Chapter 5

"Santos said his multi—grandfather bought his ranch from my multi—grandfather. But if it happened like Dad said, Santos is full of bluster, trying to keep something that's not really his."

"Yes, Texas, like most of the other southwest states, is a fee simple state. The owner has the right to control, use, and transfer the property at will."

"Okay Gail, I'm going to think about all of that, while I try to remember everything Dad told me Grandpa said."

"Ah, Howard ... did you move ... did you do something with my letters? I left them here in the bottom of my food box."

"No, I gave you the ones I read, the one to your mother and the other one, to your ex—husband. I didn't look at any of the others and I didn't pay much attention to where you put them. Are you sure they were in the food box?"

"Yes, I only had them in my handbag or the tray between the seats of my truck. When I brought them into the house, I put them in the pocket on the outside of my handbag, here in the food box."

"And we didn't grab your handbag when we left, did we?"

"No, leaving was a much bigger priority than anything else."

"You don't think ... no, Santos wouldn't ... but maybe someone else might. Look, tomorrow we can drive down to Santos's ranch and ask him if anyone went through your purse. Can you tell if anything else is missing?"

"I don't think so. I never have carried a large handbag, just my wallet, keys, a lipstick and my checkbook, and all of it's still there. Oh wait, yeah, I had a business card case, darn it's gone, too. Good grief, who would want a cheap thing like that? It's just plastic and holds maybe ten or fifteen cards."

"Gail, go lie down for a while, you've been on your feet for a lot more than you're supposed to be. The ten days aren't up yet."

"Doctor Jackson didn't say anything about..."

"Oh yes he did, remember? He asked if you were staying off you feet as much as you can for the first ten days, didn't he?"

"Well, yes he did, I forgot about that. Okay, but I'll fix supper."

"And you're still complaining about my cooking, huh?"

"No, not a complaint, I just want to do my share as long as I'm here."

Howard watched Gail sit down on the side of the bed, and then she jumped up and ran to the food box. "What are you doing? Bed time, remember?"

"My cell phone, I just remembered, it was in my handbag, too. It's gone. Oh hell, it has all my phone book in it. Oh lord, now what. Whoever took it has had it all week."

"Gail, I don't know if it will do any good, but I can take you back to town and you can call your cell phone company and report it as a theft. Is that going to keep you being charged if any calls were made on the phone during the week?"

"Howard, I have no idea. I'm on a plan and have hundreds and hundreds of minutes rolled over every month. Who ever has it probably can't use it anyway. When I was driving down here, the battery was already showing I needed to charge it."

Howard walked over to Gail, took her by the arm, and pulled gently, "Come on, Sweetheart, bed, remember? It's your doctor's orders."

Gail turned and looked at Howard. "I need to get out of your life, Howard. I can't stay here with you. I need to leave."

Howard put one hand on her cheek and said, "I don't want you to leave."

Gail looked up into his eyes, "You can't possibly want me around to complicate your life."

"I'm not sure what I want. I just know I don't want you to leave." Slowly, giving her a chance to turn her head or back away from him, he leaned forward and kissed her gently.

Gail closed her eyes, feeling him put his arms around her, pulling her closer, and putting her head on his shoulder. It was a natural reaction for her to put her arms around him, holding him as easily as he held her.

"I don't have a very good history with guys, Howard. My life is a mess. I don't want to mess up your life, too."

"Sweetheart, I'm not a guy, I'm a man. Your life is not a mess. You've left the mess behind. We can worry about my life later." He removed his arms from around her and stepped back, took her hand, and led her to the bed. "Now, come on, bed, doctor's orders."

When she sat on the bed, to remove her shoes, she looked up at Howard, "You can't save me as a substitute for Marie."

"No, and I wouldn't try. Marie didn't give me a chance to help her. I just hope you will."

An hour later, but what seemed only a moment to Gail, when she opened her eyes, Howard was sitting on the side of the bed, looking at her. "Do you know," he asked, "you smile in your sleep?"

"No, I don't think I've ever had anyone sit and watch me sleep, before."

"No, probably not, I came to wake you up for supper, so you wouldn't sleep too long. I saw you smiling and I wanted to watch. You're a beautiful woman."

"Not that beautiful, I'm sure. You don't see a string of men trailing behind me."

"Nope, there are no other men." Hesitatingly, he said, "I haven't had ... I don't look for ... There aren't any..." Howard paused for a moment and took a deep breath, "I'm sort of bungling this aren't I? I think I'm just trying to say that I'm attracted to you. I'm not accustomed to having a woman in my bed. I'm not a monk, not by any means, but I don't bring women here. This house is special to me. I'm very glad you are here." He paused for a moment and watched the blush creep up her neck and fill her cheeks with color.

"Howard..."

He put a finger across her lips and said, "Sh-h-h, I'm not going to ... I'm not the kind of man who would force a woman, or anything like that. I just wanted you to know, I want you here."

Gail rolled over, her shoulders began to shake, and Howard was pulling her into his arms. "Please, Sweetheart, don't cry. God, it hurts me when you cry like that. I know it's hard. I know you lost something ... something you wanted. I can't get that back for you, but I can take care of you if you'll let me."

Through her sobs and hiccups, Gail said, "It's not ... It isn't about, not about the baby ... I know Dad would ... he would tell me to get an ... I never had anyone ... not anyone who ever ... cared enough."

Howard put her back on the bed and brushed her hair out of her face. She put both hands up to cover her face and he pulled her hands away. "Don't hide from me, please. Talk to me, yell at me, scream, throw things, have a temper tantrum, I don't care. Just don't hide from me."

"I don't ... I'm not temperamental ... I don't throw tantrums."

"Well, maybe you need to. Take a picture of that useless "guy" who abused you last, and use him as a target. When that's out of your system, start on the one before him."

"Is that what you do? You, Frank, and the others, when you holler, throw beer cans and shoot guns?"

"It could be." He stood and offered his hand, "Come on, Sweetheart. Let's eat supper and try to figure out a way to keep any more rocks from falling."

"Golly, that was good," Gail complimented Howard's cooking as she pushed herself back from the table. "I'm never going to make enchiladas with plain hamburger meat again. I might have trouble finding venison at the meat market, but I'm going to ask."

"Then, if you are so appreciative, you can wash dishes and I'll get the pillows and blankets."

Standing with the empty plates in her hands, Gail looked at Howard and asked, "Pillows and blankets?"

"Yeah, I need to count my stars. I think I noticed one missing the last time I counted, so I figured it was about time to do it again."

Gail laughed, "You are crazy. You aren't really going to try to count the stars?" She stopped laughing and changed her tone, "Are you?"

Howard grinned, "Sure, I don't have television; radio stations play mostly music I can't dance to, or it's some evangelist telling me I'm a sinner. I already know that. So, since there's not a whole lot to do after dark, I figured I'd try to count the stars, again."

"Alright, I'll hurry with the dishes and as soon as you get the blanket spread out, come get me and I'll help you count your stars."

When Gail got outside, she asked, "Hey, this is not just a blanket, is it?"

"No, it's an old cowboy camp bed," Howard told her. "I made it while you were taking a nap. See, it's an old blanket, folded in half. You sew the bottom and sides together and fill it with moss, grass, and leaves. You have to be careful and not get any sticks in with the grass. It can get sort of painful, trying to sleep on a stick or a rock after a few hours."

After they were comfortable, lying on the stuffed blanket with pillows under their heads, Gail said, "This cowboy bed isn't very big, is it?"

"No-o-o," Howard drawled, "Cowboys didn't take women on a trail drive." He was lying on his side, his elbow dug into the blanket and his head propped on his hand. He was looking at Gail.

She turned her head to the side to look at him and reminded him, "You're not counting stars, Howard."

"No, I'm not. I'm thinking about kissing you."

Gail started to move away from him, but he put an arm across her to hold her still. "Howard, that's probably not a very good idea."

"I don't know, I sort of like it, myself." He leaned over and gently kissed her. "In fact, I was thinking, I've already done that a time or two and I sort of like it."

Gail said nothing, just looked up at him, waiting to see what he would do or say next.

Howard was confused. He was a mature thirty-two year old man who had enough experience with women to know when one was flirting with him and when one didn't need much attention before being ready to share his bed. He'd been receiving mixed messages from Gail. She seemed shy, inexperienced, she blushed when he smiled at her. Yet she had a woman's confidence in the way she talked to him. From the little she had said about her ex-husband and the former boyfriend, Howard felt she was almost virginal, requiring he show some patience to this very young twenty-three year old woman.

Howard lowered his head and kissed her again, just a little longer than before. Then he said, "But it seems to me that you never kiss me back, and I was wondering why that is. I figure, that if you really don't like me, you would have already left."

He moved a little closer and kissed her again, just a little longer, slowly moving his lips from one side of her mouth to the other, before lifting his head. "Then I thought that you might be afraid of me, like maybe you thought I would do something to hurt you, or take advantage of you. But I don't think that's it, either."

This time he began to kiss her, raising his head long enough to say, "Then I decided that you are afraid of yourself, like you are afraid to kiss me back, because you want to and you don't trust yourself." He threw his leg across her and kissed her some more, moving down to place a few kisses under her chin and down her throat. He raised his head to look at her, "So, I decided I would promise you that I'm not going to do anything but kiss you. That might make you feel safe enough to kiss me back. You think you can do that, huh?"

Gail lifted her head and gave him a slow tender kiss, parting her lips slightly. She rested the tip of her tongue inside her lower lip and relaxed her tongue as she pushed the middle of her tongue against his lips, and then made several gentle sucking motions with her cheeks. She put her head back on the pillow. "You mean like that?"

"Oh, God yes, just like that." Now the message going to Howard's brain was that Gail was much more experienced than he had thought. A woman who could kiss like that made his toes curl and his cock hard. Then he was devouring her lips, moving over her face to kiss her eyes, her temples, down to the soft tender place under her ear, down her neck, and then back to her mouth, his promise to go no farther than a kiss forgotten.

He rolled over, pulling her on top of him and didn't stop until both of them were panting. Gail was disoriented, astonished at her participation in the few moments of meeting his probing tongue with her own.

"My lord, woman, where did you learn to kiss like that?"

Half on the camp bed and half on Howard, with his arms around her, Gail braced her arms and lifted her shoulders. Her first words were stammered trying to cover her embarrassment, "I didn't ... it wasn't ... I just tried to..." She stopped for a moment for her head to clear so she could explain.

Gail did not resist Howard's hand at the back of her head, encouraging her to relax against his shoulder. His other hand moved slowly up and down her back, soothing her, as he enjoyed simply holding her in his arms.

"You see, Carol Ann had this advertisement. She's my friend. Well, she used to be my friend. Anyway, this advertisement was about how to drive a man wild, I think it was seven steps or something like that. Maybe it was seven minutes. It was for a CD or VCR tape and Carol Ann checked the wrong box. She wanted the CD so she could play it on her computer, like before she had a date, well, that's another story. She ordered the VCR tape by mistake and came pounding on my door one evening, all in a rush. She had a date and no VCR and I did. We watched the tape and she was in such a hurry when she left she didn't take the tape out of the VCR. Well, I didn't understand some of what the tape was all about, so I watched it a second time."

Gail was so involved in explaining how she learned to kiss she didn't realize her hand was doing much the same as his was. Her palm smoothed his shirt over the flexing muscles beneath her hand. Her fingers traced down the midline of his chest, as if she were counting the buttons on his shirt, unaware his stomach clenched when she reached his belt buckle.

"And," Howard encouraged, shaking his head in puzzlement, "this tape was about how to kiss a man?"

"Yes, and a bunch of other stuff, but I'd already told Gary to leave ... actually what I told him was to get out of my life, and that he should turn around and run if he ever saw me coming his way. So I never tried anything on the tape. I just forgot all about it, until you asked me, just now. That was what the guy on the tape said. "Where did you learn to kiss like that?" I guess I just sort of had it in my head. I wasn't really trying, honest. I kissed you because I wanted to, I liked it, you kissed me back, not like you were going to, kiss-kiss, bang-bang, bye-bye, at least that's what Carol Ann calls it."

"This Carol Ann friend of yours, she's not very complimentary of men—or hasn't met many good ones."

"No, she's not a friend any more. That's the other story, that's why I ... why I didn't let Gary ... oh, never mind, it was just another mess I made for myself."

Slowly rolling Gail over, Howard put his head down beside hers and chuckled. He'd meant to go slow and she'd responded, testing her untried skills, alluring him into kissing her, showing how much he desired her. Then he began to laugh and was soon laughing so hard he had to sit up.