Desperado (25 page)

He scanned the area and decided to set up his equipment in a new spot today, where the stream widened slightly and had some interesting boulders on its banks.

He tried to ignore Helen's long-winded lecture on all his shortcomings and all her wonderful, superior philosophies on everything from money to family values to the meaning of life.

He glanced up when Helen wound down to silence. She was standing with her hands on her hips, tapping a foot impatiently at his failure to acknowledge her advice. Her flaming hair was tied back into a ponytail, topped by a wide-brimmed hat. She was wearing her camouflage pants laced into the high skydiving boots and the blasted green T-shirt tucked into her waistband.

Her enticing curves pulled at him like a sensual magnet. He thought seriously about tackling Helen on the spot and wiping that patronizing look off her face with about two thousand kisses.

“Well, did you hear what I said?” She tapped her foot like an Army major, reprimanding a lowly private.

He did
not
like her condescending tone or the blasted foot tapping.

As they entered the stream together, he decided to retaliate. Zeb and Hector were approaching, carrying more shovels and pans. Before they got too close to hear, Rafe said, “You know what's one of the first things I'm gonna buy when we get back to the future?”

“A BMW?”

“That's the second thing.” He cuffed her gently on the chin. “First, I'm gonna buy me a Magic Marker, and I'm gonna connect the dots all over your sweet body.”

“Dots?”

“Yep, those cute little freckles that cover your skin, starting right here.” He put a fingertip on her right breast, just above the nipple.

“Oh.” Her mouth parted on a sigh.

Man, oh, man, he loved the way she responded to his mere touch. And, even better, her foot was planted firmly on the bed of the stream. No tapping now.

“Then down to here.” He traced the fingertip down to a point between her waist and belly button.

She made a kittenish sound deep in her throat. He really, really liked it when she made a small kittenish sound deep in her throat.

And still no foot tapping under the water.

“Over to here.” His finger moved even lower, stopping just above the vee of her trousers. She sucked in her stomach reflexively. He didn't think she could move her foot if her life depended on it.
Damn, I'm good
.

“What're you doin'?” Hector asked, splashing up to them.

“Playing a game,” Rafe choked out.
Damn, I'm in trouble
.

“Kin I play, too?” Hector begged. “Please, please, please?”

Rafe looked to Helen for assistance.

She made a motion of zippering her lips.

“Oh, hell!” Rafe let out a whoosh of air. “Listen, Hector, this was an adult game Helen and I were playing. I'll find a children's game to play with you later.”

“Oh, all right,” he said with childlike agreeability.

“Would you go get me that other shovel?” Rafe asked then.

Hector sloshed off to the other bank.

Helen taunted him then by swinging her hips as she walked by him.

And, damn it, he could swear both feet were tapping.

“These two weeks are gonna go by way too slow,” he called after her.

“Do you think so?” She stood on the far bank, and she was tapping her foot to beat the band, grinning from ear to ear. Then she started whistling. Whistling!

“I
'd better go start dinner,” Helen said late that afternoon.

“Betcha heard my innards growlin'.” Zeb chuckled from where he was shoveling pay dirt, which Rafe had loosened from the hard bedrock. Then he dumped the gravel into buckets for eventual panning.

They'd been working steadily, except for a short lunch break, for eight straight hours. Her arms were numb from the repetitive motion of swirling the pan of gravel and water. She had a blister on her palm. Her back might not ever straighten again. Her thigh muscles screamed from the unnatural crouching position she'd been in most of the day. Maybe she would just crawl up the incline to the cabin.

“You better take
el niño
with you,” Rafe suggested as he leaned on his long-handled pickax, panting.

Hector's shoulders drooped with exhaustion, and he cast pleading eyes to her. Although he hadn't worked as hard or steadily as the rest of them, it was a long day for a little boy.

Helen tousled his overlong hair. “Maybe you could help me find some more carrots.”

His eyes lit up with gratitude at the reprieve. Then her words sank in. “Carrots again! Yeech!”

They all laughed.

“Hey, even carrots sound good to me,” Rafe chipped in. “I'm as starved as Zeb. My stomach feels like it's shrunk in half.”

He took off the wide-brimmed hat he used to shade his eyes and swiped a forearm across his forehead. Sweat dripped down his bristled face—he hadn't shaved that morning—and covered his bare skin with a sheen right down to the waistband of his low-slung Army trousers, held up by suspenders. Helen watched, fascinated, as one drop drizzled in a straight line from the middle of his collarbone, across his ridged abdomen, and right into the cavity of his navel.

“Helen,” he warned.

Her eyes shot up with embarrassment.

He laughed. “Don't be embarrassed. I'd gawk, too, if you were standing in front of me with nothing but a pair of camouflage pants and a pair of suspenders. In fact, I think I saw a photo just like that in
Playboy
once. Girls of the Armed Forces, I think the series was called.”

“You are—”

“Disgusting? Actually, honey, you wouldn't have to pose in the nude for
Playboy
. They'd welcome you just the way you are.”

She looked down and saw that perspiration had caused her T-shirt to mold her breasts and abdomen like a film of green Saran Wrap. And her normally loose military pants were plastered to her hips and legs due to her treks back and forth across the stream.

Rafe winked at her, but she was too tired to rise to his bait, or think of a smart comeback. Luckily, he decided to drop the enticing subject of their mutual, very visible sexual attributes.

“God, I could go for a cold beer right now,” Rafe told Zeb. “I can't believe it's so hot for October.”

“Injun summer,” Zeb explained, “but it could change overnight. You gotta appreciate the good days whilst you got 'em. Bad days are sure ta come.” The old man looked at the clear sky with a worried frown.

A
fter dinner, Rafe stumbled to the bed, where he lay propped against the headboard waiting for Helen's nightly ritual of reading. He couldn't have sat upright across the table from her if his life depended on it. His eyelids drooped with exhaustion.

“How much did we make today?” Rafe asked Zeb.

The old man took his pipe from his mouth and adjusted Hector on his lap. The boy was playing with a crude wooden horse Zeb had whittled from a piece of hardwood over the past few weeks.

“I'd say 'bout two pounds.” Zeb calculated in his head. “There was some flakes and a few tiny nuggets today, along with the usual dust. Not a bad day.”

At the going 1850 rate, that would amount to more than five hundred dollars, Rafe knew, or more than twelve thousand dollars in the future. Divided in half with Zeb, and then his half shared with Helen, it wasn't nearly enough. He needed to go back to the future with a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars to get himself out of debt and his family off his back. Only then would he be able to make any kind of plans for a future with Helen. He sighed at that last possibility, refusing to allow himself even to think about a future with Helen until he was sure he had something to offer.

“Did you say something?” Helen asked, sitting down at the table. Despite the dimness of the room, light from the lantern positioned next to her open book gave him a perfect view of her fresh-scrubbed face. Rafe liked looking at Helen.

Exposure to the sun had caused more freckles to erupt over her clear skin. He liked them. She'd bathed in the lagoon, after he and Hector and Zeb had done the same, and her clean hair sprung into damp, unmanageable corkscrews all over the place. He liked them, too.

She gazed at him with concern and repeated, “Did you say something?”

I love you,
he mouthed silently, but aloud he said, swallowing over a lump in his throat, “I just wondered if you were going to read tonight.”

Helen nodded, her lips parted with emotion, and he knew which of his words she was reacting to.

“Sí, sí, sí,”
Hector piped in. “You hafta finish the story.”

“Before you start,” Zeb said, coughing nervously, “there's somethin' I gotta tell you.”

Rafe and Helen exchanged looks of foreboding.

“I'm gonna have to make a trip ta Rich Bar.”

“What?”
he and Helen exclaimed at once. “Why?”

“Well, I dint want ta alarm you, but that bear done more damage than we realized. Ain't enough flour ta last more'n a month and hardly any salt pork ta mention.”

“We can make do.” Helen began to panic.

Zeb shook his head. “It ain't the seasonin' I'm worried 'bout. You'll need salt ta preserve the game I bag fer the winter. When I get back, I gotta do some serious huntin'.”

“I guess we could all go,” Rafe said hesitantly, knowing it would cut seriously into the deadline he'd set with Helen. She glanced over at him as he spoke, and he saw that she realized the importance of the time element, too. “Maybe we could wait for two weeks. Then, Helen and I would continue on home from there.”

Hector's wide eyes shot from one to the other of them, obviously wondering where he fit into all these plans.

Zeb patted the boy's shoulders and said, “Nope, I gotta go tomorrow. Can't take no chance of hittin' the bad weather. Hector will come with me, and you two'll stay here, ta hold down the fort, so ta speak.”

“NO!” Rafe and Helen responded at once, their eyes locking in dismay.

Alone! In a secluded cabin! With my testosterone already blinking a zillion kilowatts! No way!

Before they could voice further protests, Zeb went on. “It's gotta be this way. They may still be lookin' fer you as that Angel Bandit. And, if they take you away, Rafe—no, no, no, don'tcha be thinkin' it ain't possible—then Helen here would be at the mercy of a few hundred wimmen-hungry miners what thinks she can do the corkscrew.”

“What's a corkscrew?” Hector asked.

Zeb's chest rumbled with mirth. “A dance,” he lied.

“How long would you be gone?” Helen asked, biting her bottom lip with concern. Her eyes were wide with horror.

Zeb tapped his pipe stem against his teeth. “I figger four days going' and four days comin' back. Add an extry day or two fer unexpected delays, and I'd say ten days at the most.”

“Ten days!”

“It's the best way, you'll see, onct you think on it. This way, you two kin continue ta work the claim, and mebbe you'll even hit a strike. It could happen.”

The only strike Rafe could imagine right now was a lightning bolt from heaven with a divine message from the Lord, via St. Augustine, delivered in a Bill Cosby voice out of the clouds, “Celibacy, celibacy, celibacy.”

“One more thing,” Zeb added. “This'll give me one las' chance before winter ta check fer you and see if Pablo showed up. I know Mary said she'd contact you if he come, and I know she promised ta send that harness and those tent things up here, but you'll sleep easier knowin' what's happened so far, one way or another. An' I can report back on the miners' mood toward the two of you. Yep, it's the best way.”

Rafe and Helen groaned with surrender.

“Besides,” Zeb concluded with a huge smile, “you two younguns ain't had no time fer a proper honeymoon. Effie allus said a man and his woman needs the privacy ta frolic naked in the sunshine afore the cloudy days come.”

“Frolic?” Helen sputtered.

Naked?
Rafe thought.

“Oh, Lord!” Helen exclaimed.

Oh, lord!
Rafe shuddered.

Rafe began to wonder if this whole time-travel adventure, and these upcoming ten days, were a divine test of some sort.

Yep!
a voice in his head said.

A
lady needs to know where she stands. A guy just wants to know the score . . .

J
ust after dawn, Zeb and Hector prepared to leave. The old man gave them last-minute instructions. “You don't need ta cut no more firewood, Rafe. I chopped more'n enough after Effie died, workin' off my grief. We got wood ta last us two winters.”

Rafe nodded. “Should I continue to let the horses graze during the day and put them in the barn at night?”

“Yep, but you best steer that F. Lee away from the wild clover. He does work up a good case of wind.”

“Tell me about it.” Rafe grimaced.

“And iffen it was me, I'd jist keep on workin' the same area of the stream. I have me a good feelin' 'bout that spot. It's got good color.”

Before Rafe could respond, Zeb turned to Helen. “There should be 'nuf flour fer the two of you till I get back. Put out those fishin' lines the way I showed you, an' shur as shootin'
you'll have trout ta fill in with the occasional salt pork. I went out early this mornin' and got you a string of rabbits. They's hanging in the root cellar.”

“An' you can always dig up some more carrots. Maybe use 'em all up before we get back,” Hector added hopefully.

Helen laughed and hunkered down to put her face eye level with the little boy, who'd become dear to them all. He gazed back at her with his huge chocolate eyes, and she pulled him into her arms, squeezing tight. “You behave now,” she whispered.

Hector pulled away with discomfort at the open show of affection.

Rafe shook his hand, then in an undertone advised, “Take care of Zeb. He needs you.”

Hector eyed Rafe questioningly. “He does?”

“Definitely.”

Hector broke into a wide smile.

“Are you sure you took enough gold dust, Zeb?” Rafe worried.

“I got plenty. Don't want ta take no more or we'll have miners followin' me back ta jump our claim.”

And they were off, with Zeb calling over his shoulder to Rafe, “I left one of my rifles. Those pistols of your'n won't be worth bat turd if that bear comes back.”

“That's a reassuring thought,” Helen said.

The rest of the day went surprisingly well. Rafe worked the claim alone all morning while she did her meditation routine, then tidied the cabin, weeded the garden, and washed some clothes. After a simple lunch of bread and coffee and leftover fish, Rafe went back to digging, and Helen swept up the dead ashes from the fireplace into a crock. She was saving them, according to Zeb's directions, for soap making on his return. In addition, another crock held ashes for the making of pearl ash or saleratus, a primitive form of baking soda.

Whistling contentedly, she cut up one of the rabbits for
stew, combined with mushrooms, wild onions, parsley, and yes, the last of the carrots, and set it to cook slowly on a hook at the back of the fire. Then she added some flour, water, and a pinch of sugar to her sourdough mixture, which the bear luckily had missed, and kneaded out the dough on the table. Before long, she had two loaves baking in the hot coals.

Her “housework” done, Helen walked down to the stream to help Rafe. “How's it going?”

“Okay.” He was sitting on the bank with his widespread legs planted up to the knees in the water. Every few seconds he leaned forward and added more water to his pan, then swirled and sloshed until only the heavy material remained at the bottom. “I probably got another few ounces today.”

Helen filled another pan with gravel and sat beside him, following the familiar routine. At first, they just worked together in companionable silence.

Rafe finally spoke. “I'll bet your father is worried about you.”

“I suppose so, assuming we're missing in the future.”

He cocked his head inquiringly. “What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe we're living a separate, double life then and now, though I don't think so. Surely we'd sense that. Heck, we don't even know if time passes at the same rate then as now. Or if they've found our bodies. Or anything.”

“Hmmm. I never thought of it that way.” He pondered those different scenarios while picking out three wheat-sized flakes of gold from his pan and putting them in a sack behind him. “Helen . . .” he started, then stopped himself.

“What?”

“I was just wondering . . . uh, what about Elliott?”

“What about him?” She couldn't understand Rafe's sudden reticence, or his somber demeanor as he continued to twirl his pan. For a second, she was mesmerized, watching his hands, the long fingers moving expertly. They were really beautiful hands, despite the callouses and grime.

“Are you still going to marry him?”

Rafe's question jolted her. “Marry? Elliott? Rafe, I would never have been able to make love with you if I considered myself still committed to another man. No, I won't be marrying Elliott.”

“Good.”

Good? What did that mean?
Helen's heart expanded with all kinds of possibilities. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Rafe said, then smiled at her—a warm, telling smile that kissed her senses.

“Tell me about your father and your childhood,” Rafe urged. “I spilled my guts about my fun-house family. Don't I deserve a little payback?”

“My life was boring compared to yours. My mother came from a middle-class San Clemente family. Oh, wipe that gloating sneer off your face. I'm not rich, no matter what you think. My grandparents died right after she and my dad were married, so we lived in the family house.”

“Acres and acres, I suppose.”

“At least. Actually, it's on a rather small lot on a tree-lined street. A nice house, don't get me wrong, but not a mansion, by any means.”

“That's comforting.”

“Stop being so sarcastic.”

“Okay. Continue. You lived on Leave-It-to-Beaver street in middle-class America and . . . ?”

“Behave.” She slapped his arm. “My mother got cancer soon after I was born. It was a slow progressing type, but she was sickly most of the time. She died when I was eight.”

Rafe set down his pan and put an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into the crook of his neck. He kissed the top of her head and said, “I'm sorry.”

“That's okay. It was a long time ago,” she said, drawing away eventually, although she loved the feel of his soothing embrace. He picked up his pan again. “Anyhow, I don't think
my dad ever intended to be career military, but after Mom died, he seemed restless, without direction. I guess the military gave him order and meaning at a time when he had none. We lived on fourteen bases in seven different countries by the time I graduated from high school.” She glanced at Rafe, whose face held tender compassion for her. “Hey, it wasn't that bad. Remember, we drove expensive cars and went on fancy vacations.”

“Yeah,” he said, probably remembering his earlier envy of that lifestyle. Then he forced a cheerful note in his voice. “Too bad I didn't know you then. I could have sent my brothers and sisters over to keep you company. In fact, you could have adopted them.”

She grinned at the image. “I probably would have welcomed them with open arms. You, too. I would have shown your sisters my Barbi collection. And your brothers would have liked my dad's tin soldiers on a miniature battlefield in the library—”

“Library? You have a library? Hell, do you have a drawing room, too?”

She made a harrumphing sound.

“And how would you have entertained me?” he asked suggestively. “Would we have played doctor? Or spin the bottle? Or grope?”

“Grope?”

“I made that up,” he admitted sheepishly. “Sounds good, though, doesn't it?”

She laughed. “You must have been a very naughty boy.”

“I tried. So, why did you go to Stonewall and not some artsy, high-class private college?”

She braced herself for the mockery that was sure to follow when she answered, “Because my dad went there.”

He raised both brows at her, and they
were
mocking.

“Well, I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she said defensively.
“It's not as if I was giving something up for my dad. And he never pushed me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“What are you implying?”

“Don't get yourself all steamed up, sweetheart. I just wonder if you weren't trying real hard to please your daddy.”

She refused to answer.

“What about your art?”

“How do you know about my art?”

“I saw some paintings you had in an exhibit in Grant Hall. They were really good, Helen. Anyone with that kind of talent should use it. Even a crude, city jerk like me could see that.”

“There's no future in being an artist, except for teaching. And I never wanted to teach.”

“No future? Like in making money?” He scoffed. “That doesn't sound like you. It sounds like something that might come out of the mouth of a . . . father?”

She exhaled loudly. “Well, I made a decision, and I'm living with it. So there.”

“Do you still paint?”

“Rarely. I don't have time.”

He studied her intently, seeing way too much.

“Let's change the subject.”

“To what?”

“Us.”

He stiffened and shifted away from her a little on the bank, putting a distance of several feet between them.

“Rafe . . .” She searched for the right words and could only come up with, “I love you.”

“Uh huh. I love you, too, babe. So?” He was still staring at her suspiciously, as if he expected her to jump on him any minute and tear off his clothes.

She was tempted.

“What's going to happen to us when we go back?” Strangely, she never doubted that they'd return to the future. It was only a question of when and how.

Startled, Rafe asked, slowly, “What do you want to happen?”

“Now that's a non-answer if I ever heard one. Pure legalese. You know exactly what I mean. Do you see us having any kind of future together?”

“Yes.” His answer came too quickly.

She arched a brow.

“Ah, Helen, I don't know. It depends on so many things. The gold—”

She cringed. What kind of future could they possibly have if it depended on money?

“—and your dreams—”

Babies
.

“—and my family, and your father—”

“My father?”

“Honey, get real. Your dad isn't going to be happy about your breaking up with the colonel, but he's going to be over-the-wall livid at you consorting with a poor Hispanic lawyer.”

“Oh, that's totally uncalled for. My father is not prejudiced. And I am so sick of you putting yourself down and using the race card as a yardstick for everyone.”

He shrugged. “I'm just trying to prepare you for the opposition you'd get.”

“Rafe, you still haven't answered my question. What kind of future do you see for us? Forget all the obstacles. If you had your way, how would it be? Would we date? Live together? Or . . . ?” She couldn't say the word. It was already too embarrassing that she was the one having to force the issue.

“Marry?” Rafe gazed at her bleakly. “Damn! You're really pushing the big one today.”

She lifted her chin defiantly. “I just want to know where I stand.”

“You have the right, darlin',” he said tenderly, “but I don't have the answers for you now. I'll admit the thought of marriage scares me, big time, but I want to be with you. And, no, I don't want to date you, like a teenager.”

With a flash of humor, she tried to picture Rafe picking her up on a Saturday night to attend a movie. A drive-in, she'd bet.

“Stop smirking,” Rafe grumbled.

“So, you don't want to date?”

“No. Would you consider living with me?” The yearning in his eyes stopped her breath. She felt blessed to have him care so much. “I don't have a house, just an apartment. Of course, things will be different if we find some gold, but . . .” He shrugged again. “Would you live with me?”

“Maybe.” The prospect didn't thrill her. A temporary arrangement was not what she wanted from Rafe.

He sighed dejectedly. “Helen, we want different things.”

That was true. When she could speak over the lump in her throat, she asked softly, “Would having a baby with me be such an awful thing?”

He set his gold pan aside and leaned back on both elbows, studying her with sadness. “No. That's the worst part. It sounds more and more appealing.”

Her blood churned wildly with elation. She dropped her pan in the water and began to move toward him.

He sat up and put out a halting hand. “Let me finish. I want you so bad that I find myself making bargains with myself. Maybe one baby wouldn't be so bad. Yeah, a child—our child—would be a different experience. If that's what it takes to have you, probably I'll do just about anything. That's the way I'm thinking. Is that the kind of father you'd want for your kid?”

She shook her head.

“And I know for damn sure what would happen after that. It wouldn't stop at one baby, Helen. You'd want more. To keep you happy, I'd agree, and before you know it, I'd be—”

“Trapped,” she finished for him.

“Am I right?” he asked. “Am I painting the picture with all the right colors?”

“You're making a lot of assumptions about me. Rafe, let me hold your hand or touch you while we talk. This is too important to discuss with you keeping your distance.”

“No way!” He laughed. “You touch me and it's all over. I'd agree to anything.
Anything!
”

She smiled and scooted over anyhow, lacing her fingers with his. He made a low, hissing sound, but didn't pull away.

“What makes you think I wouldn't want you enough to compromise?” she said.