Chapter 6

She was still weak, but she managed to walk straight when she went into the camera shop. Jill's head was fuzzy, but she'd thought of buying some Polaroid film and perhaps faking a set of prints for Boyce Pittman. Overexposure, blurred prints-anything that might make him believe the pictures were real. She'd need someone to help, probably, but the only man around was Dink Watson, and that was out.

Film in hand, Jill was walking back toward the counter when the woman stopped her. "Hi, Jill."

It was Dee Oliver, looking neat as usual, with every hair in place, her pants suit crisp and fashionable. Jill didn't understand how the woman did it, because Dee was a ranch wife, too. Jill said, "Hi, passed your husband on the way in."

Dee lifted an eyebrow. "Then you don't know yet."

"Know what?"

The other woman smiled. "I hear he's been calling all over town, trying to find you. Your husband, dear. Steve's come home from the wars."

Jill dropped the film, and it skidded along the polished aisle. She chased after it, stooped, turned to say over her shoulder, "Thanks, Dee. Thanks a lot. I-I'd better hurry home; I didn't know . . . "

And since there wasn't time to stop at the cashier, she whizzed by him waving the film. "Pay for this later, Charlie."

Steve was home; Steve Devlin, her husband of nine years, was at the ranch and had been trying to find her. While she'd been in a motel room with another man. Jill's throat tightened, and for a moment, she thought she was going to cry, but fought down the impulse and got into her truck.

She wheeled it down the street, and when she passed the bank, saw Boyce standing in the front door. He gave her a little wave and a smile as she drove by. Puzzled, she kept going into the county road, feeding the truck more gas than usual. What did Boyce have to be so happy about? Surely, Steve's return didn't mean anything to him, beyond a possible mortgage payoff.

Boyce had never waved at her before; the move just wasn't in character for him. She slowed the truck and tried to get her head together, to look at everything from Boyce's perspective. His reaction to Steve's return-and surely, he'd heard about it before she had-could be caused by relief, by the hope that Jill would be too preoccupied with her husband to make any more trouble for Boyce Pittman, and/or the Mid-Oregon Trust Bank. That could be it, and nothing more; or he could have made some move against her, done something that protected himself.

"He talked to Dink!" she said aloud, and the pickup veered as her hands tightened on the wheel. "Boyce got hold of Dink and slipped him some whiskey, and found out that there are no pictures. That's it; that has to be it. Oh, damn, damn! And all the time, I was in that motel being stupid."

Then she thought of ninety thousand dollars; that was the figure Aaron Mercer gave her; seventy thousand clear, he had said. She and Steve could buy a nice small ranch with that, put equipment on it, and keep the stock they had now. They could make it just fine, starting over without debts they'd inherited with the Rafter D. Seventy thousand dollars, clear.

"Oh, Steve," she breathed, a new and different kind of excitement rising within her, and a vindication of her involvements with other men. It was working out, after all; it didn't matter that Boyce knew she'd bluffed him about the pictures, and it didn't matter if he tried to foreclose now. They could accept Aaron Mercer's offer and pay off the bank.

Jill stopped the truck just inside the ranch turnoff, and sat staring blindly at the dashboard. Had there really been an offer? Aaron had said: Here's a figure to think about. He hadn't said: I'll give you that much for the ranch.

And if he had said it, did he really have that kind of money?

She would have to sweat it out for a while longer, go back to see Aaron after she'd talked it all over with Steve. She had to find out for sure that a "developer" who traveled about with bodyguards wasn't just some kind of crook putting up a front.

Those bodyguards; when she'd left the motel, they looked from their own rooms, and Lang had simpered after her; ugly Jojo only looked, but she could feel their thoughts, know that they'd been seeing her as an immoral bitch who was fresh from playing sex games with their boss.

Jill moved the truck up the ranch road. Well, she thought, what the hell was she, if not an immoral bitch? Good lord-all that oral sex that she had wallowed in, and Aaron mounting her so soon after she'd passed out from the intensity of repeated orgasms. His penis-she shook her head and steered around a bump; she didn't want to think about that now. She had a husband waiting, a loving man that she hadn't seen in two years; she wanted to think about him.

The gate ahead, the cattle guard; she drove on, and a sickness caught at her stomach. Was there some way a man could tell if a woman had been screwing recently? Aaron's semen, she thought; oh, lord-suppose it made her too slippery or something, and Steve would know without a doubt that she'd been laying someone else, and only a few minutes before. The idea was frightening. She'd have to have a douche, or at least a bath. Maybe Steve wouldn't want to wait that long. "Oh, lord, oh, lord," she breathed, and turned the truck into the front yard of the Rafter D.

But then she saw him come out onto the porch and slammed open the door of the truck to go flying across to meet him more than halfway. His arms were spread wide, and Jill raced into them, hurled herself against his hard, comforting body and wrapped her own arms tightly about his neck. She saw only the blur of his face, the eyes bright and smile white, before her uplifted mouth crushed fervently into his, and something like a small sob broke against his teeth. "Steve-Steve!"

His mouth was sweet, and her tongue sought the depths of it, her teeth raked his, and she squirmed hotly, tightly against him. Then Jill remembered that she was supposed to hold him off, and dropped back from him, pushing him away, laughing up at him and seeing again his beloved, battered face. "Hey, husband-welcome home!"

Scooping her up, he carried her across the porch and into the house, where he set her upon her booted feet again and kissed her, lingeringly, with tenderness and longing, and she felt an immediate response rise in her body, a swelling of nipples she thought would remain flaccid for days to come.

She forced herself back, her hands against his chest. "Wow! Don't you want to give us a little time? Are you hungry or-or anything?"

Steve laughed. "I'd say mostly anything."

Jill slid away from his hands. "Back off, soldier. I've been running around town, and I'm all hot and sweaty, let me jump in the shower for a minute-"

"No chance." He caught her wrist and pulled her close. "I don't mind a little heat and sweat; on you, it's good. We can discuss it later, but right now, after I've been away from my woman for so damned long ..."

So she went with him to the bedroom, because there was nothing else she could do, and because she truly wanted to be with him. He came out of his uniform in a hurry, scattering blouse and slacks and shirt beside the bed, and she tried to match his exuberance, but her fingers slipped on a zipper, and then fumbled with a bra hook, so that when she turned to the bed, he was lying upon it waiting.

Steve looked well; he looked really wonderful, tanned from his belly button up, dead white below the line, except for the patch of black, curly hair between his legs; except for the purple head of his penis rising tall.

Aaron's cock had been twice that size.

Quickly, Jill moved to the bed and lay down, one hand dropping to grasp his penis, that familiar, loved penis that had taken care of all her desires for nine good years. It fit warmly and snugly within her palm, and she stroked it tenderly.

It had been difficult getting her fingers to reach around Aaron's cock.

Jill kissed her husband and rubbed the points of her breasts across his chest. His hands felt over her body, finding the remembered hollows, the places where he made her tingle, and she thought, // / concentrate, this will go all right, because I want him, I do!

She knew the scent of his shaving lotion, and the taste of his tongue, and she knew the hairy thrusting of his pelvis after she had lifted her leg over his body. Guiding the head of his penis to her slot, she was just a little surprised to find her labia moist for him. Not too moist inside, she thought; not all slidy and greasy from the stuff that Aaron Mercer left in there. His cock pushed in slowly, neatly, and she knew a gentle thrill as it centered itself and sank home.

Aaron's huge cock had stretched her labia, fought its way into her vagina and filled the length and breadth of it, stuffed her completely.

Jill pushed back, rotated her ass slowly in the gyrations she knew Steve liked to feel, and somehow he seemed not like Aaron, but like Boyce, and wasn't that a hell of a thing to do-compare her husband's lovemaking to other mens'? She ground her pelvis into him, hurried the squirmings and found that his testicles were in her hand, that she was squeezing and pulling upon them in time with the rhythm of his strokes.

Like two hairy melons, Aaron's balls had been, and the head of his prick had ballooned inside her, had tapped the entrance to her womb itself.

"Darling," Steve panted, "oh baby, oh Jill-so wonderful-"

She screwed him rapidly, humping and bucking to milk him of his semen before he could discover there was more of it contained in the far reaches of her vagina.

"Darling," he moaned, "oh, darling, darling. Do it to me, darling!"

And Aaron Mercer had said, "you bitch; you hot-assed bitch, fuck me!"

Shuddering, Jill clawed at Steve's back, and rolled her hips to meet his passionate release. His semen spurted thick and hot within her, and she clamped her thighs together to hold him in her vagina, to surge steadily against his cock while it pumped the essence of his manhood into her. And in surprise, she also came, slamming her pelvis against his in a series of rapid poundings as she came.

They lay quietly after that, and slowly, she eased his penis out of her to turn over onto her back. He pawed over on his side of the bed and found cigarettes, his lighter. "Still not smoking, Jill?"

'That's right," she answered, glad for mundane conversation, for all the little things they had to collect again, so that they could both become whole.

"I tried it in Nam," he said, "giving up cigarettes. But I got too jumpy, especially during the last few months. I guess I can quit any time now. I'm not going back there."

She turned on her side to look at him, seeing the broken nose in silhouette and the scar tissue along his right cheekbone, the G.I. haircut that barely left enough black-gray hair to cover the top of his head. Her fingertips brushed slowly across the side of his mouth, and Jill loved her husband all over again. She said, "You're not going back to Vietnam-or not back into the army?"

His eyes were closed; smoke drifted up as he let it purl from his lips. "I got the divorce, Jill. I'm not married to the army any more. Only the army pays the alimony to me, for the rest of my life. Half pay, baby; we can make it on that and the ranch."

"I'm glad you retired," she said. "Two wars, Steve; that's what the retirement pay is for. And we can make it-if we can pay off the notes at the bank."

Steve's eyes opened and he watched the upward moving column of smoke. "I have some money; two thousand from a crap game in Saigon, travel pay of five hundred; almost sixteen hundred in accrued leave time, a few bucks I saved. Call it forty-five hundred. That's not enough, is it?"

"I'm sorry, Steve. It isn't enough. We owe twenty thousand dollars, and the bank doesn't want to wait any longer. The calf crop, if we can move all the foals and most of the mares at a loss, maybe sell some of the old farm machinery, get somebody in to cut fence posts off that north hundred ..."

He put out his cigarette, stubbed it out in an ash tray that hadn't been used since he'd been home before. "What's all that tally out to?"

She sighed. "We're six thousand short, at least; only four if we're lucky. But he-the bank is pushing pretty hard; they don't want to wait until we can sell off everything. They want the ranch, Steve. I know this is the wrong way to welcome you home, darling, and if I could, I'd change it all-"

"You've done all you can," he said, and her heart shriveled up inside her chest. "But I'm home now, and maybe I can talk to some other people."

Sitting up, Jill wrapped her arms about her knees. "I-there's a chance that we might be able to sell and make a pretty good profit, if the bank doesn't foreclose first. I, well-I talked to this man just come to town, and he said-he said he might buy the Rafter D."

She was going to tell him for how much, but he cut in. "We're not selling. When the old man died four years back and left us the place, I didn't think it was such a good idea; then I'd have moved it, if anybody would have paid a decent price for it. But this last tour in Nam changed a lot of things in my head, and I want roots, a place to grow solid in. I left here because I was a smartass kid who just had to hire out to fight a war in Korea and see the world. Okay, I've fought the wars and seen the world, and the green grass of home looks a hell of a lot better to me."

"That's-that's fine," Jill said. "I'm with you, whatever you want to do, but maybe after you go to town and ask around, you'll see that maybe our only chance of coming out with anything at all is to-to ask this man if he'll buy."

Suddenly, moving with that swift energy he could still unleash after forty years, Steve was off the bed and moving for the bath. "I am hungry," he said, "and thirsty, but one thing at a time. First we eat and then we get drunk, and then we make a lot more love. I'm going to shower now; sure you won't join me?"

"N-no," she said, picturing the screwing she had given Boyce Pittman in that shower, seeing again how she had wrapped her legs around his waist and taken his penis up her while the hot water rained down on them. "No, Steve-I h-have to fix something to eat, and find the bottle, and-you go ahead."

In the kitchen, Jill pressed a hand to her belly and bent over the ache there, a pain not sexual, but something just as deep. She straightened up and pulled her robe closer about her body, and moved to the sink in her scuffs. Her hair felt tangled and matted, and when she had looked down, she'd seen the teethmarks between her breasts, marks that Steve hadn't noticed in his excitement. There were scratches on her buttocks, too, and she wondered that Steve hadn't discerned the gray taste of Aaron Mercer in her mouth.

A woman was built for hiding, she thought, and took down pots and a pan; a woman was designed for secrecy and sneaking and cheating. And this woman couldn't play it up front and honest yet, not at all. When Steve found out there was no credit and that it was probably only a matter of hours, no more than a few days, before Boyce Pittman had the vital papers served-maybe then Steve would listen to her.

She would have to make a trip to see Aaron again.

"Ohmigod," Jill breathed, and busied herself hauling things from the freezer, opening cans.-She hardly realized what kind of meal she was putting together, but she had to keep things moving.

Boyce Pittman and nothing keeping him from foreclosing now; she hadn't seen Dink around the barn, and he was probably passed out on his cot again. Aaron Mercer and his talk of ninety thousand dollars, his bodyguards and the two gray Buicks so much alike.

Now Steve didn't want to sell the ranch, and if he delayed doing just that, or if Aaron was a phony and couldn't come up with all that money, then Boyce Pittman would win all the chips anyhow.

She turned over some pork chops in the pan, and watched them thaw in the hot grease.