Chapter Ten

Chris went home to let his dogs out after lunch. When he drove up to the house, he had to contend with a young rattlesnake, curled up and napping on his front porch. He was glad he hadn’t come home to it after dark or he might have missed it, or stepped on it. The dogs were vaccinated, but he still didn’t want to deal with going to the vet and the possibility of one or both dogs suffering the effects of a bite, even with the vaccine. And like most dogs, they liked to investigate the snakes that wandered onto their property.

He went to a side shed and pulled out a makeshift pole with a hook on the end, scooped up the snake and got it to the fence before it slipped off and coiled up, tail rattling, head arched to snap. He backed off fast, and after a minute or two, the snake calmed down and slithered away under the fence and back out into the desert.

He wondered whether Beth was prepared to deal with venomous snakes. New Mexico had different types of rattlesnakes and the deadly coral snake, though he doubted she’d ever encounter one of those in this area.

Did she have something to move a snake without getting bitten herself? Was she careful and aware of her surroundings when she left the house, went onto her property, or even out to her car? City folks with dreams of living a rural life out in the desert rarely think about the less welcoming aspects of living in the boondocks. In addition to rattlesnakes, there were black widows and brown recluse spiders, tarantulas, and scorpions. He didn’t know a single woman who didn’t freak out at the presence of these common creatures.

What if Beth got bit or stung? What if she decided living in the desert was too rustic for her taste and she moved back to California? Christ, his mind was running away on him. He’d never been this messed up, worrying about a woman, in his entire life. He wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with it.

For the first time in his life, part of him liked the idea of being the one to manage and remove these dangers from her life. He’d grown up dealing with snakes and spiders, and hell, isn’t that what little boys are made of?

He put his snake removal stick away and unlocked his door. The dogs were waiting, eager for his company and the opportunity to get out of the house. Since he ran his own company, and generally stayed within a half hour of his place, he made a point of coming home midday to check on them and to let them out back to pee. They were an integral part of his life, and any schedules he kept meant he was always home every night, and sometimes during the day.

“Out the back, guys,” he waved them to the slider leading from the kitchen to the fenced backyard.

They trotted over to the door. He put them on leashes for the initial foray into the yard. If a snake had found its way into the backyard as well, he wanted to keep the dogs away from it. A brief walk around the yard, with a couple pauses so they could empty their bladders, showed the enclosed space to be snake-free, so he let them off the leash. Immediately, they sprinted into a run, circling the perimeter of the yard, burning off energy.

After a few minutes of running, Zelda picked up one of her toy bones and brought it to him, so he obliged her by tossing the bone all the way to the back of the fence. Jaeger joined in the play, racing her to reach the toy first, and bringing it like a prize to drop at his feet. Unfazed at being beaten to the toy, Zelda looked at him expectantly, so he threw it again. It took a good fifteen minutes of chasing after and returning the toy before the dogs flagged, sweaty and thirsty, in the afternoon desert heat.

“Time to go in,” he told them. “House.”

They loped back up the steps to the slider and he let them back in. They headed for the bowls of water and took long drinks. When they finished, Chris refilled the bowls with fresh water and lots of ice cubes. If he had a woman staying in the house, then the dogs could go out every time they needed to pee. Beth worked from home. Would Beth like having his big dogs around? he wondered again.

His phone buzzed with a new message and he tapped the app, his pulse speeding up. He hadn’t contacted Beth since last night, but maybe she was contacting him.

It was Evelyn.

Evelyn: R U COMING DOWN THIS WEEK? DID U C DOC?

Chris rubbed his eyes. He should bail on the meet-up. He hadn’t seen the doctor, didn’t have any blue pills, and didn’t want a repeat of the last time he’d gone down to see Evelyn. His attraction and response to Beth seemed to suggest his problem was mental, not physical.

But if he went to Albuquerque, he might find out for sure if there was something different about Beth. Or not. If he had the blue pills and he could get off with Evelyn, then what did that say about his feelings about Beth? He knew in his head he didn’t owe Evelyn any obligation, and even the flare of guilt was immediately followed by a sense of resentment. He’d made no promises to the woman. She’d even said she was only interested in a good time. For two years, they’d scratched each other’s itch, once a month, and that was that.

The idea of being with Evelyn again didn’t sit right with him, though. He couldn’t even work up much interest in seeing her. Why drive all the way down to Albuquerque for decent sex when he could drive half a mile down the road for mind-blowing sex? Not that Beth was in the same hook-up category as Evelyn, no matter how Beth tried to frame their last week together. Hell, even Evelyn was perfectly nice; he’d never put her in the same category as the women out at the club. In fact, she was pretty classy for a guy like him. Shit.

He knew enough about women that if Beth even knew he had women in categories, she’d block his calls and never speak to him again. Hell, she was probably a diehard liberal, being a schoolteacher and from California, basically the bluest state in the country. He was independent himself, and had voted for candidates from both parties, his vote depending on the candidate he preferred. Truthfully, though, he’d voted conservative until the last election. Not that he let his buddies in the club know how his voting had changed. They’d revoke his fucking membership.

Maybe he was already changing, even before Beth showed up. What he knew was that a lot of his convictions about life, politics, relationships, even what he wanted out of life, had been slowly shifting. Or the people he used to spend time with had changed in a way that didn’t fit him anymore. Some guys at the club had become increasingly angry and resentful. New Mexico was becoming more liberal, and they didn’t like it. Chris didn’t know what it mattered as long as the roads were kept in good shape, the fire and police departments and schools had the money they need to operate. He appreciated someone who wanted the job of managing all those services and maintenance. He sure as hell didn’t want it.

He closed down his texting app and pocketed his phone without replying to Evelyn. Drama. That’s all this was. The thing he’d tried to avoid his whole adult life, after growing up in a house filled with drama. The worst of it was he didn’t think he was going to make the drama-free choice here. Being around Beth felt too good. Too comfortable, even after a couple of days. He didn’t believe in soul mates, but he believed in compatibility. Is that what Beth and he had? Compatibility? They were definitely compatible in bed, and that was mind-blowing. Now he knew why Bill and Judy worked. He’d take a brief break. Regroup emotionally, then see Beth again.

Thinking about things he’d never thought about was making his head hurt, in fact. He took a few pain pills, locked up and headed back into town to check in with the architect and to oversee the changes to the Gregson job. What he wanted to do was drive in the other direction, straight to Beth.

Beth wrote two scenes in a sprint of inspiration before stopping for breakfast, which ended up being the BBQ leftovers, since she hadn’t been back to the market after getting her appliances installed. She planned to return today to get some basics at the place, which wasn’t a full-blown grocery store after all, and drive into Santa Fe sometime the next day to stock her pantry in full. Heavy rains were forecasted by the end of the week and she didn’t want to drive into the city on unfamiliar roads during a rainstorm.

It was only midday, day four of her new life and she already felt like a real writer, getting up in the morning, having coffee, sitting down at the computer and filling blank pages with words. No actual deadlines, no boss, no need to produce anything. She was writing simply to write. Part of the reason she suspected she was so productive is that she had little expectations for this story other than getting it written. She’d read over and over that most writers never publish their first novel. It’s usually a mess, and that writing well was the achievement of writing frequently over an extended period.

She’d heard somewhere no one was any good until they’d written a million words. It sounded both encouraging—most people who wanted to could get good at writing—and daunting because that was the equivalent of half a dozen long novels. She imagined those million words also depended on a writer’s age and life experiences. After all, as a student in public school and university, she’d written all the time. And as an educator, she’d been required to write through the years. Of course, none of what she’d wrote had been fiction.

In addition to general writing, it seemed to her those who read heavily, from early childhood on, must have an advantage against those million words as well. She’d consumed a hundred books a year, at least, since her early twenties. That was ten million words a year, times twenty-five years, or somewhere around a quarter billion words read during her adult life. She spent time thinking about and studying what she read as well, in terms of story structure, character development, and language. She could become good before she’d written a million words of fiction, but she had no illusions about this first book. It was her practice book. She wanted to take risks, stretch edges, play.

She spent the afternoon unpacking another load of boxes and putting away her belongings. She hadn’t been disciplined about eliminating clothes, books, or kitchen and dining items for the move. She didn’t want to have to buy much when she got to New Mexico. And the beautiful chinaware and crystal from her wedding to Kyle was the least of what she deserved out of the marriage. The only thing they’d argued over was the fine art work they’d collected together. In the end, they took turns choosing pieces and split them fairly. Kyle unfailingly chose the more valuable pieces, but she’d chosen the ones which made her happy.

Since unpacking didn’t require serious concentration, her mind kept wandering to Chris. But he didn’t call, and he didn’t message her. She did her best not to feel disappointed. She ran out to the local shop late afternoon for enough food items to make a light supper and breakfast in the morning. She cooked and ate pasta sauteed in garlic, olive oil, frozen spinach and packaged grated parmesan cheese, pairing it with a basic Sauvignon Blanc. The streaming services were working, so she picked out a British crime drama, curled up on the sofa and watched the first three episodes in a row. The show was interesting, but she kept thinking about what she’d done on the sofa with Chris the night before. Finally, frustrated at her inability to stop thinking about the man, she dressed for bed, climbed under the covers, and downloaded a favorite book she reread whenever she felt restless.

She fell asleep with her reader glowing in the dark.

A wild crack of thunder lit up the entire property, turning the bedroom bright. Beth startled awake in a fright. A loud rumble of thunder seemed to shake the ground beneath the thick adobe walls of the house. Then another strike of lightning hit the earth again, and Beth swore the storm had to be directly overhead. Then she heard a huge noise in the back of the property, like something cracking and crashing to the ground.

She jumped up from the bed and ran to the east-facing window, which looked over the back of the property. It was pitch black out. The cloud cover prevented any light from the moon revealing what had happened. Another strike of lightning hit the ground and for a second, she could see her large Texas umbrella tree had lost a few of its top branches. It must have been hit.

“Damn!”

Living in southern California all her life had not prepared Beth for this level of storm intensity. Californians feared fire and earthquakes, not thunderstorms. Although lightning caused some of those fires, it didn’t hurt people much by itself. In San Diego, on the coast, the worst of a storm was the heavy downpour of rain, which could fall thick and fast enough to obscure visibility and cause vehicles to hydroplane at relatively low speeds, and dangerous high tides. If you stayed off the freeway and out of the sea, storms rarely killed you. It wasn’t even raining here yet, and the violent lightning and thunder had shaken her nerves.

“Welcome to New Mexico,” she told herself dryly. She tried to turn on the overhead light and nothing happened. Great. One thing she hadn’t brought with her was a flashlight. And she’d left her phone downstairs so she wouldn’t obsess over checking it for a message from Chris. She had candles in the kitchen pantry, though, glad she’d worked on unpacking the last of the kitchen boxes earlier in the afternoon.

She shuffled her way carefully to the bedroom door and down the steps of her still unfamiliar house. She moved slowly to avoid injury, but she still stubbed her toe at one point and cracked her shin against a side table in another.

“Fuck!”

The thick walls and small windows, along with the black storm outside, made her feel like she was moving through an underground cave. Rubbing her shin, she found her way into the kitchen and, along the wall, to the pantry door. In the blackness, she felt around for the box of scented candles she’d stored in the closet hours earlier. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet unpacked any candle holders.

She pulled a new candle from a set of a dozen, along with the hand lighter she stored in the same box, and lit the taper. It burned steady. With the light, she hustled to the kitchen cabinet for a temporary holder, grabbing a thick mug with a handle. She let hot wax drip into the bottom of the mug, then carefully positioned the candle upright inside it. She only burned herself twice.

“There,” she breathed in relief, once the candle was stable and upright in the mug. “She said, let there be light, and there was light.” She chuckled at her joke. A faint effort to calm her nerves and not to be afraid, at age 51, of some weather.

She wandered into the living room, heralding her way with her makeshift chamber stick. The world outside the house continued to rumble with frequent lightning and its accompanying thunder. It sounded like the wind might have come up as well. The house felt like a protective cocoon now, with the candle broadcasting its gentle glow across the surfaces of her furniture and the fireplace in the corner. She located her phone in the sofa cushions and set it face up on the table. Deep breath. Another roll of thunder shook the house, but it didn’t unsettle her. A few more breaths and she felt like her heart rate and blood pressure had returned to normal.

A pounding on her front door set off all her nerves again. Shit. She left the candle burning on the table and approached the door. The heavy Spanish door didn’t have a traditional one-way peephole. Instead, it had a small wooden window with an iron guard and a shutter opening inward. If she opened it, she could see out, but the person on the other side could also see in. Great. All she needed was for a stranger to be pounding on her door and discover a woman lived alone here. As she debated whether to open the little window, her phone binged with an incoming message.

She sprinted back and picked up the phone. A new message from Chris. She opened the texting app.

Chris: ITS ME. OPEN UP.

“Not creepy at all, Chris,” she muttered under her breath as she hustled back to the door, filled with a relief he’d come and she wouldn’t have to sit out this storm by herself.

She swung open the little window to see Chris’s face looking worried.

At the same moment, the skies opened up, and a heavy rain poured down.

She swung the door open wide and Chris charged in, two large dogs at his heels. He caught the door and shut it firmly behind him, reengaging the lock.

He turned to look at her and stopped short, his gaze running over her, stalling at her breasts—and noting the way the silk sleep shirt highlighted her stiff nipples—and lingering over her bare legs and feet, even in the low candlelight. For the first time since she’d woke, Beth felt the chill of the house. His eyes returned to hers and blazed as hot as the candle.

Then his dogs did what dogs do and started sniffing her crotch.

“Jaeger. Zelda. Sit.”

The dogs obediently sat on their haunches and stared up at her expectantly. They were…huge. Even sitting on their haunches, their heads were even with her waist. She hadn’t been around big dogs in years. Still, she knew how to greet them. She held out her hands, one to each dog, and they sniffed with interest.

“This is Beth,” Chris told the dogs, who’d progressed from sniffing to licking her hands. “She’s a friend.”

After a minute, Chris told them to lie down, and they did, sitting alert by the door.

“Aren’t they afraid of the storm?” Beth asked.

“Yep, but they know they’re with me and it helps them calm right down. If they were home alone right now, they’d be under the bed. Plus…”

He looked around the room, seeing the single candle on the table and taking in the hushed nature of the storm experienced from inside the thick walls of the adobe home.

“It’s a lot quieter in this house than in mine, which is a stick build.” He coughed and looked uncertain then.

“I hope you don’t mind my coming to check on you. This is a big storm, and it came earlier than forecasted.”

Beth placed her hand reassuringly on his arm.

“No, I’m glad you came. I was managing, but I admit, it’s a relief to have you here.”

He nodded his head, obvious relief settling over his face.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called or texted—”

Beth held up her hand. “No strings. No obligations. Isn’t that what we said?”

Chris looked like he wanted to say something, but he pursed his lips. “Mind if I get out of this jacket? It’s pretty soaked.”

“Of course! Let me hang it up on the coat rack so it can dry out.”

Beth helped him shrug out of it. “Do you want towels for your hair and the dogs?”

“That would be great.”

Beth spread his coat over the empty rack, not worried about it dripping onto the tiled flooring. Then she pulled several towels out of the hall linen closet and handed them over to Chris. He paused and looked down at them.

“These look awfully expensive for drying my dogs. Anything less fancy?”

Beth smiled at him. “The reason I buy good towels is that they are durable, and wash up great so I don’t need to worry about them getting ruined.”

Chris looked a doubtful, but he dried off each dog, and then used the third towel on his own hair and beard.

Beth gestured to the back of the house.

“While you’re drying off, I’m going to go put on warmer clothes. This storm seems to have chased off the warm humidity of the day and turned the house chilly.”

Then she grabbed her phone, and found her way upstairs, using the flashlight feature to find her way. In her room, she quickly changed into black yoga pants, and a long pull-on sweater and a pair of thick socks. Her hair was a mess, so she pulled it up and back into a ponytail.

Back downstairs, Chris had moved into the living room. He was sitting tensely on the sofa, and the dogs were sprawled at his feet.

“Would you like something to drink?” Beth moved into the kitchen, still using her phone to light the way.

“Sure. Whatever you’ve got.”

Beth tried the kitchen light switch to see if the power was still out. It was.

“Is wine okay?” She’d only had one glass out of the bottle at dinner.

“Sounds good.”

She found two wine glasses, filled them, tucked her phone in her waistband, picked the glasses up, and returned to the living room. The dogs watched her with avid interest as he handed Chris his glass. He took a quick sip and set it on the table. Then he patted the cushion next to him on the sofa. There was a brief moment of shuffled confusion as the dogs also thought the invitation was for them and tried to beat her to the spot. Finally, Beth snuggled up to Chris, his arm wrapped around her shoulders, and the dogs reluctantly settled on the large rug at their feet, their heads up, watching the two of them. The dogs had never seen him this close to another person.

For about ten minutes, they simply sat listening to the storm in silence, a lingering tension radiating off Chris’s body, and taking a long time to ease off. Beth figured they were both thinking heavily about what it meant for Chris to come out with his dogs in the storm to check on her. He’d looked pretty worried when he’d first arrived. The kind of worry that wasn’t common for two people in a casual relationship. Not even a relationship. An arrangement. To fuck each other’s eyes out. She huffed a laugh and felt him stir, probably thinking she was crazy.

Finally, he took a deep breath and relaxed his shoulders.

“I think lightning struck one of the big trees on the property,” she said, breaking the silence.

“It’s possible. I could see the lightning strikes around your property as I drove here. The dogs were getting pretty nervous about me driving us into the center of the storm.”

She took a sip of her wine.

“I’m surprised you came.”

He chuffed a laugh. “Me, too.”

“So, this isn’t a middle of the night booty call?”

That finally made him laugh.

“I wasn’t even thinking about sex when I got dressed and came to check on you. I figured you didn’t have a backup generator and…hell…I did think about it when I got here and saw you wearing that satiny slip.”

Beth stroked his thigh and snuggled in closer.

“Do you want to talk about why you were worried about me, or do you want to save that conversation for another time?”

Chris turned and nuzzled her ear, but she could tell it was an affectionate move, not a move for physical intimacy.

“Another time, if you don’t mind. For right now, I’d like to sit, safe in this house with you and my dogs, listening to the storm rage outside.”

Beth kissed his cheek, then lay her head on his shoulder. The dogs were still sitting, alert at their feet. She could see they sincerely craved the comfort of touch. She patted the cushion next to her and one of the dogs—Zelda?—looked over at Chris for approval.

“They’ll wreck your sofa.”

“I think we’ve already broken in this sofa,” she teased. “We did a lot of vigorous activity on it. I think it can handle the dogs.”

In the candlelight, she could see Chris’s humor returning. He nodded, and both dogs jumped up, one on each side, settling in with their heads on her and Chris’s laps. They were trapped.

“I warned you,” Chris told her.

Beth smiled and pet Zelda, who gave a deep sigh of contentment, even as the rain pounded the roof of the house.