Love, Like Water (23 page)

Patting his hand, Tucker said, “Nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Joshy. You’re my boy. Sleep well.”

“Thanks, Uncatuck.”

The kitchen was quiet after he was gone. Tucker finished his coffee, but sat there at the table thinking a while before Sarafina came in to start breakfast. Then he shook his head, kissed her cheek, and went in to his office.

Chapter 20

T
HE
alarm went off at 6:30. Eli flung his arm out without looking and smacked the snooze bar, then opened one eye and stared at the time. Why had he thought he’d set it for five? He usually set it for six, so he had time for a shower before breakfast, and he really needed one this morning, for some reason…. Oh. Right. He raised his head to see the other half of the bed empty, and Joshua’s clothes gone from the floor. Josh must have reset the alarm.

Josh. Eli let his head thunk back down on the pillow. Fuck breakfast—he had more to worry about than that.

His stomach growled, though, and so he got up and showered and dressed, then went looking for chow. As he crossed the yard, Dennis, Frank, and Ramon came out of the house and crossed his path. “Hey, Eli,” Dennis greeted him. “You’re running late this morning. Must be—hell, nearly seven o’clock!” The others chortled—Eli was notorious for being an early riser.

“Yeah, well, even I oversleep sometimes,” Eli said with a casual wave, and went on into the kitchen.

The rest of the hands were still there. It looked like Jason had only just arrived and was fetching his coffee. Tuck looked up from his usual seat and said coolly, “Mornin’, Eli.” His eyes met Eli’s and Eli’s appetite fled.
Shit. He knows.

He took the mug that Jason handed him and sat down in
his
usual spot, catercorner from Tucker. Sarafina set a plate full of breakfast burritos and fried potatoes in front of him. “You’re late,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m late. Jesus. I overslept. It happens.”

“I only made an observation,” Sarafina said. “
I
don’t care if you’re late. I’m still cooking.”

“Sorry.” Eli rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t sleep so good.”

“Not enough exercise before bed?” Tuck asked innocently.

Eli had just put his coffee cup to his lips but hadn’t taken a sip yet, for which he was grateful. “Got my regular routine in,” he said carefully. “My sleep was just—interrupted. Had a hard time getting back to sleep.”

“Tucker had some insomnia this morning, too,” Sarafina said. “I came down to find him drinking coffee at five-thirty.” She shook her head. “You both drink too much coffee. No wonder you have trouble sleeping.”

Shit. Tuck must have intercepted Joshua.
“That so?”

“Uh-huh,” Tucker said, and sipped his coffee.

Eli dug into the burritos and home fries, blocking out the look he was sure he was getting from Tucker and trying not to pay attention to the fact that the food tasted like paper. Jason and Tom didn’t seem to notice any undercurrents, but the silence crawled over Eli’s skin like bugs.

Finally, Tucker got up, put his plate in the sink and said to Sarafina, “When Josh gets done eating, send him into the office. We’re gonna work on payroll today. Eli, I want you to take Spence and Pat out to the canyon where the culled mamas are and introduce them to ’em. Make sure they’re good and scared—the men, not the mustangs. That lead mare should make ’em crap their shorts.” Tucker’s grin was evil. “They’re a little too smug, if you ask me. Need to shake ’em up a bit.”

“My pleasure.”

“After lunch you get Josh again.” Was the grin a little eviler? “I want you to start working with him on his riding skills. Put him in the arena and through his paces. He’s been doing okay with Avery?”

“Fine. Seems to remember most of what he learned about riding.”

“Good. Then maybe we can graduate him to something a little more lively. I think that bay’ll be good for him. Rodney’s given him a clean bill of health, and he seems like he’s got some spirit. Start working with him and Josh.”

“Right.”

“Then after supper I think you and I need to conference on… um, let’s call it ‘personnel issues’. That all right with you, son?”

Do I have a choice?
“Fine,” he said hoarsely, and took a gulp of the orange juice Sarafina had just set in front of him.

T
HE
day dragged, of course. Taking the two trainees out to see the horses in the canyon was entertaining: the mustangs were pretty damn pissed and still wild, even after two months in captivity, and disturbed by Manny and Billy’s visit the day before. They were all feisty and belligerent, and the head mare in the herd kept charging at them at odd moments. Eli knew she was just displaying, but the trainees didn’t, so it was kind of fun to freak them out.

Then it was a matter of explaining how the ranch handled the mustangs’ gentling and training, and that was less fun, because Patrick seemed to have a lot of bad ideas and Spencer was generally clueless. By the time Eli turned them over to Dennis to have them explore his farrier’s shop, he was exhausted, more mentally than physically.

He missed Josh at lunch; he ate late when he got back from the canyon and then went out into the stable yard to touch base with the other hands and trainers. He was inspecting a barrel that had corroded and split, and cursing the wasted grain, when he heard Joshua’s voice. It was raw with pain.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how it can work. There’s so much I can’t give him, and if he knew—if he even suspected…. Jesus. I don’t know what to do.”

Setting the barrel carefully on its side, with the crack upwards so as not to spill any more grain, he rose, dusting his hands.

“I mean, shit. I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anyone.”

Nobody responded. Frowning, Eli peered around the door to the storage room.

Joshua was standing next to a pile of boxes. The cat was sitting on the top box, his eyes closed under Joshua’s scratching fingers, and purring fit to beat the band. As Eli opened his mouth to speak, Joshua whispered in a broken voice, “It’s killing me….”

Taking a long step back into the storage room, Eli leaned back against the wall. Shit. What was Joshua talking about? Something important. Something probably having to do with his experiences undercover. But what could be so bad? He already knew about the heroin—could it be that Josh was still using? But how did he get it, if he was? Someone in the hospital? He couldn’t believe that. Besides, he explored every inch of Joshua’s skin last night, and he’d have seen any fresh marks.

But then Joshua murmured, almost too softly for Eli to hear, “So much blood…. Why can’t I forget? Why can’t I ever forget?”

Shit
. Eli walked quietly over to the barrel, kicked the metal side and said loudly, “Son of a bitch!” A moment later, Josh stuck his head in the door and said, “You in here, Eli? What’s wrong?” in a perfectly normal voice.

“Buggering thing split. Looks like it corroded along the seam. The sides are aluminum, but they musta used something else to seal the seams. Shit. I hope the grain ain’t spoiled.”

“Did it cost a lot?”

“Yeah, this is the special high-test for the rescue animals. This pisses me off. I’m gonna have to find another supplier.”

“You need to contact this company first,” Josh said. “See if you can get a discount or replacement grain. Because this could have cost you a lot if you hadn’t found it as quickly as you did. They need to have better quality materials. They need to be aware of it, and take responsibility.”

“Huh,” Eli said. “Good thinkin’. But I’m still gonna look for a different supplier.”

Joshua nodded. Eli set the barrel aside, and went to Joshua’s side. Putting a hand on Joshua’s jaw, he said quietly, “You’re okay, Josh—you just need to figure that out.”

Joshua made a sound halfway between a sniff and a snort, but he leaned back against Eli’s hand. “Thanks, Boss.”

“Just the truth.” He kissed Joshua’s cheek. Josh turned then, and slid his arms around Eli’s waist, letting his cheek rest on Eli’s shoulder. “That’s nice,” Eli said.

“You’re nice. You’re too nice for someone like me.”

“Hey. You criticizing my selectivity?”

Josh chuckled. “No, I’m not criticizing your ‘seeee-lek-tivity’, Boss. Just your taste.”

“Brat.” Eli delivered a sharp smack to Joshua’s backside. Josh obligingly yelped, and Eli kissed him, hard, before turning him loose. “Come on, I need to see a man about a horse.”

S
UPPERTIME
came too quickly for Eli’s liking. He’d spent some time with Joshua and Rory, but they seemed to like each other well enough, and after putting Josh through his paces in the arena, Eli pronounced them acceptable.

Spencer and Patrick had observed Josh in the ring, and Eli talked loud enough for them to hear as he explained what they were looking for in matching up a rider and a horse. For once, they didn’t ask too many stupid questions, and when he reviewed with them later, they seemed to get the gist of it. Maybe they weren’t as stupid as they were, just… thick. Stuck with preconceptions. That was the usual flaw in most of the people Tucker had brought in as trainees—he had to see something worth his time and their money, but most of them had ground-in ideas that needed to be rooted out.

To be fair, Eli was a little bit prejudiced—at least against Spencer, because of his apparent interest in Joshua. He didn’t blame the boy. Now that Josh was looking a little less gaunt, and the dead look in his eyes was making rarer appearances, he was turning into a handsome man. And he did have a nice smile when he used it. He had a long way to go to look healthy, but his coloring was better.

He said so when he walked into Tucker’s office that evening after supper.

“Yeah, he is looking better,” Tucker agreed. “Due to Sarafina’s food, I expect—thanks for helping me keep him fed while he was in the hospital. That swill ain’t nothing worth eating.”

“I didn’t mind.” He didn’t. At the beginning, it was a little awkward. Josh didn’t talk, so when he visited, Eli would dish out whatever Sarafina had sent with him, and just natter on about whatever was going on at the ranch. He didn’t address Joshua’s “getting lost” or his health or anything else personal; he just talked about the ranch.

Later, Eli thought Josh was looking forward to his visits and the food he brought—by the end of the week, he was responding to Eli some as he scarfed down whatever chile-covered dish he’d carried in. Just an occasional, stray, quiet question, but enough to show Eli he was listening.

“He seems to be settling in better.”

“Yeah. We had a talk about that while he was still in the hospital. I told him to give us six months, and if he still didn’t feel like staying, I’d pay for his plane ticket back to Cincinnati or wherever he wanted to go. But he had to promise not to do anything stupid in the meantime. I sure as shit hope that shrink he’s seeing can straighten him out. He’s a smart kid, and a good kid, and the hands like him already. They were really concerned when he got lost.”

“Yeah.” Eli never wanted to live through anything like those hours again. When his dad died, it was fast and he knew about it within an hour of it happening. Dealing with it was shit, but there was none of this “not knowing” that made Josh’s disappearance so bad.

“Okay. Shut the door and siddown, Elian. We need to talk.”

Eli obeyed but stayed standing, his arms folded over his chest. “You got something to say to me, Tucker Chastain, you out and say it. I’m done waiting.”

“Woo, boy, enough with the tough guy. I ain’t firing you, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I want to talk to you about Josh. I spent the whole day thinking about it.”

“Look, Josh and I are both adults. We’re both consenting and neither of us is taking advantage of the other. I know you ain’t comfortable with me being gay, and I try not to flaunt it, and Josh don’t want to flaunt it either. So there ain’t gonna be no kissy-face at the table or other PDAs….”

“What the Sam Hill is a ‘PDA’?” Tucker demanded. “I thought them was what people had before their smart phones or whatever?”

Eli rolled his eyes. “Public Display of Affection.”

“Well, shit, boy, I got nothing against affection. As long as you aren’t bumping uglies in my living room, you display affection all you like. Just don’t go kissing him so’s the other hands can see, ’cause that could get ugly.”

“That’s kinda what it means, Tuck.”

“Oh. Well, shit.” Tucker threw up his hands. “I just ain’t up with all that crap. Guess I don’t watch enough TV.”

“Probably.”

“Point is, I don’t care if you’re queer, and Josh is queer, and you guys… do whatever it is queers do together, and I really don’t want to know, okay? I get that. But if you’re just dicking around with Josh and he gets hurt, I’m gonna be pissed, and then I
will
fire your ass,
comprendes
?”

“
Comprendo
,” Eli agreed.

“I know what the Bible says, but I ain’t a churchgoing man, and from what I’ve read there’s a lot of damn silly stuff in the Bible anyway, about shrimp, and ladies’ bosoms looking like pomegranates, and having multiple wives. I mean, shit. I like shrimp, and I ain’t never seen anybody’s bosoms looking anything like pomegranate, and hell, I never had enough patience for any one of the ladies I dated, let alone a couple at the same time. So I figure the Bible can’t be right all the time. And if it’s wrong about some things, who’s to say it ain’t wrong about that too. I heard tell of two gay penguins once, and some dogs’ll hump other dogs when there’s bitches standing around watching, so who am I to say what’s natural and what ain’t?”