Green Fire (20 page)

"I might not have wanted to admit to myself or the sheriff that I'd been having an affair with a murderer."

Flint sat down on the edge of the bed, his weight making a heavy impression on the mattress. He rested his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely in front of him. "You really aren't going to make this easy for me, are you?"

"What do you want me to say, Flint? That I've been lying here realizing I couldn't suspect you as a murderer because of the way you make love to me? That I'm far too involved with you to let myself believe you're a danger to me? That all my feminine instincts tell me I can trust you? That deep down I believe you intended no harm, that you only wanted to protect me? Is that the sort of thing you want to hear me say?"

He inclined his head but didn't turn to look at her. "Something like that."

"Ah," she said knowingly. "Perhaps that wasn't quite as much as you wanted. Maybe you wanted to hear a little more."

"Such as?"

"Such as I'm probably falling in love with you and that's the real reason I couldn't possibly believe you're a danger to me?" Her voice was a soft whisper of sound in the darkness. She wasn't sure he heard until he moved.

"Rani." Her name was a deep sigh of masculine relief. He came down beside her on the bed, gathering her into his arms and holding her fiercely against his bare chest. He buried his face in her hair. "Oh, God, Rani."

"You're cold," she heard herself say, touching him with a sense of wonder. "What on earth were you doing running around outside without a jacket?"

"I was hoping you'd let me warm up in your bed," he said into her hair. He stroked her with his big, callused hand. "Are you falling in love with me, sweetheart?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters. I want you to love me, Rani. I want it very much, I swear I'll take care of you."

"You keep saying that."

"I mean it."

Rani sighed, relaxing against him. "I know."

"You trust me?"

"I don't seem to have much choice," she admitted.

"Maybe neither one of us has a choice." His mouth closed over hers with a heavy, dark need. The deep kiss was both an act of claiming and an act of gratitude.

She should be more afraid of the power he had over her, Rani told herself as her lips parted beneath the pressure of his. But there was no way she could ever really fear this man, and she knew it now. It was the unavoidable, inescapable conclusion she had reached as she had laid alone in the darkness thinking about the evening's events.

She knew with a sure, womanly instinct that Flint Cottrell was the man fate had chosen to teach her about the reckless, uninhibited power of passion and love.

The sun was forging an unsteady path between a coalescing mass of gray clouds when Rani stirred into wakefulness the next morning. She knew Flint was already wide awake beside her, although he hadn't disturbed her by moving. He was like Zipp in a lot of ways, she thought in sleepy amusement. There was a lazy alertness about him that seemed to be part of his basic makeup even when he was sound asleep.

She turned in his arms, and Flint stretched luxuriously. "What I'd really like to know," he announced, leaning over to kiss her, "is what rumors Dewhurst actually heard."

"That's not the first thing you're supposed to say in the morning."

Flint propped himself on his elbow and rested one hand possessively on her breast. He tilted a lazy brow. "No? What am I supposed to say?"

You're supposed to say I love you
, Rani thought silently. Aloud she murmured, "Something along the lines of how cute and cuddly I look in the morning, I believe."

He gave her a slow grin. "How cute and cuddly you look in the morning!" he exclaimed dutifully. "Also sexy as hell." He moved his thumb on the tip of her breast and watched with interest as the nipple reacted. Satisfied with the firming peak, he slid one foot down the calf of her leg. Then he deliberately pushed his knee between hers, his eyes never leaving her face. His hand made its way over her breast, trailing slowly toward the soft nest of hair below her flat stomach. "Very cute. Very cuddly."

"So are you. She wound her arm around his neck and pulled his head back down to hers. Flint obeyed the summons willingly, his mouth closing over hers as his fingers snagged gently in the nest he had found.

She loved the feel of his big, callused hands, Rani thought as Flint bore her back against the pillows. Such strong, careful, gentle hands. Hands that could coax a garden into shape. It was hard to remember that once she had seen a. gun in those hands. He was meant to grow things, not kill things.

"You should stick to gardening," she told him in a soft whisper.

"You think I'm good at it?" He touched her intimately until she sighed and lifted herself against his hand.

"You're very good at it. Oh,
Flint
!"

Zipp roused himself in disgust, jumped down off the bed and stalked off to the kitchen to find his morning spot on the windowsill. Humans had a way of getting their priorities mixed up. This was the time of day for breakfast and a nap in the sunlight.

It was a long while before Rani and Flint joined the cat in the kitchen. When Rani finally did start breakfast for the three of them, she was feeling healthy, vibrant and very much alive. Her hair was in its usual knot, and she wore a brilliant coral shirt with her jeans. The ring on her hand glinted in the morning light as she flipped pancakes.

Sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in one hand, Flint watched her with a hunger that wasn't just for the pancakes. Rani could feel his eyes on her as she worked, and the sensation was a little disquieting. It was difficult to tell sometimes exactly what Flint Cottrell was thinking. He'd spent too many years learning to conceal his emotions.

"What was it you started to say about Mr. Dewhurst this morning?" she asked, deciding to get Flint talking.

There was a slight pause behind her. "I was just wondering how Dewhurst heard the rumors about Ambrose's death. Did he say who had told him?"

Rani shook her head. "Only that there was some gossip in the trade."

"Dewhurst is a long way from the East Coast where your uncle was killed."

"True, but he was a longtime business associate of my uncle's. If there was talk about a murder, it makes sense it might have gotten back to him. He said something about a man who had been on the trail of the Clayborne ring for many years."

Flint was thoughtful. "A lot of people have wanted that ring over the years. So far as I know, none of them has wanted it badly enough to kill for it."

Rani glanced down at the gem. "How valuable is it, Flint. If this was the real thing, what do you think it would be worth?"

"Hard to say what it's value would be to a collector, but Ambrose once told me that if the stone were removed, cut up and sold a man might get somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred grand if he knew what he was doing.

Cutting up the stone would devalue it. No telling what it's worth whole."

Rani swallowed. "That's a nice neighborhood."

"Whoever cut and sold the real stone would have to know what he was doing and who he was dealing with, Rani. Not everyone has access to that kind of skill."

"My uncle would have known what to do and who to contact." Rani sighed.

"True. But Ambrose told me this was the one piece of jewelry he wasn't going to duplicate. He wanted to keep the Clayborne ring. He was fascinated by the history surrounding it. It wasn't just another pretty trinket to him."

Rani piled the pancakes on two plates and carried them over to the table. "But he still might have copied it just to protect the original."

"That's a possibility," Flint agreed, accepting his plate with the enthusiasm he reserved for Rani's cooking.

There was no doubt that he liked having her cook for him, Rani thought with concealed humor. She was a decent cook but not a great one. She doubted it was her culinary skill that appealed so much to him. It was more subtle, more primitive than that. Rani sensed it had to do with the symbolic fact that she was doing the cooking for him. He liked eating her food because in a nonverbal way it established a very distinct, very basic bond between them. Until now Rani hadn't realized just how basic cooking for a man could be.

"Assuming that he did decide to duplicate the ring, where would he have hidden the original?" she asked, buttering her pancakes.

"I don't know." Flint munched reflectively. "A safe-deposit box that we don't know about perhaps. Somewhere in his shop. The possibilities are endless."

"But he would have wanted someone to find the ring eventually," Rani pointed out. "He wouldn't have hidden it so that no one would ever find it."

"He may not have had time to set up the hiding place and the clues." Flint forked up another bite. "We don't even know for sure he was killed because of the ring. I told you, Rani, it's just a suspicion."

"One that Dewhurst shares, apparently."

"Yeah. I'd sure like to know how he heard that particular suspicion. Maybe he knows someone who could shed some light on this mess for us."

Rani put down her fork. "What do we do now, Flint?"

"The same thing I've been doing all along. Exercise due caution for a while. If nothing happens we can assume eventually that either no one really is after the ring or that whoever is after it has heard it's a fake and is looking elsewhere."

"How long do we exercise this 'due caution'?"

"Until things feel right," Flint said casually.

Rani stared at him in astonishment. "Until they feel right? What on earth does that mean?"

"It means I'm operating on a gut feeling that I can't really justify with evidence."

She frowned. "A feeling that something is wrong?"

He nodded. "Don't worry. I've been off base before when I've had this feeling. I could be wrong this time, too."

He looked up, his gaze locking with hers. "It's all I've got to go on, Rani."

Rani couldn't think of anything to say to that.

The pattern of the day fell into its normal routine, although Rani didn't see how that was possible. Surely, after the realization she had made the previous night that she was falling in love with Flint, something significant should have changed in the environment. But everything went on as it had for the past several days. Flint seemed to have accepted with magnificent calm what to her was a momentous discovery. It was rather irritating.

It was late in the afternoon when Rani decided to run into town to check the post office and pick up some items for dinner. She wandered out into the garden to find Flint. He was coiling a hose near a stack of gardening tools when she found him.

"Give me a minute to change my shirt and I'll come with you," he said.

Rani nodded pleasantly but secretly wondered if he were raising the intensity of the watch he had decided to keep on her. Perhaps Dewhurst's call had worried him more than she'd realized. She waited while he went into the main cottage and found a fresh shirt to replace the dirt- and sweat-stained one he'd been wearing. He came out of the front door buttoning it.

"We'll take the Jeep," Flint said. He glanced down at Zipp who was sitting in the doorway. The cat looked up expectantly. "You're going to have to stay here, Zipp. Keep an eye on things for us." Flint closed the cat inside the house and locked the front door. "What have you got planned for dinner?" he asked Rani, automatically checking the lock.