Something Has to Give (4 page)

Get a hold of yourself, Elsie
.

Dragging herself up the wall, Elsie straightened her spine. Rydecker might be a soldier, but she was used
to fighting too. She’d been fighting every single day for every fragile toehold of gain she’d taken, and she wasn’t about to back down now. If he’d had the power to really throw her out, the cop would have arrested her. He hadn’t; so Rydecker didn’t. The only way he could win this battle was by getting her to admit defeat.

Well, Elsie was al
l done being defeated.

She
scrubbed the tears she hadn’t realized were winding their way down her cheeks, and then she marched back into the bedroom. Sometime during her crisis in the hall, Rydecker had got up and shut the light off himself. He was back in bed now, still with his back to her, still with his arms folded across his chest. He was pretending to be asleep, but she knew better.

She wasn’t about to
strip down to her usual nightshirt, but she did kick off her shoes and then she got into bed, too. Robbing him of at least half of his blankets, she scissored them between her legs to ensure he couldn’t wrench them back and freeze her out during the night.

“
Damn it!” he swore, lifting his head off the bed’s only pillow while he tried ineffectively to tug back enough to cover himself.

She grabbed the pillow next and yanked it out from under him, then lay down facing the door with
it clutched tight in both hands.

Swearing again, she could feel Rydecker’s indecision a bare moment before he elbowed the mattress i
n frustration and lay back down with his head now cushioned on his own forearm.

It was a Mexican sleep-off, and it was one she intended to win. Back to back, they made that bed into a silent battlefield
, and neither one of them slept easily or well.

December 22
nd
…

Quint
awoke with the light of the rising sun glaring through a crack in the window curtain and falling directly across his face. Right away he knew he had two major problems: the first, Elsie was making a full-frontal assault on his side of the bed. Sometime during the night, he had taken back the pillow, and she had retaliated in true female fashion by turning him into a pillow instead. Her cheek was plastered to his chest. Her arm lay heavy across his stomach and she had one leg thrown indifferently across both of his. Flyaway wisps of tangled brown curls were tickling his shoulder, neck and one side of his face. She was snoring. Soft little in-drags of breath that puffed out again, spreading sleepy warmth across his pecs and down his ribs, adding merciless fuel to the fire of his second problem—he had morning wood the likes of which no military man wanted to wake up with while living in a barracks full of men…like
, ever
.

Except that
Quint wasn’t in a barracks full of men right now. It was worse than that; he was waking up in bed with Elsie—his mortal enemy (well, maybe that was a bit overly dramatic) and the first woman he’d been to bed with since his last leave with Maydeen. What had that been…three years ago? Oh no, a full-on morning erection was the last thing he wanted to have to explain right now.

He had to get out of this bed before he did something completely insane—like roll Elsie over,
rip those pesky jeans off her for the second time in less than twelve hours and, in a long, slow thrust (a motion he was certain would be the single most satisfying movement his body ever made), bury his cock all the way up inside her. He could already feel the mind-blowing heat emanating from her hot little core, like a brand searing its beckoning heat right into his hip.

Elsie softly snored again.

He had to get out from under her. Right now. Before he forgot how much he didn’t like the thieving little wench and made love to her instead.

H
e tried to move, but she stopped snoring and he froze, praying like hell she wouldn’t wake up. No such luck. She scrunched, hugging her arm in, drawing her leg up his body until her thigh was stroking right up the underside of his cock, pressing it hot against his belly with the bulbous crown peeking out at him from under the elastic waistband of his underwear. When she pulled in a sleepy sigh, her hand coming up to rub at her eyes, Quint completely panicked.

He erupted out of bed, throwing both her and the blankets back onto her side of the
mattress and leaping over the protesting top of both in his mad-dash to the bathroom.

“Hey!” she mumbled, thrashing to find her way out from under the blankets.

Quint slammed the bathroom door and threw the lock.

“Jackass
!” she barked after him.

Quint
didn’t care. He leaned both hands on the edge of the sink and concentrated on breathing. Let her go ahead and think he’d awoken angry. She
should
be afraid he was angry. Hell, he ought to be angry, not sporting the love-log of all erections!

“Jesus, man,” he growled, baring his teeth at his reflection. “Get it together.”

A small fist battered the other side of the door. “You’re not the only one who needs to pee first thing in the morning!”

Quint smacked the door right back. “There’s another bathroom in this house. Find it!”

“Jerk,” she sniffed, and stomped back to the bedroom.

Switching from sink to tub, Quint turned on the shower. Under the hot, pelting spray, he planted on
e hand against the tiles and vigorously rubbed one out just as fast as he could manage it. He closed his eyes while he did it, trying to see anyone’s face but Elsie’s, but his was the body of a son-of-a-bitch and it kept trying to feel her whisper-soft breaths moving across his chest, the way her fingertips had trailed him on their way to rub the sleep from her eyes and the slow caress of her leg stroking up so sweetly along the underside of his cock.

He swore, gripping hard as pure heat and need shot out through his hips and drizzled into the bottom of the tub. The spasms
were beyond pleasurable. He held himself frozen, fighting the urge to keep right on pumping until the final spasm stilled and his seed at last was spent. The spray of water washed both the tiles and his frame, sweeping tell-tale semen down the drain. His eyes closed, Quint kept his forehead pressed to the tile until he could breathe without panting.

That was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. He was made of st
ronger stuff than this. She was the enemy who was trying to steal his house out from under him. He did not need to spend his first morning home masturbating furiously to get her out of his system!

A soft bump rattled the bathroom door.

Lifting his head, Quint glared through the plastic shower curtain in that direction. He raised his voice to be heard over the falling water. “I said, use the bathroom downstairs!”

There was no answering reply.

Snorting, Quint straightened up under the spray and finally applied himself to using the shower as it was originally intended. He soaped every inch of himself, shampooed his hair three times and didn’t get out until he had exhausted the hot water supply. She wanted to live here, fine—he shut the water off and got out of the tub, toweling himself vigorously to get dry—but he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. In fact, he was going to make this the most miserable experience of her life. Give him a few days, and she’ll be running to get out of here before the winter snows made it impossible for either one of them to escape the other.

Having escaped to
the bathroom without a change of clothes and in nothing but his underwear, Quint pulled his shorts back on and reached for the doorknob. With any luck, Elsie would be downstairs making coffee or breakfast and he’d be able to dash back to the bedroom to get dressed in peace.

Except
that the door wouldn’t open.

Quint tugged, turning the
old porcelain knob first one way and then the other. The door budged only the merest centimeter and then no more.

“The hell you say,” Quint muttered, tugging again and again, but budging it no
further than before. “What the—” He stopped. He thought. “Oh, hell no.”

He
searched through the medicine cabinet and the under-the-sink cupboard, then finally rummaged through half of the six shelves that made up a very narrow linen closet located behind the bathroom door. Finally, he found something that would work—one of Maydeen’s many makeup compacts, fallen to the floor and kicked into the very back of the closet where it had become lost and then forgotten. Quint opened it up, laid it flat on the wood-floor slats, and there was just enough room under the door to push it through. He tipped and angled the small mirror until he saw Elsie, propped up against the railing overlooking the stairs. Arms folded across her chest, she gazed down at the small compact, looking smug.

The second thing he saw was the rope. He didn’t know where she’d got it, but she had tied one end to the doorknob and the other to the banister.

“You…bitch,” he said, marveling.

Pushing off the banister, Elsie squatted down over the compact. She
hunkered close enough for him to really see her face and then she smiled. Just before she snatched the compact away, she flashed him both middle fingers.

“Who’s the bitch now?” she said, laughing as she walked away.

* * * * *

Nanny Cactus, Nanny Sage, and Nanny Pita (which was really spelled P.I.T.A. and for very good reason) were patiently waiting for their morning milking when Elsie came out onto the back porch.

“There’s my babies,” Elsie greeted as she pulled her coat on. Her breath fogged the air. It was really getting cold here lately. Close as it was to Christmas time, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised, but then this was supposed to be the desert. If she’d known the days would get as cold in the winter as the nights often were, she’d have picked a more southern highway to get stranded on.

H
olding the milking can well up so the bottom wouldn’t tangle with inquisitive little goat horns, she pulled the short stool away from the wall and sat down. Cactus always went first, and from the moment Elsie sat down, she assumed the position with no prompting and waited to be relieved of her swollen discomfort. Of the three, Elsie liked Cactus the most. Cactus made the daily milking chore so much easier because she was so well-behaved.

Sage
ran a pretty close second. She tended to lean if Elsie wasn’t paying attention though, and now and then she still lipped at clothing, though she rarely nibbled.

P
.I.T.A. not only nibbled, she swallowed.

This morning, however, all three stood in a neat cluster, chewing their cud while they waited for the milking to be done, and now and then, they cast wary glances at the house where muffled cursing could still be heard coming from the upstairs bathroom.
Elsie was casting glances now and then, too. Rydecker didn’t seem to be settling down much. Tying him in the bathroom where he couldn’t interfere with her morning had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she was beginning to second-guess herself now. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do but leave him where he was until he calmed down.
If
he calmed down…

Taking the milk
to the kitchen, she headed back outside again. With collar bells clanking, seven goats came running out of the field to join the three nannies trailing along behind her to the sheds behind the house. Apart from the garage and barn, there were four small outbuildings total. Two she had converted into a chicken coop and goat shed, respectively. A third held the grain for both animals and the fourth she’d pretty much left alone. As she passed out the morning feed, she took a quick count: two billies, three nannies, the pretty spotted female who’d be ready to breed next spring, and Curries 1 thru 4, whom she was going to have to harden her heart against and butcher before winter set in. She gave them each a greeting and friendly petting and when it got to the Curries, she did her best to convince herself that she wasn’t checking to see how plump they were, then she turned her attention to the chickens.

Fi
fteen hens and two roosters came running the minute they saw her at the door. Spreading the grain mix in a wide arch so everyone would get fed, she gathered the early morning eggs and then headed back to the house.

Rydecker had the tiny second-story bathroom window open and he was glaring down at her through the screen. “You have to the count of three to let me out of here. One…”

“Two,” she sang out with him as she mounted the porch steps. “Three.” And then in her best Sesame Street Count impersonation, she added, “Three I don’t give a craps! Ha ah ah ah!” Then she went into the house.

She heard him bang his fist against the windowsill and laughed all the way to the kitchen. She didn’t really feel like laughing, but it was important when sharing a house to establish one’s domina
nce and show who was boss early on, and it sure wasn’t going to be him.

After giving the eggs a gentle rinse in the sink, she packaged them in cardboard cartons and put them in the fridge.
The rest of the morning she spent making cheese—heating the goat’s milk on the stove and adding vinegar to allow it to separate. She had just enough to make two batches. One she left plain and the other she spruced up with garlic and herbs before pressing into molds and taking them down into the basement to age hanging from the rafters.

No sooner had she emerged from the basement than
she heard a knock at the door. It was Ben Johnson, who ran the little breakfast café in a tiny hole in the wall called simply Benny’s. He bought all the eggs she had, plus two 8-ounce tubs of cream cheese and one round of aged cheese from the basement for himself.

“Goat cheese is an acquired taste,” he said. “Much too fine for most of the folk who patron my place.”

“You and Darby are about my only cheese customers,” Elsie acknowledged. “But between you, my poor goats can barely keep up.”

Ben winked at her. “Well then, tell Darby you’re sold out. Cheese, crackers and pepper jelly on top; that there is my idea of heaven.”

Throughout the visit, there wasn’t one sound from Rydecker upstairs, but as Ben was heading back to his car with two recycled Walmart bags full of eggs and cheese, he turned and offered a wave up toward her roof.

“Welcome home, Quint!” he called and then tossed Elsie a wink and a grin.
“Didn’t know you two were an item.”

God forbid.

Faking a smile, Elsie waved goodbye like her insides weren’t curdling with dread, but just as soon as his car had vanished down the winding driveway and that curtain of his retreating dust had dispersed in the wind, reluctantly her gaze tracked up to the rafters of the porch ceiling. She was going to have to do something about Rydecker, especially now that Ben had seen him. What if Ben talked and suddenly Rydecker started getting visitors? The sheriff might not arrest her for squatting, but she was pretty sure she could and would be arrested for holding someone imprisoned in a bathroom.