Follow the Sun (29 page)

Her last thoughts before sleep were happy.
An aimless wanderer … sorrowing as he goes along
.

The next thing she heard was the click of the lamp and a low, masculine groan of dismay.

CHAPTER 5

J
AMES THOUGHT LATER
that it was like finding an unexpected gift without the gift wrapping.

In the second before Erica gasped and scrambled to the other side of the bed, pulling the blanket up to her chest, he glimpsed a long, svelte torso with beautiful breasts and a taut stomach just made for a man’s lips.

He groaned because that kind of temptation was the last thing he needed. Seeing her in shorts and a T-shirt the day before had convinced James that “skinny” was a description he’d never use again. She was a tall, coltish woman, but her angles were soft, and his senses went into high gear whenever he imagined how her body would feel under his.

“What are you trying to do?” she yelled, her eyes like green ice. “Do you want to be drilled in a spot that really hurts?”

No. Particularly not at the moment, he thought.

James sighed and backed away from the bed, his hands up. “I knocked. You didn’t wake up. I have a
key to the front door. I didn’t expect you to be in the living room naked.”

“What are you doing here?”

He nodded grimly toward a heavy leather tote bag on the floor. Then he caught her gaze and held it. “Moving in.”

Her eyes widened, and she looked like a wild mare about to paw the ground. Lord, he’d liked to have been the man who gentled her to ride.

“Why do you want to stay here?” she demanded.

“One, I own the place. Two, there’s an extra bedroom.” He looked around drolly. “Two extra bedrooms, apparently. Three, I hate motels.”

“You have a bedroom with nifty football pennants on the wall and a rock collection glued to the window-sill. Yes, I lifted the curtain and noticed. Why don’t you stay with your rocks?”

James wasn’t about to explain how much it hurt to visit a home filled with photographs of his parents, Echo’s husband, and Travis’s wife. He wasn’t going to explain that he wanted to cry when he overheard Grandpa Sam solemnly reading the newspaper aloud to them, so they wouldn’t miss out on tribal happenings.

And he wasn’t going to tell her that the day’s fishing trip with Travis had been a bitter fiasco of grief and anger that had ended with Travis telling him quietly that they were no longer brothers.

“I’m moving in,” he repeated fiercely. “I won’t bother you, so don’t sit there like a spinster-on-the-half-shell, looking as if you’re afraid I might take a bite.”

He tracked the rise of fury in her fair complexion. With her face flushed and her hair tangled like a chestnut mane she looked not only wild, but violent.

“I’m not afraid. I know what to do and how to do it right,” she said in a seething tone. “I know where to put what and what happens if I put it there.”

“Now if you could only get somebody to put it there for you.”

She twisted the blanket in one fist and pounded the bed with the other, all control gone. “I was married for eight years! It’s not my fault that I’m a virgin!”

They stared at each other in shock, she looking as surprised as he felt. Then her head drooped, and she covered her face with one hand.

“I’m joking. What a dumb joke. You didn’t even smile.”

“You’re not joking. Too late for a recall.”

James looked for a place to sit down. All this time when he’d teased her about her attitudes he’d never dreamed she was a virgin. He’d never encountered a virgin before, much less one over thirty.

He went to the ugliest green couch he’d ever seen, sat on the edge of a cushion, and waited until Erica lifted a troubled gaze to his.

He watched her shiver visibly.

“I should have gone into journalism.” She moaned. “I know how to broadcast news without thinking first. Congratulations. You’re the only stranger I’ve ever told my sexual history to.”

“Well, Erica Alice,” he said numbly. “Well.”

She shook her head in defeat. “When I tell people I’m an old maid, they believe I’m kidding. I’m not. There. Think what you want.”

“Doll, you’ve gotta explain how you could be married for eight years and still qualify for volcano sacrifices.”

“Catch my story on
Oprah Winfrey
next week. The Oddities of Nature’ show.”

“Look, we’re going to be housemates. I’m not a stranger. And I’m great at keeping secrets.”

“We’re not going to live in this house together. If this community is so traditional and conservative, what will people say?”

He arched one brow. “Relax. If they say anything at all, they’ll blame the big bad wolf for corrupting you. You’ll get sympathy.”

“Why didn’t you tell me up front that you intended to stay here?”

James pretended to study his watch. “Can we discuss this tomorrow? I can’t wait to get a good night’s sleep on this comfortable couch.”

Her voice was ragged. “This is just another way to antagonize me into leaving. Dammit, you’re really cruel.”

James stood ominously. “If I were cruel I’d lock your butt out of my house and say to hell with the consequences.”

“You wouldn’t like the consequences, I promise.”

The day’s frustration and fatigue boiled over. James strode to the bed, snatched the blanket with both hands, and jerked it away from her. She backed off the bed like a cornered animal, hugging her arms over her breasts.

“Out,” he commanded, and pointed toward the front door. He figured he’d let her sit on the porch for five minutes, then toss her the blanket and apologize.

She gaped at him as if he’d lost his mind. “
No!
”

“You want me to carry you out?”

She heard the determination in his voice and edged warily toward the short hallway that went to the kitchen and bedrooms. “Let me get my things,” she said between gritted teeth. “And I’ll go to a motel.”

“No.” He waved a hand at her nakedness. “You want to be a native, then go outside like a native.”

“You’re despicable!”

He smiled with malevolent pleasure. “I don’t use my seat belt. I drop cigar ashes in houseplants, and I thought
E.T
. was a so-so movie.” He pointed. “Out,”

She had nothing left but dignity, and she used it. His heart twisted with admiration and self-rebuke as she straightened imperiously, lowered her arms, and walked past him to the door.

He caught the unadorned, squeaky-clean scent of her hair and skin. He saw the pride outlined in every inch of her backbone, though muscles quivered around it. She had to know that he was looking at everything below her backbone, too, but he suspected that she didn’t know how perfect that part of her was.

She didn’t have much padding, but it had found the right places.

Without looking back she slung the door open. James cursed under his breath. “Forget it,” he said gruffly. “It was a dumb joke. I’m entitled to one myself.”

She paused for a moment, glanced over her shoulder, and said with icy disdain, “I’m going to prove something to you. I may be an old maid, but I’m a hell of a tough old maid, and I don’t need your patronage.”

Then she stepped onto the porch and slammed the door behind her.

James followed her to the porch. She descended the steps and walked across the yard, looking incredibly majestic even in the harsh lights of the flood lamps. His mouth opened in dismay. How the hell could a man deal with a woman like her?

James watched in disbelief as she strolled into the darkness. “You’ll get bitten by gnats, and the nights are cool up here even in the summertime,” he called.

“Cold gnats are preferable to staying in the same house with you,” she called back.

Then he heard only the silence of the night; it had captured her, taking her away for who knew what purposes. He’d either have to go after her and drag her back, strip naked and go sit with her, or let her suffer nobly.

He didn’t think she’d appreciate any of the options.

James paced the porch, unwillingly thinking about
Utluhtu
, the spear-fingered monster who haunted the forests, stealing people’s livers; and
Uktena
, a giant, dragonlike creature so dangerous that just looking at it could be fatal.

He chuckled harshly. And those two were just the tip of the arrow, where Cherokee monsters and evil spirits were concerned. No matter how modern and questioning and cynical he became, a part of him would never forget the stories he’d learned as a boy.

And Erica was out there thinking gnats would be her worst problem.

When he heard her scream he flung himself off the porch and hit the yard at a dead run. James pushed blindly into the woods, his shoulders scraping against the dark shadows of trees, feeling thorny vines tear at his jeans and golf shirt.

He heard a commotion that sounded like devils with giant wings trying to escape from the trees. Ahead of him in faint starlight he saw the ground drop away in a deep gully. The top of a small pine tree showed over the rim, and the branches were swaying wildly.

Erica screamed from somewhere in the gully.

James dived over the rim and landed hard on the exposed roots of a nearby oak. He flung out a hand and caught Erica’s arm. She was huddled on the gully floor, and when he grabbed her she jumped like a rabbit.

Then she hit him across the stomach with a tree limb the size of a baseball bat.

He groaned. “Thanks.”

“James!”

“No kidding.”

He pushed her onto her side and curled around her spoon-style, one arm protectively flung across her head. They lay there panting and listened to the unknown terror in the pine tree.

Finally it got free of the limbs, emitted a ridiculous gobbling sound, and flew away on ponderous wings. James groaned again, this time in disgust.

“A damned turkey.”

“A bird?” Erica asked in an apologetic tone.

The adrenaline surge ended, and pain rushed through James’s bad knee. He bit his lip and rolled onto his back, then drew the knee up gingerly and described turkeys in terms that had nothing to do with Thanksgiving. He got to his feet and threw his shirt to her. “Follow me back to the damned house and don’t give me any more grief.”

He started climbing the gully wall, his movements
slow and painful. He had to stop halfway up the gully to catch his breath.

Erica chuckled fiendishly. “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

“RED! BRING ME
a glass of water!”

“In a minute.”

“Now.”

“When I finish this chapter.”

Sitting at the kitchen table, Erica lifted her gaze from a history book and smiled. For three days it had been that way—James in bed, bawling orders, her in the kitchen, ignoring them as long as possible.

She heard furious rustling in the living room, then uneven clumping. Alarmed, Erica put the book down and looked toward the kitchen door. James appeared in its whitewashed frame, his swollen knee half-bent, his hair disheveled, his eyes black with aggravation.

And he was naked.

Erica felt the pulse throb in her neck. She folded her hands in her lap to hide their trembling and said calmly. “Nice crutch.”

He emphasized each word slowly. “From now on, every time you ignore me I’m going to get up, find you, and wave this thing until I get attention.”

“You think I’m so mousey that I’ll faint? Just because I’ve never had personal contact with one of those doesn’t mean it terrifies me. It’s just another part of the male body.”

Her stomach shrank under his evil, slit-eyed smile. “Oh? Then you won’t mind if it moves closer.”

He hobbled toward her with a great deal more menace than she’d expected. Erica jumped up and sidled around the table, using it as a barricade.

To her chagrin, he began to laugh. He braced both hands on the tabletop and chortled heartily, his deep-set eyes squeezed almost shut, his teeth flashing white in an uninhibited show of victory.

Erica walked to the battered old metal sink, picked
up a big glass from the drain rack, and filled it with water. She held her hand under the faucet for a moment. Mmmm, well water was so wonderfully cold. She turned gracefully, her chin up, and tossed the whole glass on him.