Jackrabbit Junction Jitters Page 11

  Somebody pounded on the door.

  She jumped. “What?”

  “What are you doing in there?” Gramps asked in her favorite barking tone of his.

  “Knitting you a sweater. What do you think?”

  “Well, hurry up.”

  “There are two other bathrooms in this house.”

  “You’re up next in the tournament.”

  Claire sighed. “Can’t someone sit in for me?”

  “No. You’ve got five minutes.”

  “Then what? You’ll break the door down?”

  “I know where Ruby keeps the key. I’ll send your mother in there to get you.”

  Claire grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. Gramps knew how to play dirty. “I thought she was going back to the R.V. to read.”

  “She did, too. But she can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s your Euchre partner tonight.”

  Chapter Eight

  “That Porter is a real gentleman,” Deborah said as she rearranged the cards in her hand. “He actually asked me what time he should have Kate back here. Can you believe that?”

  She looked across the table at Claire, sporting a porcelain smile that barely reached the corners of her lips, let alone her eyes. “Claire, didn’t you tell me MacDonald asked your grandfather for permission to date you?”

  “No, Mother.”

  White knuckled, Claire stared blindly at her own cards, her tongue raw from biting it repeatedly while Deborah crowed praises for a man with whom she’d spent a grand total of ten minutes trading weather forecasts.

  She tipped back her Corona, barely tasting it. Cigar smoke and Chanel No. 5 swirled around on the air conditioned trade winds that circled the rec room.

  “Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten that MacDonald isn’t concerned with your family’s feelings. My mistake.”

  With Ruby off to Yuccaville to pick up Jess from a friend’s house, Deborah had no incentive to censor her comments about Mac and his so-called shortcomings. But Claire was about to give her mom a reason. She just wasn’t sure if cramming a bear claw doughnut in Deborah’s mouth and then duct taping her lips shut would be enough.

  “Claire, it’s your bid.” Gramps thumped his fingers on the table, puffing on his cigar. His knickers were wadded up double-knot tight because he and Manny needed only one more trick to win the game. “And that tic is back in your eye, girl.”

  Closing the guilty eye, Claire shot Gramps a Cyclops glare over the top of her cards. His cheeks creased slightly as he noticeably fought to keep a grin from surfacing.

  “Did you see how Porter kissed the back of my hand?” Deborah sipped her second glass of White Zinfandel. “I haven’t had a young man kiss my hand since I was in college.” She tittered as she lowered her glass to the table.

  Claire winced. Whistling tea kettles grated less on her nerves.

  “Claire, bid.” Gramps nudged her again.

  Chester belched from where he sat at the bar watching them play. “Did he kiss your hand, too, Claire?” The smirk on his face said he already knew the answer.

  “Of course he didn’t.” Deborah spoke for Claire, like any good, overbearing mother. “I don’t blame him either. You saw how filthy she was.”

  Her stomach churning with tension, Claire stared down at her cards. She tried to focus on the suits and numbers. Manners instilled back when she wore pigtails kept her from snarling at her mother in front of Chester and Manny, but her teeth were going to crack if she gritted them much harder.

  “Seems to me,” Manny said, “a gentleman would look past a little dirt to have a chance to touch his lips to the hand of a beautiful woman.”

  Claire shot him a quick smile.

  Gramps slammed down his cards. “Would you quit horsing around and bid already, Claire!”

  “Fine! I’m going to shoot.” That should shut Gramps up.

  The only way to keep him from basking in the spoils of victory was to try to win all of the tricks this hand and steal the game out from under Manny and Gramps.

  “Alone?” Manny asked.

  “No.” Claire laid her worst card face-down on the table and pushed it across to her mother. “Give me your best heart.”

  Gramps snickered. “I’m not sure Deborah even has one.”

  Deborah frowned. “Very funny, Dad.” She shoved one card across the table toward Claire and pocketed the rest. “Since I’m sitting out this round, I may as well file my nails. That country bumpkin at the Nail Palace turned my fingertips into daggers.”

  Claire had always thought her mom’s nails grew that way naturally.

  She picked up her mother’s card—the Queen of clubs. What part of “best heart” had Deborah not understood? Claire stuffed the card in between her others.

  Straight faced in spite of this chink in her armor, she told the guys, “Hearts is trump,” and led the round with the highest trump card—the Jack of hearts.

  Gramps and Manny threw out lower-ranking suit cards. One down, five to go.

  “Honestly, Claire.” Deborah pulled a short nail file from her purse. “If you want my opinion—”

  “I don’t.” Honest opinions from her mother usually burned in Claire’s gut.

  She dropped the second highest trump card, the Jack of diamonds, onto the table.

  “It would do you some good to be a little more like Kathryn.” Deborah filed away on her talons.

  Gramps tossed out the nine of diamonds. “So, you want Claire to start lying to the cops?”

  Chester guffawed.

  “I think she means Claire should bleach her hair blonde and wear short skirts.” Manny dropped the Ace of hearts on the pile. “And I for one am all for short skirts.”

  Chester rolled his cigar in the ashtray. “They say blondes have more fun, but I’ve known many brunettes who could—”

  “I’m referring to Kathryn’s choice in men.” Deborah had stopped filing. She glared at each of the three stooges in turn.

  Claire scooped up the cards and replaced them with the Queen of hearts, her penultimate trump card. “Oh, I get it. You want me to start dating petty thieves.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Claire Alice.” Deborah pointed the file at her. “I’m not your father. I don’t think it’s cute.”

  “What’s your problem with Mac?” Gramps slapped the Jack of spades on Claire’s card.

  Manny added the Jack of clubs.

  Three down, three to go. Claire’s nine of hearts came next—the last trump card out there.

  “MacDonald needs someone less refined than Claire. Someone more his social equal.”

  “Have you forgotten Claire’s entrance earlier this evening?” Gramps asked. “She looked like she’d been making mud pies all afternoon. And look at her now, sitting there in her paint-stained shirt and torn jeans. She’s not even wearing a bra, for chrissake.”

  “Hey!” Claire pulled Ruby’s windbreaker closed over her purple Deadwood Rocks! T-shirt. “You guys are the ones who couldn’t wait for me to run to the Winnebago for some clean underwear.”

  The stash of spare clothes she kept in Ruby’s linen closet included jeans, shorts, some old tennis shoes, and a couple of T-shirts—extra clothes she didn’t care about getting paint or grease on. But no skivvies or bra, and she’d refused to slip back into the ones she’d sweated in all afternoon.

  “Claire is not exactly a model of refinement.” Gramps placed the King of clubs down. “No offense, kid.”

  “None taken.” She watched Manny place the ten of diamonds on the stack. “Refinement sounds too much like ‘confinement’.”

  “Her outfit tonight is just a minor setback in my plans for updating her wardrobe.”

  “I swear to God, Mother, if you lay one manicured finger on my T-shirts, I’ll tell Kate that you never really took Mr. Bojangles to that ‘nice little farm’ out on the prairie.”

  Deborah flashed Claire a narrow-eyed, silent warning. “I’m just saying that you cou
ld use someone to guide you here and there.”

  “What do you think I am? Some ass-scratching ape?” Claire rolled her eyes and threw out the Ace of spades, Gramps the Ace of diamonds, and Manny the Queen of spades. “Besides, Mac has a master’s degree. You’ve obviously never heard him talk about soil types or plate tectonics at the breakfast table.”

  One to go and she’d be free of her mother for the night. Crossing her fingers under the table, Claire dropped the Queen of clubs in the center of the table.

  Manny sighed and threw his King of spades out of turn.

  She looked at Gramps. The grin on his face made her swear. He slapped the Ace of clubs down and howled in victory.

  Deborah pulled her cards from her pocket and laid them in the center of the table. Claire flipped over her mom’s cards. The King of diamonds mocked her.

  “Damn it, Mom. Why didn’t you give this one to me? We could have won the game.”

  “No one likes a sore loser, sweetie.” Deborah’s gaze remained glued on the nail she was filing. “Besides, you shouldn’t have shot. It was too risky. One of these days you’re going to learn the importance of using caution and not jumping before you’ve had a chance to plan things out.”

  “Whatever!” Claire fell back in her chair. She shoved her stack of won tricks across the table, her shoulders drooping in defeat. Partnering with her mom had added several wrinkles on her face. She’d eat a fly in exchange for a cigarette right now.

  “Don’t ‘whatever’ me. You’re thirty-four years old.”

  “Thirty-three and a half.”

  “You have yet to settle down with a good man.”

  “Have you forgotten that I live with Mac?”

  “And raise a family of your own.”

  “If this is about you wanting grandchildren—”

  “No, it’s not about grandchildren. It’s about you being a responsible, well-groomed woman. Take Kathryn, for example.”

  “No, you take Kate.” Claire had put up enough with her mom raining glory on her younger sister’s deeds for this evening. “I’m going to take Henry.”

  The dog looked up from where he’d been snoozing on the couch. He stood and stretched.

  “We’re going to go for a walk. And tonight, when Mac gets back, we’re going to have wild and wooly sex. The kind improperly-dressed, intellectually-challenged girls like me revel in. So if you don’t want to hear it, stay away from the spare bedroom.”

  Eyes bulging, Deborah gaped at Claire.

  Gramps grimaced and puffed on his cigar.

  “What do you mean by ‘wooly’?” asked Chester.

  Henry hopped to the floor when Claire grabbed his leash and stepped into her flip-flops.

  “And for your information, Princess Kate hasn’t been a virgin since her sixteenth birthday, while I waited until my eighteenth before letting Stevie Logan go cherry picking. So stuff that in Kate’s ‘Best Daughter’ trophy and shove it.”

  Claire slammed out the back door with Henry in tow.

  * * *

  Mac pulled up next to the General Store and cut the engine. The rec room lights blazed through the window in the back door. Mabel gleamed under the outside nightlight, but Ruby’s truck was gone and chances were, so was Ruby.

  After spending the last ten hours inside a hole in the earth, Mac wanted nothing more than to wash the dirt from his body and touch Claire, but if Harley was home, he couldn’t walk in the back door looking like he’d been in a mine all day. Claire’s grandpa would tie him in a chair and put a spotlight on his face until Mac coughed up all the details and then some about the letters to Ruby.

  He stepped to the ground, slinging his pack over his back. The pickup engine ticked as it cooled. The willow tree next to the house quivered in the lukewarm breeze.

  He tiptoed up to one of the rec room windows and peeked inside. Harley, Chester, Manny, and Deborah sat at the card table, playing cards, drinking beer—well, except for Deborah, she had a half-full glass of wine in front of her.

  Where was Claire? He glanced up at the spare room window. The light was off. Maybe she was with Ruby.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, his skin sticky. So much for that shower. Then he remembered Harley’s R.V.

  Crunching along under the waning moon toward the Winnebago, his thoughts slipped back underground.

  The mine hadn’t given up its secrets, if there were any. Joe’s old maps were outdated—several tunnels not shown, others now blocked by cave-ins. But the maps were all Mac had, since the library’s stash had been pilfered. He’d taken his time, noting changes on the maps, inspecting the walls and ceiling for cracks, using spray paint as bread crumbs so he didn’t end up lost in the black maze.

  The Winnebago’s windows were dark, the door locked. Maybe Harley still kept a spare key hidden inside the rear bumper.

  Down by Jackrabbit Creek, Chorus frogs trilled their raspy tunes, sounding like fingernails running over comb teeth. High up in one of the cottonwoods, a Western Screech owl greeted him with a soft “cr-r-oo-oo-oo-oo.”

  Desert summer nights reminded him of a rave party, with hundreds of mammals, amphibians, and insects all clamoring and bumping against each other under the Milky Way.

  He squatted next to the back bumper avoiding a patch of rank-smelling clammyweed and reached underneath. His fingers brushed over the magnetic key box.

  The hinges creaked as he swung open the R.V.’s door. With two claps the light overhead flickered to life. He trod softly across the linoleum floor even though the place was empty.

  Somebody had opened the windows. A breeze rippled the curtains.

  Mac didn’t waste any time while showering; Deborah or Kate could walk into the Winnebago at any minute and he didn’t want to risk seeing either of them, especially the former.

  Squeaky clean, still damp around the edges, he slid into his jeans. He grabbed his pack and dug out the extra T-shirt he kept there, slipping it over his head. With one last glance in the bathroom mirror to make sure he’d washed off all traces of the Lucky Monk, he clapped the lights off, swung open the door, and stepped down into the night.

  “Come here often?” A soft voice asked.

  Mac lowered his pack to the ground and walked over to where Claire stood in the shadows under the awning. “Not often enough.”

  He ran his hands down her arms, slid his fingers between hers, and sandwiched her against the R.V.’s aluminum siding.

  “You’re late,” she whispered as he nuzzled her neck.

  He dragged his lips along her jaw line. “I missed you.”

  She moaned as his mouth covered hers.

  “You taste like chocolate.” He released her fingers so he could explore the warm skin under her shirt.

  “It’s the M&Ms.”

  He nibbled on her collarbone; his fingertips slid up her smooth stomach and paused. “Hey, you’re not wearing a bra.”

  Her laugh sounded low and husky.

  His body hardened, eager to explore further. “Let’s go inside.”

  “We can’t.” She delved her fingers into his hair, dragging his lips back to hers.

  “Why not?” he asked when he came up for air.

  “Because my mom could be back any minute, and what I plan on doing to you is going to be loud and take a while.”

  “Jesus, Claire.” Mac pressed harder against her and savored her sweetness, immersing himself in her scent and softness. She filled his palms, so full and inviting.

  Her hand pressed his zipper, and he almost hoisted her over his shoulder, carried her down by the creek, and had his way with her on the bank.

  Instead, he pulled away from the she-devil’s grasp and took several deep breaths. He needed to focus on something besides Claire’s body for a few minutes.

  Claire adjusted her shirt, her breath as choppy as his. “Did you find anything at the mine?”

  Good idea, talk about the mine. “Just some empty ore carts and a dead possum.”

  “Yuck.” She grabbed H
enry’s leash from the back of a lawn chair. “So now what?”

  “Dig deeper. It’s an expansive mine with a lot of real estate left to cover.”

  “Are you going back up there tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep from grabbing her and yanking her shirt over her head.

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “I have to.”

  “Is there anything I can do to stop you?”

  Mac chuckled. “Tie me to the bed.”

  “Okay.”

  “I forgot to tell you this morning that I’m going home tomorrow night.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “But you don’t have to be back to work until Tuesday.”

  “I’m going to pay a visit to Leo Scott.”

  He hoped a little face-to-face exchange would land some answers—like who was so hell bent on taking the Lucky Monk mine from Ruby. Mac would work on figuring out the “why” part on his own.

  Claire closed the distance between them. “When are you leaving for the mine tomorrow?”

  “Before Harley wakes up.”

  She ran her fingertip down his sternum. “So, I get you until sunrise?”

  He captured her hand at the waistline of his jeans. “Unless you put me in a coma.”

  “I’ll give it the old college try.”

  Lifting her palm, he kissed the center of it. “Let’s go back to Ruby’s.”

  She moaned and curled her fingers, rubbing her knuckles along his stubble-covered jaw. “Let me just run inside and get some underwear.”

  “You’re not wearing underwear either?” Screw the bed, the creek bank would do just fine. A little sand never hurt anyone.

  “I’m totally commando, baby.” Handing him Henry’s leash, she asked, “Will you get Henry? He’s down by the creek taking care of doggie business.”

  Then she took the spare key from him, unlocked the door, and stepped into the darkness. He listened to her footfalls as she walked to the back bedroom.

  “Henry?” Mac shook the bell on the dog’s leash.

  The thick thatch of mesquite behind the R.V. rattled.

  Inside the Winnebago, the bedroom light switched on. A soft glow spilled out from the window.