers back and forth on the sofa cushion between them.

“What’s so damn funny?”

“You. A big macho guy like you. Afraid of li’l ol’ me. That’s funny.”

Enough already!
Pic lurched to his feet. “You got more pictures you want to shoot? Let’s get on with it.”

Her mouth twisted into a pout
. She got to her feet and picked up the camera. “Fine.”

“You oughtta put your shoes back on. It’s not a good idea to—”

“It’s hot. This floor feels cool on my feet.” She walked out the door.

Pic said a silent prayer a scorpion or a trail of fire ants wasn’t waiting in the breezeway.

He followed her out, unable to take his eyes off her heart-shaped ass in tight shorts and that friggin’ tattoo. He couldn’t see all of it, but he knew it was located not too far above the cleft of her bottom. His imagination didn’t have far to go to see the whole picture vividly. After all, he had already seen most of it.

At the door to the reading room, he said, “These two rooms on this side are just alike.” He gestured back and forth between the two rooms with his index finger. “Just big square rooms.”

“Is one of them a bedroom?” She looked back at him, big-eyed and all innocence. “I suppose I should take pictures of that, too. To be thorough, I mean.”

Pic unlocked the door to what his mom called a reading room. At the same time, he glanced around, looking for crawling varmints and checking the containers of vermin poison.

A couple of big wooden rocking chairs covered by plastic hunkered near two bookcases. The shelves were stuffed with paperback books, the spines natty and faded. The only person who had even touched the books in a very long time had possibly been Mandy. She was a reader. She had sometimes read the sex parts to him out of romance novels and they had tried the stuff she read.

Zochi pulled a book from its slot and thumbed through it.
Dust motes rose from the yellowed pages. She made a little cough, fluttered her hand in front of her face, then returned the book to its place.

“It’s so hot, I’m sweating,” she said. “What I need is a nice cool pool to swim in. Why don’t you have a pool back at your house?”

“No need. None of us swim.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t have time,” he answered sharply.

“But your girlfriend swims.”

“How do you know that?”

“The little guy at the grocery store in town told me. His granddaughter is on her swim team. He thinks she’s great.”

“She
is
great,” Pic said firmly, intending to quash this conversation. Discussing Mandy or his relationship with her with Zochi somehow felt dangerous.

Zochi
ran her free hand under one breast, lifted it and slowly rubbed under it. The mound of flesh came within an inch of falling out of her top. “Having big boobs is a pain in the summertime.”

Involuntarily, Pic’s jaw clenched.
Three garments. Just three. Top, shorts and panties.
Hell, maybe she wasn’t even wearing panties. That was all that separated a dark side of him from what he wanted more than he could ever explain.
Who would know?
that dark side asked.

“I’ll bet,” he said,
barely managing a normal voice.

He tore his traitorous eyes away from her.
Jesus!
Today was worse than yesterday. Today, he couldn’t escape by walking out the door and leaving her. He was as trapped as if they had been thrown in a hole together.

Zochi snapped a few pictures, then started toward the door. “I want to go to that other room.”

Setting his jaw, Pic walked to the other room, opened the screen door and unlocked the heavy wooden door. He stepped out of the way, let her go inside, then leaned a shoulder on the door jamb while she looked around the room.

He, too, looked around. Nothing had changed since he had been here last.
The square room was cool and dim and smelled of disuse. Mom had installed a cast iron queen-size bed. The mattress was covered by a quilt she had probably made herself, back when she used to do things like that. Memories rushed at him of how, in the wintertime, he and Mandy had snuggled together and kept each other warm under the down comforter that used to be on this bed. His memories seemed to be determined to make him behave himself.