Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(44)

Uh-oh. “Oh, yes?”

“About your Gideon.”

My Gideon. I smiled inwardly. Already they knew he was my Gideon.

“We want our turn to nurse him, too. Why should you get all the fun?”

I was aghast. “Oh, so it’s ‘fun’ now, changing the dressing on a shooting victim?”

Tazmin was about five years older than my thirty, but she acted five years younger. “Why, yes, if you want to be blunt! Who wouldn’t want to get a chance to touch that gorgeous stud’s body? Let’s be blunt, Mahalia. I’ve lain with no one but Allred and frankly, that gets old. It’s worse than laying with no one, if you know what I mean.”

Did I know what she meant? I was blunt, too. “Does he beat you too?”

She rolled her eyes. “How do you think I broke my arm last year? It wasn’t from falling down the stairs. I’m not that clumsy. Listen, I know it’s our lot in life and blah blah. I have to live with the fact that I’ll never be touched by another man until my dying days. But you’ve got to share the wealth with that statuesque stud of yours.”

Stud of mine. I liked that even more. “Well. He’s much better today. In fact, he went out on a few visits with Allred—”

Tazmin’s eyes turned round. She looked at something behind my shoulder. I paddled in a circle to see what she was looking at. Oh, my squash. A grinning Gideon stood there, plain as day. His gauntness was clear to see under the thin cotton of his t-shirt, under the cut that had been pierced by a bullet. He looked boyish today, freshly shaven, his lovely auburn hair almost sparkling in the lacey light and shadows cast by the cottonwood tree leaves.

Tazmin’s look was distinctly hateful. It was a look I thought we’d been taught not to give others. “Well, lookie here. You even get your own cabana boy.” And she swam to the opposite side of the pool, full of hate.

I splashed some water at her, just for the sake of doing it, and swam swiftly to Gideon’s feet. I hauled my torso out of the water, clinging to the red sandstone for support. Looking up at him this way, the package that swelled the crotch of his jeans looked enormous. His stomach was practically concave with the minimal amount of food he’d been eating, though he seemed to love the homemade sourdough bread I kept bringing to the cottage. “You finished with Allred’s visits?”

He just would not stop grinning. “Yeah. He just wanted me to go around to some mining suppliers, introduce me to them, that sort of shit.”

“So everything’s good with Allred?”

“Yeah. He gave me the deed to half the mine.”

“Wow. He must be real grateful you saved his life.”

“All in a day’s work.” Gideon squatted and reached a hand out for me. He pulled me out of the swimming hole and I felt like a giant beached manatee, streaming a river of water down the sandstone. “I brought my own picnic. I see the kids have torn into yours.”

I laughed, eager to wrap at least my lower torso in a towel. But Gideon kept snatching it from me, his face betraying no emotion. “Give me my towel!”

“You look better without it. We can use it to sit over here in this grove of cottonwoods.”

We picked our way through the little forest of cottonwoods mixed in with birch.

“We shouldn’t go outside of earshot of the kids,” I said, when Gideon seemed to want to push farther.

“But isn’t that other gal watching them?”

“Well yes, but…”

Grinning, Gideon consented, and let me spread my towel in a sandy spot. We seated ourselves Indian style, my fat butt barely fitting on the towel. I was so self-conscious I almost cringed away from Gideon. Even during the bath tub incident, I’d been fully clothed in my red dress. It was all right for little kids to see me like this, of course. But a grown man?

Gideon gestured at me with a beer bottle, asking me if he had my permission. “Oh, go right ahead. I just have a…thing against it ever since my husband…I mean my first husband…”

“Oh, he was an overdrinker? I can understand why you don’t like it.” Gideon reached into the bag and took out two sandwiches he must have gotten from our Cornucopia deli. The Jeffersonian Butte was on Allred’s land, heading up toward Zion, meaning Gideon still hadn’t left the property since being shot. He handed me one without asking me what sort I preferred. “Did he…get out of control?”

“You mean like beat me? No, but it meant he stayed out late a lot of the time and he didn’t want to come home to a lecture. So instead he’d ride his scoot drunk and come home at six AM when I was just getting up.” I’d almost forgotten there were times that were less than idyllic with Field. Compared to the nausea and loathing I felt when I thought of Allred, life with Field had been a romp through the park.

Bluntly, then, Gideon asked, “Does Chiles beat you?”

I sat up straight, fingering my sandwich. I was starving—the kids had leaped on all the food we’d brought—but didn’t want to come off as a complete cow. I had to be ladylike with my food. “What makes you ask that?”

“I’ve seen bruises, Mahalia. And I’ve seen the way you cringe and cower in his presence.”

I shrugged. “No more than any other woman cringes in his presence.” I sighed. Why was I protecting Allred? “But yes, he does beat me and most of his other wives. We’re just chattel to him. It’s his way of asserting authority over us, obviously. He can’t just rape us. He has to beat us while he’s doing it.”