Peggy Nicholson - The Wildcatter

She jumped, then glanced over her shoulder. Miguel Heydt sat astride the tow hitch of a horse trailer that had been uncoupled and left parked alongside the tool shed. Leaning back against the trailer’s streamlined front, he held a beer balanced on one blue jeans–clad knee. He tipped his head back in inquiry, but he didn’t rise as she approached.

At least he still has his shirt on, she told herself. Actually, it was a T-shirt, clinging damply to his broad chest. She stopped close enough to smell an aroma of hay and hot male that did funny things to her pulse. “You’re not inside,” she said, suddenly at a loss over how to begin.

“Waiting for my turn in the shower.” He rubbed the hard angle of his jaw and she heard the tiny rasp of bristles. He hadn’t bothered with shaving this morning; the blue shadow gave a rakish air to his weary smile. He looked like a bandido one jump ahead of the posse.

But not worried about the outcome—far from it. “Looking for someone?” he inquired politely.

“You.” There was no way she could think to hide that fact. “I was wondering if you’d—” She ran out of air, had to stop for a breath. “If you might loan me your truck—that is, if you don’t mean to use it yourself. Tonight. I’d be happy to fill it with gas for you. Pay you something, if you like.”

His dark eyes narrowed behind thick black lashes. “Ah.” Absently he raised the bottle of beer to his lips, then seemed to focus on it. “Could I offer you una cerveza? Or maybe you’re not of age. Perhaps a cold drink. We have lemonade.”

He, also, saw her as a child? She felt her temper kick up a notch. “I’m quite old enough to drink, thank you, but no, thank you. But your truck…?” She couldn’t manage an ingratiating smile—bit her bottom lip anxiously, instead; this was even harder than she’d imagined.

“Your own car is not working?”

“I don’t own a car.” She’d asked—begged—Ben for one, for her graduation from high school. She was so cut off from the world, here at Suntop. Most of her friends lived in Trueheart, some twenty miles away. She’d have been happy to take a job in town to earn the price of a car, but there was no way she could reach the job without wheels in the first place.

All that last month before graduation, she’d circled ads in the Durango newspaper for used compact cars at reasonable prices. Left the classifieds on Ben’s desk where he couldn’t fail to see them.

On graduation night, he’d given her a pair of two-carat emerald ear studs, which she’d yet to wear. Because she’d read his gift’s message loud and clear. He’d treat her like a princess—as long as she remained under his thumb.

“You own all this…” Heydt’s eyes swept the horizon beyond her. “But you own no car?”

Her problems were not his business. She shrugged. “I have the use of the ranch car when I need it.” As long as Ben approved of her needs. It was a battered old Range Rover that rattled your teeth out. But there was a constant tug-of-war between her and Lara for its use, and since she’d been gone from home, Risa had lost this round. “My middle sister, Lara, has taken it to Albuquerque. She’s visiting friends, so…” She looked at him pleadingly.

“Then, perdoname for wondering, but why not ask your father for his car?”

She almost stamped her foot with frustration. “He’s out somewhere driving and I’m in a hurry!” Eric had to work overtime on a case tonight. But he’d promised her that if she could come to him, he’d take her out for a late supper, then show her his new apartment. Damn it, it had been nearly five days since last they’d kissed!

“Ah.” Miguel sighed and rose stiffly to his feet. He swayed as he reached his full height, bouncing lightly off the trailer behind him. “In that case, señorita, I will drive you to Durango with pleasure. Let me grab a shower, then we can—” He paused as she shook her head emphatically.

That was the very last thing she needed—Miguel Heydt tagging along. Oh, Eric would love that, all right! “No, please—I mean—thank you very much. But I have to go alone. Look, I really will pay you. Whatever you want for a night’s rental.”

The corners of his mouth took on a whimsical tilt as his gaze seemed to drop a few inches.

She licked her lips nervously and felt a wave of heat rush through her. He was thinking of kissing her? Surely not! “Please?” she repeated, hating to beg. “Say…fifty dollars?” She reached into her pocket.

“No.” He cut the syllable shorter than usual. A Spanish no, not an anglo one. A Latin-male no, she realized as his lips tightened and his eyebrows drew together. She blew out a breath and looked away. He’d offered her a favor; she’d spurned it, trying to buy his help, instead. But she was too frustrated to apologize.

“Tell me,” he said after a moment. He patted the trailer behind him, drawing her eyes back his way. “Who owns this thing?”

“The trailer?” Lara’s mother had owned it originally, Risa remembered. So she supposed it had become her daughter’s when she died. But Lara had written her elder sister in March, in desperate need of money—for what she would not explain. Some scrape that she’d had to conceal from Ben.

Risa had sold a classmate her favorite Zuñi bracelet, a corn blossom sterling-and-turquoise bracelet, and sent three hundred dollars on to her sister. Which meant that Lara owed her. Which meant that now, if Heydt’s inquiry was more than idle curiosity… Her shrug was elaborately casual. “I do.” At least, you could say she had a three-hundred-dollar interest in Lara’s trailer. “I and my sister own it. Why?”

“Because I would like the use of it. I have so little time to ride after work. With this I could go farther.”

“Oh? But I was talking about borrowing your truck once,” Risa pointed out, fighting an urge to clap her hands in excitement. “If you mean to use this trailer often, then I’d want to…” She met his gaze squarely. “Then how about a one-for-one trade? For each time I get to use your truck, you get a night’s worth of my trailer?”

His eyes gleamed like shards of obsidian. “Bueno, a woman who knows how to bargain! But there’s una problemita. I’ll need my truck to tow this thing.”

Risa gave him a wide, close-lipped smile. “Oh, that’s no problema at all.”

IN SPITE OF his exhaustion, Miguel didn’t fall asleep until nearly ten. The poker game in the bunkhouse kitchen was particularly raucous tonight; somebody was drawing good hands. Each time he laid his cards on the table, the shouts of disbelief and groans of indignation carried through the thin walls.

Lying on his top bunk in the darkened room he shared with three other men, hands clasped behind his head, Miguel stared at the ceiling only a few feet above. It was too dark to make out the crack in the plaster, but he knew it already by heart; a line like a ragged river, cutting its patient way through limestone.

He wiggled his toes under the sheet with pure pleasure. The creek bed at the Sweetwater Flats! His hunch had been right. From the instant he’d stumbled across that old map of Trueheart in a flea market in Abilene, he’d known it in his bones. Somewhere along the course of that creek was an oil seep—maybe several seeps. He hadn’t been able to find the upwelling in the dark. Every crack in the bank, every shadow cast by a rock, looked like a gush of black gold by the light of his lantern.

But though he’d yet to find it, he’d tasted the water and that told him enough. Bad water? This was water to make a man’s fortune! Agua bendito!

An image of Risa’s heart-shaped, haughty face flashed through his mind. Would you look down your adorable nose at me, gringa, if I were as rich as your papá? Richer than your Mr. Mercedes?