The Texas Blue Norther. Lass Small

he done?”

      The phantom’s face was sour. He groused, “I hate women. They always do the dumbest things.”

      Warming inside the coat, she retorted heatedly, “Women? Women do dumb things? Do you know that I’m out here for only one thing?”

      His interest changed and riveted. “You streetwalking?”

      With great, adult patience, she replied, “I came out here with a group to-”

      And she couldn’t blab a secret club’s activities. She was staunch.

      “Yeah?” He encouraged her speech with his riveted attention.

      Why didn’t his Stetson blow away? She was fascinated.

      She saw that his shoulders were hunched. He was cold. Where was his coat? It was on her. She said, “I’ll give your coat back to you in just a minute. It’s so warm.”

      And he replied nicely but he leaned close as he yelled over the sound of the winds, “As soon as you’re just about thawed, we’ll get out of here before it thunders.”

      “It’s thundering?” Her eyes got big and her head jerked around.

      “It’s just wind right now. It’ll get interesting in a while. Are you warm enough to get on the horse?”

      “What’s his name?”

      “Whose?”

      “This horse.” She was kind and pointed to the horse so that he’d know what she meant by the word. She didn’t think he was very bright.

      But the male creature replied, “Block Head. We just call him plain Block.”

      She lifted her chin a little. “He seems more intelligent than that.” She was chiding.

      “He don’t know no never mind.”

      She indicted the horse’s position and mentioned kindly, “He’s protecting us from the wind.”

      “That’s ‘cause he don’t know not to.”

      She stiffened. Then she said in her Daughters of the Alamo voice, “I’m ready to ride.”

      He smiled and bit his lower lip. She was probably hostile enough now to see to herself. He said, “Give me the coat. I’ll wrap you in this here blanket. I’d take the blanket but it don’t have no sleeves. Understand?”

      He was a basic man. No wonder he had so carelessly referred to streetwalking. He probably didn’t know any better. She would be careful of him. She took off the coat with steely discipline.

      He took hold of her and tossed her up on the horse. Lauren didn’t shriek or sprawl because her daddy had been doing something like that to his daughters all their lives.

      She landed neatly in the saddle. She would ride; he would walk. He was a gentleman under all that crudeness. He knew his mann—

      Move your foot out of the stirrup.”

      He was boarding the horse. too.

      But he sat in back of the saddle and he shifted until he got the blanket right, covering the front of her and her legs, then he opened his coat and covered her entirely.

      In a sexually stimulating, roughened voice, he commented in her ear, “It’s jest a good thing you got your own gloves.”

      He spoke of those thin-skinned, driving gloves, which protected her hands from sun-browning. Sure. But thin as the leather was, the gloves were better than nothing. She said a dismissive, “Yes.”

      Then he startled her as he said quite naturally, “The pod’s tail makes a pretty good cover for your head and neck.”

      How’d he know it wasn’t a cantaloupe? She replied a nothing, “Umm.”

      He didn’t realize the subject had been rejected by her. He said, “We’ve found a couple of them there things. What’s in them? Ones we’ve tried ta see, they just crumbled.”

      She looked at the pod, which was the size and shape of a cantaloupe. “I thought it was a distress signal from a plane flying oddly.” Jack’s flying was odd.

      The man in back of her with his arms around her said, “He had enough room to land. He didn’t need any such distress signal.”

      “I guess not.” But she did hear in his words that he had been watching as the plane had buzzed the mesquites and then dropped the pod.

      Why had he waited in the beginning of the storm? Why hadn’t he come to her immediately? He’d allowed her to find the pod. He’d known where it was? If he was so curious, why hadn’t he retrieved it first? She would have never known if it had been found or lost forever.

      This person in back of her on the horse had mentioned they had found other pods. Who all had they told of finding them? Where were the ones they’d found?

      This whole adolescent activity was only a confirmation that they were all bored. They had too much spare time with little to distract them. Well, Mike’s baby might distract him for a while.

      Actually, Mike had had very little to do with his wife having a baby. She’d done all the work. Come to think of it, even at a time when his wife could be very uncomfortably pregnant, Mike had run off on a pod hunt. He had.

      She said lazily, “Next time, I get to sit in back.”

      “The wind’s at my back,” he said next to her ear. Then his voice was different, lower, huskier. He said, “I’m sheltering you.”

      She accepted that as only right and asked, “Where are we going?”

      “To the nearest house.”

      She was courteous. “Thank you.”

      “You’re welcome.”

      It began to rain quite nastily cold and wet. He pulled her head back under his chin, and she was protected. He slid his hand across her ribs below her breasts under the blanket. “You warm enough?”

      Her mouth responded in a tiny, female way that was embarrassing. She told him, “My feet are cold.”

      “Sit Indian-style. I’ll balance you.”

      She was surprised. Here she was countering all her horse training. She was slumped back against a man and now her legs were crossed under the blanket and she was—warm.

      He fumbled down her stomach and his hand slid into her trousers. “Oops, sorry. I’m trying to see if your feet’re okay.”

      “They are.”

      “Good.”

      A lecher. She squinted a little, as she went over the karate lessons she’d taken because her daddy had insisted. She’d been good at it. She’d nailed the instructor. He’d been hostile to her after that.

      If the instructor had gone along the whole way, instead of trying to escape, she would have thought he was letting her win. But he’d tried hard to win over her.

      Winning had been heady.

      Of course, she’d antagonized yet another male. Her father had laughed.

      Her mother had altered the classic, “Never give a man an even break.” But her mother had added, “You’d lose.”

      And she had. By being so confident and physically safe, she’d lost just about every male who’d come down the pike. Even all those who had been blinded by her daddy’s clout. She’d lost them all.

      Which ones had she wanted?

      And lying back against a crude man, she went over all of the contenders like turning pages of a diary, and there hadn’t been a one she’d really and truly wanted. To be a twenty-seven-year-old woman who had never really been tempted must be some sort of remarkable record.

      She