Beloved Wolf (10 page)

“How could you?” Sophie demanded, catching the door on the backswing and slamming it against the wall one more time. “Damn you, River James—how could you!”

“Evening, Sophie. Out a little late, aren't you? Has Chet gone to bed already? Guess maybe the long drive tired him out?” River asked, continuing to undo
the snaps on his shirt, and remove it, then carelessly toss it on a nearby chair.

She ignored his questions, clearly having her own agenda for this impromptu meeting. “You had no right.
No
right!”

“If you say so, Soph,” he answered calmly, putting a hand to his belt buckle, but then deciding he'd probably already pushed her about as far as she could go for the moment. “But just so I'm sure we're both talking about the same thing, I had no right to do what?”

Her huge brown eyes, the ones that could melt like warmed chocolate, narrowed to slits as she walked straight up to him, rammed her index finger against his chest. “You know damn well what you had no right to do. Taking Chet outside, threatening him like some big bully cowboy,” she told him, then sort of growled in exasperation. She dropped her hand to her side. “Oh, put your damn shirt on!”

River compromised. He picked up his black leather vest and slipped into it. “Better?” he asked, then hid a grin as Sophie's cheeks went hot and she turned away, refusing to look at him. “Gee, guess not.”

Sophie shook herself, then turned to glare at him once more. “You're insufferable, do you know that? No, don't answer. Of course you know that. You work on it, don't you? You love to see me go crazy. You know just what buttons to push to make me go crazy.”

“True, at least part of it,” River agreed. “I didn't know about the vest, though, or I probably would have tried it sooner. You like it, huh?”

There wasn't any steam coming out of Sophie's nose or ears, but there could have been, she was that incensed. “I loathe you when you're like this, River James. Ever since I first saw you, you've been driving me crazy, teasing me, making fun of me, laughing at me. That's all I was to you, Riv, the gum on your shoe that you couldn't get rid of, so you finally decided to tolerate me—and now you're acting as if you own me.”

River, who had been smiling, sobered. “That's not true, Soph, and you know it. You're the one who drove me crazy, remember? Tagging after me, not letting me perfect my angry young man routine, showing me that at least someone wanted to be around me.”

“Yeah, well…” Sophie closed her mouth, shook her head. “Oh, forget it,” she continued after a moment. “Just forget it. We had a good thing once, Riv. But not anymore. I'm not a kid and you're not obligated to ride to my rescue. Not over Chet, not for any reason. You got that?”

“Yeah, Soph, I got that,” River said, but he was talking to the night air, because Sophie was already gone.

S
he slid her hands beneath the black leather vest, ran her fingers over his bare chest. Felt his warmth, felt his flesh ripple, tighten, at her touch.

She touched her lips to his skin, traced his nipple with the tip of her tongue, eased closer against him, sliding one hand down, down…to encounter the silver buckle of his belt.

Barriers. Always barriers.

Moaning low in her throat, she fumbled with the buckle, feeling frustration tangling with the passion heating her body, moving her head lower, to bite, nip, at his skin.

Brrrrinnng.

Sophie's eyes flew open and she jackknifed forward in her bed, her heart pounding, her throat dry, too dry to swallow. She glanced around the room,
looked at the clock and slammed a hand on the thing to silence its insistent ringing, then fell back against the pillows.

“Oh, damn,” she said, shakily raising a hand to her forehead, staring up at the ceiling that was striped with morning sun coming through the slatted wooden shudders at the window. “Damn, damn,
damn!
”

 

Sophie met Chet at the breakfast table, as he was already loading his plate from the buffet Inez always set out on the weekend. Inez was usually short-staffed on the weekend, Nora Hickman, her kitchen helper having time off. Chet had chosen three thin slices of cantaloupe, two fat strawberries, and was now neatly spooning yogurt onto his plate. A plain bagel with a stingy layer of reduced-fat cream cheese completed his breakfast.

“Good morning, darling,” he said, showing himself to be as dense this morning as he'd been last night.

“Good morning, Chet,” Sophie answered, busying herself by loading down her plate with a thick slice of ham, two spoonfuls of scrambled eggs, another of home fries, and topping it all off with a slice of cantaloupe, just because it was there. She could eat healthy, too, damn it. “I hope you slept well.”

Chet put down his plate, then pulled back the chair next to him, waiting for Sophie to sit down. “To tell you the truth, I didn't. It's awfully quiet out here, isn't it? Next time I'll have to bring along a recording of street noises, just to make myself feel at home.”

Sophie smiled, as she was supposed to do, then
reached for the carafe of coffee already on the table. “I thought we'd take a drive this morning, Chet. We need to talk.”

He reached over, squeezed her hand. “We certainly do. Besides, I have something for you, darling, something that belongs to you.”

Sophie turned to him, searching for the right words, but her father chose that moment to come into the room, so she just smiled again, then lifted her cheek for Joe's kiss.

“Beautiful morning, isn't it?” Joe asked, then shook his head as Inez did another of her magical appearances and began loading a plate for her employer. “Really, Inez, I wasn't going to cheat.”

The housekeeper lifted the lid of a small silver bowl and spooned out cholesterol-free eggs, then placed three pieces of imitation bacon on the plate, following up with two slices of wheat toast spread with low-fat margarine. “Just be quiet,” she scolded, “and start on this. Your oatmeal is still in the kitchen. And the yellow carafe has the decaffeinated coffee, remember?”

Joe looked at his plate, then at Sophie, his expression comically pitiful. “The woman is killing me with kindness,” he said, then began poking at the too-yellow eggs with his fork. “I live for Sundays now, you know, because that's the only day she lets me have the real stuff.”

“You should try yogurt, sir,” Chet said, his condescending tone scraping down Sophie's spine like chalk on a blackboard. “Healthy, nutritious, and great for the waistline. Plus, my total cholesterol is one-
eighty-six, with my LDL and HDL right in the middle of the normal ranges.”

“Well, pin a medal on you,” Joe Colton muttered as Chet got up, went back to the buffet table for more fruit, then excused himself and headed toward the kitchen, for Sophie had taken the last of the cantaloupe and he wanted to ask Inez for more.

Joe leaned across the table and whispered, “I can't believe you invited him up here.”

Sophie leaned forward as well. “I didn't. Mom did. She only told me yesterday afternoon, when it was too late to head him off at the pass.”

“Meredith?” Joe asked, his eyes going hard. “Well, why the hell did she do
that?
”

“You'd have to ask her, Dad,” Sophie said, pushing her scrambled eggs around the plate with the tip of her fork. “I don't know what I'm going to do.”

Her father looked at her for long moments. “What do you mean, you don't know what you're going to do? Do you want him back?”

Sophie shook her head, then turned her attention to her breakfast, as Chet was heading toward the table once more, his plate now loaded down with honeydew melon slices.

“Your housekeeper is a treasure, Mr. Colton,” Chet said as he sat down. “And she certainly has your well-being very much in mind. Sophie, darling, you should think about your own diet, you know. It's never too late, or too early, to start eating healthy, thinking healthy.”

Sophie bit her tongue—she'd nearly told him she was considering taking up smoking, just to see how
he'd react—wondering if Chet had always been such a bore, or if she was so unhappy to see him that he couldn't please her no matter what he said or did.

She looked at him as he neatly cut the honeydew melon with knife and fork. Chet was in his usual weekend clothes: pleated dress slacks and silk, mock turtleneck pullover tucked into his waistband so that the Gucci buckle on his belt showed. He was tall and slim. Not exactly muscular, but without a spare ounce of fat on his body. His tasseled loafers always shone as if spit-polished, his hair was never out of place, and the gold watch on his left wrist had a black face, with a diamond marking twelve o'clock. His nails were buffed and neatly rounded, his cheeks freshly shaved, and the scent of Aramis clung to him.

Sophie tried to picture him in scuffed cowboy boots, faded jeans, a belt buckle designed by Levi Strauss, and a black leather vest slung carelessly over his bare chest.

Nope. It didn't work. Chet wasn't cut out for jeans or black leather vests. Not unless he was going to a Halloween party. Because, on Chet, it would be a costume. River, on the other hand, wore such clothes like a second skin, a skin he felt easy in, to walk a world he felt easy in, sure of himself, of who he was and what he wanted.

She closed her eyes, and saw River standing in front of her. The vest, the jeans, the cowboy boots. His long black hair below the brim of his cowboy hat—that was all that had been missing last night, the cowboy hat—his thumbs stuck through his belt loops, a slow, lazy smile on his face.

“Sophie? Sophie, are you listening?”

“Hmmm?” she said, her head snapping up as she realized her mind had been miles away, going places it had no business going, thinking thoughts it had no business thinking. “Oh, I'm sorry, Chet. I guess I'm not entirely awake yet.”

Which was true, because part of her was stuck in her dreams…and very reluctant to let go.

“Apology accepted, darling,” Chet said, and Sophie bit her lip to suppress a smile as her father made a rather rude noise low in his throat, then got up and carried his empty plate into the kitchen to exchange it for a bowl of oatmeal. “I thought we might drive into Prosperino today. Do a little shopping, stay there for dinner. How does that sound?”

It sounded about as exciting as watching paint dry, but Sophie just smiled and nodded and said something that probably sounded a lot happier than she felt. At least they wouldn't be alone all day, except in the car, and when she told him at dinner that she didn't want to see him anymore, well, Chet Wallace would never make a scene in public.

 

Louise Smith sat back on her haunches and smiled at her latest purchase, a small hydrangea plant with the most immense blue bloom topping it, rather like a colorful puff-ball on a stick.

Louise adored her garden, having turned nearly the entire small backyard of her house into beds devoted to tea roses, to perennials, to a long bed of cutting flowers. She'd had to consult books, not knowing the native plants in Mississippi, but she'd signed up for
catalogs, checked gardening books out at the local library and, last year, finally got up the courage to join the local gardening club.

She got to her feet, swiped a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, unknowingly depositing a smudge of black potting soil on her cheek, and turned, looked at the rather large cardboard box sitting on the brick patio she'd built by herself the previous summer.

“What have I gotten myself into?” she asked, examining the box from all sides as she walked around it. “I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew this time, Sparrow,” she told the brown tabby Persian just now sunning herself on a white wrought-iron chair.

The cat lifted its head, chirped at her and began washing herself with one fat paw. Sparrow talked, sometimes held entire conversations with Louise, but instead of a commonplace “meow,” she sort of chirped in short bursts. Hence her name, Sparrow. At least that was Louise's explanation, the one she gave anyone who asked about the unusual name. Actually the name came to her during one of her dreams, which was too ridiculous to tell anyone.

Her entire life was ridiculous, begun nine years ago as far as her memory was concerned, but much more fully explained by a stack of official prison documents and doctors' notes that told of a past definitely worth forgetting.

“Well, enough of that,” Louise told herself, picking up a large screwdriver and using it to rip open the tape holding the top of the box closed. She peeled back the cardboard bit by bit, feeling the effects of
both the heat and her exertion, and finally stood back to look at the fountain she'd ordered from the local nursery.

All she had to do now was put it together in about six thousand easily followed steps written in hieroglyphics, fill it with water, and plug it in to the nearest receptacle.

“And then I'll probably be qualified to single-handedly construct the next space shuttle,” she grumbled, paging through the thick instruction booklet.

“Knock-knock. Anybody home back here?”

Louise smiled as she looked toward the garden gate and saw Dr. Martha Wilkes standing there, holding up a small picnic basket. “Oh, what a nice surprise. Come in, come in. I can use all the help I can get.”

“Hi, Louise,” Dr. Wilkes said, opening the gate, then depositing the wicker basket on a low table. She was dressed casually, in beige twill shorts and a simple V-necked shirt with a leopard-skin pattern, her hair tucked beneath a triangle of bright orange cotton.

“Wow, is that the fountain?” she asked, walking around the box, shaking her head at all the pieces. “After you told me it was being delivered today, I decided that, since it's Saturday, maybe I'd stop by and lend a hand. I'd say you could use more than one hand. I hope you're good at jigsaw puzzles.”

“I should have paid extra for assembly and setup, shouldn't I?” Louise said, shaking her head. “But I've always loved a challenge.”

“Really?” Dr. Wilkes said, tipping her head as she looked at her patient and friend. “Well, so do I. What do you say we get started?”

 

River watched as Erik Tapler guided the roan stallion around the corral, occasionally flashing River a wide grin. After three hours of education and getting to know each other, horse and rider were doing just fine, and River felt a small surge of satisfaction knowing that he'd had a hand in bringing man and beast together.

Besides, it gave River something to do besides walking around the stables, muttering a lot and kicking things while he waited for Chet Wallace's BMW to come back up the road leading to the house.

“I can't believe it,” Erik said as he dismounted, patted the roan's neck. “He's a new horse. You're a miracle worker, River. What do I owe you?”

River lightly jumped down from the five-barred gate and went over to stroke the stallion's velvety nose. “One free stud service ought to do it.”

“For you, or for Colton Enterprises?” Erik asked as he removed the saddle and handed it to one of the Colton stable hands before leading the roan toward the horse trailer just outside the gate.

“For me,” River said, following after his friend. “How did you know?”

“Well, I heard something about it somewhere. Joe Colton gave you some land and you're going to be building your own stud as well as running his. Do I have that right?”

“Almost right, Erik,” River told him, amazed at how fast news traveled. “I've
bought
some ranch land from Joe, and am now mortgaged straight up to my neck, as I'm planning a good-size stable on the prop
erty, and my own house. Joe's holding the paper, which was his idea, but he knows I'll pay him back. Every penny.”

“Anybody who knows you knows that, Riv,” Erik agreed, nodding his head. “Wow. Running this stable, building your own. You're going to be a busy man.”

“Sometimes that's a good thing,” River said, watching the empty road. “Besides, it's time I started thinking about making my own fortune. You can't be around the Coltons for long without thinking about your own fortune.”

The roan was led into the trailer without a problem, causing Erik to shake his head. “It took five of us to load him to bring him over here. I tell you, Riv, you'll be a millionaire in a week, with that talent of yours.” He held out his hand, and River shook it. “Well, good luck to you, not that you'll need it.”

“Thanks, I'll take it.” River stood in the middle of the gravel drive, watching truck and horse trailer drive off, then sighed, turned back to the stables, pretty sure the BMW wouldn't be arriving back at the ranch until after the sun had been down for hours.

Luck? Hell, he'd take all the luck he could get.