Green Fire (5 page)

"You seem to have accepted this particular weakness you've identified in the male of the species," Flint growled, ignoring her question about the pancakes.

"I have. I've just recently turned thirty. What's the sense of growing older if you don't also grow up?'
^:

"What do you do? Go through life being wonderfully understanding and not making any demands on the men you go to bed with?" he demanded roughly.

Rani blinked owlishly, uncertain of his mood now. "Men can be quite entertaining on occasion. Some have a great sense of humor. Some are talented. Some are even quite intelligent. I enjoy their company at times. But I've learned that it's best not to let them get too close. Physically or emotionally. The thing with men is not to take them too seriously.' ' she explained gently.

"Are you sleeping with that guy who called last night?"

She stiffened. "Mike Slater? That's really none of your business, is it?"

"I keep forgetting. I'm just the hired help, aren't I?"

"I'll try to make sure you remember in the future." Angrily Rani got to her feet and picked up her dishes. The sunlight streaming through the window glinted off the green stone in her ring as she dumped the leftover pancake batter into the garbage.

"Wait a second," Flint yelped as the batter disappeared into an empty can, "I was going to have some more."

"I gave you your chance," she reminded him with a sense of satisfaction. "You didn't answer my question when I asked if you wanted more. So you're out of luck."

"You run a tight ship," Flint complained as he grudgingly brought his own dishes over to the sink.

Rani turned to confront him, her hands braced on the sink behind her. "I'm glad you realize that. For a while there this morning I was afraid I'd have to spell it out more clearly. This is my home for the next few weeks, Flint. I run it my way. Stray cats who happen to wander in and out when it pleases them will have to accept that or stay the hell out of here."

His mouth curved faintly, and he glanced at Zipp. "Is that how you see me? A stray cat who just happened to wander over the threshold last night?"

"The analogy seemed appropriate."

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully. "It does. But I don't think you realize yet just how appropriate." He reached out to touch her ring. Rani jumped a little as his callused fingers drifted over the back of her hand. "The lady who commands the ring attracts stray cats. You're the current owner of the ring and therefore only you can wield its power. You can have as many cats under your spell as you wish, but there's only one man in your future, Rani."

She shivered a little in spite of herself, but her voice was steady. "What a pity. You mean I only get to exercise my power over one man?"

"And a few stray cats such as Zipp."

"Do I get to pick the man and the cats?"

"No. They pick you. Didn't you know that, Rani? When it comes time to settle down, free-roaming alley cats always choose their own homes. A man who's spent his whole life roaming does the same."

She swallowed at the sight of the subtle green fire in his eyes. "I thought you said that it was one particular man's fate to be summoned to the lady who wears the ring, to be in her power."

"Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between fate and an act of will."

He seemed to move closer. Rani could still feel his fingers lightly gliding over the back of her hand. She was suddenly, vitally, intensely aware of him, and the knowledge was frightening. She felt trapped against the sink, far to conscious of the sleek power in his body and the sense of urgency she discovered in herself.

"I know all about acts of will," she managed.

"Do you?"

"I'm going to exercise one right now. Get out of my kitchen and get to work, Flint Cottrell. You were hired to pull weeds and fix broken footpaths. When you're done with that, I'll make out a list of other things that need attention around here, starting with your shower. Now move! Breakfast is over."

He stared down at her for a long moment, reading the determination in her face. For a few timeless seconds a subtle battle of wills was waged. Rani felt it in every inch of her body. She refused to back down. Instinct warned her that retreat would only be inviting some unspecified disas-ter. She didn't dare back down or turn the small scene into a joke. She was completely serious, and she knew Flint realized it. Without any warning, he appeared to accept the situation.

"Yes, ma'am. I'll get to work right away. Thanks for the pancakes. Like I said, it's been a long time." He turned and walked out of the kitchen. A moment later the door slammed shut behind him.

Rani realized she had forgotten to breathe for a couple of tense moments. She inhaled deeply, staring at the closed door. Then, very slowly, she swung around to draw water into the sink. The pleasantly ugly cat on the windowsill cocked one ear inquiringly.

"I think I won that round, Zipp. It was close, but I did win it. The trick will be to stay on top. Give that man an inch and I can forget all about the mile. He'll take it before I even realize what's happening."

Zipp yawned and stretched out one paw to bat playfully at the dishrag.

"I'm not sure you're on my side, Zipp."

Two hours later Flint paused to lean on his rake and watch as the somewhat staid-looking Oldsmobile nosed out of the driveway and onto the main road that circled the water. Rani's car appeared to have been purchased with an eye for safety and utility. Flint guessed she was the type who never took chances when she drove and who wouldn't dream of buying herself a hot little sports car. He was coming to the conclusion that her vividly colored clothes constituted her chief outlet for the adventurous impulses that cropped up in her mind. She was a lady who didn't take undue risks.

Rani was on her way to Reed Lake, the small town located at the north end of the large, meandering lake. She was going to do a little shopping and pick up her mail, she'd explained as she'd waved the keys at him on her way out to the car.

Flint knew she was going to do more than that. He'd heard the phone ring in the living room earlier when he'd been working at the front of the house, and his intuition told him that the man who hadn't made it to dinner the night before had probably called to set up a lunch date in town. Flint wondered if she'd tell Mike Slater about her substitute guest. There was also the possibility she might not take Flint's presence seriously enough to bother explaining his presence to another man.

Flint's fingers locked fiercely around the rake handle, and he went back to cleaning leaves out of the hedge. Quite suddenly nothing on earth was more important than having Rani Garroway take him seriously.

He hadn't missed the amused disdain in her eyes that morning when she'd casually implied he shared a commitment problem with the rest of his sex. She seemed to think his past was ample evidence to support the implication. What really bothered him now was that he hadn't viewed his wandering life as a result of an inability to settle down or make a commitment. He knew it looked that way to other people, but it hadn't felt that way to him.

Rani didn't understand, Flint told himself. She didn't know what it felt like to be driven all of your adult life by a restlessness that didn't allow any peace. She couldn't know the feelings of isolation and aloneness it brought, that sense of being completely on your own. After a while the knowledge that a man could depend on no one but himself became so much a part of him that he stopped trying to imagine any other way of living. He kept going; kept searching for something he couldn't name because he didn't seem to have any choice.

Flint knew it wasn't a sense of wanderlust that had kept him on the move since his early twenties. It was something far more insidious and potentially destructive. It had to do with an odd kind of desperation, a feeling that out
there
, somewhere, lay the answers he was seeking, the end of his quest.

It was strange. For a long time he hadn't consciously thought about the unnamed demons that drove him. Years ago he'd stopped trying to analyze and fight them. He'd come to accept them as a part of himself. He'd kept searching, even though he frankly admitted he didn't really know what he sought. Chasing legends became a way of chasing an elusive truth about himself.

But last night when Rani had opened her door to him, everything had begun to change. It was as if his very isolated, very private world had shifted subtly on its axis. He'd crossed the threshold, had sat down in front of Rani's fire and had realized that things that had never been in focus for him were suddenly beginning to solidify.

That morning he'd awakened with an overpowering hunger for pancakes. The chilled autumn morning, together with the tall, sunlit pines and peaceful lake, had demanded a breakfast of hot pancakes and real maple syrup. Flint hadn't quite understood it. Usually he could take or leave a pancake breakfast the way he could take or leave anyone or anything. But that morning he'd needed it. Memories of teenage camping trips, Sunday morning breakfast as a child and the occasional times in his past when things had seemed to be going right all coalesced into a desire for pancakes. Hot, homemade pancakes fitted the morning perfectly. He'd known without asking that Rani's kitchen would contain the makings.

He hadn't realized until he was blundering around between cupboards, refrigerator and too many pots and pans that he needed more than pancakes. He needed someone there to share them. The sense of things coming slowly into focus had intensified when Rani had walked into the kitchen and made breakfast for him.

The problem was that Rani hadn't seemed to realize how right the whole situation was, or perhaps something in her was afraid of seeing the Tightness of it. He'd known at once that she was careful and cautious by nature and that she didn't approve of people who weren't. She'd sat across the table, delicately lecturing and scolding and dismissing him until he'd suddenly wanted to pull her down onto the kitchen floor and make love to her until she acknowledged his right to be there.

He'd known just how he'd do it, too, even though the wild impulse had startled him. He would have kissed her until the feminine challenge in her tawny eyes was replaced with passion. Then he would have held her very close, crushing her soft breasts against his chest while he stripped away the brightly colored sweater and the snug jeans. Flint knew with sure instinct that her body would fit his perfectly. He could imagine the soft roundness of her thighs, the heat he would generate in her and the clinging, yielding way she would hold him.

He would have made love to her until she took him very, very seriously; until she admitted he had a right to make love to her.

Instead he'd let her order him out of the kitchen and send him off to work. Flint swore softly and wielded the rake with controlled force. He reminded himself grimly that if the legend of the Clayborne ring held any truth at all, the scene in the kitchen had ended the only way it could for now. After all, the lady wore the ring. Until he'd taken her to bed, he was more or less at her mercy.

When he was near Rani he had to keep reminding himself that he didn't believe in legends.

Rani ordered a hamburger with an extra-large portion of french fries and sat back as Mike Slater told his amusing tale of trying to get the fallen tree cleared out of the drive of the lakefront cottage he was renting. Beyond the cafe window the main street of Reed Lake was busier than usual as trucks full of deer hunters stopped at the gas station, bought beer from the general store or stopped at one of the two cafes for coffee.

Rani frowned at the sight of the rifles hanging in the back of the red Ford pickup that was parked just outside the window. Two laughing men in camouflage shirts were returning from the grocery store with six-packs of beer under their arms.

"Why the disapproving librarian look?" Mike asked good-naturedly, following her gaze.

Rani smiled wryly. "You'd think those men would have better sense than to mix rifles and beer."

Mike grinned, his pleasantly intense eyes crinkling at the corners. "Are you kidding? The main reason they're here is to have an excuse to party all night long with their good buddies. For most of them this is their yearly fling away from the wife and the kids. For two week each year they get to pretend they're macho survivalists instead of nine-to-five clock-watchers. The deer hunting just provides the excuse. If it's any consolation, you can bet most of them won't manage to kill a damn thing."

"I trust that will be some consolation to the deer. I suppose hunting is an example of the old male bonding thing. It's one way men prove their manhood to themselves."

"And have a good time while they're doing it. Don't be too hard on them, Rani. The tradition of hunting season is too old and established for you to be able to change it."

Rani was forced to laugh a little. "I know. I wouldn't think of depriving men of their yearly flings. But I'm glad you're not a hunter, Mike."

He leaned back in the booth and smiled at her. "If I were, would you be having lunch with me?"

She shook her head. "I doubt it. I much prefer artists."

"Actually, a real macho hunter with a pickup under him could probably have managed that tree in my driveway a lot more efficiently than I did." Mike chuckled as he continued with his story. His blue eyes were full of self-directed amusement.

Rani sat across from him and realized she was mentally comparing Mike to Flint Cottrell. But how could you compare a successful artist to an alley cat? Mike was in his mid-thirties, his features sharp and aquiline, his sandy-brown hair a little long and a bit on the shaggy side, which only seemed appropriate for his profession. He had a lean, wiry build, and there was a certain artistic intensity about him that fit the image of a painter. He wore a long-sleeved, white, open-necked shirt and a pair of faded, paint-stained jeans. He had a pair of expensive running shoes on his feet. Rani had met him the first day she'd stopped at the Reed Lake post office to pick up her general delivery mail.