When Night Falls (9 page)

What was she doing standing between these men, trying to understand and soothe? “Yes, and I’m right here. Don’t talk over me.”

“We have to. You’re shorter than we are,” Mitchell said slowly as if explaining a basic fact to someone who should know the obvious.

“I may be shorter, and I may be a woman, but I am definitely smarter—” she began.

“You’re sweaty, and you
are
definitely a woman. No maybes about it,” Mitchell stated flatly, as if nettled.

Uma stared at him and fought to keep her control. “You are in a bad mood, Mitchell Warren. And you want to start a fight with someone. And for some reason, you’d like that someone to be me. Why?”

After a silence saturated by Mitchell’s brooding, Roman answered, “Because every time you run by here, he’s locked onto every move. Why do you think he’s up at this hour? To wait on me? I’m taking a shower and going down to the old garage. If I catch that punk kid or one of those guys, I’m going to get either some money or some new tires out of them.”

“Oh, fine. Start looking for fights first thing in the morning. That’s the way to make friends,” Uma said and reached for something to lighten the moment, the brothers’ childhood names. “Same old Hawk and Eagle. You really shocked very few people when you rode into town, bareback, and wearing only war paint and breechcloths.”

Both men stared at her darkly.

“I hate that peacemaking crap women do,” Mitchell murmured after a silence, ignoring her again. “I’ve been here just three weeks, and that’s long enough to find out just what Uma does—she’s part matchmaker, part town historian, protector of abused women; she writes newspaper articles, and does pro bono graphic work for civic clubs. In short, she runs this town her own way. She likes everything to be nice and sweet, and as for her life, she’s got enough to do managing other people’s. She comes in here, tells me I should make peace with Grace and a few other things. And I am not a bully.”

“I don’t want to have anything to do with Grace,” Roman said. “She walked out on us. No mother should do that.”

“Oh, did she really? I’m sure you know all the facts, don’t you? I’ll bet you don’t talk about this either, or try to understand anything past a ten-year-old viewpoint.” Uma didn’t care if her tone challenged them; she understood exactly in facing these two brooding, stony-faced men why Grace might have given up and left Fred. According to Uma’s mother, communication wasn’t Fred’s strong point—evidently he’d passed that lack of ability onto his sons.

“Eight,” Mitchell stated. “I was eight. He was seven. Don’t try to make it right. That won’t work.”

She looked from Mitchell to Roman and back again. She could only handle one at a time. “So you’ve been brooding about that all this time? It was a logical suggestion. I do not manage other people’s lives. And what’s wrong with wanting no trouble?” Uma demanded, staring up at him. “Madrid is a good place to live.”

“Because it’s a lie, and I was talking to my brother. Not you.”

“I’ll bet you two have absolutely no meaningful conversations anyway. I can understand you being upset about your tires. But I can’t understand you being surly with me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s all a little package, isn’t it? And by the way, men don’t have
intimacy
. It isn’t a requirement.”

“Maybe
you
don’t. I don’t know what you mean about the package, and the way you say ‘intimacy’ makes it sound like a bad word.”

“I heard about you meddling in Lenny’s love life.”

She’d tried gently to help Lonny and Irma’s troubled marriage. “I…did…not.”

“Books aren’t life, honey.” Mitchell’s tone was sarcastic.

“I’ll leave you two to your squabbling.” Roman shook his head and took his mug with him, heading for the bathroom. He ignored the wad of wallpaper that Mitchell tossed at his back.

After a moment, the shower started and Uma, circling just exactly why Mitchell was up and watching her run in the morning, stood very still. She sipped her coffee there, leaning back against the kitchen counter with Mitchell, dressed only in his shorts and bad mood.

She looked down at her legs, smooth, gleaming slender-strong. Next to hers, Mitchell’s were bulkier, lightly furred, and definitely more powerful. An electric jolt skittered over her skin and slammed low into her body, and she decided to concentrate on the style of the brown pottery mug. She’d known sensual excitement in those first days with Everett, and she didn’t want that tug with Mitchell.

She held the mug with one hand, and smoothed the other hand up and down the surface, sensitive to the textures under her hands. She lifted the mug and blew lightly into the brew to cool it.

Next to her, Mitchell shifted abruptly, as if he were uncomfortable. In the ominous silence, his next statement roared, though he spoke quietly: “You’ve got sweat between your breasts and they bounce when you run. When you bent over to catch your breath I could see enough of your breasts to want to know how they’d fit in my hands, taste in my
mouth. When you put your hands on your waist, trying to catch your breath, the whole package is there, sweetheart, nice and curved and soft. Your butt has just enough quiver to make a man hard, and those shorts should be illegal, showing off—”

She stared at him and blinked, trying to equate his dispatched brooding with the raw sensuality churning from Mitchell now.

Mitchell slowly placed his mug and hers aside, then turned back to study her. The tip of his ringer lifted to push beneath her chin gently, closing her parted lips. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you think I’d notice? That any man would notice? I may be trying to sort things out, but I’m not dead. You smell like a woman. You sweat like a woman. You move like a woman. You
are
a woman. Or is reality just too much for you?”

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She saw Mitchell’s hard expression ease, his eyes lower to her lips, and then his head was slanting, coming nearer.

She saw his eyes close, those thick lashes gleam as his lips brushed hers, and when he straightened, studying her, she forced herself to breathe shakily. Those gold eyes were soft and warm, amused, just like the slight curve of his lips.

She continued to stare at him, trapped by what had just happened as Mitchell leaned back, crossed his arms, and smiled.

She hadn’t expected that boyish grin, that delight as he watched her. Or the flush rising up her cheeks.

“Surprised?” he asked. “Are you going to come out and play or not?”

“What do you mean?”

His grin widened and he said softly, “I bet you’re rosy all over. I didn’t know women still blushed. It’s fascinating, the way that pale skin changes to pink, how it sort of blooms like a rose.”

He was obviously flirting with her, enjoying unraveling a self-possessed woman, a woman everyone saw as functional and quiet and in control, the wallflower she preferred to be. “I’m not. I’ve just run and—”

In slow motion, his finger reached to hook her tank top, just between her breasts, and he tugged lightly. His finger trailed across the neckline, brushing her skin, before moving away.

Those light brown eyes traced her face, the heat upon it. “Sure. Tell me another one. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a woman react like you did out there on the street, all engines humming and heating.”

“Mitchell! Don’t talk like that.”

There was that slow, devastating smile, that sexy look of a male—

She wished she hadn’t looked downward—but then, how could she stop?

Mitchell was definitely aroused and ready, and those humming motors were definitely gearing up.

Uma held very straight, lifting her chin. She wouldn’t let him unnerve her, she understood herself, he wasn’t getting to her—“Thank you very much for the coffee. I have work to do. I’d better not keep you from your business.”

“Okay,” he said easily, those gold eyes still amused.

Uma cleared her throat. “Yes. Well Goodbye.”

She sensed him watching her as she forced herself to walk slowly out of the kitchen and down the hallway, her heart pounding to a rhythm she didn’t want.

She wanted safety, and Mitchell definitely wasn’t that.

Later, in her shower, Uma leaned back against the stall, lifting her face to the streaming water. She could just feel his kiss, feel the need behind it, the testing, the sensual current dancing between them.

In another life, one of dreams and forevermores, Everett had kissed her like that, just a brush of his lips. He sometimes
kissed her now like that. Years ago, she’d enjoyed lovemaking, the safety of a man committed to his marriage and to her, the gentleness of it, the friendly comfort, the assurances in the afterplay. Everett was the kind of man who would be there in the morning, and the next day, and the next.

She knew his body, the pleasure of it. And yet her desire for him had slowly died.

Mitchell wasn’t meant to be a gentle man or to comfort. His words this morning said he wanted, and that desire ruled him, nothing more.

She opened her lips and let the water inside, still tasting that kiss.

She couldn’t take him seriously.
Are you going to come out and play or not?

“Not,” she whispered as the shower streamed against her skin, sensitizing it.
When you bent over to catch your breath, I could see enough of your breasts to want to know how they’d fit in my hands, taste in my mouth
.

Mitchell stood in the shower, letting the cold water stream over him. He tried not to think of Uma’s smoky stare, the way it had taken in his body this morning. He could feel her awakening, the stark stirring of her sensuality there in the mist—and knew it was wrong. With a failed marriage behind him, and enough relationships to tell him that life with him was hard on a woman, he could only hurt her.

He closed his eyes, and the image of her breasts, quivering as she ran, and the rounded shape as she bent to catch her breath, tantalized him.

He shook his head and wondered what had possessed him to reveal his desire, a controlled man who shielded his emotions from everyone.

He sighed roughly. Uma was inside him, stirring him, and with her, it wouldn’t be sex-on-the-go, it would be problem after problem. He had enough to do sorting out his life, and
he was flirting with her this morning, just like he was on the make and she was in the direct line of fire.

The worst part was how much he enjoyed her reaction, all that rosy, warm soft skin heating up, her confusion, the elegant ladylike way she pulled herself together.

No, the worst part was how much he’d wanted her, there on his bed, in the cool, fragrant morning. Worse yet was the way he’d exposed how he’d wanted to touch her, taste her.

Mitchell briskly soaped himself. He felt raw and bristling and surly, as Uma had said, and he didn’t like the knowledge that at his age, sex still created enough pressure to waylay him from clear thinking.

Roman shoved open the door of the old garage on Maloney Street and inhaled the musty past. The morning sunlight was warm on his back, spreading between his legs and over his head and shoulders to lay his silhouette on the old concrete floor.

There were Dozer’s lawnmowers, the riding and the push ones, and his assortment of pruning tools and chain saws, the bottles and sacks of weed killer, insecticide, and fertilizer. The bagged fertilizer’s sharp tang mixed with echoes of Roman’s father’s voice, the shadows stirring memories around him. Fred was a really good mechanic, not a rancher. He was best with tools in his hand, bent into a humming motor.

Maybe it was that frustration that he chose to take out on Mitchell and Roman.

Roman didn’t want to think about the bitter memories associated with Fred. He pushed away the night of the fire but couldn’t drown out the sounds of his own voice echoing from the past, “The old man deserves what he gets.”

Maybe he did. Maybe they
all
did. Life had never been easy, growing up in Madrid.

Maybe he’d always been racing back here. Roman shook his head. He’d come full circle, through the fame and the
money, back to Poor Town. He had enough to think about—Shelly might have given him a child, a daughter, and he hadn’t known. Whatever he was, he would have stood by her.

He scanned the shadows, the mechanic’s pit without the lift, the workbenches, and frowned when he saw pale, fresh sawdust on the floor beneath the steps. He glanced up at the old office and eased up to the top steps. He crouched to run his finger across the rough planks and then angled around to look at their underside. Someone had sawed the boards just enough that weight would cause the board to break. And the cuts were fresh.

Roman shook his head. Eighteen years ago, someone had nailed boards across the house, setting it afire. And his homecoming present was Lyle’s kidney punch and nails in his Harley’s tires. People were watching from behind their curtains, suspicious of where he went and what he did. Things hadn’t changed much.

He turned to go down the stairs and then momentarily slowed as he saw the tough-looking girl standing in the shadows, watching him. Without the hard look, the punk and the paint, she might be around Dani’s age.

She watched him walk toward her, the buttoned leather vest and cutoffs making her seem very slender and young. “Saw you walking past the house and followed you here. Heard you had tire trouble.”

“You can tell your friend that I’ll be expecting his money for the tires.”

Within the hard black makeup, her eyes widened. They were light brown, he decided, catching the dim light and changing into a dull gold—just the shade of his. “Oh, no. Jace wouldn’t do that. He wants that bike and said the tires alone cost a fortune and that he could get a good price for them.”

“Someone nailed them. I’ll be finding out who. They’ll pay for my brother’s truck tires, too.” He wanted to find out about Dani. “You go to school, kid?”

“Hell, no. I’m out.” When she shook her head, the spiked hair caught the light and he wondered about the true color—rich and auburn and soft, like Shelly’s?

“Summer vacation?”

“I’m just out.” She held out a slender, small hand, the wrist layered with beaded bracelets. “My name is Dani. I hear yours is Roman. Nice. Like gladiator stuff, right? I heard you can handle yourself, too. I like a man like that.”