After Eden Page 8

  “Don’t be so grim all the time, Johnny. Relax, loosen your cinch a little.” As if she realized the hopelessness of her advice, Judy took his arm and squeezed it. “So don’t relax. I’ll settle for your not snarling at me.” She giggled, a deliciously naughty sound—as if she were either thinking something wicked or doing it—that caused Johnny to smile in spite of himself.

  “I hope she’s as ugly as a mud fence. And fat!” She let out another lilting trill of mischievous laughter and clapped her hands. “A fat stump of a body and a big round flat face! Wouldn’t that be wonderful!”

  “Not for her.”

  “Oh! You’re just thinking of yourself. Besides, you’re not allowed to look at other women. You belong to me, and I don’t share. Do I?”

  Johnny didn’t reply. He had been home over two months, and this was the first time they had been alone together.

  Now, if her words could be trusted, Judy acted as if nothing bad had ever passed between them. For Judy life was pig simple. The only thing a man could count on was not being able to count on anything.

  Judy tugged at his vest. “Life’s too short to spend all your time snarling and snapping.” She giggled, then sighed at his lack of enthusiasm. “Oh, Johnny…don’t be so sober. Smile! Be happy.”

  She started to flounce away, seemed to think better of it, and stopped. “You’re as tense as a hen in a pack of wolves, Johnny.” Reaching up, she ran her hand along his shoulders and neck, then down over his muscular chest.

  Johnny took her hands and held them away from him. “It’s late,” he said, his voice gruff, unnatural.

  “You never used to be like this.” She expelled a frustrated breath. “Are you ever going to forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “I hurt you, didn’t I?”

  Johnny shrugged. “That’s smoke up the chimney.”

  “Kiss me, Johnny, please.” She sounded like a child asking for reassurance, not a woman asking for a kiss.

  Johnny leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Go to bed. We have to get up early tomorrow.”

  “To ride in so we’ll be there to meet Miss Garcia-Lorca…Lord, what a name.” She sighed.

  “She might be a lot like Steve,” he said.

  Anger flared in Judy. “And I’m not?”

  Johnny had no answer for that. Judy went back to the subject he hated. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”

  “Beside you, Apaches look like house pets.”

  “I never promised you anything before…”

  “Don’t rile yourself up, Judy. This woman who’s coming can’t hurt you. Steve won’t let her.”

  “Maybe you’ll fall in love with her.”

  He laughed softly. “Maybe.”

  “I hate her! She has no right coming here,” she said, her dark eyes flashing with anger.

  “You set your mind to it, I don’t reckon she’ll last long,” he drawled.

  “You’re blamed right she won’t,” she said darkly. “I’ve got everything all planned out. She won’t last a day.”

  Judy stepped close to Johnny, and a strange look kindled in her dark eyes. A pulse began to pound in his temple, and an ache started low in his loins. This was no memory. It was the real thing. He turned away toward his door.

  Judy caught his vest. “Please don’t be mean to me, Johnny. I’m older now. You’ll see. I can be true to you. I wasn’t exactly untrue to you, anyway…”

  “Sneaking around with Morgan Todd was being true to me?” he asked, caught off guard by the sudden anger that welled within.

  “I didn’t sneak around,” she said, indignant. “I just forgot to mention it to you ahead of time.”

  Johnny felt like hollering. I didn’t sneak around. I just forgot to mention it to you ahead of time. The simplicity of it confounded him.

  “Johnny, please don’t fight with me tonight. Everybody’s against me. I need you.”

  Desire lowered her sultry voice. Tears welled in her eyes. Sliding her hands up his chest, clasping them around his neck, bringing her downturning lips tantalizingly close to his, she pulled his head down and pressed her mouth to his as if testing how far she could push him. Her small tongue tip darted body until it made a place for itself in his mouth. Tiny rivers of flame burned down the length of him. His hands slid over her back, pulling her hard against him. Part of him had already given up—it would do anything she wanted—but part of him knew better.

  But it was Judy who ended the kiss, who sighed with contentment. Her hands stroked his face and neck, mesmerizing him.

  “Go back to the house.” He tried to sound stern, but he was sure he only sounded like a man too affected to speak plainly, a man about to embarrass himself by succumbing to a young woman who generally had more important men to spend her evenings with, but who was making do with him.

  “Tell me you don’t want me, and I might,” she said, tossing her long brown hair, her voice sultry and rich with her power.

  He did want her, but even that feeling confounded him. He didn’t want her the way she wanted him to want her, and he knew it.

  Judy seemed to read his mind. “Does everything have to be forever?” she countered softly. “Maybe tonight is all any of us has…”

  “Is that what you tell yourself?” he asked bitterly.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, her face taking on a sulky look he had seen any number of times when she didn’t get her way.

  I don’t want to talk about it. Johnny controlled himself with an effort. Naturally she didn’t want to talk about her infidelities, but he had better remember them or he would be right back where he was three years ago: a callow boy, making a fool of himself at every turn.

  He hadn’t come back to fall in love with Judy Burkhart all over again. He couldn’t remember why he’d come back. He had been at loose ends when Steve’s letter came. He’d talked himself into thinking that if he did come back, he’d either win her love or get her out of his system.

  “Then let’s don’t talk about it,” he said, determined not to play the fool again.

  Judy brightened instantly. Her sullen look was transformed to a provocative smile. “That’s better. Let’s don’t talk about anything…”

  She pulled his head down. Her warm, sweet lips closed over his. Her kiss vibrated through him like a red-hot stake driven through him lengthwise, searing from his mouth to his loins.

  Judy felt the slight vibration in his lean form and sighed with the closest thing to contentment she’d felt in years. Johnny’s hands tangled in her hair and pulled her head back so she couldn’t resist even if she’d wanted to. It hurt. A thrill tingled through her. Johnny was back. Really back.

  “Love me, Johnny,” she whispered.

  Talking was folly at a time like this. Johnny lifted his head, wishing he hadn’t heard her words. Because they reminded him he couldn’t spoon with Judy if he wasn’t going to love her and marry her. He had hoped to forget that fact. It meant he was going to have a miserable night. Morgan Todd had spooned with Judy, and he hadn’t married her. But Johnny knew he was no Morgan Todd.

  Something changed. Judy opened her eyes.

  “How come you stopped kissing me?”

  “’Cause I don’t want to kill your brother.”

  “You’d never kill Steve. He’s your friend.”

  “Any man comes after me with a gun ain’t my friend.”

  Judy could not believe the turn of their conversation. One minute Johnny was about to make love to her, the next he was talking about killing her brother. “Why are you so lathered up all of a sudden?”

  “If I make love to you, Steve would have every right to come after me with a whip or a gun. I’m not a kid. I can’t let a man whip me or shoot me without a fight.”

  “Then those things we heard about you…they’re true, aren’t they?” she asked.

  “Don’t know what you heard,” he said, his voice husky. “Don’t care.”

  “That
you’re a gunfighter. That you killed Billy the Deuce and other men, too.”

  Johnny shrugged, a small negligent movement of his manly shoulder, and Judy knew it was all true. She’d known from the first day when he’d ridden in and hadn’t come looking for her. He was the Johnny Brago, a gunfighter like Dusty Denton, Lance Kincaid, Sam Bass, Curly Bill Brocius…

  Moon and starlight silvered the sand in front of Johnny’s cabin. The cool night breeze felt good against her damp skin. A thin curving sliver, tilted crazily, the moon had moved out of sight. Moments ago it had nested between two limbs of the tree beside Johnny’s cabin. A horse whinnied, and another answered. Steve’s dog, Red, bayed at the moon.

  “It’s late. You better go back to the house before Steve misses you.”

  Judy knew the moment had passed, but somehow she couldn’t give it up. She laid her head on his chest and felt the beat of his heart against her cheek. “We’re good together, Johnny, aren’t we?”

  “We ain’t together,” he said.

  “Oh, Johnny, don’t buck so hard. Now that you’re back everything is going to be so wonderful. I’ve changed; why, I’m nearly perfect. You’ll see. I clean and cook and plan meals. I practically run the whole household. Steve is proud of me, too. And now, with you here, I’ll be even better…”

  Johnny closed his eyes. Judy rattled on about all the new leaves she was going to turn over, but he’d stopped listening. He’d heard them all before. She’d be the best everything in the world: cook, housekeeper, lover, mother. She’d be endlessly faithful, hardworking, clever, pretty, loyal, thrifty…

  Judy was in her own private reverie, recounting how wonderful everything would be, and Johnny was in torment. He had forgotten how appealing she was—the childlike innocence in her that was so uniquely Judy. Every day brought a fresh slate. Yesterday’s mistakes didn’t count. Judy didn’t hold grudges, so she couldn’t fathom why anyone else would. And now she was determined to be good, so she had always been good.

  Judy—my little dreamer. There were no lies in her world, he thought bitterly. No betrayals, only some promises that should never have been given.

  Sadness settled into him. He shouldn’t have come back here. He couldn’t punish Judy or marry her. That had been the sheerest insanity—an idea dreamed up in the cold dark hours of a lonely night to trick himself into coming back. How else could he justify deliberately walking back into a tornado?

  He’d known three years ago there was no hope for them. She was too fickle, too impetuous. Judy was quicksilver, and he was lead—as unmoving and unforgiving as she was fluid. He couldn’t forget the past, and she couldn’t remember it. That was why she could act like she hadn’t ripped his insides out. That was why she could act like he was still twenty-two, still in love with the girl he planned to marry. For her nothing serious had happened. She made love to the man she wanted, and the other one got sore about it. They fought, and the sorehead rode away. End of problem. Now he was back, and she could pick up where she had left off…

  Except it wasn’t that easy for Johnny. He had kissed her, and now she was talking about love and marriage.

  “Well?” Judy demanded, smiling expectantly.

  “Fine, but I’m not here to marry you,” he said.

  “That’s it?” she asked incredulously. “I tell you how wonderful your future is going to be, with one of the best-looking females in the territory, and you say fine? I’m insulted.”

  “Guess I’m off my feed.”

  “You’re different now, Johnny. You know that?” she asked suddenly. “You hurt me,” she said almost proudly.

  “Did I?”

  She searched his face and waited for his response. “There was a time,” she whispered, “if I said you hurt me, you would have apologized.” Judy wavered between pique and a newly awakened feeling of submissiveness.

  Submissiveness won. “I’m glad you don’t feel sorry. That’d spoil it if you did.” She paused. “Why did you come back?”

  “Steve wrote and said he needed me.”

  “I thought maybe you missed me.”

  Shrugging, he didn’t answer. He had been over all of this in his head. No answer he could give would satisfy her. A week after Bill died, he had gone to Steve to find out why the Burkharts had brought him back to Rancho la Reina. He had stopped Steve on his way out to the barn. The sun had set, and the sky was a bright backlit coral with brooding gray streaks.

  “We need to parlay.”

  Steve smiled and patted his shoulder lightly. “You want a drink?”

  “No.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “Bill told me that the two of you brought me back so I could take care of Judy.”

  Frowning, his clear blue eyes level and unwavering, Steve shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that. I brought you back to run the ranch.”

  Johnny nodded his satisfaction and turned to leave.

  “But,” Steve added, a slow smile spreading across his clean, square-cut Burkhart features, emphasizing the easygoing manner everyone liked and trusted, “if it should turn out that way, you can count on my blessing.”

  Soft and rich, Judy’s voice brought him back to the present. “Did you miss me, Johnny? You were gone a long time.”

  “It’s time I walked you back to the house, before your brother discovers you’re missing and thinks you’ve been carried off by renegade Injuns. You’ll need some shut-eye if you’re going to be in top form to ride into Tombstone to meet your new sister.”

  “She’s not my sister!”

  “Stepsister, then.”

  “She’s Steve’s stepsister, not mine.”

  “Well, you heard what Steve said, whatever’s his is yours.”

  “Well, some things I don’t want any part of. If I have my way, she’ll be sorry she ever set foot in Arizona Territory.”

  Johnny walked Judy to the back door of the casa grande and waited for her to step inside and close the door. Then he walked slowly back to his cabin. His bunk was hot. The cabin was hot. And he was hot.

  Picking up a blanket, he carried it into the orchard to a spot between two of his favorite trees and spread it on the cool ground. It felt good to lie on the earth. Must be the Indian in him. No matter what ailed him, lying on the earth always helped.

  Moon and stars filtered through the limbs of the peach tree overhead. The night was alive with sound: dogs, cows, horses, night birds, even men snoring. His body was alive with feeling.

  Three years ago he had thought any woman who kissed him could cause the same reaction Judy had—that it was a natural response to being kissed—but he had been kissed a number of times since leaving Rancho la Reina, and only Judy and Tía had stirred him up this way. Tía, who had disappeared the day he’d met her and never showed up again.

  What had happened to Tía? His mind instantly made a picture of Tía and wanted to know why she had run away. Had she known when she’d left him that she would not be back? He had talked to a number of people in the town. White people had seemed to know of Tía but thought she was Mexican, so they probably didn’t know of her at all. Mexicans had seemed not to know anyone like her had ever existed. He had walked from door to door, asking folks if they had work. When they’d said no, he’d asked about Tía. He’d found the house she’d lived in. It had been burned to the ground. Only smoking rubble, a charred iron stove, a few blackened cottonwoods, and a wilted garden marked the spot. He’d asked the family in the closest house, almost a quarter of a mile away, about her. Their reaction—the cunning in their eyes and their blank-faced ignorance of anything having to do with Tía or her family—caused him to ask the same question at the next house. The reaction there was different, but just as intriguing. At the third cottage he’d asked what had happened to Tía’s house. One of the children started to tell him, but the old woman had backhanded the kid and sent him in the house.

  What could frighten folks so badly that they’d pretend they had never heard her name before? Johnny h
ad decided that El Gato Negro had taken Tía, burned her house, and terrified her neighbors. He had followed El Gato Negro’s trail until he’d met an old prospector who’d claimed to have seen them ride past one evening. No womenfolks. Just a pride of bandidos that would scare the hair off a warthog. Johnny had invited the old man to share his grub and a fire. After dinner the old man had dipped some snuff and settled back to relax. Course they could get women any time they wanted ’em, but I don’t reckon they was in the mood, what with their leader bunged up liken he was. The old man had adjusted his snuff in his cheek and waited while Johnny cut off a plug from a piece of tobacco he carried to use as bait. Catfish loved tobacco. So did prospectors. An hour had gone by while the old man chawed on it.

  Johnny had been about half-asleep when the old man spoke again. They dragged him behind a big black horse on a travois, and when they was going past me, they stopped for a minute and this feller wearing a mess a patches gave the man on the travois a drink outa his canteen. When the injured man lifted his head up, the blanket fell off’n I seen his fancy silver suit and knew who it was.

  El Gato’s getting injured might explain why the bandidos had lost interest in Johnny. But it raised other mysteries. And no one in town had seemed to know he’d been injured. Just like no one in town had seemed to know Tía existed.

  He’d lost El Gato’s trail in the Chiricahuas. In frustration he had turned north toward the Burkhart ranch. The cavalry had spent years trying to find El Gato Negro’s lair, so Johnny hadn’t been particularly surprised when he couldn’t.

  The prospector’s tale seemed to refute his theory about El Gato taking Tía. Johnny hoped so. But still his instincts made him suspect her disappearance had something to do with El Gato showing up in Tubac. Tía hadn’t seemed to be especially afraid of the bandit. But Johnny had noticed almost no fear in the girl. Curiosity, maybe, but no unreasoning fear.

  Frustrated, Johnny turned over and punched the sand into a more accommodating contour to fit his body. He’d probably never see Tía again.