grip's made for bigger hands so it'll try to jump out of yours. Hang on tight, squeeze the trigger gently, and don't shoot again until you're fully under control. Oh, yeah, it's also loud.'
I'd brought a packet of foam earplugs along with the targets and extra rounds. I dug it out of my shirt pocket and gave a pair to her. She brushed her hair behind her right ear and started to insert one. But she hesitated, then stopped.
'I don't want to dull this,' she said.
That brought me out of my officious-instructor mode and back around to the weirdness of why we were here in the first place. I shoved the earplugs in my pocket. We wouldn't be shooting enough to risk long-term hearing damage-it would just be less comfortable.
'Okay,' I said. 'Step up to the plate.'
She positioned herself facing the target. I placed the pistol in her hands, steadying them with my own, with the barrel pointed down and to the front. I jacked a round into the chamber and touched her thumb to the safety.
'As soon as you click this off, you're hot,' I said. 'You've got seven shots.'
I let her go and stepped back. She raised the weapon and aimed for several seconds. I could see her hands wavering with its weight.
A boom ripped across the still afternoon and through my eardrums. Renee stumbled backwards into my hands, which were waiting to catch her waist. The barrel flew up to point skyward, but she held on and kept it in front of her.
'That's fine,' I said. 'Go ahead, you'll get used to it.'
She fired the next six shots carefully, with increasing control. When she finished, she looked attractively disheveled-bright-eyed, flushed, breathing slightly fast. I took the pistol from her, cleared it, hung it in its holster, and went to check the target. She'd hit it five times out of seven, with two of the shots inside the dinner-plate-sized circle and another only a few inches away-pretty damned impressive for a novice who didn't weigh much over a hundred pounds.
I set up a fresh target and took the used one to show her.
'Annie Oakley would be jealous,' I said.
Renee didn't speak. Her eyes still had that bright, almost glazed look.
'You want to go again?' I said.
She nodded.
I reloaded the pistol, wondering if it was time to try a couple of prompting questions that might start her talking.
As it turned out, I didn't need to.
'Stand behind me,' she said. I hadn't expected the sound of her voice, and it startled me a little. It was subdued and shaky.
I stepped to where I'd been when I'd caught her waist.
'Closer. Right up against me.'
Carefully, I pressed my chest against her back and put my hands on her waist again. I could feel her warmth through our coats, and the quick rise and fall of her breathing-even imagined that I sensed the tremor of her heartbeats.
She raised her hands and took aim at the target.
'That nine-millimeter pistol was Astrid's,' Renee said. 'She stood just like you are and touched my breasts while I shot it.'
31
We spent the rest of the afternoon in bed in my cabin. Renee fell asleep before long, with the tomcat curled at her feet. He'd wasted no time in claiming her, and he was giving me looks that plainly urged me to get lost.
She had to be exhausted; she'd never gotten a chance to rest up from the stress and strain of the past days. The silence and the gray light through the windows were soothing, and maybe there'd been a catharsis in the secret she'd finally let out.
I was short on sleep myself, but too wired to drift off. I was entirely content to lie there, however, and I had a new blitz of information to process. In a way it was the most bizarre yet, but somehow it didn't even surprise me-maybe because it dovetailed into what I knew about Astrid. Just as she was a threat to Renee, the reverse was also true, so she had used seduction to establish control, the same as she would have with a man.
Or maybe it didn't surprise me because I was getting harder to surpise.
As Renee described it, the incident had happened during the summer when she was seventeen and visiting her father and Astrid in Helena. At first, the wicked-stepmother syndrome prevailed, but Astrid was shrewd about breaking through that; she treated Renee nonjudgmentally and like an adult, and was candid and amusing about herself. She was alluring, mysterious, exciting-irresistible.
Toward the end of the visit, on a day when Professor Callister was gone, Astrid confided that she loved to shoot. She showed Renee the nine-millimeter pistol and invited her to try it. Just the fact that she owned a gun was a little shocking, and for two women to go out shooting seemed almost improper. Their mood was conspiratorial, girlishly mischievous.
Astrid drove them to a wilderness area a few miles away. They hiked into the woods until they found a suitable clearing, away from any trails.
Then Astrid pressed up against her back. And cupped her breasts. The July afternoon was warm and sultry, Renee remembered. Feeling the voluptuous older woman touch her like that had made her almost dizzy.
She'd kept shooting until the clip was empty, then sagged back into Astrid's embrace. After a moment, Astrid released her. They went home as if nothing had happened and neither of them ever mentioned it again.
'I'm not hung up about the sex part. You know, because I was turned on by a woman,' Renee had told me, talking quietly with her cheek on my chest. 'I didn't want to be, I didn't not want to be. I just went completely docile-it was like she owned me. That's the problem.'
'How so?'
'Because I loved it. It was so intense, so powerful.'
'It's kind of supposed to be like that. Especially at that age.'
She rose up on an elbow to gaze at me intently. 'That's not what I mean. Ever since then, I've been craving somebody who overwhelms me like that-not a good, healthy kind of love where you give and take. I'm an emotional cripple. If somebody loved me, I don't know if I could really love him back.'
That wasn't an easy thing to hear.
'What about your fiance?' I said. 'Does he know?'
'Not about what happened with Astrid. I've told him the other part-that I don't know if I'll ever feel what I should for him.'
'He's okay with that?'
'He thinks I'll get over it. He's so normal, and he assumes that will rub off on me. I guess it has-I've been with him almost two years.'
'I don't think there's any such thing as 'normal,'' I said. 'Not on that turf, anyway.'
'Okay, I'll settle for 'less screwed up.'' She made it clear then that she didn't want to talk about it anymore. After giving me a sweet, lingering kiss that suggested regret, apology, and maybe good-bye, she turned away and drifted into sleep.
As for me, I was left in a bittersweet confusion that was deeper than ever. No way was I the kind of man who might arouse that blind, consuming passion in her. And, taken though I was with her, I wouldn't have wanted that.
Yet again, there was a whisper in my head that said maybe, just maybe, I was seeing this wrong-that Renee knew she could never change in the way her fiance expected her to.
So she was testing me to find out if I would accept her as she was.
