Page 35 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
Now was as good a time as any to ask a question that Jenny had been wondering about. As casually as she could manage, she inquired, “Did your uncle Ty say anything about me?”
“He hates you because you killed my mama,” Graciela answered, after she had swallowed and patted her lips with her handkerchief.
“He said that?” Jenny stared. “I told him what happened. He knows damned well that I didn’t have anything to do with Marguarita’s death! Did you explain to him that I don’t lie?”
Graciela hesitated. “I told him what you said about promises.”
“But he still thinks I had something to do with your mother’s death?” She set her plate on the ground. “That son of a bitch.”
She was still fuming after she got the kid into her bedroll and settled for the night. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, she stared into the embers of their cook fire and thought about Ty Sanders. It occurred to her that she was spending a hell of a lot of time thinking about Ty Sanders.
She couldn’t look at Graciela without seeing the cowboy’s blue-green eyes. Every time the kid mentioned Uncle Ty, and that was about two hundred times a day, she saw his lean wiry body in her mind. Remembered the hard muscle knotting his thighs and arms.
Jenny didn’t seek out brawls, but she’d been in a few fights over the years. This was the first time, however, that remembering a tussle with a man had made her feel hot and strange when she thought about it afterward.
Worse, she knew what feeling hot and strange meant. Rubbing a hand over her forehead, she rose from the embers and walked toward the campesino’s scraggly maize field, then turned and walked back to the campsite.
There had been a man in Yuma a few years ago, a man who for no reason that she could figure had made her feel hot and strange inside. Eventually she’d recognized it meant she had a hankering for him, and she had satisfied that hankering out behind Shorty Barrow’s saloon in a wholly unsatisfactory coupling that had left the man smiling and her blinking up at the stars in bewildered disappointment.
Now here she was, having another hankering when she knew damned well that sex was a man’s sport and there was nothing in it for a woman except a few bruises and two minutes of having someone’s breath in your face. And, afterward, a feeling of loneliness as dry and empty as a desert. Never in her life had she felt as gut-bad lonely as she had that night out behind Shorty Barrow’s saloon.
Until she met the cowboy, she hadn’t had a hankering since.
Drawing back her boot, she kicked dirt over the embers in the fire pit, then strode over to her bedroll and crawled inside. Folding her hands behind her head, she stared up at the stars until she found Marguarita.
“I’m too fricking tired to tell you about today. Nothing happened anyway,” she said. She squinted suspiciously. “Can you read my thoughts?”
That was a disconcerting possibility. She’d have to find a subtle way to ask the kid if people in heaven knew the thoughts of living people. She had a sinking feeling that dead people knew everything, especially those like Marguarita, who probably became angels. After worrying about it for several minutes, she decided that she didn’t care if God knew she had a hankering for the cowboy. God was in the forgiveness business. She didn’t think God wasted too much time thinking about Jenny Jones anyway.
But it made her acutely uncomfortable that Marguarita probably knew she liked to remember how good it had felt rolling around the hotel room floor with the cowboy on top of her. There had been one startling moment when she’d had a chance to knee him in the groin, but she hadn’t done it because the hankering feeling had suddenly hit her hard and addled her brains.
Well damn. Her hands formed into fists behind her head. For all she knew Ty Sanders had a wife and family back in California. Not that it mattered. A man that good-looking wouldn’t give Jenny a second glance in any case. He’d want some tiny little woman rigged out in lace and ribbon. Most men did. Men preferred birdlike women who smelled like flowers. Women who thought a callus was something unique to men.
Men turned their eyes away from rawboned women with a mule skinner’s vocabulary. Women like Jenny might be good for satisfying a temporary hankering, but not for long-term company. There was no one out there wishing and pining to spend his life with a woman like Jenny Jones. There never would be. She’d learned that lesson a long time ago.
But it usually didn’t hurt as much as it did tonight.
Much as she hated it, by late afternoon of the next day, Jenny recognized the need to find a room for the night. Graciela sat wilted on the saddle in front of her, sagging against Jenny’s chest like a bag of hot rocks, too exhausted even to complain. The relentless white sun had severely burned the kid’s face, and she felt feverish to the touch. They both needed a bath, especially Jenny. Her blackened hair was stiff and waxy, coated with dust and sweat. They needed some decent food and a real bed.
Knowing she’d run across a village if she angled toward the east and the railroad, she rode another four hours until she spotted smoky curls of burning chaparral, signaling cook fires ahead. Another few minutes brought the scents of food and smoldering refuse and animals and humans.
“Buenos noches, Señora,”she called to a woman standing beside a small yard garden at the edge of the village. “Where can I find a room, a bath, and a meal?”
The village wasn’t large enough to boast a hotel, she could see that. But she had always found the Mexican people to be warm and hospitable. She and Graciela would not sleep on the ground tonight. Indeed, the senora walked them to the home of a daughter, who hurriedly moved two children out of a room and offered it to Jenny and Graciela.
“Gracias, Señora.”Exhaustion caused her voice to emerge from deep in her throat, sounding huskier than usual. If Jenny had been by herself, she would have said to hell with a bath and supper and fallen gratefully into one of the hammocks spanning the corners. But she had the kid to worry about.
Graciela stood in the center of the small room, one hand clasping the heart locket pinned to her chest, the other touching her fiery face. “I don’t feel good.”
“Senora Calvera is bringing a tub and something to eat,” Jenny said wearily, sinking to a stool beside an open window. A warm breeze had appeared with the stars, and she jerked open her collar to dry the salty sweat slicking her throat and chest. The leaves of a courtyard tree blocked the night sky, and she couldn’t see Marguarita’s star. Good. She had begun to dread the night, as that was when Marguarita appeared in the heavens to gaze down and judge Jenny and the day’s events.
Graciela bent at the waist and vomited on the floor. When the spasm passed, she pressed a hand to her mouth and raised stricken eyes to Jenny’s openmouthed stare. “I’m sorry.”
Stumbling, Graciela pushed a low stool against the wall and collapsed. When she fell back against the wall and closed her eyes, her lashes formed sooty crescents against white, white cheeks.
“Kid! What’s wrong with you?” Jumping to her feet, Jenny clapped her hand on Graciela’s forehead. The kid was burning up. Damn. She waved Senora Calveras’s husband into the room. He carried a washtub dented enough to have belonged to the conquistadors an eon ago. “Okay, listen. A bath will cool you off.”
Senora Calveras followed her husband, carrying two buckets of water, which she poured into the washtub. After glancing at the puddle of vomit, she pulled a rag from her pocket and tossed it to Jenny.
