LITMIR.BIZ

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      “That’s what I’m gonna tell him, too. First thing tomorrow.” Alex took a chug from the bottle, then lowered it and demanded of Booker T, who was gazing at her from under his beetling white eyebrows and shaking his head, “What? You don’t think I won’t? Eve’s right. Why in the hell should I let my paraplegic ex-partner book a tour with me when he friggin’ deserted me? Didn’t even have the guts to come back here and help me run this damn outfit? Who needs that? Who needs him?”

      This time Eve’s “Hear! Hear!” was echoed enthusiastically by Bobby and Ken and a couple of the other river guides who were obviously a beer or two up on the rest of the crew. Randy, the photographer, who had his mouth full, gave a thumbs-up gesture. Linda, Booker T’s wife, who also manned the Rafting Center’s store and was too kind and sweet to say a bad word against anybody, just smiled and shook her head. Booker T scraped back his chair and stood up.

      “We got boatin’ to do tomorrow, people,” he announced to a chorus of boos, which he ignored. “Time to be headin’ on home. C’mon, sweet pea.” He pulled out Linda’s chair for her and offered her a hand with a gesture like an old-time gentleman, which he did sort of resemble with his sweeping handlebar mustache with its waxed and curled-up ends. Then he gestured at Alex. “You, too, baby doll. Morning comes early.”

      “Ah, hell, Booker T, we’re just getting warmed up. The night is young!” And as far as Alex was concerned, home was the last place she wanted to be. Home was quiet, and empty. She wanted music and noise and a few more beers. Hopefully enough to block out the memories.

      Evidently Booker T could read her mind, because he shook his head and said, “Come on—we’ll drop you off home,” as he took her by the shoulders and guided her up out of her chair. His touch was gentle, and although Alex could have resisted it, she didn’t. It was a mystery to her why, but Booker T was the only human being on the planet she’d let boss her around like that.

      So, she laughed and hollered her goodbyes and Booker T hooked one arm around her waist and the other around Linda’s, and he danced them both out the door of The Corral with a Texas Two-Step to the Billy Ray Cyrus song that was playing on the jukebox. By the time they got to the parking lot, they were all singing along with Billy Ray at the top of their lungs, having a good time. Alex thought it would be a fun idea to ride in the back of Booker T’s king cab Chevy truck and keep right on singing all the way—the whole half mile—to her house, but Booker T somehow managed to maneuver her into the backseat instead, where she had to sit on some coiled-up rope and leather gloves and a bunch of other stuff she couldn’t even begin to guess the nature of.

      Booker T slammed the door on her complaining and got into the driver’s seat while Linda climbed in beside him. He started up the truck and pulled out of the parking lot, and Alex scooted forward and put her folded arms on the back of his seat.

      “Booker T?”

      “Yeah, baby doll?”

      “I’m tellin’ him tomorrow. I mean it. No way am I booking Matt Callahan for a tour. Huh-uh.”

      “And why’s that?”

      “Well…hell, isn’t it obvious? I mean, he’s a—”

      “Cripple?”

      The word stabbed into Alex like a thorn, and she sucked in a shocked breath because she’d never thought Booker T would say such a thing. Something so mean. But it’s what you were thinking.

       I was not!

      “No! You know it’s not—shoot, we take disabled people on the river all the time, you know we do.”

      “Well, then?”

      “Jeez, Booker T, he wants to go on the Forks. That’s a class V. He can’t—”

      “He’s done it before, dozens of times.”

      “Not in five years, he hasn’t!”

      Booker T pulled up in front of Alex’s little house, set among the granite boulders and bull pines with the privacy and isolation she normally loved. He cut off the motor, and in the silence said quietly, “That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it? The fact he’s been gone five years. What are you afraid of, Alex? That he can’t do it, or that he still can?”

       Still can…make my heart hammer and my skin hot? Still can…make me want him?

      She sucked in another breath—an angry one, this time—and whooshed it out along with, “No, that’s not—Look, I’m not afraid, okay? That’s just stupid.” I’m not afraid. I’m not.

      “Okay, you’re not afraid. So, why not book his trip?” He opened his door and got out, then opened hers for her and held out his hand to help her down. “You’re not chicken, are you, baby doll?”

      She could see the snaggletoothed smile lurking underneath that mustache. Damn him.

      “Damn you, Booker T.” She let him walk her to her door and open it for her and turn on the lights, then paused in the doorway to give him a sideways look. “You know you’re the only person on God’s green earth that gets to call me ‘baby doll.’ You know that, don’t you?”

      “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with you,” Booker T said as he started off down the pine needle-strewn walk, heading back to his pickup.

      “What’s that supposed to mean? Hey, Booker T—” She stomped her foot and started after him, and he paused with one hand on the truck’s door handle to turn back to her.

      “You never got to be any lovin’ daddy’s little girl,” he said, then yanked open the door, climbed in and drove away.

      He left Alex standing there with tears smarting her eyes, cussing out loud and ashamed at herself because she’d just remembered. Booker T and Linda’s only daughter, Sherry Ann, had died in a car accident when she was just seventeen.

      But she still wasn’t booking Matt Callahan and his brother on a trip down the Forks of the Kern. No way, José.

Chapter 3

      Alex spent a restless night in the company of dreams that weren’t quite awful enough to be called nightmares, but close.

      First, she was back on the Mojave Desert where she’d spent her childhood. She, the grown-up Alex, was climbing the tree that stood beside their mobile home. It was an old tree shaped by decades of desert wind so that it seemed to hover with its limbs spread protectively over the trailer, sheltering it from the relentless desert sun. Down below, her mother was yelling at her to come down from there before she fell and broke her neck. Alex smiled and kept climbing. And then she fell.

      Except, instead of the tree, it was a rocky cliff she was falling from, and as she was falling she looked up and saw a face peering down at her from a ledge up above. Matt’s face. He was yelling at her, something she couldn’t hear because of the wind rushing past her ears, and he was holding out his hand for her to grab hold of. But she wouldn’t. She scowled at him and kept falling, and just before she hit the ground, she woke up.

      She was drenched in sweat, so she threw aside all her covers and pulled off the oversized T-shirt she’d worn to bed, flipped the pillow to a dry side and went back to sleep.

      And she was right back on that cliff, still falling. Only now she was naked, and Matt was still peering down at her, holding out his hand for her to grab on to, and instead of yelling at her, he was smiling. Smiling that beautiful Matt Callahan smile that could melt her heart like vanilla ice cream in the Mojave sun. She watched the smile get smaller and farther away as she fell, and fell, and fell, and again, just before she hit the ground, she woke up.

      The ringing telephone woke Matt in the darkness. He groped for the handset, squinted at the time in the lighted window. Jeez, was

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