Rainsinger (18 page)

He had to shift uncomfortably at the reaction of his body to those memories. The want was mutual. He’d do almost anything just to make love to her. Just to touch her and taste her and revel in that heady need he miraculously kindled in her. He wanted to please her, to watch her come apart, watch her give herself up to the lurking passion she’d controlled so carefully.

But was that wrong? He had no intention of making it permanent. The notion of commitment and love and all the rest made his heart race with panic. No. He wanted her for now, for the summer, for the pleasure they could give each other now, not some amorphous future. He wanted to be the man who awakened her, so she wouldn’t forget him.

The moral dilemma was that she’d told him she didn’t indulge in casual sex. Yet wasn’t there some middle ground between casual sex—which implied lightness and no emotion—and total commitment? For two consenting adults, wasn’t there something warm and rich in between, a mutually respectful exchange of passion and beauty and pleasure?

There was. And they could have it. He had to find a way to help her see that.

* * *

Winona fixed a simple supper of salad and grilled cheese sandwiches. As she tore lettuce, she noticed a dimming of the light in the kitchen and frowned, brushing hair filled with static electricity out of her face. When she bent to peer out the window, she touched the metal back of the chair and got a sharp, strong shock. “Dang it,” she said, rubbing her fingers together. She was tired of being shocked every time she touched anything, tired of the dust, tired of itchy, dry skin.

But now, on the horizon, dark and heavy looking, were
clouds.
Winona gave a little cry and bounced toward the back door. “Daniel!” she called toward his bedroom as she went. “Look outside!”

Eagerly she stepped on the back porch, lifting her head to smell the air. It was as dusty and hot as ever. No wind. No rustling anticipation of cottonwood leaves.

Daniel joined her, fresh from the shower, smelling of shampoo and soap and toothpaste. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “They might really be rain clouds.”

Far away on the horizon, lightning streaked through the slate-colored clouds. “Even if we get just a little moisture, it will help,” Winona said.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he lifted a hand and put it on the back of her neck, rubbing lightly. “Yes, it would.”

Even such a small gesture acted on Winona’s nerves. Guardedly she shifted away. “Daniel, I think, considering everything, this afternoon was a mistake.”

“Was it?” His voice was low and intimate.

She gazed at him, expecting anger or annoyance or that shuttered look he could adopt. Instead he was smiling the smallest bit, his eyes dancing with mischief. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes, it was,” she said firmly.

The smile broadened and he lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever you say, Pooh.”

Quizzically she echoed, “Pooh?” He nicknamed everyone, she’d noticed. Jessie was “Irish,” for obvious reasons. Giselle to “Gazelle” was an easy leap. And “Little Owl” for Joleen, with her big eyes and late hours, was so perfect it was a wonder no one had given it to her before this.

But “Pooh”? “Oh, because of Winona. Winnie the Pooh. I get it.”

“Nope.” The grin broadened. “Pooh’s always rubbing his little paws together saying, ‘Oh, dear. Oh, my.’”

“I don’t do that.”

“Don’t you?”

That stopped her. “Well, maybe sometimes.” She inclined her head. “Don’t you have a nickname?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe because Daniel suits you so well. Daniel in the lion’s den and all that.”

He shrugged.

The smell of scorching bread reached her. “Oh, drat!” she exclaimed, and pushed by him to rescue the sandwich she’d left on the stove. Smoke rose from the pan in stuttering curls. She grabbed a pot holder to rescue the skillet, coughing.

When Daniel came in, she said, “It’s only one sandwich. The rest are done. Will you yell down to the girls and tell them to wash up?”

“Sure.”

It was only then that she realized he hadn’t even argued with her about her request that they leave the passion between them alone. She looked over her shoulder as he leaned into the stairwell to call the girls. Her gaze caught on his long, jean-clad thigh, and she found a restless annoyance rustling her nerves.

Joleen came up first and slumped into her chair.

“You couldn’t have washed your hands that fast,” Winona said.

Without even a glance at her sister, Joleen stood up, crossed to the sink and washed her hands, then slumped back into her chair. Winona sighed. The silent treatment. Oh, joy.

The irritation on her restless nerves increased. She hadn’t asked for this responsibility, but she’d taken Joleen happily, without question. And every so often lately, she would have liked Joleen to act as though it meant something.

All at once, she realized how spoiled and sulky Joleen was becoming. And it was Winona’s fault for indulging the child too much. Her motives had been good, but she wasn’t doing Joleen any favors. Would her parents have allowed Joleen to behave this way?

Not in a million years.

With a rush of clarity, Winona put the sandwiches down. “Take your hat off at the table,” she said.

Joleen looked up, and even through her cat-eye glasses, Winona saw her shock. She simply stared at Winona for a long moment. Her pretty, pouty mouth slowly went hard.

Distinctly she said, “No.”

“Then you can take your food and eat outside.” Joleen didn’t move. At the top of the stairs, Daniel and Giselle stood as still as the walls.

“I mean it, Joleen. Take off the hat, or eat out on the porch.”

“You know I can’t do that—” Joleen began, the familiar beginning of a wordy, long protest.

“I’m not arguing,” Winona cut in. “I’m tired of looking at it, and so is everyone else.”

“But I—”

“Outside or hat off,” Winona repeated, turning back to the counter for the salad.

Joleen stood up so fast her knees hit the back of the chair. “I won’t eat, then!” she cried, making a wild grab for the chair: She caught it just before it fell.

“Don’t eat, then,” Winona said with a shrug, sitting down calmly at her place. “But don’t ask for anything else later.”

“Fine!” She shoved past Daniel on her way downstairs, her feet slamming hard on the wooden steps.

For one moment, Winona considered making Joleen come up the stairs and go down them again calmly. How often had her mother done that? Winona smiled at the memory, and reached for the salad.

It was only then that she realized both Daniel and Giselle were eyeing her with wariness. “What?”

“Where did that come from?” Daniel asked. Winona paused. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

He smiled and gave her a subtle thumbs-up sign.

“Maybe I ought to go down and see if she’s okay,” Giselle said, gnawing her lip.

“She’s fine,” Daniel said. “Sit down and eat.”

“But can’t you hear her? She’s
crying!”

“Mind your own beeswax, Gazelle.” Gently he put her in her chair. “You just haven’t been around sisters and brothers. This is normal stuff.”

Giselle peered at Winona. “Are you mad at her?”

“A little.” Winona took a bite of her sandwich. “Do you ever get mad at your mother? Does she ever get mad at you?”

“Yeah. All the time.”

Winona smiled. “Same thing, honey.”

“Eat,” Daniel said. “I want you guys to get a good night’s sleep. Staying up till all hours every night has to stop.”

Winona nearly choked on her grilled cheese. She looked up at Daniel.

And damned if he didn’t wink.

T
he clouds yielded no rain. All evening, they simply hung in the sky, casting a thick sense of anticipation through the atmosphere. Crackling flashes of distant lightning zigzagged over the sky, and Daniel felt restless with waiting. Waiting for the rain, waiting for the hours to pass.

Waiting for Winona.

At last the girls shut out the lights, and another hour passed before their murmuring ceased. It was nearly eleven, and Daniel had pretended to read through most of the evening. Winona had long ago fled to the front porch. Turning off the lights inside the house, he took the tape player outside with him and sat down next to her on the rough-hewn wooden bench.

She looked up nervously, then stared back up at the sky. In her lap was Percival, curled up and fast asleep.

“That dog is going to be mighty disappointed when he can’t curl up in your lap anymore,” he said.

“Let him enjoy it,” she said, scratching his ears lovingly. “He’s such a sweet puppy.”

Quiet fell between them, as charged as the clouds overhead. “I don’t think we’re going to get any rain,” she commented.

“No, I don’t, either.” He settled back against the wall, in no hurry now, content to wait for her to become comfortable. A stiff, warm breeze swept over the tops of the trees, rattling cottonwood leaves. Above flashed a thread of blue lightning. “It’s beautiful, anyway.”

“I’ve always liked storms.”

“You have? Why?” Along his bare arm, he could feel the faint warmth of hers.

“I don’t know,” she said. “The drama, I suppose.”

“I didn’t like them when I was a kid. There were holes in our roof, and the rain came inside. I hated it.”

She looked at him. “You don’t talk much about your family,” she said. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Yeah.” He picked up a twig from the bench and slumped lower so he could rest his feet on the wooden railing of the porch. “Somewhere.”

“You don’t know where they are?”

He methodically broke tiny pieces from the twig and tried to hit the tip of his toe with each one. “Nope. Don’t care, either.”

“That’s sad, Daniel.”

The tiny pieces fell short of his toe, so he broke off a bigger one and aimed again. “No, it isn’t. I was the odd one, you know. The mixed-blood kid. I had a different father than they did, and they never let me forget it.”

“Where is your father?”

He let go of a short laugh he had meant to sound cynical. It had sounded bitter, instead, and he felt chagrined that he was spilling any of this to begin with. “I don’t even know who he was, much less where he might be. He was some Chicano my mom met at a powwow in Albuquerque.”

“What about your mother?”

“Dead.” He ran out of twig pieces and looked through the dimness to the floor to see if he could see another one.

“So you don’t have anybody.”

Daniel looked at her. Her hair shone like a cloud of stars, wispy and almost ethereally lightweight around her face. Her expression was lost in the darkness, but he sensed her sorrow like a flow of lava, coming at him.

Harshly he cracked the twig in his hands, and said, “Don’t start feeling sorry for me, Winona. I turned out just fine, as you can see for yourself.”

“Sorry.”

This wasn’t going the way he had planned. Not at all. He was supposed to come out here, get her feeling comfortable, then play the tape to let her know he wanted her. Badly.

Instead there was this river of things flowing through him, putting distance between them.

Her voice came softly into the breach. “I really miss my parents. Joleen and I were very, very lucky. They loved us and they loved each other, and we had the most comfortable, warm childhood you can imagine.”

“So did Luke. His father loved his mother like a wild man. I knew it even when I was a kid.” Daniel leaned back again, remembering. “When she died it just about killed him. I remember he came back to the reservation and he’d turned into an old man overnight.”

“That was the one thing that was good about my parents’ death. At least they got to go on together, and one didn’t have to spend the rest of their life missing the other one.”

Daniel nodded. “I used to be jealous of Luke’s mom and dad. I’d see them, kissing and messing around when they didn’t think anybody was looking, and I’d be so jealous I could just have killed someone. I’d get home, and there was my mom, all by herself, or with her boyfriend of the moment, and all those kids.” He shook his head. “But when Luke’s mom died, I decided it would be better never to love that much than lose it all. Maybe my mom was the lucky one.”

“Do you really believe that, Daniel?”

Knowledge that this was the moment of truth made Daniel hesitate. If he said he did, which was the honest answer, he might lose any chance to make love to her. If he lied to reach his objective, he’d be no better than a dog. He took a breath and let it go. “Yes,” he said quietly, tossing a bit of stick at his toe. Bull’s-eye. “I really do. There are no guarantees in life. It makes no sense to put faith in things you can’t control. It puts you at the mercy of everything.”

“Oh, Daniel.”

She said it so sadly he couldn’t stand it. That was it, then. He’d done the right thing. He’d let her go, and there wouldn’t be any moral question in any of it. And since there was no point to this conversation, he ought to just go back inside and do something useful with his time.

But he didn’t move. There was an ache in his chest he hadn’t noticed until just now, and he felt as if he could cry.

Until she touched him, he didn’t know Winona had moved so close. She put her hand on his upper arm, as though to hold him in place, and pressed her mouth to his cheek. The dog groaned as she put him aside and moved closer, feathering her mouth over the side of Daniel’s face.

Daniel closed his eyes at the tenderness of the gesture, trying to swallow the ache in his chest, the ache that filled his throat, making it impossible to speak.

Her mouth moved to his ear, and she kissed him there, too, delicately, sweetly. Then his temple. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t speak.

She put her hand on his face, rubbing lightly. He turned his head and looked at her. Her pale eyes caught some of the lightning and flashed, and all he could see was that colorless light.

Then she bent her head close again, her hand cupping his face, and kissed his mouth.

The ache in his heart burst, and he felt the damage send slivers all through his body, stabbing everywhere. Something told him to run, to stop, but instead he felt his breath leave him. Her mouth was soft and giving and warm, her tongue a moist thrust against his own. He lifted his hands and threaded his fingers through her weightless hair, touching her scalp and her ears.