Last Chance Llama Ranch (18 page)

“Oh, for sure, Merrilicious,” said the Spirit Wind. He tossed his braids back in preparation for exiting the pool, moving his woman aside with a gentle pat on her shoulder. “Hang tight, ladies. I'll just get my smudge bundle, and be right back.” Rising like the Swamp Thing, he sluiced water off his body.

His very
naked
body.

Oh boy.
Merry caught a glimpse of a rather unfortunate piercing before Steve padded away toward the tree line to rummage inside an enormous macramé satchel hanging from a bough.

Jane, eyes alight with mirth, divested herself of her own clothes and waded into the pool, Mazel making way for her like an aquatic guard dog welcoming her master home.

“Hey, why do
you
get to go in and I don't?” Merry demanded, crossing her arms over her breasts and trying to pretend the rest of her body did not exist. Once, she'd been rather proud of that body, despite its unfortunate height and the Viking warrior-maiden comparisons it had invited. But that had been when she was in competitive condition, when she'd been working out eight days a week and strong as an ox. When she had been
whole
, not looking like the aftermath of a bad slasher flick. Now…it was nothing but a source of shame, an announcement of her failures.

“Oh, I've already been purified,” Jane told her. “A couple years back. It's a blanket blessing.”

A blanket would be a blessing right now
, Merry thought. She turned her death ray up to eleven, but Jane only smiled wider, dipping her hair in the water and shaking it out sassily. For a healer, she seemed to have a serious streak of sadism.

“Darn it! Mazel, where'd I put the premium blend?” Steve muttered, elbow deep in the bag.

Merry edged farther away from Steve.

“It's next to the Udder Butter, sweetie,” Mazel called.

I feel faint
, Merry thought.

“Right. Here we go!” Steve cried triumphantly. He raised his arm, at the end of which was a foot-long bundle of bound-up brush. He brandished a Bic, flicking it alight and holding the flame to the bundle, watching until it caught. “Comin' at ya, Mer-Ber,” he said, suiting actions to words as he fairly skipped to her side. Merry squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to see anything that jiggled. “Now, hold still. Won't take but a sec!”

Steve proceeded to smudge her.

It did not take “a sec.”

Performed by Steve Spirit Wind, the ritual of sage smudging appeared to have a great deal in common with the acrobatics of a ground controller guiding a plane to a safe landing in foggy weather. He swooped and waved, flourished and swirled, smoke billowing and sparks spinning from the burning baton under his enthusiastic ministrations.

I definitely feel faint
, Merry thought,
and it ain't the sage.
She was blushing from stem to stern, six feet three of pure, agonized embarrassment.
Please, let this be over soon
, she begged the god of hapless travel writers.

“Sage smudging is an ancient practice,” Mazel informed Merry as she oversaw her man's efforts. “Make sure you get the smoke everywhere, dear,” she chided.

“You got it, babe.” Steve waved the bundle lustily, then, with spastic flaps of his hands, encouraged the resulting fumes to envelop Merry. “Cup the smoke,” he told her, panting from his efforts, “and wash with it.”

“Ah…wash with it?”

“Here, watch me. I'll show ya.”

Steve began to pantomime using the sage stick like a shower brush. Under the arms. Over the head. Between the toes. Behind the knees.

And betwixt his legs.

Bending over nearly double, limbs akimbo and tush aimed right at Merry, Steve passed his smoldering rod dangerously close to his
other
rod, encouraging the herbal effluvia to invade every one of his body cavities.

Hole-y smokes…

He straightened up, beaming, then made as if to give Merry the same treatment. “Now you!”

“It's okay,” Merry squeaked. “I think we're all pure here!” She backpedaled furiously, but Steve would not be deterred. He advanced, waving his wand, fairly chasing Merry around the rim of the pool. Out of the corner of her eye, Merry just had time to register Jane, biting her fist and crying with silent laughter before her heels met only thin air. She hurtled backward…

And found the third hag.

With her ass.

A series of kaleidoscopic impressions hit Merry, one after another.

Scalding blue water.

A scalding blue glare.

A steaming cauldron.

A steaming-mad man.

Naked flesh.

Naked fury.

“The fuck!?” Suddenly Merry found herself hoisted skyward, in defiance of all the laws of gravity, then just as quickly plummeting back down with a tremendous splash—three feet from a simmering Sam Cassidy.

Water dripping down his brick-red cheeks, sun-bleached hair tied in a messy bun atop his head, Sam's expression was thunderous and shocked at the same time.
The outraged virgin, ogre edition.

Merry's own mouth made a perfect O of surprise, and she blinked stupidly. “Um, hi?” Trying out a queasy smile, she pushed sopping hair back from her face and looked around the pool for a quick exit. Jane, she saw, was nearly hysterical with laughter now, face buried in her hands and shoulders shaking, while Steve had rejoined his woman in the water, a pleased-as-punch expression on his face as he cuddled her close by the shallow end. “Now our circle is complete!” cried Mazel.

My humiliation sure is
, Merry thought, backing away from Sam as fast as she could in the sulfurous, neck-deep spring. Or at least, it would be neck-deep on
most
of its occupants. On Merry, she'd have to stay crouched to keep her boobs from breaking the surface.
Fuck, did he see me naked?
She hadn't seen
him
through the steam, so maybe she'd dodged the bullet there. But it hardly mattered, she realized.
He's
felt
me naked.
The sensation of his slippery flesh sliding against hers was indelibly burned into her nerve endings.

“Nine-point-six from the Russian judge,” Jane hooted. “With bonus points for artistic expression.”

Merry shot her the Death Star of all dirty looks, even as she crab-walked over to the vet for safety. She wanted to get out of troll territory as fast as humanly possible. “It's not funny, Jane!”

“You're damn right it's not,” Sam snarled, slapping the water with his palm and spraying everyone, including the now-openmouthed hippies. “But I can't say I'm surprised. You've been throwing yourself at me since the moment you got to Aguas Milagros!” He slapped the water again, drenching them all a second time. “You want a gander so bad? Well, get it while the light's good, Wookiee.” With a lunge, suddenly Sam was airborne, launching himself up with stiff arms to clear the water and land with surprising lightness on the patchy moss and ferns covering the ground around the spring. He threw his arms wide, drops of water flying in all directions.

“There. Look your fill, if you're so hot and bothered. But let's be clear—a look is
all
you're gonna get.” He twirled like Stevie Nicks—once, twice—gave a sardonic curtsy, then swiped his towel off a nearby tree branch and tied it around his waist with jerky motions. “Thanks for spoiling another otherwise beautiful day in paradise, Wookiee,” he growled, and strode—some might say
flounced
—off down the trail. They could hear angry mutters and snapping branches for some time after he had disappeared.

“Um…wow,” said Jane. She flapped a hand to fan her face as if to cool her heated cheeks.

“Wow is right,” said Merry, her pirate brow making friends with her hairline.

Because Sam—naked Sam—wasn't an ogre at all.

What
might
have been beer belly beneath the enveloping overalls he usually wore was a barrel alright—of pure muscle. From broad, deep chest to arms every bit as steely as she'd only suspected earlier when he'd caught her in the store, he was primal male in its most honest form—muscles built by nature and hard work rather than hours at some gym where they swapped the towels out every hour and blared Bloomberg Business news from every treadmill. And it didn't end above the waist. His legs were solid columns of brawn, surprisingly shapely for all their strength. And that ass…

Good on 'im
, Merry thought, pursing her lips. Nice, round buns, not flat—or God forbid, furry—like she might have suspected. She had seen world-class athletes who weren't in as good condition as Sam Cassidy. But it was when he'd done his final flourish that Merry
really
had to give it to him.
Whoa
, she marveled.
And that's
with
shrinkage?

“I think Sammy-whammy needs another smudge,” said Steve. “The negative energy is really funky on him today.”

W
hile the days in Aguas Milagros are idyllic, the nights can be a tad chilly.

Whoops. I mean, chill-ING.

Just when I was snuggling down under my lovely crocheted blankie, tuckered from an honest day's work and an eye-opening evening of soaking with the locals, a movement on the ceiling of my cabin caught my attention.
A cobweb
, thinks I.
Surely no more than a breath of wind tickling the spider streamers in the eaves.
Never mind that it didn't move like any cobweb I'd seen before.

Cobwebs, in my experience, don't scurry.

And they don't fall out of the sky and land on your face.

After which they most certainly do not race, with one hundred horrifying legs, down your neck and disappear—all six inches of them—beneath your covers.

Where they very adamantly do not dive into your pajamas and attempt to make a home for themselves in your navel.

As one might imagine, there came after this a spate of quite understandable hysterics. There were screams, dear reader. A number of screams that carried on for an indeterminate period of time that I'm guessing lasted anywhere from thirty seconds to thirty thousand years. There was the throwing back of covers. The Olympic-caliber leap from an unfortunately unspringy cot. The tearing off of nightwear. Much thrashing, and slapping of various body parts that might potentially be harboring the beast. There was stomping. And whimpering, and perhaps even a wee bit of gibbering.

And that's when Sam Cassidy busted down the door.

With an axe in one manly fist.

Merry was naked and panting when next she saw Sam Cassidy.

Her desire, however, was not for him but for a flamethrower, a suit of seamless, impregnable armor, and the phone number of a reliable exterminator.

“
Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!
” she howled, rending garments, hair, and the quiet of the night with equal abandon. She spun in circles, pajama top torn open, hair flying about her like a flaming copper cape, hopping and recoiling at every shadow. A slithering in the seat of the silk pj's made her shriek again, loud enough that the very windowpanes shivered, and she kicked the bottoms off as if they were afire, leaving her lower half clad in only panties. “Cleese!” she screamed. “Save me!”

“Who the hell is Cleese?”

Merry spun again to find the source of the furious voice. She gasped. Standing silhouetted in the doorway of the cabin was a burly, vaguely manlike shape with a huge-ass woodcutter's axe braced on its shoulder, like a character out of a fairy tale. But was it Big Bad Wolf or hero come to save the day?

Then the figure flicked on the light switch. Merry blinked in the sudden light.

Definitely Big Bad Wolf.

“The hell are you doing, Wookiee?” Sam's sun-bleached brows were beetled, and he stomped into the room with his axe at the ready, looking for trouble. “I could hear you wailing like an air-raid siren from six acres away.” His chest was rising and falling as if he'd been running—which he probably had, if he'd been that far away when she'd started caterwauling. Finished scanning the room and obviously finding nothing worth axe-murdering, he eyed her up and down. A strange expression crossed his face. It was almost…
mortified
? “You got a guy in here?” His gaze darted to the cot in the corner of the room with its rumpled covers.

Merry shook her head, still trembling. “There was a…a…” She paused, gulped. “I don't know what it was. A creature of some sort. It fell…” She swallowed again, shuddering. “And landed…” She gestured toward her face and neck. “And ran…” She waved down her chest, oblivious to the fact that her pajama top was gaping open. “And it tried to…” She made a swirling motion of her finger around her navel. “And then it…” She made walking gestures with her finger down her leg. “And now I don't know where it is!” She spun again, toes curled in terror of the floorboards.

“And you were expecting some guy named after a Monty Python actor to save you?” Sam lowered the axe, but he didn't look any less murderous.

Merry waved her hand absently at the cabin's tiny table, where her pet had taken up residence. “Cleese is my turtle,” she said, still peering anxiously into corners.

“Oh, well then,” Sam said, looked at the travel terrarium with a jaundiced eye. Inside the enclosure, Cleese appeared to be sleeping soundly. “Guess you don't need rescuing after all.”

Broadsided by the sarcasm, Merry looked at Sam—really looked at him. Her eyes widened. Her jaw hinged open.

The man was wearing nothing but a faded red union suit.
An honest-to-goodness, pioneer-era onesie, saggy ass-flap and all. Beneath it, his feet were bare as usual, and up top, his hair was a wild nimbus of bed-head—if one were in the habit of bedding down in a barn. Merry gaped stupidly for a minute at the sight of his ridiculous getup, then abruptly realized she herself was wearing only panties and the torn-open top of her red silk pajamas, which covered precisely
none
of the important bits.

Shit
,
she thought.
The leg!
Her scars were on full display. Merry dove for her coverlet, then paused, struck by a terrifying thought. What if the mutant creature that had just creeped years off her life had gone to ground in Dolly's intricately knotted afghan? She had no idea what the horrid thing had been, but one thing was sure—she didn't want it anywhere near her naked flesh again. But then again, she didn't want Sam's gaze anywhere near her naked flesh either. She snatched, flapped, and wrapped the fabric around her with record speed.

Maybe if she went on the offensive, Merry thought, he'd forget how offensive the sight of her mangled body was. “Um, what's with the Miner Forty-Niner costume?”

“
You're
giving
me
sartorial snark? A woman wearing half a pair of Frederick's of Hollywood pajamas?”

“Shows how much you know,” Merry snapped. “My mother wouldn't go near a Frederick's of Hollywood for all the tea in Ceylon.”

Sam scrubbed a hand over his face. “Lady, sometimes I don't even think we speak the same language. Do you have an emergency or not? Because if not, I'd like to go back to bed. You're lucky Dolly's a heavy sleeper, or you'd have given her a heart attack with your histrionics. I heard you hollering from halfway across the ranch.”

“Well, gee, Mr. Cassidy, I'm sorry my abject terror got in the way of your beauty sleep. It's clear you need all the help you can get.” The words were out before Merry could call them back. She knew it was a cheap shot. Someone as looks-challenged as herself had no business throwing stones. But she was too damn tired of taking crap from Sam—and, hell, too damn tired in general—to worry about fairness right now. The contemptuous look he'd shot her in the store this afternoon when she'd fallen, the way he'd flung her from him in the spring this evening as if she were poison…enough was enough! “What is your
problem
with me?” Merry demanded. “You've been a total prick from the moment I met you. Then, just when I thought you
might
be turning into a human being on the hike yesterday, you get all weird again today. And I don't even know
what
that shit was at the hot spring tonight. You'd think I was carrying seventeen kinds of swine flu, the way you've been acting.”

Sam puffed up like a bullfrog, axe still held across his flannel-covered chest. “And you'd think
I
had catnip in every pocket, the way you've been sniffing around me!”

“What!?”

“C'mon, lady. Fess up. You've been angling to get naked in front of me since the minute you got here. Falling all over me in those skintight jeans, the
accidental
slip at the springs, and now…” He waved at her blanket-wrapped form.

Merry drew the cover more tightly around her, hoping the elegant pattern might lend her some dignity. “You have
got
to be kidding me. I mean, I know your ego's half the size of New Mexico, but even you have to know you're not exactly…” She trailed off, waving demonstratively at the threadbare union suit.

“‘Major Gorgeous'? ‘Thor in snug denim'?”

Merry's mouth gaped open in an excellent impression of a deep-sea bass. Then it snapped shut. “You've been reading ‘Don't Do What I Did.'”

“I have,” he said, laying the axe atop the table next to Cleese's terrarium and glaring at her in a way that made Merry glad he was no longer armed with a handful of highly honed steel. “Bob gave me a look this morning, and imagine my surprise. Hate to break it to ya, but you, Miss Manning, are barking up the wrong tree if you think we're gonna have some kind of Crocodile Dundee–style romance while you're here.”

“Wait. Back up a minute. You thought I was
serious
? That I see you as some sort of Marlboro Man with a string of llamas instead of mustangs?” An incredulous laugh burst from her throat.

Sam suddenly looked less sure of himself. He folded burly arms across his barrel chest—a chest Merry now had cause to know was 100 percent muscle. “Well, what would
you
call ‘Studly Sam'? A friendly nickname?”

“Dude,” she said. “I don't know if they have mirrors in your yurt or dugout or whatever it is you live in, but there's a
reason
I'm only photographing you in silhouette for the column.”

“You've been photographing me?” His scowl was thunderous.

“I've been photographing the goat shit too, Llama Boy. Don't let it go to your head.”

Now it was Sam's turn to gape. For a second, a corner of his mouth curled up. Then he smothered the nascent smile in its crib. “So what was all that ‘Oooh, Sam's so dreamy' horseshit?”

“I was
trying
to do you a favor,” Merry said. She attempted to plant her hands on her hips, but it wasn't exactly easy when one was wearing nothing but a blanket and the ruins of an eight-hundred-dollar pair of La Perla pj's. “If I wrote you the way you've really been behaving, it wouldn't exactly reflect well on Dolly, would it?”

Sam looked like she'd just planted the axe right through the top of his skull. He backed up until his rear hit the chair behind him, then availed himself of it, all the wind gone from his sails.

Merry pressed on, relishing the chagrin on his face. “It wouldn't do much for tourism at the Last Chance if I told my readers how singularly rude and unwelcoming you've been from the moment I got here. How many people would be signing up for llama tours if they knew their guide was going to insult, demean, and debase them the whole time?”

“So…you haven't been trying to get in my pants?” Sam asked slowly.

Merry snorted. “Believe me, if I wanted to seduce you, I sure as hell wouldn't be naked.”

Sam turned his head sideways, like a dog eyeing a particularly vexing house cat. “You wouldn't be naked,” he repeated slowly, “if you were trying to seduce me.” His expression was baffled. “Lady, are you
completely
batshit?”

Merry crossed her arms defensively. “You've seen the mystery meat,” she muttered, gesturing to her leg. “Not that I was ever anyone's idea of a supermodel, but
that
hot mess, combined with the rest of the package…” She waved up and down the length of her tall figure and face. “If I were at the post office, they'd stamp me ‘damaged goods.'”

Sam squinted at her as if reassessing the situation. “You know,” he said slowly, “I'd give you shit about that ridiculous statement, but I'm starting to get the idea somebody's
already
fed you a whole heap of bullshit.” Arms crossed over his flannel-clad chest, he eyed her solemnly. “Who did a number on you, Merry Manning?” His tone was gentler now, and his scowl had faded to a more open, inquiring expression.

Merry's eyes stung, suddenly, and her throat seemed to be trying to swallow a tennis ball. His abrupt switch from sparring partner to confidant had her scrambling to shift gears. “I don't know what you mean,” she mumbled, looking away.

“Well, someone's obviously got you convinced you're some sort of…hell, I dunno, a Frankenstein's monster or something.”

“And you're telling me that's
not
how you view me?” Merry crossed her arms once more, tightening the blanket around her shoulders. Her leg was throbbing again after her frantic attempts to evade the alien slither-monster, though the hot springs
had
loosened her up some earlier. (Once Sam had gone, she and Jane had been able to relax for an hour or so with Steve and Mazel, who were actually pretty nice once you'd passed the smudge test.)

The last thing I need is to take another header in front of Sam
. Still cocooned in the blanket, Merry hobbled to her cot before her muscles could give out. “I saw how you looked at me in those stupid jeans earlier today. Obviously, I'm nobody who should ever attempt fashion.”