Morning Light (25 page)

“Well, I'm not planning to sleep tonight, so shoot.”

“It's not that big a thing, really. Just another small wrinkle to iron out.”

“We've done pretty well ironing them out so far. What is it?”

Clint got that weird, tight feeling in his chest again. But sooner or later she was going to start wondering why he hadn't kissed her a second time, so he had no choice but to tell her.

“I can't have sex.”

L
oni was certain she hadn't heard Clint right. She'd felt his arousal last night when he kissed her, and she'd seen evidence of the same yesterday morning when they first awakened. How could he possibly be impotent?

“I'm sorry?” She turned a questioning gaze on him. “Could you repeat that, please?”

His normally burnished face had taken on a ruddier hue. “I can't have sex,” he informed her huskily. “I gave it up.”

She searched his dark eyes, which were usually alight with mischief. Not now. He appeared to be dead serious. “Lent ended on Easter.”

“No, no, not for Lent. I mean I gave it up permanently.”

“Permanently?”
Loni had been waiting all her adult life to finally experience the joys of womanhood, and now the man of her dreams was telling her he'd given up sex? This couldn't be happening. “Why on
earth
would you do that?”

“Not permanently. Bad choice of words. Outside of wedlock, I mean. I promised myself I'd never again have sex unless I was married.”

“Oh, I see.” Only she didn't see at all. If he had indulged in sex previously, what had possessed him to turn over a new leaf right before he met
her
? She was thirty-one years old. She'd followed the rules her entire life. Was it so wrong for her to wish she could do something really,
really
bad for once? Something deliciously bad, of course—like making love under the stars with the man of her dreams. Literally, the man of her dreams. “What led you to reach that decision?”

He rubbed a hand over his face and then blinked as if to bring the world back into proper focus. “I know it doesn't sound very macho, but I reached a point where I didn't like myself anymore, and I realized I had to straighten up my act. There were a lot of women over the years. Not dozens or anything.” He flashed her a meaningful look. “I don't want you to think I was one of those guys who picked up a different woman every Friday night. But over the years, starting when I was a freshman in college, I'd occasionally meet someone I liked well enough to date for a while. I never set out to have sex with anyone. It always sort of…Well, you know how it goes. You're only friends, and you don't expect the relationship to go there, but somehow it does, and then you feel bad about it.”

Loni
didn't
know how that went, and she found the situation very frustrating, despite all of her moral convictions.

“Anyway, that was the pattern. I'd meet someone, screw up, go to confession, and have every intention of never doing it again. Only I eventually would. Six months later, maybe a year. I wasn't a monk, after all. I wasn't married. Like any young person, I needed to go out and have fun, and when you hang out at honkytonks, people tend to pair off toward the end of the evening, even if they don't arrive there with a date.”

“What's a honky-tonk?”

“A bar with a dance floor, most times with a live country-western band. Anyway, a little over a year ago I met this gal. She was fun, and I enjoyed her company. Following my usual pattern I dated her for a while, content to have someone to go out with and not expecting anything more. She was divorced, had two teenage kids. She seemed okay with just being friends. She didn't dress seductively or press me for anything more than a quick kiss good night. I honestly thought…Well, looking back on it, I should have known it would happen sooner or later. I'm a man. I have needs. Sometimes certain parts of my anatomy take over, and my common sense flies out the window.”

“So you had sex with her.”

“Yeah. She'd never seen a foal born, and I had two mares that were ready to drop. I invited her out to the ranch for supper, and then we went to the arena to attend a birth. I rarely bring women home, as in almost never, because my dad lives close, but with the foal coming, I made an exception.”

“You can actually predict the time of a birth that closely?”

“Not to the hour, no. But we can tell when a mare's in labor. Anyway, it was a great evening. We had fun. And when we went back to the house to get her things so I could drive her home, she was suddenly all over me. Before I knew quite how it happened, it was over. She apologized; I apologized.” He raked a hand through his hair. “It's a nasty feeling when you do something like that with someone and both of you regret it afterward. The sex was good. I mean—” He broke off and waved a hand. “When a man goes as long as I do between times, it's
always
fairly good.”

Loni drew her sleeping bag up around her chin. She really,
really
didn't want to hear about his sexual exploits. It had been
good
? How was that supposed to make her feel? Jealous was how it made her feel. She wanted to poke him with her elbow again, only this time not in fun.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I really thought we'd both agreed that a serious relationship wasn't for us, that we'd return to the way things had been, just being friends. Only I soon realized that wasn't her plan at all. All of a sudden she started buying me gifts. Expensive stuff. One time a belt buckle trimmed in real gold with my initials engraved on it, and then a money clip that must have cost the earth. I knew she couldn't afford that kind of money with two kids to support. I also realized she was getting serious. I started getting nervous, really nervous, so I took her out to dinner one evening and told her we needed to end it, that I liked her a lot as a friend, but that I didn't love her and would never love her.”

“Oh, Clint.”

“She seemed okay. I took her home. About three o'clock in the morning I got a call from her sixteen-year-old son. His mother had just been rushed to the hospital. She'd OD'd on sleeping pills.”

“Oh, dear
God.
”

“She didn't die. What shook me to the core was that my callous treatment of another human being had made her want to take her own life. She had
kids
, for God's sake. They
needed
her. I almost destroyed their world.”

“She can't have been emotionally stable, Clint.”

“No. Come to find out she had a history of emotional problems—” Clint broke off and met Loni's gaze. “But there I go again, making excuses. The bottom line is, you can never look into someone's heart and know, really know, what she's all about. In her mind she'd created a fantasy romance between us, and to her that was the reality, not my saying I counted her only as a friend. I should never have had sex with her. She was okay until then. It was only
after
that she started with the romantic cards and presents, only
after
that she developed the big emotional attachment.

“They put her in the psych ward. She received the counseling she needed. And I went to Father Mike for the counseling
I
needed. You can't live your life the way I was living mine. Looking back, how many other women have I hurt? Maybe they didn't take sleeping pills, but they may have suffered in other ways. We have the Ten Commandments for a reason, and they are rules even an atheist should follow. If we don't, we hurt people. There's no way to get around it. Sexual intercourse is the most intimate act two people can engage in. Bonds are formed. You can lie to yourself and pretend differently because
you
feel okay, but you're not around the next morning to see how
she
feels. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Loni did understand. “Is she okay now?”

“She called once to tell me she was sorry.
She
was sorry. Damn, I felt like such a jerk. Come to find out her dad walked out when she was a teenager. She felt rejected and looked for affirmation with boys. Later with men. Her marriage was a repeat performance of her childhood. Her husband came home one evening and told her he didn't love her anymore. She had been hurt over and over again, and my decision to stop seeing her pushed her over the edge. When she called, she assured me she was feeling better, still in counseling, and back on the right track. Asked if I'd like to do lunch. I could tell she still wasn't over me, that she hoped there might still be a chance for us.”

Loni turned on her side to watch his expressions. “So you decided never to risk hurting anyone again.”

“Yeah, essentially. But more than that, I promised myself I'd never have sex outside of marriage again. Until I met you I had pretty much given up on ever getting married, so for me it was a lifetime commitment. If you can't do something right, don't do it at all. My dad's told me that all my life. It just took me thirty-six years to figure out that the rule should also apply to sex. It's not for sport. It's not a game. The stakes are very high for some people.”

He rubbed a hand over his face again. “I hope you'll bear with me on this. I want to kiss you again, I swear to God, but I'm afraid I'll lose control if I do. And I can't do that. Especially not with you. When it happens between us, it has to be right, not just in our eyes, but also in God's. I want to build a life with you—love you, raise a family, grow old together. Why risk starting out on the wrong foot when it requires only a little willpower to wait and do it right?”

Loni sighed. He looked over at her, clearly eager for her answer. For a moment she couldn't think what to say. Finally it came to her.

“How do you feel about very short engagements?”

He laughed. “It can't be too short. Father Mike will insist on our taking marriage preparation classes.”

“How do you feel about getting married in Reno and
then
taking marriage preparation classes?”

His amusement faded. “We can't do that, honey. We're both Catholic.”

She sighed again. “You've had your turn at confession. Now it's mine. I haven't ever.”

“You haven't ever what?”

A hot, itchy feeling crawled up her neck. “Had sex.”

He shot her an incredulous look. “Come again?”

“I've never had sex.”

A deathly quiet settled between them. When an ember popped behind her Loni almost jumped out of her skin. Clint just stared at her with a blank look on his face. When he finally spoke his voice sounded strained.

“Well,
hell.
”

Though they didn't talk any more, they were both still awake at dawn and up in time for Loni to wash at the creek, a thoroughly chilling experience, which she tried to tell herself was invigorating.
Yeah, right.
She used a rag to freshen up, scrubbing her armpits without removing her shirt. Then she rinsed the rag to use again later and knelt on a rock to wash her hair. The water was so icy it made her teeth ache. Once in the tent she freshened her nether regions and put on a set of clean clothes. She felt halfway human by the time she joined Clint at the fire for morning coffee.

“Wish we still had the eggs and bacon,” he informed her. “We can't head out until full light because the horses can't see that well. There's plenty of time to cook.”

“I think the wolves needed the food more than either of us does.”

They settled for sharing a heated can of corned beef hash and the leftover corn bread. Even that tasted pretty darned good. Loni decided the mountain air and the smell of wood smoke increased her appetite somehow. Normally corned-beef hash ranked low on her list of favorites.

Over their second mug of coffee, Clint asked about her romantic relationships to date.

“I never had one, obviously.”

He gave her that stunned, incredulous look again. “There must have been men, Loni. You're beautiful.”

“I was asked out. But it never went anywhere. I'm not exactly normal, you know. I felt it was only fair to be up-front with people, so on the second date I always told the men the truth about myself. When I did, I watched for their reactions, which covered a broad range. Most of them never called for a third date. Those who did…well, I could see no point in taking it any further because I knew they wouldn't be able to handle my clairvoyance over the long haul.”

“So you turned them down.”

She nodded. “And, like you, I finally came to think I'd
never
meet someone. When I was twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight, I even started to dread meeting you.”

“Me?
Why
?”

“Because I…” She couldn't think how to explain. “When you're young, being a virgin is okay. In this day and age, with a large percentage of girls becoming sexually active in their teens, it isn't
normal
, but at least it's not too weird. In your early twenties you start to feel sort of funny about it. ‘What's wrong with me? Why can't I find someone?' That sort of thing. Then your late twenties roll around, and you're embarrassed to even tell a girlfriend. I just couldn't imagine finally meeting you and having to confess that I was still a virgin. It makes you feel like something icky hanging on a clothing rack that nobody ever wanted.”