Desperado

  He nodded. “Luisa is twenty-eight and has five kids. She’s on welfare, although she helps my mother out on some cleaning jobs sometimes. LuLu—she hates that nickname, by the way—is divorced and lives at home.”

  A flash of anger in Rafe’s eyes warned Helen not to ask for more details about Luisa—for now.

  “My mother and I have to help her pay her bills most months. Her husband left her with a pigload of debts. Plus, she has a baby with asthma. I’m hoping LuLu finds another husband soon so she’ll get off my back. I don’t suppose you know any wealthy, eligible bachelors who’re in the market for a ready-made family?”

  She knew he was only kidding, or was he? “Go on.”

  He stood and stretched, yawning again, then walked over to nudge Zeb awake.

  “What? What?” Zeb flustered. “Are you done with yer story already?” he asked Helen.

  She and Rafe laughed companionably as Zeb shuffled outside. With still another yawn, Rafe sat on the bed and began to unlace his boots while she threw a quilt over Hector and made sure he wasn’t too close to the fire.

  When she turned back to Rafe, he’d already removed his boots and socks and was starting on his shirt.

  “So, finish with your family. You were down to Luisa.”

  He pulled a face at her. “Eduardo is next. He’s, oh, about twenty-six. Eddie keeps changing jobs. Last I heard he was a firefighter. Before that, he drove a truck, worked for the post office, was a disc jockey, and dozens of other things. Even a—you won’t believe this!—male centerfold.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “He’s trying to find himself.”

  “Is he married?”

  “Nope, but he’s been engaged to the same girl for some time. Her parents don’t consider him very stable. He’s not.”

  “Does he live at home?”

  He shook his head. “He and my youngest brother, Ramon, who’s twenty, share an apartment in Long Beach. Ramon, when he’s not being a rabble rouser, attends UCLA.”

  She decided to save her questions about the rabble rousing for later. “You left two out.”

  “I didn’t think you’d notice,” he groaned. He was down to his T-shirt, which he quickly pulled over his head. He stood, about to unbutton his pants. “Helen, Helen, Helen,” he admonished, “I hope you’re not thinking of watching me get naked. After yesterday’s near disaster, I’m not sure I could take any more temptation.”

  Disaster? He considers our making love a disaster? She cringed, ducking her head so he wouldn’t see the hurt.

  Rafe came up behind her and pinched her bottom, whispering against her ear, “Just teasing, Prissy.”

  When she looked back over her shoulder, he was already in bed with the quilt up to his waist.

  “Finish,” she ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He saluted. “Jacinta is twenty-three, a nurse. J. C. thinks she knows everything. Really. She’s the world’s biggest know-it-all. Worse than me. She graduated from nursing school last year, and she plans to go to graduate school soon.” His brow furrowed. “She might have already started by now. Wonder if she got the money.”

  Rafe’s reminder of their return to the future jarred her. To her surprise, Helen realized that she hadn’t thought about going home in a long time. How could that be?

  “And the last one is Carmen. I skipped her out of order . . . deliberately.” Rafe’s voice softened when he said her name. “Carmen is twenty-two. She has the most beautiful smile in the world. I ought to know. It cost me eight thousand dollars in orthodontic bills.”

  Helen could tell that Rafe was especially close to this sister, despite his griping.

  “Carmen is a dancer. As long as I can remember, practically from the crib, Carmen’s been dancing. All kinds of dancing, but the worst was the tap dancing. Lord, oh, Lord! I threatened hundreds of time to hide those damn tap shoes. She would tap from the kitchen table to the refrigerator. She would tap to the bathroom. She would tap while taking out the garbage. Sometimes I still hearing that tap-tap-tapping in my dreams.”

  She couldn’t help giggling at that image. “So, is Carmen the one who taught you to dip?”

  He jiggled his eyebrows at her. “Nah, that was Barbie Bimbolini. She taught me to dip, and a few other things.”

  “Liar,” she hooted. “Geez, couldn’t you be more original than Bimbolini?”

  He crinkled his nose at her. “Anyhow, Carmen doesn’t tap dance much anymore. She’s into modern dance, and she just made the L.A. Dance Company. She’s touring Europe right now. Of course, she needed five thousand dollars for extra expenses, and guess who she came running to?”

  “Oh, Rafe, your family sounds wonderful!”

  “Huh?” Her compliment stunned him. “You must be nuts. I just told you the good stuff. They’re a bunch of screwball, loud, interfering, demanding leeches. We had a motto in our house: take a breath, you lose a turn. Take my word for it, you wouldn’t like them. Nope, you definitely wouldn’t like them.”

  “Rafe, I already like them.”

  He gave her a level stare. “Then you are nuts.”

  “And I love you.”

  He closed his eyes and his lips moved silently. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was praying. If fact, she thought she heard him mention St. Augustine.

  She decided to answer his prayers and not push him beyond his endurance. “I’m going outside to do some forms and meditate,” she said.

  “Stay near the house,” he cautioned.

  She turned in the doorway to peer back at him. Rafe was half-sitting against the headboard with both arms folded behind his neck, grinning. His body still carried bruises from his various beatings. His hands were calloused from hard work. She wanted more than anything to make love with the handsome rogue, to feel him inside her body again, to show him with kisses and caresses just how much he meant to her, to strengthen this tenuous bond that was growing day by day between them. But I can’t.

  “Go to sleep,” she said. Maybe tomorrow will be the day we hit a strike, and we can head home. Maybe then we can end this sexual torture you’ve imposed on us. Maybe then we can plan a future together.

  Together? Will we be together in the future? Helen wondered, suddenly alarmed. Rafe had never mentioned marriage, or living together, or commitment of any kind. In fact, over and over, he’d made it clear he’d never marry or have children.

  That night, Helen had trouble meditating and doing her forms. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring her mind to a state of harmony. Rafael Santiago was clouding her concentration.

  The games rogues play . . .

  “I’ll give us two more weeks of prospecting. If we don’t hit a strike by then, we’ll go home,” Rafe told her the next morning. “It’s October ninth now. Our deadline will be October twenty-third. Okay?”

  Startled by his sudden announcement, she asked, “Why? I mean, why are you giving up now?”

  He shrugged. “Reality, sweetheart. We’re in a race against the elements. Another two months and we risk being snowed in for the winter. Even Rich Bar will start to empty out soon when the winter exodus to the south begins.”

  Helen knew that the northern diggings pretty much closed down for the winter when the rainy season began, and that could be anywhere from late October to early December. Roads became quagmires. Streams flooded into virtual swamps. And at higher elevations, snow was a deadly threat.

  “If I were the only one involved, I’d probably just stay till I struck a bonanza, or die trying,” Rafe continued, “but I won’t do that to you, honey.”

  “We have been here in the past for almost eight weeks already,” she replied defensively. “Heck, we’ve been at Angel Valley alone for more than a month.”

  “And still no gold, no harness, no parachutes, and no immediate hopes for returning to the future,” he pointed out before she could say so herself.

  She followed Rafe down to the stream, explaining at length as they walked why his mercenary attitude toward life was filled w
ith loopholes. “You know, Rafe, the worst thing about being in the rat race is, even when you win, you’re just another rat.”

  Rafe gathered together his pick and shovel and several tin pans, trying to tune Helen out.

  “Furthermore,” Helen droned on, “you know what they say about lying down with dogs. You come up with fleas. Just extrapolate that to rats. If you run with rats, you eat a lot of vermin.” She continued to rant on regardless of whether he answered her or not.

  He scanned the area and decided to set up his equipment in a new spot today, where the stream widened slightly and had some interesting boulders on its banks.

  He tried to ignore Helen’s long-winded lecture on all his shortcomings and all her wonderful, superior philosophies on everything from money to family values to the meaning of life.

  He glanced up when Helen wound down to silence. She was standing with her hands on her hips, tapping a foot impatiently at his failure to acknowledge her advice. Her flaming hair was tied back into a ponytail, topped by a wide-brimmed hat. She was wearing her camouflage pants laced into the high skydiving boots and the blasted green T-shirt tucked into her waistband.

  Her enticing curves pulled at him like a sensual magnet. He thought seriously about tackling Helen on the spot and wiping that patronizing look off her face with about two thousand kisses.

  “Well, did you hear what I said?” She tapped her foot like an Army major, reprimanding a lowly private.

  He did not like her condescending tone or the blasted foot tapping.

  As they entered the stream together, he decided to retaliate. Zeb and Hector were approaching, carrying more shovels and pans. Before they got too close to hear, Rafe said, “You know what’s one of the first things I’m gonna buy when we get back to the future?”

  “A BMW?”

  “That’s the second thing.” He cuffed her gently on the chin. “First, I’m gonna buy me a Magic Marker, and I’m gonna connect the dots all over your sweet body.”

  “Dots?”

  “Yep, those cute little freckles that cover your skin, starting right here.” He put a fingertip on her right breast, just above the nipple.

  “Oh.” Her mouth parted on a sigh.

  Man, oh, man, he loved the way she responded to his mere touch. And, even better, her foot was planted firmly on the bed of the stream. No tapping now.

  “Then down to here.” He traced the fingertip down to a point between her waist and belly button.

  She made a kittenish sound deep in her throat. He really, really liked it when she made a small kittenish sound deep in her throat.

  And still no foot tapping under the water.

  “Over to here.” His finger moved even lower, stopping just above the vee of her trousers. She sucked in her stomach reflexively. He didn’t think she could move her foot if her life depended on it. Damn, I’m good.

  “What’re you doin’?” Hector asked, splashing up to them.

  “Playing a game,” Rafe choked out. Damn, I’m in trouble.

  “Kin I play, too?” Hector begged. “Please, please, please?”

  Rafe looked to Helen for assistance.

  She made a motion of zippering her lips.

  “Oh, hell!” Rafe let out a whoosh of air. “Listen, Hector, this was an adult game Helen and I were playing. I’ll find a children’s game to play with you later.”

  “Oh, all right,” he said with childlike agreeability.

  “Would you go get me that other shovel?” Rafe asked then.

  Hector sloshed off to the other bank.

  Helen taunted him then by swinging her hips as she walked by him.

  And, damn it, he could swear both feet were tapping.

  “These two weeks are gonna go by way too slow,” he called after her.

  “Do you think so?” She stood on the far bank, and she was tapping her foot to beat the band, grinning from ear to ear. Then she started whistling. Whistling!

  She could be in the Women of the Gold Rush issue . . .

  “I’d better go start dinner,” Helen said late that afternoon.

  “Betcha heard my innards growlin’.” Zeb chuckled from where he was shoveling pay dirt, which Rafe had loosened from the hard bedrock. Then he dumped the gravel into buckets for eventual panning.

  They’d been working steadily, except for a short lunch break, for eight straight hours. Her arms were numb from the repetitive motion of swirling the pan of gravel and water. She had a blister on her palm. Her back might not ever straighten again. Her thigh muscles screamed from the unnatural crouching position she’d been in most of the day. Maybe she would just crawl up the incline to the cabin.

  “You better take el niño with you,” Rafe suggested as he leaned on his long-handled pickax, panting.

  Hector’s shoulders drooped with exhaustion, and he cast pleading eyes to her. Although he hadn’t worked as hard or steadily as the rest of them, it was a long day for a little boy.

  Helen tousled his overlong hair. “Maybe you could help me find some more carrots.”

  His eyes lit up with gratitude at the reprieve. Then her words sank in. “Carrots again! Yeech!”

  They all laughed.

  “Hey, even carrots sound good to me,” Rafe chipped in. “I’m as starved as Zeb. My stomach feels like it’s shrunk in half.”

  He took off the wide-brimmed hat he used to shade his eyes and swiped a forearm across his forehead. Sweat dripped down his bristled face—he hadn’t shaved that morning—and covered his bare skin with a sheen right down to the waistband of his low-slung Army trousers, held up by suspenders. Helen watched, fascinated, as one drop drizzled in a straight line from the middle of his collarbone, across his ridged abdomen, and right into the cavity of his navel.

  “Helen,” he warned.

  Her eyes shot up with embarrassment.

  He laughed. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’d gawk, too, if you were standing in front of me with nothing but a pair of camouflage pants and a pair of suspenders. In fact, I think I saw a photo just like that in Playboy once. Girls of the Armed Forces, I think the series was called.”

  “You are—”

  “Disgusting? Actually, honey, you wouldn’t have to pose in the nude for Playboy. They’d welcome you just the way you are.”

  She looked down and saw that perspiration had caused her T-shirt to mold her breasts and abdomen like a film of green Saran Wrap. And her normally loose military pants were plastered to her hips and legs due to her treks back and forth across the stream.

  Rafe winked at her, but she was too tired to rise to his bait, or think of a smart comeback. Luckily, he decided to drop the enticing subject of their mutual, very visible sexual attributes.

  “God, I could go for a cold beer right now,” Rafe told Zeb. “I can’t believe it’s so hot for October.”

  “Injun summer,” Zeb explained, “but it could change overnight. You gotta appreciate the good days whilst you got ’em. Bad days are sure ta come.” The old man looked at the clear sky with a worried frown.

  They were going to frolic? What was frolic? Oh, Lord! . . .

  After dinner, Rafe stumbled to the bed, where he lay propped against the headboard waiting for Helen’s nightly ritual of reading. He couldn’t have sat upright across the table from her if his life depended on it. His eyelids drooped with exhaustion.

  “How much did we make today?” Rafe asked Zeb.

  The old man took his pipe from his mouth and adjusted Hector on his lap. The boy was playing with a crude wooden horse Zeb had whittled from a piece of hardwood over the past few weeks.

  “I’d say ’bout two pounds.” Zeb calculated in his head. “There was some flakes and a few tiny nuggets today, along with the usual dust. Not a bad day.”

  At the going 1850 rate, that would amount to more than five hundred dollars, Rafe knew, or more than twelve thousand dollars in the future. Divided in half with Zeb, and then his half shared with Helen, it wasn’t nearly enough. He needed to go back to the future w
ith a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars to get himself out of debt and his family off his back. Only then would he be able to make any kind of plans for a future with Helen. He sighed at that last possibility, refusing to allow himself even to think about a future with Helen until he was sure he had something to offer.

  “Did you say something?” Helen asked, sitting down at the table. Despite the dimness of the room, light from the lantern positioned next to her open book gave him a perfect view of her fresh-scrubbed face. Rafe liked looking at Helen.

  Exposure to the sun had caused more freckles to erupt over her clear skin. He liked them. She’d bathed in the lagoon, after he and Hector and Zeb had done the same, and her clean hair sprung into damp, unmanageable corkscrews all over the place. He liked them, too.

  She gazed at him with concern and repeated, “Did you say something?”

  I love you, he mouthed silently, but aloud he said, swallowing over a lump in his throat, “I just wondered if you were going to read tonight.”

  Helen nodded, her lips parted with emotion, and he knew which of his words she was reacting to.

  “Sí, sí, sí,” Hector piped in. “You hafta finish the story.”

  “Before you start,” Zeb said, coughing nervously, “there’s somethin’ I gotta tell you.”

  Rafe and Helen exchanged looks of foreboding.

  “I’m gonna have to make a trip ta Rich Bar.”

  “What?” he and Helen exclaimed at once. “Why?”

  “Well, I dint want ta alarm you, but that bear done more damage than we realized. Ain’t enough flour ta last more’n a month and hardly any salt pork ta mention.”

  “We can make do.” Helen began to panic.

  Zeb shook his head. “It ain’t the seasonin’ I’m worried ’bout. You’ll need salt ta preserve the game I bag fer the winter. When I get back, I gotta do some serious huntin’.”

  “I guess we could all go,” Rafe said hesitantly, knowing it would cut seriously into the deadline he’d set with Helen. She glanced over at him as he spoke, and he saw that she realized the importance of the time element, too. “Maybe we could wait for two weeks. Then, Helen and I would continue on home from there.”