When Night Falls (29 page)

He breathed deeply, inhaling the scents of the summer roses on the trellis near his head, and silently mouthed his promise, his litany: “Before the last rose petal falls this year, those women will be dead.”

He ripped a fragrant blossom from its thorny mooring and let the blood-red petals drift slowly to the earth. He ground the fragrant petals into the grass with his well-polished shoes; he’d always hated roses. The women chatted endlessly about tea, damask and old European roses, and whatever other boring nonsense interested them.

Uma had interfered in his life too many times. When she was dead, everything would fall into place…first, Shelly, and then dim-witted Pearl…

Clyde sucked in the night air as it chilled suddenly, bringing the scent of—of Lauren? The dead woman?

He shook his head, clearing it. The fragrances on a hot August night weren’t that of a woman.
The air smelled like Lauren’s lemon cookies
. He eyed Lauren’s house and fought the fear that she might be in the night, waiting for him.

Then from the shadows he saw the cat’s eyes, and moonlight caught the glow of white fangs as it hissed at him, its back arched. He thought he heard his real name whispered, the rose leaves brushing against each other as he moved, the thorns dragging at his jacket and slacks, threatening to dislodge his hat, trying to reveal who he really was…

He gave way to the prowling fear that Lauren wanted re
venge. The sense that she waited for him pounded through him, his heart racing.

With a soft cry, Clyde hurried into the safety of the night and his secret place.

A
fter his rousing argument with Roman, battles with Uma, and the discovery that she had brought his mother to Madrid, Mitchell wanted some very private time with the woman in his life.

She stood in the center of his kitchen, her hands on her hips her shirt stretched over those perfect breasts, her nipples etching dark peaks in the material. Her eyes narrowed up at him. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Let’s get this straight. Parts of my life are out of bounds. You stepped over the line. I’m expecting you to correct your mistake.”

“You’re talking in memos again. You’re not running a business empire here, Mitchell. I’m not an employee or an underling to be dictated to.”

“I thought we had an agreement, a good one. An arrangement that suited us both.”
She was his, and she knew it; that was a fact. She’d given him everything in lovemaking, with nothing held back, and they were one. Why did women have to complicate life? Dealing with them certainly wasn’t easy, but then, he’d never wanted to, had he?

“It may have suited
you
.”

“Let’s hear it. Whatever she’s told you, I want to hear.” Mitchell smiled tightly. He admired Uma; how she wouldn’t back down. He breathed uneasily. A standoff with his mother was not what he wanted.

“She loved your father. He loved her, but he couldn’t stop working that land, and it ruined their lives. They could have made it—just living there, and her working. But he felt he had to do as his father had done and his father before him—raise and break horses, selling them. He couldn’t afford to do that, not with the expenses of food and grain and feed.”

Uma shook her head. “She thought he’d come after her when he’d had time to think about what turned out to be their final argument, when he saw the ledgers and realized the truth, the folly of trying to do as his family had done before him. But he couldn’t bend enough. Instead, he held his bitterness and frustration inside, and it devoured him. I don’t want that to happen to you or to Roman. You’re more like your father than you know. He got entrenched in that bitterness, and it took him to drink and trouble. And she wrote you, trying to explain. You look stunned. You didn’t know that, did you? That she sent money for you and Roman? That she wrote and tried to call?”

Mitchell tried to rally his argument against his mother. “Dad promised his father the land would always be in the family. She knew that when she married him.”

“They loved each other, Mitchell, and sometimes life just isn’t sweet. He didn’t want her working, and she wanted to help. They had a growing family, a piece of land that was a luxury to farm, her husband was killing himself trying to work it, and work at the garage, and she loved him.”

“I don’t want to talk with her. I’m not rehashing this.” He felt backed into a corner.

“You’re going to have a hard time ignoring her. The attachment with Dani is already strong. Dani needs her, and Everett has agreed to rent Grace his house. He’s staying in
Denver for a time. He didn’t give a woman there a chance, and he’s trying to work through that. Grace is staying because of Dani and Shelly and me. Roman and you will just have to adjust.”

“Not likely. You’re saying that all you women are united on this. You’ve unionized and you’re the spokesperson.”

“I’m saying that you wanted to unravel what is inside you, and until you understand the past, you won’t have the total package. I want that total package very much, not just pieces of you.”

Uma forged on, her low voice slamming into him. “Children make a difference. You know how the baby you delivered touched you, reached inside you, and made you want to understand yourself? You’ve closed off the past and it’s coming after you. Pride kept them apart, pure and simple. And children did make a difference in their marriage. She wanted more for you and Roman—”

“And herself. She left us, Uma. She left a husband and two sons for a better life. You like to fix things. Try justifying that.”

He was feeling ugly and bitter and wounded. When he’d come into the house, carrying Uma, the gray cat had hurried in front of him. Now it leaped to the counter behind him, nudging and purring softly against his back.

Mitchell elbowed the cat away, and it gave way to sitting on the counter, watching him solemnly.

He thought he felt a gentle warning, but the storm between Uma and himself brewed hot and tight. “You started this.”

He opened a drawer and took out a file folder of Charis Lopez clippings. “I’ve been doing some reading.
The Smooth Moves List
, too. You’ve got a real talent for ideal situations and how to fix them—in fairyland, where everything is perfect, but not in reality. Try dealing with reality sometime, Uma, and staying out of other people’s business. I enjoyed the col
umn ‘Why Men Bristle.’ It reminded me of a certain dinner at your house…the one with your ex-husband. You must just travel through life, viewing it from a distance, and coming up with these goodies. Like in the ‘Single City’ chapter, where like people will gravitate to each other—or opposites, and then the individual has to choose if they want to give up something to share with that person, or if they want to remain single.”

When she turned pale, he regretted striking out at her. That was what he knew how to do best, wasn’t it? Protect himself?

The cat leaped to the floor and wound around her legs, then the animal sat beside her, staring at him with yellow eyes. Mitchell had the feeling the cat had found him guilty of total insensitivity. Great. Now he understood cats and dead women.

“How long have you known?”

He disgusted himself, attacking her, like a wounded bear trying to take down everything in its path. “From the first. Your penchant for fortune cookies…Charis’s neat little one-liners. Don’t worry. I haven’t told anyone.”

“I wrote that when I was trying to sort out why it wasn’t working with Everett. I had to have something to do in those hours at the hospital, after Dad’s heart attack. So I outlined a book from some articles I’d stored away.”

“Your relationship with Everett wasn’t working, because of chemistry. He’s perfect and so are you. You need flaws to fix. You need me—raw material to mold. I’m attractive to you. You can’t help yourself. You’re a do-gooder. You want life to be nice and sweet. And you need me to fix. Well, honey, what happened to my family can’t be fixed.”

“Of all the arrogance—”

She looked so defenseless, and instead of holding her as he wanted to, Mitchell jerked open the refrigerator and uncapped a bottle of water. “Here. Drink this.”

“It’s a natural consequence to relive or dissect mistakes when a marriage fails, I suppose,” she said dully. “I wrote what I thought might happen.”

“You did a good job of projecting,” he murmured, remembering how after they had argued, they had made love—feverishly, hungrily.

Uma slowly sipped the water. “You think I’m trying to fix you, do you?”

“We’re not going to be one big happy family. I came here to find what was missing, why I’m so different. I needed to prove that I was as good as anyone else. That I could earn a good paycheck and respect myself. My father didn’t in the end, and I had to have that respect. But I’m not management and I don’t like being cooped up in a city office. I like outside work, simple work with my hands—and not ranching on a two-bit place, either. You’re complicating a basic man-woman relationship.”

He didn’t trust her narrowed look and that assessing “mmm.”

Then Uma spoke slowly. “So you’re afraid to talk with her. You’re afraid you’ll learn the truth and that frightens you. You’ve built a lifetime hating a mother who didn’t deserve it. Gee whiz, what would you do without that bitterness to cling to?”

“Let’s cut to the basics, shall we? The bottom line?”

“Mmm. Without the foreplay, the afterplay?” she taunted.

“You can sure hand it out, lady.” Unable to resist, appreciating her determination and frustrated, Mitchell reacted. He reached to cup her chin and lift her face to his. Those smoke-gray eyes said she wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t backing down, and he admired her all the more.

Uma pushed his hand away and brushed away the tendril dancing along her warm cheek. “Now
you’re
confusing the issue.”

He noted that fascinating telltale little quiver that rippled
through her. The air sizzled between them. He reached to smooth her cheek, to feel the passion in her. It licked at the ends of her hair, twining around them as her lids lowered, the light shimmering on her lashes as she met his stare. His body was already full and hard, needing her. Their physical bond was the truth that talking couldn’t provide; he trusted that bond and what went with it, that river of deeper emotion.

“I don’t feel like talking any more,” she whispered unevenly as she flattened against the wall, watching him.

“Neither do I,” he returned rawly as he braced his hand near her head and let the other hand slide downward, over the warm curves he needed against him. The hem of her T-shirt lifted to her briefs, and he smoothed his finger beneath the elastic, finding her warmth, stroking her gently, intimately.

Her body heated and melted beneath his touch, her hips moving against him, her lips ripe and hot against his. Her hands flattened to him, smoothed his shoulders, his throat, his chest. Her fingers rummaged through the hair on his chest and her mouth was on him, burning…she was his, a part of him, his hunger to complete them growing.
Oneness
…the word twined around him, the woman who was the other part of himself, completing him.

There was the passion they created, hot and feverish. She made him come alive, all his feelings storming, circling him—tenderness, need, desire, the completion he’d never known possible. Erotic and scented and soft, she was his other part, not gentle now, but hurrying to lift her T-shirt away, to find him with her hands—

Primeval? Basic? Truth in motion? Fire burning away all else, each touch raising the burn, the hunger?

Only for her, only for this one woman, Mitchell thought, as their hunger enveloped him, and he tore away his jeans.

Only for her…Uma…the only woman he had ever wanted…a special woman…Oneness…

On the edge of her passion, Uma’s eyes were slitted, watch
ing him, waiting as their bodies burned for each other, skin against skin.

Precious…gentle…valiant…truthful…feminine…

Oneness…
Inside him, the words turned and gleamed and warmed. Passion and hunger rode them now, but Mitchell wanted more, wanted to give more—

Just there, before entering her, he saw everything—her quickening pulse, the hunger, the anticipation, the truth, the bonding. Uma could only give herself to a man she trusted and wanted as a part of her life. Her nails dug lightly into his shoulders and she closed her eyes as he moved his chest against her breasts, slowly, erotically, smoothing her body with his open hands.

He enjoyed the flavor of her, the nip of hunger, heat beating from her, the scent of her skin, the contours and softness, the way her breast fit into his hand, the peak rising at the brush of his thumb.

“What are you doing?” she whispered as he slowly moved around her, fitting himself to her, letting the curve of her bottom nestle against him, his face brushing against her shoulder, his tongue tasting her, both hands cupping her breasts, smoothing and caressing downward.

“I don’t know, but it feels right.”

He eased aside her hair to find her ear, sucking it gently, stroking, making her a part of him without the completion. There was more to their relationship than sex, more…

She turned slightly and he took her kiss, moving around to lift her in his arms. “I don’t know what this is, but I like it,” she whispered as he simply stood and held her against his chest.

“I think you may have a plan, Mitchell,” she teased, nipping at his shoulder as he carried her into the bedroom.

“It’s a new strategy,” he answered as he eased her onto his bed and came down beside her.

“A very erotic strategy,” Uma whispered as Mitchell’s
hands and mouth and body claimed every inch of her without completion. He took her higher, only to ease the driving hunger, then slowly higher again. Intent on her pleasure, Uma sensed that he was taking her into him, into his pores, his senses, his rushing bloodstream, the heavy beat of his heart. In return, he was giving her everything he had protected from all others.

She couldn’t breathe, holding the pleasure inside her, waiting for him to make them one. Then, as his face nuzzled and lips heated and suckled and tongue tasted, Uma held herself in check, wanting to give him as much, the slow, thorough erotic journey.

His breath stopped and held as she began to move slowly, brushing her body against his, moving her thighs, her hands open on him, feeling the strength he restrained when holding her, that burning rough skin, the friction rising between them.

Each touch lifted and seduced and burned, until Mitchell groaned deeply, rawly, and turned her beneath him, entering her fully.

Poised above her, Mitchell stared down at her, his hands taking her hair, holding her, though there was no need. A part of him now, lock and key, Uma moved boldly against him, watched his struggle to slow their journey, and cherished the pounding of his heart. Instinctively she knew that Mitchell had never given another woman this slow, erotic pleasure that she knew was meant only for her. Every touch was truth from his heart, opening for her, giving…

She’d waited a lifetime for him
, she thought hazily, as her body began toppling over the edge…

Oneness
…the word was her last clear thought.

Pearl glided the tiny black Miata that Pete had stolen for her into its garage, the space between the old motel’s units. In a fury, she hurried outside to close the wooden doors and lock
them. Always cautious, she glanced at the silhouettes of the small oil drills pecking at the earth, outlined by the moon, and then punched the hidden digital locking system’s buttons.

Pete Jones wasn’t much of a shooter, but he was handy enough to remodel this room with a battery-powered lock and several hidden panels in the walls and floors while he waited for Pearl. When the lock released, Pearl tore inside the motel unit and slammed the door behind her.