Wild Enough For Willa

“We’d decided to get back together.” Not that Baines cared.

“Your brother’s here.”

Alert suddenly, Luke felt his hair spike on the back of his neck. Carefully he kept his voice casual. “Give him my regards.”

“He’s got a gun.”

“So does every other macho Texan.”

“You know what I mean. He threatened—”

“If you’re scared, call the cops. He’s violated parole. They’ll send him back to prison.”

“He’s sick. Cancer.”

Luke sucked in a breath. He was glad Baines couldn’t see him, couldn’t detect…Luke felt cold, so cold. And it was a hot night.

Baines was still talking. “But do you think the crazy little bastard went home to his old man or checked himself into a hospital?”

Old man…

“Didn’t he?”

“Hell, no. Says he’s dying. The cocky little shit says he’s gonna kill himself a lawyer first. You know who…yours truly.” Baines paused. “He’s after Spook, too. And then…after he does us, guess who’s next, old buddy—”

Luke stood unmoving, his hand frozen on his icy bottle. Cancer? Little Red…?

“You really want me to call the cops? That’ll mean publicity. I thought you said you didn’t want anybody to know you had a piece of scum like him for a brother.”

Scum? Once Baines and his rich white law school buddies had called Luke scum.

Cancer? The kid was barely twenty-three. Five years in prison…and now a diagnosis like that. Would he die young like Marcie?

A quietness stole over Luke. His computerlike mind raced. What the hell kind of cancer? Could something be done? Options? Doctors? Experimental treatments? M.D. Anderson Cancer Center?

He thought of the stacks of sealed manila envelopes in that locked safe in his bedroom closet. Reports in those envelopes told all about the kid whose existence Luke publicly denied, whom Luke had denied to himself—until the day the old man had barged into his office and said, “I need a lawyer.”

“I would have thought a man with your connections would have any number of lawyers of his own.”

“I need a dope dealer’s lawyer. I hear you’re friends with that piece of slime in the valley—Brandon Baines.”

“Friends? Call Baines yourself. I’m busy. Kate, show this…er…this gentleman out.”

“You can’t throw me out like I’m nobody.”

“What exactly are we to each other? Are you my father?”

Big Red had glared at him. Then he’d looked away. Finally the old man had broken the silence.

“Baines says he’s too busy to see me.”

“That’s too bad.”

Luke knew, as he’d known that day, a whole lot more about the kid than he had ever let on. Oh, yes he knew a lot. He’d been keeping tabs for years. Even then he’d had a secret filing cabinet bulging with information about the kid.

Not that Luke had personally set foot in New Mexico to get that information. He hated that state, the people and the culture—what they’d done to him; what they’d done to his mother. Most of all what the old man had done to her.

Still, Luke knew the exact day, the exact minute, the exact place Little Red had been born. He had every school picture stapled to a single sheet of typing paper. He knew every basketball game the kid had ever won, knew every grade he’d ever made, knew the kid could add like a computer the same as he could. The kid was lousy in English the same as he was, too. Knew the kid had had a complex in high school because he’d been skinny and unattractive to girls.

Luke even knew the name of the first girl Little Red had screwed in college, knew they’d gotten high on pot and done it in the back seat of the brand-new, red Chevy the old man had given Little Red so he could make a splash in college.

Luke hadn’t had a car in college or law school. He’d had jobs. He hadn’t gotten to screw girls. At least not as often as he’d wanted. He’d had to work too damn hard.

Every time Luke had read a report he had visualized the boy and his charmed life, trying to get into his head the experiences he’d only dreamed about. He had wanted to know what it was like to be beloved and legitimate—to be the pure-white son.

Luke knew the brand of the first cigarette the kid had smoked. Just as he knew when the kid had taken the first false step, made the first bad friend that had led toward his dealing dope for Spook. Luke could have called the old man, could have warned him long before the kid went bad. Big Red had cut the free-spending kid off when he’d flunked out. The kid had been desperate. Instead of getting a real job, he’d started selling dope to friends.

He’d been a natural salesman. Girls had been easy to get after that. His life and travels had made fascinating reading. And the ritzy Longworths had been fooled by the lies the kid told them, believing he was a whiz in the computer business and had a real job.

Will Sanders, a private detective in Albuquerque, still made his monthly visits to Austin to update Luke’s files. Sanders had even had contacts in prison, so Luke knew everything that had happened to Little Red during the past five years, too. He knew about that night seven guys had held the kid down in his cell and nearly killed him.

Luke had taken steps then, used connections to get the kid moved. Gradually, Luke had begun to feel pride about how stoically Little Red had endured prison. A lot of pampered rich kids couldn’t have stood up to the abuse Little Red had suffered.

The kid was out. Free.

But cancer?

The kid needed doctors—fast.

“McKade, have you heard a damn thing I’ve said? He’s got a gun,” Baines repeated.

“And he knows how to use it. Stay out of his sight. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

“Look, I’ve got another big problem that can’t wait. A woman…”

“Hold tight.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Give the kid a target he can’t resist—me.”

“This is good.”

Luke slammed the phone down, his gut churning. He waited a minute, grabbed his cell phone to call his pilot.

No! He’d drive.

He didn’t bother to pack. He was out the door, running.

The smell of raw sewage hung in the air, no doubt, vapors from the Rio Grande. Heat glued Luke’s white collar to his neck. His long-sleeved, cotton shirt felt heavy and wet against his armpits. He wore jeans, boots, and a black Stetson. Three blocks shy of the posh, tourist zone of Nuevo Laredo with fancy restaurants like his favorite, El Rancho, and glitzy silver and leather shops, Luke stomped through paper cups, papaya peels, plastic bags, broken bottles, not to mention the human debris—beggars and pimps.

Familiar territory to a man with his past.

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico was an old city with a crumbling infrastructure. Like all poor places it was noisy, hot and dirty. It was in-your-face, gutsy, colorful and alive.

A shiny, low-riding American sedan cruised up to Luke, its radio blaring. A skinny, Mexican punk with a silver crucifix dangling from his glistening brown neck got out. The boy rushed him from the darkness, flipping pictures of naked girls.

Gleaming white smiles in pretty brown faces. Iridescent straight black hair. Breasts. Thighs.

Girls who didn’t look a day over fifteen. Girls willing to do whatever perversion a man could pay for. There were illustrations of those perversions.

Unsure of Luke’s nationality, the boy switched back and forth from English to Spanish.

“Meester…pretty girls.…Putas.…Muy baratas.… Cheap! They do anything.”

Luke shook his head, waving him off, only to have a dozen more swarm him.

“¡Vayate!” Luke growled, knowing but not caring that he probably botched the grammar.

“Chinga…”

The boys made vile hand gestures, such gestures having a rich obscene vocabulary all their own in Mexico. Aloud, they cursed him with a virulent stream of Mexican profanity. Then on the next breath, they sauntered jauntily across the street to cajole a fat-stomached tourist in Bermuda shorts who was smoking a cigar. Rap music pulsed from the low-slung sedan as the gringo leered at their pictures and then pulled out a fat wallet.

“Putas. Very pretty.”

Fun and games? In Mexico? Tonight?

They do anything.

It had been a while since Luke had had a woman. Sucker that he was, he’d been true to Marcie. It struck him he’d been waiting for her call and not her lawyers. His pride, his stupid pride had killed her.

I’m sorry. Why had that been so hard to say?

Sweat dripped from Luke’s brow. The heat. The damned desert heat. In July, even at night, Nuevo Laredo was like a furnace, baking him from above and below.

Why the hell hadn’t Baines done what Luke had told him? Why couldn’t he have stayed put in the good old U.S. of A.? But, no. Baines, like a lot of lawyers, had a penchant for drama. He was up ahead, leading this caravan of fools through the dense NAFTA traffic.

Little Red was not far behind.

Baines had gotten a green light when he’d crossed the border. His companions were a gorilla in a jogging suit, a small, skinny guy with greasy, black hair and a goatee, and a yellow-haired whore in red polka dots who was so pretty she made Luke’s stomach knot.

The Americans had stopped Little Red. But the paunchy-gutted idiots in their tight uniforms had let him go. When Luke got across the traffic-clogged border, which was bumper to bumper with eighteen-wheelers, he found Baines’s and Little Red’s cars two blocks from the main drag, their doors open in a dirt lot as if the occupants had scrambled out of them and taken off running. The radios had been ripped out. In another hour, the tires would be gone, too.

Beside Baines’s car, Luke had found his brother’s wallet, all the money gone and a high-heeled, red pump. Was the shoe the whore’s?

So where were they? He’d asked questions. Paid people. So far, he’d come up with zip.

Suddenly something that looked like bright red hair shimmered under blue neon a few blocks ahead. When Luke sprinted, a beggar with a mouthful of black teeth grabbed his ankle. Stumbling, he threw a fistful of pesos at the woman. Pushing himself free of her, he raced toward blue neon.

The redhead had vanished. Luke ran until he was thoroughly out of breath and thoroughly lost. When he stopped, he was on some dusty, rutted lane that wound in an indefinite course through a warren of shabby, graffiti-splashed buildings. Breathing hard, Luke rocked back on his heels.

Buildings? The houses were crude shacks made of sticks, adobe and cinder block. They leaned against one another like a row of dominoes ready to fall.

Hell on earth had to be junked cars lining a road like this. Hell was dirty, mean-looking, starving cats and dogs, half-naked kids with big brown eyes and ragged clothes. For an instant Luke was back at the pueblo. Then he stopped himself, not letting himself go there.

A lone rooster wandered in circles in the middle of the road. What was the use? Little Red could be anywhere. Luke might as well find a bar, have a tequila, the good kind, and pray for a break. But as he was scanning the houses for a familiar landmark so he could retrace his steps, a woman screamed.

Harsh slaps quieted her.

Then a gun popped, and she screamed again.

“Get off her, so I can kill myself a lawyer!”

Luke knew that voice.

The kid!

Another low-throated cry. This time Luke placed it as coming from the cinder block shack two houses down.

The silence that followed unnerved him. A brown bottle in the gutter caught Luke’s eye. He needed a weapon. Crouching, he swiped his sweaty hands on his jeans and then grabbed it by its long neck.

When the girl screamed again, he knocked the bottom off against a wall. Pulse pounding in his temple, Luke pressed himself into the warm shadows and inched nearer the house.

When he was close enough, he yelled from the street. “Damn you, Little Red…you’re crazy to carry a gun into Mexico. Cops down here will lock you away. You’ll never get out.”

“This is good,” mocked his brother drunkenly. “Not before I kill me a lawyer and…and…a bastard.…You’re next—Indian.”

The door banged. Bloody fingers against his golden face, Baines staggered outside. As always he was dressed impeccably in a dark custom-made suit. His two goons, the giant in the jogging suit and the runt with the slicked-back hair, stumbled outside behind him, grabbing Baines before he fell.

“Run, you sons of bitches,” Little Red whooped, rushing after them. “Vengeance is mine.”

The three men took off running. Luke sidestepped into a black pocket between two houses. Something he’d read in one of Sanders’s reports came back to him. Little Red had starred in a dozen plays in high school.

“Corny. Prison damn sure didn’t dim your flair for cheap drama, did it, kid?” he shouted.

“Where the hell are you?” Elbowing his way into the shadows, Little Red waved his gun. “Step out where I can see you.”

“This isn’t a high school play—kid. And you ain’t Rambo. And I ain’t stupid.”

The gun swung wildly.

Luke shrank against the wall.

“Luke! You…you…coward! You bastard!”

Silence.

Then a roach scurried out of the dark past the rooster. Scrawny wings spread.

When Little Red fired, the confused rooster flapped straight at Little Red.

“Sonofabitch!” Swatting wildly at the bird, the kid dropped the gun.

Racing footsteps at the other end of the alley.

Mr. This-is-good and his goons hadn’t gotten far after all.

Little Red roared in rage, then gleefully scooped up his gun and lurched after them.

Silently, swiftly, Luke pursued them.

He got ten feet before she yelled. Then she moaned.

When nobody answered, a final hoarse cry was swallowed, strangled, broken off.

She was scared. The bastards had left her all alone in that shack.

Luke remembered the gunshots and stopped running. With acute frustration he watched Little Red’s bright red head vanish into darkness.

She could be hit. Dying.

Marcie.

3

“Help…” This girl’s Texas drawl was as pronounced as Marcie’s. Thus, the e was elongated.

Luke stared at the black door as if it were the gate to hell.

“Please…” Again her prominent vowels seemed endless. “P-le-e-ease…”

“Marcie?” he whispered.

No. But this girl’s faint cries held raw urgency. He drew in a savage breath and then pushed against warped wood that creaked heavily on ancient hinges.

“Help…”

He cursed the dark and Mexico and the heat that had him dripping with sweat. Most of all he cursed the whore and her soft, alluring drawl that compelled him into this black and forbidding shack.

A bar of moonlight backlit his tall, muscular body and the broken bottle he held raised above his black head. More of that same silver light slipped through the cracks in the mortar left by shoddy workmanship and glistened against dirty, broken windowpanes.

The room was squalid, hot and hellish; its ceiling so low he had to stoop slightly. Plywood had been nailed against a hole in the wall. Corrugated tin was both ceiling and roof. The dirt floor was carpeted with cigarette butts and loose boards. Then he saw a Mexican bullwhip coiled like a black snake around a brand new, red high-heeled pump on the dirt floor, this shoe an exact match to the one he’d found earlier.

He picked the shoe up, turning it in his palm, and whistled. “Cinder-eff-ing-rella!”

“Who are you—Prince Charming?” drawled a small wavery voice, in an attempt at bravery. “What gives? A prince in blue jeans and cowboy hat?”

He liked her spunk.

The yellow-haired girl was tied by her wrists and ankles with remnants of her own nylons to a metal bed in the middle of the room. She lifted her drugged gaze to his.

A board groaned under his weight.

Her eyes bulged when she saw the bottle. Trying to free herself, she squirmed on the bare mattress. Moonlight rippled over her long shapely legs that were spread widely apart.

The room seemed to shrink, and the confines of it were suddenly more stifling. He drew a sharp breath.

Masses of reckless, yellow hair framed her exquisite oval face.

Sexy. Sexy as hell.

He thought, Wow.

He muttered, “Damn.”

It was only natural to want to keep his reaction to himself and to be repelled by it. He averted his eyes from the girl’s face and her awesome legs. But he felt like he’d fallen into a sensual barrel of forbidden delights. A girl with looks like hers made a man think of only one thing.

Images of those endless legs, a short polka-dot dress pushed above shapely thighs, black lace bikini panties and a garter belt had burned themselves into his testosterone-charged brain. Her breasts bulged against a low neckline. And that face…with those slanting eyes that caught the moonlight. Those full red lips…

Ah, such a face would give a saint wet dreams. Not that McKade was a candidate for sainthood. For as surely as there was a devil in hell keeping tabs, McKade’s name would be scrawled in roaring flames at the top of that fiend’s list of sinners.

“Are you going to he-e-e-l-p me…or…”

“Shhh…”

Why did she sound so much like Marcie? Why did she have to be blond?

Don’t look at those legs, or at that face. Don’t notice that her skin is pale and luminous, her shapely lips so moist and bright with paint they make your mouth go dry.

Her makeup, her costume, the mere fact Baines and his goons had brought her here and tied her to this bed to play kinky games told Luke what she was—a whore. As a kid, he’d had fun with her kind.

Was this hellhole her room? Or Baines’s?

Glazed, startlingly blue eyes, lined in heavy black, stared up at him. “It’s our honeymoon. Love me. Love me…P-please…just love me.”

Love?

What Luke felt had a lot more in common with what she would do for a dollar than with love. He wanted sex; she sold sex.

She moistened her lip with her tongue. Then she seemed to suffer a moment’s shortness of breath beneath his direct gaze.

His stomach lurched. She represented sex and the forbidden, all the vices he’d learned young and tried to rise above when he’d crawled out of the gutter. She had designed herself to bring out the beast in him.

She did.

“Shhh…”

With a muted whimper, followed by more slurred endearments, she strained toward him. Black stockings jerked, and she collapsed against the bed.

She was drunk or very high on something. Yet not so high that she wasn’t conscious of him. Nor did she act ashamed to be lying there with her breasts and legs so exposed. Instead, she twisted her hips deliberately to entice him, begging, “Love me.…”

At that honey-soft plea, his breath stalled. His body hardened. Her cheap beauty and suggestive posture paralyzed him. For a second or two, he even forgot about the heat.

He hadn’t changed. His fine suits, his fine house, the fine wife he’d buried only this afternoon…The fine schools he’d attended but hadn’t fit into…His whole damn life was a lie.

This girl was real. Too damn real. And she made him real.

“Don’t play your whore tricks on me,” he snarled even as he sank down on the bed beside her.

On a whimper, she shrank from him. Her wide eyes fixed on the broken bottle in his hand. Strips of black nylon held fast and put her at his mercy.

He saw a brown boy, facedown, in a vacant lot and the bullies standing over him, kicking dirt and rocks at him.

“Be still. I won’t hurt you. I’m going to cut you loose.”

She watched him. He fought not to look at her. Still, sitting on her bed, their hips touching, he felt joined to her in ways he didn’t understand.

He caught the scent of her perfume. Gardenias. Sweet, sweet gardenias. The fragile scent took him back to a summer day, to a cool, shady garden, to a haughty white woman who’d frowned at him with fury when he’d picked that single perfect blossom. He remembered her children in the same garden and the bouquets they’d held.

No.

The heat of the whore against his hip was a wholesome pleasure compared to his bitter memories. Perspiration beaded his brow. Better her. Better this hellish shack than his own shameful past.

The girl stared at his face unblinkingly. “Hawaii? Love…”

He waved the razor edges of the brown glass under her chin. Then he deliberately sliced a brown fingertip across the glass that was like a blade. Blood bubbled, oozed. A single drop splashed her cheek.

She started, whimpered.

“Hold still. Understand? So I don’t cut you.”

Her expression was grave, but she didn’t move when he began sawing with the bottle.

After a few swipes, the nylon gave, and her limp arm fell across her breast. Trouble was, he had to lean across her to reach her other wrist.

The second he felt her female flesh molding his, something hot and dangerous consumed him.

His heart slowed to painful thuds. Male nerve cells registered body heat, registered gardenias, woman smell. Registered her. She fit him like a glove.

She was available. She would do anything.

Wildfire.

Her breasts pressing into his chest made him dizzy. His hand began to shake so badly he had to stop so he wouldn’t cut her.

She held her breath.

So did he.

Get a grip. Don’t let her know. Work fast.

Again, jagged brown glass sheered the flimsy nylon.

But she knew. The instant she was free, her hands were all over him.

“I love you. Love me. I love you. Love me,” she pleaded in Marcie’s drawl.

Her hands. Her body.

Marcie’s voice.

Love me. That constant refrain pounded through him like a drumbeat. Eagerly her hands moved over his torso.

He had to get away. It had been a mistake to lean over her. Her skillful, expert hands, her whore’s hands knew exactly what to do to arouse a man like him.

Lightly, ever so lightly, she stroked. Sliding across his chest, her heated fingertips had his damp shirt out of his pants in no time, his belt unbuckled. Then like heat-seeking missiles, her hands were inside his jeans, circling him with her fist.

Low moans rose from her throat, her excitement matching his when she found him already hard.

Marcie used to moan like that. Until he’d forbidden her to make that sound in bed. You’re not a whore. You’re my wife.

He’d liked what Marcie had done too much. He’d known she’d win him through sex. It was a way to that deeper part of him he’d sealed and locked, so he’d be safe. With a whore, he could let go in bed. Because there were other lines he wouldn’t cross with a whore.

The girl writhed. To hold her still, he threw a leg over her thighs. She wiggled, snugged herself closer. He slashed her ankle bindings loose with the broken bottle. Their hips joined.

Meltdown.

Wrapping herself around him, she clung.

For years he’d been alone—his whole damn life. This woman, the soft warmth of her, erased all that. He gulped in air as her fist caressed him.

“Love me.…”

“You’re a whore.”

He saw tearing pain in her gaze. She froze, and he was moved beyond words by the sheen of tears misting her black-lashed blue eyes, by the way she drew back with proud dignity. “I love you…B-B…”

But whatever drug she was on got the best of her. Before Luke could register the name she called him, she wiggled closer, bringing her lips up to his. She caught her lower lip with her teeth. When she released it with a soft kiss, the swollen softness was pink, wet and shiny. And so damned kissable.

She kissed him, and her adoration, sweetness and innocence amazed him. Her seeming innocence, he amended.

He held his breath, his heart beating hard and fast. Don’t. Don’t.

But she kept at it, this spontaneous nibbling of his lips. She had a marvelous mouth. And not just to look at. She tasted, oh, God, she tasted delicious and so damned innocent…and so utterly utterly sweet.