The Rogue (32 page)

“If you had reached him sooner, both of you might be dead. You can’t think like that, Diana. There was no way of predicting what happened. The only thing that might have saved him would have been getting him immediate medical attention. It was too far away.”

“I’ve known Rube all my life. Yet, in all these years, I never once guessed that he thought of me in any special way. I just took him for granted, the same way I did with Guy. They were just conveniently around when I . . .” The sentence trailed off as Diana sensed the sudden stillness that had come over Holt. She stared at the smoke curling from the cigarette and the
ashes building on its tip. They had been so close. Now Holt had withdrawn. “I wish I hadn’t mentioned Guy,” she murmured.

“It doesn’t matter.” He crushed out his cigarette and handed her the ashtray.

“It does matter! You keep accusing me of being sexually involved with him, that we’re having an ongoing affair. It isn’t true.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Holt repeated in a hard, flat tone.

Tears stung her eyes as she snubbed out her cigarette. “Please.” The muscles in her throat had constricted, making her voice husky and taut. “I don’t want to argue with you about Guy, not this time.” Not the way they had done every time before in the aftermath of their lovemaking.

There was a pause as he inhaled deeply and released the breath in a long sigh that bordered on regret. “Neither do I, Diana.” Holt turned on the mattress, caught her chin in his hand and kissed her, but he didn’t let it deepen into passion. He slipped his arm from beneath her and sat up on the edge of the bed.

Love sprang from the eternal well of her heart. Rising, Diana moved to where he sat, her hands gliding over his shoulders to circle his chest. She pressed close to him and kissed the fading white scars lining his back with crisscross marks. It was a release of deep emotion rather than a desire to have him make love to her again. Gently, Holt unwound her arms from around him and partially turned to set her away, ending the embrace without rejecting it.

“It’s almost noon,” he said.

Nodding, she made no attempt to reach for him as he rose. Diana remained in bed, watching him dress, feeling she had the right to such an intimacy. Her gaze kept being drawn back to the scars, her blue eyes clouding over with question. Holt turned and intercepted the look. He hesitated, then reached for his shirt, hiding the old marks from her sight.

“My father beat me when I was a child.” Holt
buttoned his shirt, seemingly indifferent to the words he had just spoken. “He was a rodeo clown. My mother showed me pictures of him. He followed the circuit, so he wasn’t home much. I used to wish that he’d never come home. Every time he did, I got a beating for something, and once he started hitting me, he couldn’t stop. My mother would be crying and begging him to quit, but I was usually unconscious by the time he stopped.”

“Oh, my God, Holt, no!” she choked out the protest.

“I was eleven when a bull crushed him against a fence and broke his leg. He came home for a week after he got out of the hospital. He had a rawhide quirt and he used that on me instead of his hands.”

“But surely there was someone—your teacher, a neighbor ...”

“That was before adults ever admitted there was such a thing as child abuse. What a parent did to a child was his business, enforced by the excuse that the kid probably deserved it.” His mouth quirked cynically.

“But surely there was something that could be done about it, wasn’t there?” Her mind recoiled from the idea that he had been hopelessly trapped in the situation, with no way out.

Holt didn’t answer immediately, taking an abnormal amount of time tucking his shirttail inside his pants. “A few months after he whipped me, my mother told me he was coming home for the weekend. When she went to buy groceries, I ran away. I swore he was never going to beat me again. Two days later the police found me and brought me back. My mother was home alone. She said he was out looking for me and he’d promised never to hit me again. But when he came home and I saw the look in his eye, I knew it had all been a lie. He started yelling at me for upsetting my mother and worrying her out of her mind. When I saw the quirt in his hand, I ran for my mother’s bedroom. Because she was alone so much, he had insisted she
keep a loaded shotgun in her closet. I remember him saying once that if you were going to shoot something at close range, a shotgun was better than a handgun. I don’t know if it was in my mind to scare him with it, or kill him. I cocked it and pointed it at the door. When he came through, I pulled both triggers.”

Diana felt sick. She knew she had gone white. Holt’s face was impassive, registering no emotion. He buckled his belt and reached for his boots.

“There were never any charges filed, because of the circumstances and the fact that I was a juvenile. But they put me in a home for a few months, then released me to my mother. We moved away then ... to Arizona.”

“I... I’m sorry.” It seemed such an empty thing to say.

“If I had the moment to live over again, I’d do the same thing.” Holt walked out of the bedroom.

It was several minutes before Diana recovered enough to rise from the bed and dress. There didn’t seem to be anything left to say when she joined him in the main room.

“I have to check on one of the horses. I’ll see you at lunch.” He held the screen door open.

“Yes.” Polite phrases that avoided the stark truth they both knew. Son hating father ... in the past and in the present.

A brisk ride in the warm, morning sunlight had not eased her conscience. Rube’s funeral was tomorrow, but the depression and guilt Diana felt had nothing to do with his death. She walked her horse slowly to the stables, skirting the main buildings in an effort to avoid others. She watched the horse’s head bobbing from side to side as it walked.

“Diana! Hey! Come on over!” A voice broke through the mist of her mind. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going for a ride? I would have come along.”

At the sound of her name, Diana had automatically stopped her horse. On her left were the gasoline
barrels, mounted above the ground on steel supports. Beyond them was the old trailer that Guy had partially restored as living quarters. He was sitting in a dilapidated lawn chair, half the webbing broken. The chair was in the shade cast by the trailer.

“Come on over and talk to me!” He motioned toward her. There was something unnatural both in his voice and his actions.

The temptation was to ride on, as if she hadn’t heard him, but it was hardly possible now that she had stopped and looked in his direction. With a sigh, she turned her horse into the narrow gap between the supports for the gasoline barrel and a machine shed.

“It sure is hot this morning, isn’t it?” Guy didn’t move from his slouched position in the chair when she reached his trailer.

“It isn’t too bad.”

“Get down. Get down.” He waved her off the horse. “Sit with me and talk.” He rose from the chair, swaying unsteadily for a minute. “You can sit here. I’ll get another chair from inside.”

As Diana dismounted, Guy walked very erectly into the trailer and came out with a second lawn chair in equally bad condition as the one he had offered her. He set his beside the one she was to occupy.

“How about a cold beer?” There was a faint slurring of his speech.

“No, thank you.”

“I think I’ll have one. Be right back.” He smiled and went inside the trailer once more.

Stacked around the chair were a half-dozen empty beer cans, the aroma fresh in the air. Diana realized that Guy had been drinking, and it wasn’t even noon. She sat carefully in the lawn chair, and the thin webbing held.

“Sure you don’t want a beer?” Guy came back out with one in his hand.

“No, I don’t.”

He sat down in the chair beside her, slouching into
his former position. He took a swig from the can, then stared at it, something sad flickering across his sensitive face.

“It’s Rube’s beer,” he said. “The boys gave it to me when they divided up his stuff. Floyd took his watch and Don wanted his wristwatch. I was going to take his radio, but the damned thing didn’t work.” Guy laughed at that and looked at Diana. “Are you sure you don’t want to have a beer on old Rube?”

“I doubt if there’s any left,” Diana murmured dryly.

“There’s still a couple of cans,” he assured her.

“I’ll pass.”

“You know”—he leaned his head back to stare at the sky—“we ought to have a wake for Rube. He’d like that. A rip-roaring, beer-busting wake. Shoot some craps, maybe. He loved dice. How he used to talk to them! He was a lousy poker player, though. You could bluff him out of any pot. He loved to gamble, but he was afraid to risk a dollar. Did I ever tell you he taught me how to gamble?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“He was a lousy teacher.” Guy sighed and drank some more beer. “He didn’t have any family, did he?”

“None that he ever talked about. The Major thought he had a sister somewhere, but Floyd thought she had died a few years ago. They’re trying to find out.”

“I don’t imagine there’ll be very many people at the funeral tomorrow—just us from the ranch. Rube didn’t have hardly any other friends except us. Maybe a couple of hands from other ranches who worked here at one time or another.” His fingers tightened around the can. There was a popping sound as the force dented the aluminum. “Did I tell you Holt took his saddle! The bastard!”

Diana whitened at the violence in his voice. “Don’t say that?”

“Why not?” Guy was faintly belligerent. “It’s the truth. That’s what he is and what he’s always been. You know it, Diana. You feel the same as I do about
him. Besides”—he didn’t give her time to refute the last statement—“if it hadn’t been for him, Rube would be alive.”

“That isn’t true. You can’t blame Holt. It was an accident. I was there. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me for not reaching him sooner.”

“No, it isn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything you could do. No, it was Holt,” Guy repeated. “And he’s blaming that wild stallion.”

“It was the wild stallion that trampled him, not Holt,” she reminded him sharply.

“But Holt was the one that got us out there. It was all his damned plan. He should pay for what he’s done. First you, then Rube. I hate the bastard.”

“That’s the beer talking, Guy. I refuse to believe you are actually saying any of this.” Diana trembled, partly in anger and partly in horror.

“How can you defend him after what he did to you?” He sat up in the chair, glaring at her.

“What do I have to do or say to get it through your head that I wanted him to make love to me?!!!” she cried out in frustrated anger.

“I don’t believe you. You’re just saying that. You wouldn’t want him, not when you hate him as much as I do. You’ve always hated him.”

“I don’t hate him anymore. I . . .” Diana had second thoughts about saying more than that.

“That bastard—”

“Don’t say it,” she warned. It wasn’t any use trying to reason with Guy, not in his present condition. “If you’re going to keep talking like this, I’m leaving.”

“No.” With an alacrity that belied any dulling of his reflexes from alcohol, Guy was on his feet, catching her arm before Diana could take a step toward her horse. “Please, don’t leave. Stay with me for a little while.” His blue eyes were contrite and beseeching. “I’m sorry for swearing like that in front of you. It just slipped out.”

He seemed such a little boy, despite his man-hard
grip on her arm. It made it difficult for Diana to stay angry with him, the same as it had years ago when he’d looked at her with those calf eyes.

“It wasn’t your swearing that upset me, Guy. It’s your attitude toward Holt. Don’t you see that he’s tried to make a home for you, seen that you had an education? He’s never mistreated you, has he?”

But her protests only brought an angry frown to his face. “He’s made of stone. You have more emotion in your little finger than he has in his entire body. He doesn’t care about me.”

“Maybe it’s all locked up inside him and he doesn’t know how to let it out. He cares about you. That’s why he warned me to stay away from you, because he didn’t want you to be hurt by me.”

“He warned you?” His face clouded over darkly. “That’s why you keep pushing me away. You’re afraid of him, afraid of what he might do to you.” Ignoring her head shaking in denial, he crushed her into his arms and buried his face in the waving thickness of her raven hair. “I won’t let him hurt you, Diana. Don’t you know that?”

Diana closed her eyes, realizing that Guy fancied himself as her dragon-slayer. “I am not afraid of Holt.” She strained for breathing space. “I don’t need to be protected from him. I don’t want to be protected.”

“All this time you’ve been telling me it was because you didn’t want to get serious, you didn’t want to get involved.” Guy hadn’t listened to a word she’d said. “And it was him threatening you. That’s why you didn’t ask me to ride with you this morning.”

“No. I wanted to be alone and think. I didn’t want anyone with me,” Diana insisted.

“When he raped you out there, I should have—”

“It wasn’t rape. How many times do I have to tell you that?” Diana argued in frustration. “If I wasn’t willing, don’t you think I would have scratched his eyes out? And I’m the Major’s daughter. You know yourself how close Holt and the Major are. Do you
think Holt would have forced himself on me and risked losing the Major’s respect, as well as his job? Don’t be stupid, Guy. Open your eyes and face the truth.”

“You’re afraid of him.” His hand was moving along her spine in what was meant to be an arousing caress. He began kissing her hair, seeking her face, but Diana twisted her head far to the side. “We’ll run away, far away from here, you and I, where Holt’s threats can’t frighten you.”

“I don’t want to run away. This is my home.” Hadn’t anything penetrated that alcohol haze?

“All right, we’ll stay here. Anywhere you want to be—that’s where I want to be. I’ll do anything you want,” he vowed huskily. “I’ll saddle a horse and we’ll go riding together. When it gets too hot, we’ll stop at the pond and go swimming like we did before.”

“No.” Her strangled cry fell on deaf ears.