Green Fire (19 page)

Flint's eyes were shuttered and cold as he moved forward to catch hold of Rani. She sensed his intention, but she didn't have time to evade his grasp. His big hands closed around her upper arms as he forced her to look at him. "I'm sleeping with you because I want you and you want me. It's as simple as that. Don't drag our personal relationship into this."

She glared at him in open amazement. "Don't drag our personal relationship into this!" she repeated. "Are you joking? That's what this whole mess is all about, isn't it? You made what might have been a business relationship or a matter of obligation into a very personal relationship. Or don't you see it that way? I realize that you probably view our… our affair as a casual and convenient little romp but that doesn't mean I, at least, don't find it a very personal matter."

"Don't get hysterical on me, Rani."

"I am not hysterical, I'm mad!"

"You're hardly a woman scorned. Don't act like one."

She tried to free herself. When he wouldn't release her, she glanced pointedly down at his hands. He followed her look and reluctantly released her arms. When he dropped his hands to his sides, she stepped away, folding her arms across her breasts. She came to a halt in front of the window, staring unseeingly out into the garden at the front of the house.

"You should have told me the truth, Flint. Right from the start. It wasn't fair of you to let me think you were here only to write the article and pick up a few bucks doing repairs for the Andersons. I feel used."

"You have no right to feel used," he told her harshly. "I haven't used you and you know it. Maybe I should have told you the truth, but I've already explained I wasn't sure what was going on. I didn't want to alarm you. I just wanted to keep an eye on you and the ring for a while. If I'd walked in here that first night and told you there was a possibility someone might kill you for the ring, how would you have reacted?"

"We'll never know, will we? You didn't handle it that way."

"I'll tell you how you would have reacted. You'd have thought I was insane. You'd have been scared to death and you wouldn't have let me in the front door."

"The only difference now is that you're in the front door."

He came up behind her. "Rani, I didn't realize your friend Dewhurst would hear about the rumors surrounding Ambrose's death. I didn't know he'd call and warn you. Hell, I was hoping your uncle's death really was an accident. With any luck this whole thing would have blown over in a few months."

"And having done your duty, you could slip back out of my life the same way you slipped into it," she concluded bitterly.

"Stop it, Rani."

"What made you think you were qualified to protect me if I was in danger? You're a handyman, a gardener, someone who writes articles for treasure hunting magazines."

"I told you, I've done some work as a bodyguard," he said stiffly. "Some security work."

"Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten your varied resume. Do all bodyguards get to sleep with their female clients?"

Flint jerked her around to face him again. "That's what's really bothering you, isn't it?" he charged. "You're madder than hell because I had the nerve to take you to bed, not because I didn't tell you the whole truth. You've decided I took advantage of you."

"Well, didn't you?"

"Lady, we would have ended up in bed regardless of what story I'd told you the night I arrived."

"Not necessarily!"

"Want to bet?" He pulled her closer.

Rani's unstable mixture of emotions exploded. "No, I do not want to bet. Nor do I want you trying to prove how irresistible you are. What I want is for you to get out of here, Flint Cottrell. You say you're here to guard me, so, okay, start guarding. Go fetch that big, ugly gun of yours and start patrolling the perimeter or whatever it is guards are supposed to do. Go on, get out of my cottage. You can spend the night walking around outside watching for jewel thieves."

"I'm going to spend the night in your bed, damn it!"

"Not a chance."

Something that might have been desperation moved across his face. "Rani, honey, listen to me. I know you're angry, but the bottom line in all this is that nothing between us has changed. We're involved. You can't kick me out."

"Want to bet?" Deliberately she mimicked his own earlier challenge. "I'm ordering you out of this cottage, Flint."

"No." He shook his head firmly. "You can't."

She took a deep breath. "You won't leave willingly?"

"I'm not leaving. Period."

"In that case, I don't have much choice, do I?"

His gaze softened. "You don't want a choice, Rani. You want me to stay and you know it. Stop fighting both of us."

She ducked out from under his arm, striding down the hall to the bedroom. "You're bigger than I am, Flint. If you won't go on request, I can't force you."

"What the hell are you up to now?" he demanded, following her down the hall.

"If you won't leave, I'll have to do the leaving. I am not spending another night in this cottage with you." She opened the closet door, shoved aside his clothes and dragged out her suitcase. Tossing it on the bed, she began filling it with the contents of her side of the closet.

"Rani, cut it out. You're acting like a child."

"I thought you said I was acting like a woman scorned."

"You're being ridiculous."

She shrugged and reached for a stack of underwear. He put his hand out and shoved the drawer closed.

"All right, all right. If you're going to be this way about it, I'll leave," Flint said through gritted teeth.

She stood very still, waiting. "Goodbye, Flint."

"You're going to regret this, you know. You're hurting both of us."

"I, for one, will be far more hurt if I allow you to spend another night in my bed."

"Honey, that's just not true. When you've calmed down, you'll realize it."

"Get out of here, Flint."

He stood looking down at her for another moment. She saw the frustration and the leashed anger in him and wondered if it would escape. But in the end Flint controlled himself as she had somehow known he would. Without a word he turned and walked out of the room.

Rani stood where she was until she heard the kitchen door slam shut. Then she sank slowly down onto the bed and huddled into herself. She concentrated her full attention on trying to keep the tears from escaping between her lashes.

Two hours later Flint gave up trying to sleep and swung his legs over the edge of the decrepit old bed he was using in the back cottage. He was still wearing his jeans. He hadn't bothered to undress completely because a part of him refused to admit he was really going to spend the whole night in his small cottage. For the fourth or fifth time he paced silently over to the window and stared out into the night. Rani's bedroom light had finally been switched off. It had been on a long time after he'd left.

She was lying there in the darkness, but he doubted if she was asleep any more than he was. She would be thinking of all that had been said that evening. What he really wanted her to think about was what had not been said. Had she realized the full import of that yet? When and if she did, would it make any difference to her? He had no way of knowing how she would respond even if she did admit the truth to herself.

Restlessly Flint turned away from the window and walked over to the refrigerator. It was humming noisily in the kitchen alcove. Absently he gave it a kick to quiet it and then he opened it to see if there was anything interesting inside. It was empty except for the last of the six-pack. He reached for the beer and popped the top. Can in one hand, he went back to his post at the window.

She couldn't be asleep. She must be lying there thinking about what she had learned that evening.

Flint felt a distinct sense of irritation toward Charles Dewhurst. If he hadn't called with his belated warning, the present situation wouldn't have arisen. Flint could have told Rani the truth in his own time and in his own way.

She didn't understand why he hadn't been completely honest with her right from the start. Flint had to admit she had a point. His main goal had been to protect her without alarming her, but she didn't seem to appreciate that. Perhaps he should have just told her the truth. It would have scared the hell out of her, though, and possibly with no real justification.

There had been no proof that anyone had deliberately killed Ambrose. Flint was surprised the rumors of murder were strong enough to reach all the way to Dewhurst. Even the police hadn't been concerned about the possibility that the accident was anything more than what it seemed. Still, the fact remained that Dewhurst had heard it somewhere and had called Rani to warn her.

The whole thing had disintegrated into an idiotic mess because he'd mishandled everything that first night. Flint groaned and took a swallow of beer. He should have told her the facts right at the beginning.

But if he had done that she would never have felt comfortable or relaxed around him. At best she might have treated him like a professional bodyguard. She would have tried to keep the relationship on a businesslike basis. At worst she would have fled back to her safe, secure world, leaving him to chase after her and try to convince her to let him into her life. As a handyman-gardener who was trying to write an article on the side, Flint knew he was a lot less threatening to her than if he'd walked in the front door and told her he was there to protect her from her uncle's murderer.

Perhaps he'd taken the selfish route, but in retrospect Flint was inclined to think that, given the same situation, he would have done things the same way. He had known the moment she'd opened the door to him during the storm that

Rani wasn't going to be just another job. He had known she was going to change his whole life.

When a man found a woman capable of changing his entire life, he probably didn't think as clearly as he would under normal circumstances. Maybe he'd behaved like an ass.

The real question tonight was whether Rani had settled down and really thought about the evening's events. Flint stood silently at the window, drinking the beer and reflecting on his own stupidity.

Rani was wide awake, lying quietly in bed and staring at the play of shadows on the ceiling when she became aware of the familiar figure of a man standing in the garden outside her window. Zipp jumped lightly off the bed and bounded up onto the windowsill. Ducking inside the sheer curtains, he pressed his nose to the glass and meowed inquiringly.

On the other side of the window, Flint didn't move for a moment. Then he put out his hands and calmly opened the window. Rani watched with a curious fascination as the window was raised. The Andersons really should hire a handyman to fix the broken lock, she thought.

"Hello, Zipp." Flint made no move to enter the room. He leaned inside the open window, letting chilled air into the room as he casually scratched the cat's ears. Zipp purred loudly for a moment and then something caught his attention. He dived through the window and disappeared. Flint continued to lean into the room, his elbows resting on the sill. "You awake?" he asked quietly.

"I'm awake."

There was a silence for another moment and then he said carefully, "I've been thinking."

"So have I."

"About the same things, I wonder?"

"I have no idea," she murmured. Rani felt as if she were back in the dreamlike atmosphere that had enveloped her earlier in the evening. Nothing seemed quite real except for Flint's inescapable presence.

"You're not going to make this easy for me, are you, Rani?"

"What do you want me to do?"

He exhaled slowly. "I'm afraid to ask. That may not seem strange to you, but it is to me. I can't remember the last time I was afraid to ask for something that was important."

He probably couldn't remember the last time he'd ever actually asked for something politely in the first place, Rani decided with a detached sort of amusement. Like Zipp, Flint was far more accustomed to simply taking what he wanted. "Why are you afraid this time?"

In the moonlight his bare shoulders lifted in a self-deprecatory shrug. "Because I'm nervous about the answer, I guess. Most things aren't this important."

Rani didn't know what to say to that. She sensed the honest
^v
of his words, but she wasn't sure what to do next. All her life she had been careful. Only this man had the ability to make her reckless. From her point of view that represented a truly awesome power. The safest course of action was to keep him at a distance. But Rani wasn't even sure she had that option any longer. She had been doing a great deal of thinking during the past couple of hours and some conclusions were unavoidable. "Am I really that important to you, Flint?" she heard herself ask gently.

He looked at her through the shadows. "If you weren't important, I probably wouldn't have screwed things up this badly. Rani, I need to know if you've thought about what else happened earlier."

"I've thought of little else."

Flint hesitated. "Did you realize exactly what happened tonight after the phone call?"

It was her turn to hesitate. "I realized I didn't react the way I should have reacted under the circumstances," she finally admitted.

He nodded. "You were madder than hell and a little confused, but you didn't really believe I was the murderer."

"It did cross my mind initially," she managed to point out dryly. He wasn't going to have it all his own way.

Flint came through the window, slipping into the darkened room like a cat returning from an evening's hunt. "It may have crossed your mind, but you weren't worried about that aspect for very long, were you? Why not, Rani? It was the logical assumption. Dewhurst had just told you that someone was after the ring. You know nothing about me except what I've told you." Flint moved over to the bed and stood looking down at her. "So why didn't you call the cops the second I left?"

"Maybe it was nothing more than female pride that kept me from doing it," she retorted.

"Pride?" That took him back. It wasn't the answer he'd been expecting.