“Rafe, I want you so bad. Let’s make love.” She moved against him, one hand caressing his face, a leg thrown over his hip. Before he could see past the stars splintering behind his eyelids, she began to plant soft kisses on his bare chest.
With a growl of surrender, he flipped her on her back and rolled on top of her tempting body, between her legs. The nightgown and his boxers were no barrier at all to the consuming passion that melded them together. He ground himself against her center and felt her dampness. He almost climaxed then.
A soft cry filtered through the night air, then died. At first, he thought he or Helen might have moaned. But it was Hector whimpering in his sleep. His cry sounded just like a baby’s, a signal Rafe had heard over and over throughout the thin walls of his childhood homes in the L.A. projects. A call to responsibility, and distasteful duties, and neverending problems. Babies.
With a jerk, he lifted himself off Helen and stood beside the bed. Drawing on his pants, he stared resolutely down at her, his trembling hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“Where are you going?”
“For an icy swim,” he said, panting. “If I don’t come back, you’ll know I’ve swum all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and I’m still rock hard and wanting you.”
“Oh, Rafe.”
“Save the ‘Oh, Rafe’s’ for later, babe. There’s gonna come a day of reckoning when I collect for every damn one of these days of abstinence. But not now.”
“But what if our time never comes?” she murmured under her breath just before he went out the door. But he heard her.
You wouldn’t do that to me, would you, God? Yo, St. Augustine?
Rafe heard no God or St. Augustine giving him heavenly reassurance.
He was on his own.
The next morning, Helen and Hector sat at the rough oak table in the center of the cabin. She was peeling carrots she’d managed to salvage from Effie’s long-neglected garden out back. The vegetables and some wild onions would taste delicious cooked in the juices of the huge trout — at least eighteen inches long — that she planned to bake later that day.
The boy was bent over a piece of paper from her tablet, diligently writing out the letters of the alphabet. His tongue peeked out between his lips as he concentrated. Although the eight-year-old could speak fluent English and his native Spanish, he’d never been taught to read or write. At Zeb and Rafe’s urging, she’d initiated two-hour daily lessons for Hector. She enjoyed the chore immensely.
In fact, she was surprised at the satisfaction she derived from homemaking, too. Normally, Helen would have been offended at being relegated to caring for the tiny home and the cooking chores — a woman’s job — when she was more than capable of performing a man’s job just as well. But she loved every minute of her domestic duties.
She cared for the log cabin as if it were a castle. The only furniture in the single room — about twenty feet square — was the massive built-in bedstead, which she’d come to think of as her torture chamber, and the oak table with matching benches. Off to the side were two homemade chairs — upended stumps with cut-off branches serving as tripod legs, and Effie’s prized, armless rocking chair.
A cooking fireplace took up one wall. The only light came from the open doorway and two most unusual windows. There was no glass, but Zeb had cut out two windows in facing walls and filled them with colored bottles and glass jars, the area between their necks being filled in with clay. When she’d asked Zeb where he’d got so many pieces of glassware, he told her they’d previously held brandied fruit and pickles and liquor. It had been his wife’s idea, he’d added, and the result was a stained-glass effect when the sun shone brightly.
Effie’s touch was evident in other areas of the primitive dwelling, as well: Her hand-stitched crimson calico curtains — was there any other color? Helen wondered; exquisite quilts; a few pieces of china displayed on a wooden shelf Zeb had built for that purpose; rag rugs thrown over the rough puncheon floor.