BODACIOUS Page 6

  “You don’t have to lock me up.” Her eyes held his as she lowered her voice. “Bo, let me go. Point the way and let me get out of here.”

  Shaking his head, he grunted and motioned for her to follow.

  She wrung her hands and stared down at them. “Well, can I at least borrow a couple of books?”

  He took a breath before he allowed one quick nod.

  She browsed through the bookshelves for several minutes.

  Most of the volumes were about military campaigns or historical battles. He had a smattering of “How To” books on organic gardening, herbal medicines, design and construction of a hydroelectric plant, cooking, animal husbandry, etc.

  There were only three novels: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, RIFLES FOR WATIE and EXODUS. She took all three.

  Again confined in the shed, Sara sat cross-legged, positioning a shaft of sunlight on the pages in order to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. Instead she thought of Bo.

  What kind of man was this? He definitely was not a madman, as Cappy had said, although he was eccentric.

  Organic gardening? A hydroelectric plant?

  Okay, he was an oddball. Also, Cappy had said Bo was old. She was less and less sure about how old. Cappy was nineteen. Maybe any fully mature man seemed old to him.

  Sara had turned the pages of a half dozen chapters and thought until she couldn’t think anymore by the time Bo knocked twice. He led her outside where he showed her how to dig yams.

  For Sara, digging sweet potatoes was like hunting Easter eggs. She gave a rebel whoop each time she probed and triumphantly turned up one of the tubers. Bent to the task, Bo appeared to ignore her sporadic celebrations.

  * * *

  After a late lunch of baked sweet potatoes, Sara casually went to the hutch drawer for the scissors. She picked them up and looked to Bo who eyed her suspiciously. Did he know what she was thinking? No, he was probably just concerned about the trim. Obviously he hadn’t considered she might use them as a weapon.

  Stay cool, she told herself. Keep him relaxed, off guard. “You agreed,” she cajoled, smiling. His usual quick nod was less emphatic. He lowered himself to sit stiffly erect at the edge of the unpadded rocking chair.

  Shoving the small footstool back with her foot, studying his beard, Sara nudged his knees apart to let her close enough to work. She tried to ignore their proximity as she tilted his chin up so the light from the open awning was on his face exposing his throat.

  She tried to imagine plunging the scissors into his neck and wondered if she could endure the feel of flesh tearing under her hand.

  Suddenly his eyes shot to her face, a perceptive glance indicating he was fully aware of the scissors and able to read her thoughts. Was he daring her? Her breath quickened.

  She couldn’t do it. She wasn’t that desperate. Not yet. There had to be another way, a better way. This man had been kind. She could never live with herself if she did such a thing.

  Giving up the ill-conceived notion, she snipped at the strands of hair draping his upper lip.

  “Are you planning to make your own electricity for this place someday?” She asked the question innocently, as if her abhorrent thoughts had not passed between them. She bent, peering, guiding the scissors around his mouth.

  He nodded slightly. She flinched. “Moving like that could cost you a lip, you know. I’m armed.” She clacked the scissors open and closed in front of his face and arched her eyebrows. She caught a glint of something in the black depths of his eyes. A twinkle? Maybe. She swallowed a startled laugh.

  She planned to trim a little hair away from his thin lips--a token effort brought on by forfeit of her lurid scheme--but as she worked, her excavation revealed full lips and a comely mouth hidden beneath the brush. His lips were not only generous but his mouth was broad.

  Finally, nearly finished, Sara attempted to take a step back to see if the shaping looked symmetrical. As she stepped, however, her heel caught the footstool and she stumbled, reeling. Her arms flailed as she teetered backward, the scissors gripped tightly in one hand.

  Reacting, Bo caught the backs of her thighs with both hands just before she toppled, steadying her.

  Breathless, regaining her balance, Sara flashed a quick look at him and blushed. A gurgle--half cough and half laugh--burbled from her throat. “Sorry.” The word trilled with her embarrassed laughter.

  Bo grinned, his dark eyes capturing and holding hers a moment before he dropped his gaze, shaking his head in disbelief. His hands lingered, however, firmly affixed to thigh muscles running the backs of her legs.

  Staring, Sara cocked her head and pursed her mouth, her reaction changing from a giddy apology to an imperious glower.

  Bo lowered his hands slowly, skimming her legs, but he maintained physical contact, his fingers coming to rest at either side of her knees. He glanced up and a mischievous twinkle glinted in his eyes, this time unmistakable.

  Before she actually saw them, Sara had assumed Bo’s teeth would be decayed or at least yellowed by age and neglect. She stared at his mouth as it spread, his grin revealing large, white, even teeth. She felt transfixed by a peculiar warmth which sent pleasurable pin pricks spiking up and down her back.

  Rattled, unable to clear her thoughts, she tilted her head and continued studying him.

  Both Bo and Sara were still, crystallized in a moment until she became aware that the pointed end of the scissors wavered close to his throat. Hot breath caught in her throat. Bo looked down, his shoulders stiffened, and the grin vanished. He removed his hands from her legs, shot a glance from her face to the scissors and back, and growled a thin warning.

  She laughed lightly as she turned the scissor tips down and, this time looking behind, minced back a cautious step.

  Bo tipped his head, shrouding his eyes behind the curtain of hair. Still, Sara couldn’t seem to force her gaze away from his mouth. Something inside her was changing, right then, a dramatic change. Her steely fear of him became molten and reformed as...as something else, something akin to fear but more intense, a feeling which defied immediate definition. She needed to think. What was this...this peculiar excitement? She needed to interrupt these sensations, whatever they were, break this reverie.

  “My what big teeth you have, Grandma,” she said, hoping that injecting humor might break the brittle edge of the moment. “That’s what Little Red Riding Hood said to the wolf in her grandmother’s bed.”

  Bo gave a series of slow nods indicating he was familiar with the story.

  “Your disguise is pretty bad, if you’re playing the grandma.”

  The grin freshened, his teeth gleamed, and he cocked an eyebrow as he eased the scissors from her hand. His hands were thick, calloused...and gentle. She retreated as he stood and returned the scissors to the utensil drawer in the hutch. She knew where to find them, if she needed them sometime later on.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon by the time Bo picked up the lantern, led Sara to the shed and accompanied her inside. Puzzled, she trailed him to a dark corner where he handed her the light and began rummaging among boxes and crates which had seemed to be part of the wall. She stood behind him, holding the lantern high enough to allow them both to see for, even though it was daylight outside, the corners of the shed were cloaked in shadows.

  Bo pulled out a large pasteboard carton, hoisted it to his shoulder and carried it to the middle of the room. He set it down, opened the lid, took the lantern from Sara, and held it high motioning for her to look inside.

  The box was full of women’s apparel, dresses, jeans, shirts, sweaters--most double knits and heavy woolens.

  She touched the garments gingerly at first, lifting, separating, shaking out one item at a time. The sizes were too diverse to have belonged to one woman. Styles and fabrics indicated the clothes had been put away decades before.

  Sara sorted through the collection, holding items up to her from time to time. “Does all this stuff belong to someone you know?”

&n
bsp; He shook his head. No.

  Most of the garments were riddled with holes. Some were small openings, eaten by moths or crickets. Other pieces had been more extensively damaged by rats and mice.

  Bo hung the lantern on a nail in the crossbeam overhead. While Sara examined pieces from the box, he strode from the shed, leaving the unguarded doors open. He returned with needle and thread, a cake of soap and the enamel dishpan filled with water. He put the items on the workbench and stood watching for a few more minutes, then, leaving the lantern swinging from the nail, he strode back to his cabin. The shed doors yawned wide.

  Sara regarded the open doors. It was nearly sundown but she could leave. Is that what he intended? Was he giving her a chance to escape?

  Fine. Which way? She thought of the coyotes and of the leering Franklin.

  No. Of all the dangers inherent here in the mountains--predatory animals, even more predatory humans--Sara definitely preferred Bo. She smiled thinking of his smile. There was a peculiar warmth growing between them. Before long, she would probably be able to convince him to take her back to civilization. She just needed to be patient.

  Turning her attention from the open doors, grateful that Bo had left her the lantern, she picked several items out of the box. Some pieces fairly dissolved in her hands. A few she rinsed in the enamel basin, wrung them--twisting until her hands burned--and draped them over the half walls between the stalls to dry. Most items she rejected. Some she mended. Several things she folded in a stack to repair later.

  * * *

  After sundown, when the air turned crisp, Sara took the lantern and scurried to the cabin, lured by the mingled smells of wood smoke and cooking meat.

  They ate a kind of chili with crackers and cheddar cheese. Sara noticed as they ate that Bo avoided eye contact. She washed dishes and put away leftover food, curious as Bo carried in an oval tub which looked like a watering trough.

  He placed the tub in front of the fireplace then filled all three kettles with water and put them on to heat--two on the cook stove and one on the metal arm which swung in over the fire in the fireplace. Then he hauled two buckets of creek water, partially filling the tub. He produced another cake of soap and a length of terry cloth fabric, and handed them to Sara.

  She looked from the items in her hands to the tub. “I can’t take a bath here.” She shook her head emphasizing the denial.

  Bo offered only a contradictory nod.

  “There’s no lock on the door.”

  He narrowed his eyes, tightened his mouth, stepped toward her, and reached for the front of her dress, indicating he was fully prepared to help her disrobe.

  She jerked beyond his reach. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it. But I need clean clothes.”

  Bo nodded and offered her the lantern.

  Glumly, Sara took the light and trudged to the shed where she got a shirt, a pair of worn denim jeans, and a flannel nightshirt, all items she had selected earlier from the box, rinsed and mended. The jeans still had damp spots around the pockets.

  The air outside was brisk, though still in the fifties, she thought, as she shooed Bo out the cabin door. “Please don’t come back until I’m dressed. Knock first, like you do at the shed. I’m modest. Okay?”

  He snorted and left. Obviously he had no interest in seeing her unclothed.

  She added boiling water from the kettles to the cold water already in the trough. When the temperature seemed right, she tiptoed to the door and peeked outside.

  No sign of Bo.

  Hurriedly, she stripped and eased into the steaming water. It felt wonderful.

  Submerging herself as much as possible, she lathered all over, using the bar soap even on her hair, then rinsed quickly. She would like to have stayed curled in the tub, to have luxuriated until the water got cold, but she was afraid Bo would return.

  She grabbed the towel as she stood and wrapped it around her before she stepped out of the improvised tub. Her back was still damp as she shimmied into the flannel gown and a pair of oversized ladies’ cotton panties. She pulled the shirt and denims on over the gown, pivoting in front of the fire all the while, warming as if she were on a vertical spit.

  She pulled the padded rocking chair as close to the hearth as she could, with the tub in the way, and tried to towel her hair dry. She ran her fingers through her dark curls to get the tangles out as well as she could, thinking it lucky that she’d had her hair cut before leaving Oklahoma.

  Finally Sara pulled the footstool close, drew a deep breath, leaned back, and rocked. Bo did not return. She didn’t know how long it had been, at least half-an-hour.

  Relaxing, she dozed in the chair, her feet propped on the footstool, warming as the blaze in the fireplace burned down, finally giving way to embers.

  She roused but didn’t move when she heard Bo’s motorcycle roar to life. Where could he be going over the terrible mountain roads this late?

  It was Saturday night. Maybe he had a date. After all, his beard was newly trimmed. The thought of his having a date annoyed her. Probably a big old hairy creature like him, she mused. Any woman would probably serve, if he just needed an outlet for his suppressed libido.

  “After all, if Jimmy Singer’s right, all women are the same in the dark.” She scowled. “As if Jimmy would know.”

  How odd, to think of Jimmy, a city slicker who couldn’t survive here in Bo’s world. Her thoughts quickly darted back to Bo and his motorcycle. She hadn’t known the machine still ran.

  It sounded as if Bo had ridden straight to the overlook. Then which way? She listened intently. The surrounding mountains played tricks with sounds, bouncing and echoing them up and down through the hollows and valleys, leapfrogging them over ridges. She needed to know which direction Bo went.

  She probably should look outside, look for his headlight, but to do that, she would have to get up, walk across the sod floor in her clean bare feet and open the door, letting the cold night air into the warm cabin.

  Maybe next time. He’d be back,

  What if he didn’t come back?

  Her eyes popped wide at the thought. If she were left alone, would coyotes or wolves or mountain lions eat her or would the half-wit hillbillies get her first? Of all the terrors of this place, Bo’s abandoning her suddenly seemed to be the worst. Again she fretted. She needed to make him like her, needed him for her escape. Damn!

  Sometime later, sleepy and shivering, Sara made her way from the rocking chair to the bed. She pulled off the top quilt, wrapped it around her and hesitated, gazing at the bed. It would sure beat sleeping in the hay in the shed. The motorcycle would wake her. She would have plenty of warning. Did she dare sleep, even for a little while, in his bed?

  Yawning, she eased onto the mound of quilts and inhaled deeply. The bed smelled like him, like leather and pine, tobacco, and...safety.

  Chapter Five

  Sunday, Day 3: At daybreak the roar of the motorcycle woke her. Sara leaped from the bed, scrambling to disentangle herself from the quilts. Two knocks, a pause, and the cabin door opened.

  Carrying a slab of bacon, Bo glanced at Sara who stood beside his bed, one foot on the other. She squinted. The beard trimming looked even better this morning. His long, dark chestnut hair was combed and had a sheen as if it were freshly washed. He looked bigger and more handsome, strapping, healthy...and young. She shivered, wondering where that renegade reevaluation came from.

  He put the bacon on the hutch and turned his attention to building a fire in the cook stove.

  Sara thought of asking where he’d been all night, then decided she didn’t want to know. Maybe he did have a girlfriend. So what? Sara didn’t know why she found that thought so irksome. Some local, mentally deficient woman, no doubt. Probably a lucky thing for Sara that he had a love interest.

  Or maybe he’d been hunting all night.

  No, he didn’t have game to clean. It was definitely a woman. Her responding irritation puzzled her.

  She smoothed the covers over the bed withou
t speaking. Bo ignored her. Shivering, she stepped into her shoes and darted out into the mist; down to the outhouse briefly where she removed the nightshirt from under her clothes, then went to get the water buckets. A frosty bite in the air quickened her movements.

  The bath water was topped with a thick layer of soap scum. While Bo cooked, she emptied the tub one pail at a time.

  After breakfast, Bo hauled the nearly empty tub out and turned it upside down beside the cabin. Returning, he pulled off his boots and began unbuttoning his shirt. Regarding him nervously for a moment, Sara then scurried outside and back to the shed.

  * * *

  The sunshine, promising at dawn, was short-lived, giving way to a daylong drizzle which kept Sara in the shed the rest of Sunday. Despite the fact the brace was on the ground, the brackets empty, and Sara free to come and go as she pleased, she didn’t.

  Working with needle and thread in the limited light from the open door, she repaired clothing from the box and wondered about the women who had worn them.

  The damp air got colder through the day.

  Late in the afternoon Bo brought her a plate of hash. He knocked twice at the open door but didn’t look at her as he set the food on the floor just inside and left. He seemed preoccupied. At least he didn’t expect her to provide his entertainment. Obviously he had gotten his companionship and bath elsewhere--not that she cared one whit.

  Day 4: On Monday the weather cleared and the temperature climbed to sixty. Bo built two fires in the yard, placed huge black kettles over the flames and filled the pots with water which he carried in buckets from the stream below the cabin. Sara wondered why he didn’t use the pump right there in the front yard.

  “Is the well water only for drinking and cooking?”

  He shook his head and indicated she should try the pump. She worked for nearly a minute before she drew any water and that only a trickle.

  “It’s easier and quicker to carry it up from the creek right?” Suddenly she felt a peculiar admiration for the man. He was certainly resourceful and marvelously energetic.

  He put detergent in one of the pots, added his dirty clothes, and used a wooden paddle to stir them as they simmered.