Danger Zone (22 page)

Her fingers stopped at the angry ridge of tissue that covered his recent wound. The skin had knit unevenly and was still reddened, slightly swollen. One day it would be a thick pink/white scar.

“Steven, you never told me how this happened,” she said. “Who shot you?”

“One of the local cops.”

“By mistake?”

“Yeah. He was trying to help me break it up and in all the smoke and confusion he hit the wrong man.”

“I hope that doesn’t happen often,” Karen said, shuddering. She traced the line of his ribs thoughtfully with a delicate forefinger.

He made a disgusted sound. “More often than you think, a lot more often than it should. Those scenes are always chaotic, all kinds of noise, screaming and shouting and running feet, and everybody involved is so charged up, so scared.”

“You, too?”

“Me too.”

“Do you know why that gang took over the post office?” she asked, circling a flat dark nipple with her thumb.

He shrugged expressively. “I don’t think they know. Some British dignitary was visiting or something, but any excuse will do. These people have been at each other’s throats for a thousand years and it just goes on endlessly. I sometimes wonder if they could tell you what they’re fighting for, if they even remember why and how it started.”

“You’re involved in these situations all the time, aren’t you? Civil wars, rebellions.”

He nodded wordlessly.

“Doesn’t it get to you?”

He sighed. “I don’t know how to answer that. Human nature being what it is, somebody’s always fighting. It’s a contentious planet.” He chuckled humorlessly. “I’ll never be out of work.”

Karen took her hand away from him and he caught it in his own.

“Don’t stop,” he said huskily.

“Oh, Steven,” Karen burst out, sitting up to face him. “What’s going to become of you?”

“Hey,” he said gently, smiling, “take it easy. I’ll survive. I always do.”

“No,” she said sadly. “One of these times all the near misses will catch up with you.”

“Not me,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and lowering her to the floor. “I’m a cat with nine lives and I’ve only used up about three of them.”

Karen began to protest but he silenced her with his mouth. He moved over her eagerly, and she slid her arms around his neck.

He undid the belt of her robe and pulled the lapels apart roughly, so anxious to discard it that he almost ripped the cloth. Holding her up with one arm he pulled the robe off with the other and tossed it aside, and then they dropped back together, his body enveloping hers.

He kissed her again, and her response was so abandoned that it excited him further, driving him to lift his head and look at her. He loved to see her in the grip of passion; her expression became transformed, hungry, fixated solely on him as the object of her desire. Now her eyes were heavy lidded, agate-dark and glowing, her mouth wet from the contact with his. He could just see the edge of her teeth set against her lower lip, and she gasped with pleasure when he slid his hands beneath her buttocks and lifted her against him. Her eyes closed luxuriously, and she pulled his head down, sinking her fingers into the wealth of hair at the nape of his neck.

He caressed one soft, pliant nipple, and it rose at his touch as he pressed lingering kisses into the soft skin at the base of her throat. His fingertips were rough and callused, and the contrast with her tender flesh was unbelievably erotic, making her long for the wet heat of his mouth to replace it. She tugged on his hair and yearned upward, sighing with gratification as he took a swollen bud between his lips and sucked hard. She held still for long, breathless seconds, accepting, and then became impatient, reaching for the waistband of his pants.

He moved back, unbuckling his belt. Karen watched with greedy eyes as he stood and took off his pants, then she grabbed his hand as he knelt beside her.

“I feel,” she whispered, holding his hard brown fingers to her cheek, “I feel so much that I don’t know how to say it all.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I know.” He tried to pull her down with him again but she resisted.

“Let me,” she said. She embraced him and kissed the taut muscles of his stomach, letting her lips run down to the tops of his thighs. He closed his eyes as she made love to him, too enraptured to move. Finally the tension became unbearable and with a guttural sound he seized her and put her on her back, pinning her beneath him. He thrust into her wildly, but she was his match, wrapping her legs around his hips and surging to meet him. He sensed that she wanted to let go as much as he did, and he raced to a headlong conclusion that left them both drained, crumpled like rag dolls before the lowering fire.

Colter fell asleep, but Karen remained awake, listening to the rain falling on the roof and the soft counterpart of her lover’s breathing. He was sprawled across her, his sweat drying on her skin. When she moved him to get up his fingers closed around her ankle.

“Where you going?” he murmured, his eyes still closed.

“Just to take a shower.”

“Good luck,” he muttered, referring to their erratic plumbing, and drifted into slumber again.

Karen retrieved her robe and belted it around her, checking to see that there was enough wood on the fire before she left him. She was no Camp Fire Girl, and when the blaze went out she had a tough time getting it going once more. There were several stout logs just beginning to burn however, so she went into the bedroom and got a pair of jeans and a sweater, leaving them on the bed. It was only nine o’clock and too chilly to run around in a nightgown. Then she got ready to do battle with the shower.

She had devised an intricate system of controlling the fluctuations in temperature, and this time she only got doused with cold water once. She dried off and dressed, thinking that by the time she mastered the fine art of taking an Irish shower she would be home again.

Home. She wasn’t sure where that was anymore. The word’s meaning had altered for her. She thought of the cottage with Colter as her home now, even though she knew the arrangement was only temporary. She ran her brush through her hair and went into the living room.

It was empty. Colter had a habit of disappearing that she found disconcerting. For long years he’d never been answerable to anyone but himself and now he didn’t seem able to change. Karen opened the front door and looked through the curtain of falling rain. The car was still there so he couldn’t have gone far.

Karen went back inside and got her coat, then walked around to the back of the cottage where the land dropped off into the sea.

Colter was sitting under the roof’s overhang protected from the rain, wearing the eggshell Aran sweater they had bought for him in Cork. He stared down at the pounding surf barely visible below, his hair darkened with moisture and his hands down at his pockets. Phosphorescence glowed on the crest of the waves, but otherwise the sea was as dark as the night, blending into the inky sky above it so that the line of the land was lost.

Karen wrapped her arms around her torso and picked her way through the wet grass to his side.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, sitting next to him on the bench he occupied.

“Hiding from you,” he answered. He raised his right hand, which had been concealed at his side, to show her the glowing cigarette wedged between his fingers.

“You don’t have to hide,” Karen said softly. “I promise I won’t nag.” 

“Thanks.” 

He took a deep drag and exhaled slowly, savoring the smoke.

“I think you’d better come inside before you catch a chill,” Karen said.

“I’m okay,” he replied. He laughed softly. “I have an eerie feeling I may be adjusting to this climate.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yeah, I’m a little worried about it myself.” He finished the cigarette and tossed it away, turning to look at her.

“You know that old Jim Croce song, ‘Time in a Bottle’?” he asked suddenly, brushing his mist dampened hair out of his eyes.

“Yes, I remember it.”

“That’s what I’d like to do with this past month I’ve spent with you—save all the memories in a bottle, so I could take them out and look at them when things got... bad.”

Moved, Karen asked, “Why do things have to get bad, Steven?”

“They always do,” he replied remotely.

“So happiness is a gift you can have only for a little while, not something you can count on to remain?” she said to him.

He shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t know. Do most people seem permanently happy to you?”

Karen thought about it. “My sister seems happy,” she finally said.

He nodded slowly. “She’s married to Joe College—perfect husband and father. Right?”

“That’s not the reason,” Karen replied cautiously. “She would love her husband even if he weren’t doing so well. They get along; they’re compatible. That’s all that matters.”

“I wish it were,” he said dully.

“Steven, what are you thinking?” Karen asked, alarmed. “Can’t you tell me?”

He shook his head, then gestured dismissively. “Just a mood. It’ll pass.”

Karen didn’t like the sound of it and stood up. “I’m going inside to make some tea. Are you coming?”

“I’ll be along in a minute,” he replied. “You go on.”

Karen went inside, and Colter lit another cigarette, inhaling until the tip of it glowed redly in the rainswept darkness.

The weather was an accurate reflection of his spirits. This time with Karen should have been the best period of his life. In one way it was, but the subliminal uneasiness was always with him, eating away at the core of his contentment like a burrowing worm. She had completed him in a fashion he’d never thought possible but he was now faced with a choice he found intolerable. Though she had said nothing and made no demands on him, he felt the pressure from within to forge ties with her, to ask her to share his life in the future.

Colter sat back against the shingled outer wall of the house and closed his eyes, the cigarette burning away between his fingers. But what could he ask her to share? The danger, chaos and constant turmoil that were his daily lot? It wasn’t fair to demand that of any woman, especially not one who had transformed his existence from an abyss of loneliness to a haven of intense, quiet joy. He didn’t want to turn her into a camp follower, waiting anxiously for him to return from each mission, but the thought of living without her now was insupportable.

So what was the alternative? Could he change? He wanted to; God only knew how much he wanted to become the middle class man of her dreams. He longed to transubstantiate miraculously into the good provider, to be like the brother-in-law he had never met but who haunted him, the specter of everything Karen’s mate should be. It was a fantasy as far away from him, as unreachable, as travel to the stars.

Ash fell on his hand and he shook it off, raising the cigarette to his lips once more. It was too late, Colter felt, too late for him to try for that elusive life with her. Ten years earlier maybe, before he had seen too much and grown too little, but now the chance was gone, like an unused ticket on a flight that had left him stranded and alone. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her; he didn’t trust himself. His track record was awful and no one knew it better than he did. He could be faithful because he loved her, of that he was certain, but he had no confidence in his ability to provide the kind of life she deserved. Wasn’t it better for him to bow out now and let her move on to someone else who would be capable of doing that? She would be unhappy for a short while, because he did believe she truly cared for him, but better off in the end. Love sometimes expressed itself in sacrifice, and maybe the best thing would be for him to sacrifice his own needs for Karen’s ultimate welfare.

The thing now was to tell her. The thought of breaking it off with her was so painful that each day he put the task off until the next, hoping that soon he would have the guts to do what had to be done. But the man who could face machine guns and mortars and the madness of a continual, unrelenting state of war could not tell one slim girl that they shouldn’t see each other any more. She would only accept it if he made her believe that their time together had been wonderful but he didn’t want her on a permanent basis, and that wasn’t true. There were all kinds of courage and he simply didn’t have the nerve to tell her that lie.

He sat up and dropped the cigarette on the ground, crushing it under his heel. Then he stood and went back into the house.

Karen was sitting on the sofa next to the fire, sipping tea and leafing through a magazine she’d bought. She looked up as he came in and said, “The tea’s on the stove. Take off that sweater, Steven. It’s wet.”

Obediently he pulled the sweater over his head and spread it on the back of a chair to dry. Then he joined her, sitting on the floor at her feet and putting his head back against her knee.

“All through thinking?” she asked him, a light, teasing note in her voice.

“Yeah.”

“‘He thinks too much; Such men are dangerous,’” she recited, bending forward to kiss the top of his head. “Did you come to any conclusions?”

“The same one I always come to but I don’t like it,”

“Oh. Can I help?”

“Yes, you can.”

He turned and tumbled her gently from the seat into his lap, cradling her as she protested that he’d crushed her magazine.

“I’ll buy you another one,” he murmured, kissing her cheeks, then her mouth. Karen responded as she always did, with that instantaneous ardor that was like touching a light to a pile of kindling.

Colter made love to her then, slowly, gently, in contrast to the fierce, exhausting unions of the past, as if she were precious and fragile and liable to break. And when they fell asleep afterward there were no bad dreams to trouble them.

* * * * 

Karen awoke in the middle of the night when she heard a noise outside the cabin. She sat up, alert, and glanced at Colter, who was still sleeping on his side, one leg carelessly entwined with hers. Not alarmed enough to wake him, she disengaged herself carefully, standing up and glancing around in the semidarkness for her clothes. She settled instead for Colter’s shirt, pulling it on and buttoning it in front as its tails fell to her hips.