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This person in back of her on the horse had mentioned they had found other pods. Who all had they told of finding them? Where were the ones they’d found?
This whole adolescent activity was only a confirmation that they were all bored. They had too much spare time with little to distract them. Well, Mike’s baby might distract him for a while.
Actually, Mike had had very little to do with his wife having a baby. She’d done all the work. Come to think of it, even at a time when his wife could be very uncomfortably pregnant, Mike had run off on a pod hunt. He had.
She said lazily, “Next time, I get to sit in back.”
“The wind’s at my back,” he said next to her ear. Then his voice was different, lower, huskier. He said, “I’m sheltering you.”
She accepted that as only right and asked, “Where are we going?”
“To the nearest house.”
She was courteous. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
It began to rain quite nastily cold and wet. He pulled her head back under his chin, and she was protected. He slid his hand across her ribs below her breasts under the blanket. “You warm enough?”
Her mouth responded in a tiny, female way that was embarrassing. She told him, “My feet are cold.”
“Sit Indian-style. I’ll balance you.”
She was surprised. Here she was countering all her horse training. She was slumped back against a man and now her legs were crossed under the blanket and she was—warm.
He fumbled down her stomach and his hand slid into her trousers. “Oops, sorry. I’m trying to see if your feet’re okay.”
“They are.”
“Good.”
A lecher. She squinted a little, as she went over the karate lessons she’d taken because her daddy had insisted. She’d been good at it. She’d nailed the instructor. He’d been hostile to her after that.
If the instructor had gone along the whole way, instead of trying to escape, she would have thought he was letting her win. But he’d tried hard to win over her.
Winning had been heady.
Of course, she’d antagonized yet another male. Her father had laughed.
Her mother had altered the classic, “Never give a man an even break.” But her mother had added, “You’d lose.”
And she had. By being so confident and physically safe, she’d lost just about every male who’d come down the pike. Even all those who had been blinded by her daddy’s clout. She’d lost them all.
Which ones had she wanted?
And lying back against a crude man, she went over all of the contenders like turning pages of a diary, and there hadn’t been a one she’d really and truly wanted. To be a twenty-seven-year-old woman who had never really been tempted must be some sort of remarkable record.
She was probably freezing to death and looking back on her life in a farewell. Actually she was warm and cozy, cuddled down, cross-legged but secure on some man’s saddle. She was leaning back against him and wonderfully wrapped in his blanket and the shared coat. His right hand was innocently tucked under her left armpit.
His wrist was resting on the top of her breast, which moved with the horse’s stride. At least the man wasn’t groping her.
She didn’t realize his wrist was feeling her. Only hands did that. Not wrists or backs or arms.
Two (#ulink_f9f82ae0-7a79-5a73-89c7-c3aaaea4e09e)
The wind was howling and shrill across the empty land. There was nothing to sieve the sound, but it was moaning and serious.
The rescuer had turned the horse away from the storm, so the brunt of the wind was on the man’s back. He was Lauren’s.windshield. That was perfectly logical. Any man protected a woman. It probably started in TEXAS, when there were many, many more men than women, and women were precious.
Of course. Women should always be treated as if they are precious. They are.
The precious woman peeked around from her limited sanctuary. Where were they going? She was so covered that she couldn’t see ahead, but she remembered there was absolutely nothing ahead of them. They were just drifting as animals drift before a mean wind. That’s how cattle piled up against fences or went off bluffs or fell through ice.
She had clear memories of hearing her father raising verbal hell over the stupid cattle who’d done that. He’d been furious! Her mother had listened calmly, seated on the sofa, and watched Lauren’s daddy.
The daughters had been sent from the room. Their mother had said to them, “Hush. Run along.”
Then when he’d calmed down, and the daughters could hear only the sounds, they would hear their mother’s voice.
What had their mother said to their father? What had she done to soothe him? Lauren would have to ask her. Until then, it had been something Lauren had never realized she might need to know.
Her nose was down in the blanket and most of the blanket was surrounded by his opened coat. With all that and the wind, Lauren asked, “What is your name?”
Oddly enough, he understood her. He said in a questioning statement peculiar to TEXANS, “I’m listed in the book as Kyle Phillips? But I answer to just about anything if the caller is serious.”
She replied, “How do you do?” And she bowed her head a trifle, as those words had demanded since she’d first been taught the phrase, long ago.
He replied to her response, “Pretty good, so far. What’s your name, honey?”
Just the fact that he’d called her ‘honey’ was a clue. He was basic TEXAN. So she said, “I’m not sure I should give it out in these circumstances.”
“It’s okay.”
He was saying he was safe for her. If he knew her father’s name, what if he just decided to hold her for ransom? She could give her first name. “I’m called Lauren.”
“Lauren. That’s a real nice name.”
How strange to have such a conversation with the wind howling around them and the horse patiently plodding along. Occasionally they moved to one side or the other. It was probably done to avoid something.
Warm, her stomach growled. Could she ask if he had some tea and cakes?
She could be flipping out. Dreaming. Hallucinating? Was she actually on a horse riding. “Where are we going?”
“The place is yonder a ways. We’ll have a fire.”
“In the—place?”
“Yeah.”
Now how big could his place be? She said a nothing, “Oh.” And she knew full well that everybody in TEXAS called their holdings their “place” because that was where they were. It could be a half acre or it could be miles square. She sighed.
And he heard her defeated sound. “It’ll be okay.”
Sure it would. Men were not any smarter than women. Their perception of things was unusual and completely different. Even plain, ordinary words had other, changed meanings. And then there was sex.
Lauren had found that out when she was quite young. Her cousin Theo had played Doctor with the fascinated Davie sisters. At that age, it was just looking.
Since that introduction by Theo, Lauren had managed to avoid such bold encounters. She was still a virgin.
Theo had gone on to actually become a doctor. Lauren had never gone to him for medical purposes.
Being human was one big pain in the neck, or lower. There were all the rules. All the customs. No other mammal had to fool around with all that stuff. The difference was to prove humans are superior beings.
Even as limited as she was, she could peek around the supposedly virgin land. She wondered what horrific wastes humans had discarded, buried deep in the low, surrounding hills. Were the hills real hills or just earth-covered piles of waste? Animals didn’t pollute the world but briefly. Humans really loused it all up. In some places, the pollution would be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
How could the people, who lived in that distant future, know? What if the chemical wars wiped out all previous knowledge and future peoples or creatures would have no clue about the dreadful storages of harmful waste?
Being human wasn’t a brag.
Being a woman meant you followed all sorts of rules. You either did—or you didn’t. Hadn’t.
Since Lauren was in the didn’t/hadn’t category, if she was in the middle of dying, right then, and going to freeze into an ice statue, should she take advantage of this opportunity to know what Life Was All About?
She’d take another look at this person whose name was nicely Kyle Phillips, and she’d decide. Had her guardian angel sent him so that she could experience him? It seemed rather unkind to take advantage of an innocent man.
Of course, he had asked if she was a streetwalker. He might not be too difficult to lure.
She lifted her head and therefore straightened her body a bit as she peered around to see if anything was in sight. It was snowing!
As she said, “It’s snowing in TEXAS!” She became vividly aware that her shift had caused his hand to come free of her armpit and cover her breast! She said, “Sorry,” as if that had been her fault.
He put his hand back under her armpit and replied, “My fault.”
How kind of him to take her guilt. She would have to pay attention and move more carefully.
She was again discreet. With her head back under his chin, she could smell the freshness of him. Obviously, he didn’t smoke. He smelled nicely male and pure. And she began to wonder what he looked like.
As had happened on occasion, she would more than likely be disappointed.
She tried to recall how tall he was and how he looked…really. He was becoming quite nice in her mind. When they got to the Place, wherever that could be, she would be able to see if all her thinking about him was true.
With some tolerance, she considered how like a woman to devise a romance out of absolutely nothing. He’d found some dumb broad out on the land with no means of transport and not dressed for the weather. And he’d managed to get her wrapped up nicely and held warmly.
So her romance novel mind had gone into overdrive, and she was imagining a Hero with a capital H. How could she possibly be so silly?
It was the storm. Her circumstances. And the fact that she would have frozen to death without him, and she was grateful? Yes. Umh-mmm. Mmmm.
Her imagination was really pretty silly. He was silent. He hadn’t talked all that much. He looked around and guided the horse. She wouldn’t even know he was aware of her being a woman except that his hand had been tugged from her armpit and that hand had curled around her breast.
How cheeky of him to have done that. He had no upbringing. He probably was an orphan and not schooled at all.
If that was so, she might could—use him! She just might do that. She’d be kind but she would see if she could use him. She’d look him over and see if she could endure him—enough. It would be an experiment. Out in the blowing storm that carried a load of snow. the snow was getting deep.
She asked, “Are we lost?”
“Not yet.”
An interesting reply. Not-yet. Did he plan for them to become “lost” while he had his wicked way with her?
Well, now, Lauren, not every man sees you as a tasty morsel. He probably has five women waiting for him plus a wife and fourteen children.
Or he might not really care for women. That could be. Think of a curious woman being in a cabin in a storm with an indifferent man.
Perhaps there would be a TV? She didn’t have her purse. It was back in her roofless, exposed and vulnerable car. In her purse was her tatting. Her tatting had saved her sanity any number of utterly boring times.
What did the man behind her look like? The man who was holding her body on the horse with him. He breathed. She could hear him breathe. It was as if keeping her balanced was a chore.
It was interesting that the horse wasn’t bothered by the storm. She sneaked a glove-filmed hand from its shelter, leaned forward and brushed the snow from the horse’s mane.
Somehow, that jarred Kyle’s hand from her armpit again and it was again on her breast. As she stiffened and leaned back, he said, “Sorry.”
And he again tucked the hand into her armpit. He had a little trouble, and he had to move her breast over so that he could get his hand where it was supposed to be. But he accomplished that discreetly with his wrist.
Lauren considered thoughtfully that, if he was at all tolerable, he would probably be easy. She would see.
The horse plodded on through the snow. She again asked, “Are we lost?”
And he again replied, “Not yet.”
She began to anticipate the line shack. That was what Kyle meant. He would have a line shack somewhere as his place.
She had seen several line shacks in her time of learning to ride. Long riding trips had involved becoming familiar with line shacks. They were neat and tidy and warm. The facilities were primitive but clean. There would be a protected place to rest the horse.
The only fly in the ointment was they might not be alone in the shack. There could be other refugees sheltering from the storm.
With the thought, Lauren began to reason with her guardian angel who was a nuisance at best.
They came to a barbed-wire fence. She glimpsed the fence from the side of her blanket covered face. In TEXAS such fences are called bob wire. When she was little, she thought the fences all belonged to her Uncle Bob. She had been grown before she knew an “r” was in the labeling.
She had never considered having to cope with a fence. She frowned at it. It was tall and securely made. It was five strands instead of the normal three strand indication of property.
Trees were in the distance. That was nice. The horse seemed to be a little perkier. His steps were a bit quicker. Her breasts shimmered somewhat and so did her stomach.
Rock hard Kyle seemed relaxed and indifferent.
The snow became a little heavier. With the fence, the line shack could very well be occupied. Wouldn’t that be a snit! Here she was planning a seduction—right after she confirmed that Kyle was worth a one night stand—and now they were getting back to civilization.
How droll to match a barbed wire fence with civilization.
