Hard Day's Knight (21 page)

Walker groaned, then started to get up. “I have work to do. The horses need feeding—”

“And someone else will do it.” I pushed him back down. “Walker, this is serious. We need to talk.”

His face darkened, his eyes mutinous. “I don’t see why.”

I drummed my fingernails on his chest. “Well, for one thing, if you refuse to joust, that means the Three Dog Knights are out of the competition, so it’ll be back to England for all of you.
Without me
.” I added the emphasis just in case he missed that pertinent bit of information.

He looked extremely discomfited. “Pepper, I—”

“No,” I said, putting a hand over his mouth. He kissed my palm. “I’m not ready to talk about that yet. Later, after the competition is over, then we can talk about what’s going to happen to us. But right now, you getting your extremely attractive butt onto a horse and jousting is what’s important.”

I removed my hand from his mouth, expecting him to refuse flat-out, but he didn’t. He just stared at me with those bright eyes of his, and looked a tiny bit confused. “Why does it matter so much to you that I joust?”

“Because I’ve got you figured out, McPhail. You’re a man with a very deep sense of responsibility, and when you hurt that other man, you swore to yourself never to put anyone else at risk again. Am I right?”

“Somewhat.” The fingers of his left hand were tangled in my hair, gently stroking my neck. “I was . . . reckless in those days, Pepper. Stupid. Foolish. I let pride rule me, driving me to take risks that I never should have taken. When my own stupidity ended up costing a man his life, I realized how arrogant I had become. I thought I was invincible . . . but I never once realized what the cost for my success would be.”

My hand covered his heart, where it was beating strong and true, my own aching for him, for the pain that was shadowed in his eyes. “This man, he died?”

“No.” Walker’s gaze flickered away to the wall of the tent, but I knew he wasn’t seeing it. He was looking inward, to the past, to the horrible guilt he carried with him still. “He didn’t die, but he might as well have for what I did to him. I broke his neck, Pepper. I did, not anyone else, not the horse, not the fall he took;
I
broke his neck and ruined his life the minute I decided to aim for his head. It’s the trickiest of all shots, and the one that scores the highest, but you have to be a master jouster, a true champion at arms to pull it off.” His chest rose and fell three times before he spoke the words that fairly dripped with anguish. “I didn’t.”

I’ve never been in a situation where I was responsible for evaluating someone’s psyche. My mother had always been a straightforward person, and my father had disappeared from my life by the time I was two. Friends and family mattered, of course, but no one had ever really needed me, not needed me in the way I sensed Walker needed me. CJ was wrong—the woman who was meant for him wasn’t someone who could comfort him and protect him from the world he had so successfully hidden from for three long years, flaying his soul with guilt for a tragic accident. No, what Walker needed was someone who wouldn’t allow him to wallow in martyrdom any longer, someone who made him confront his issues, work through them, and move on with life.

It wasn’t going to be easy, it wasn’t going to be fun, and I had a nasty, suspicious feeling that it would take a while before Walker realized just how good I was for him, but I have never been one to back away from a challenge.

Much. Well, okay, there was that whole vet thing, but that was a
totally
different situation.

I leveled Walker a steady look, and said simply, “Then I guess you’ve got a lot of practicing to do before you make your qualifying runs today, huh?”

His arm stiffened beneath my head. “I’ve just explained to you why I can’t—”

“No, you can, you just won’t.” I sat up, looking down at him. “But that’s a quitter’s attitude, Walker, and you’re not a quitter. Furthermore, this isn’t just about you. You have a responsibility to your team members.”

He frowned and sat up as well, reaching for the black tights he wore under his tunic. “They knew the odds were against them—”

“Yeah, and you’ve pretty much made it a sure thing, haven’t you?” I pulled my wrinkled negligee over my head, looking around for something else I could wear back to my tent. I hated to be so rough on him, but it was about time he stopped hiding from the truth.

“I don’t have a responsibility to them—”

I whirled around, at the end of my temper. “Yes, you do! Why don’t you see that? You’re their leader. You’re their teacher. I’m willing to bet you’re their idol, as well—at least you are for the men. And if you don’t do this, if you don’t get a grip on yourself and confront your fear, you will be responsible for the ruination of two more lives. Can you live with that, Walker? I sure couldn’t.”

He made an abrupt, frustrated gesture, throwing me a long white linen shirt before donning its twin. “Vandal made the choice to mortgage his house, not me—”

“And how likely is it that he would win the lottery just when you guys needed a couple thousand dollars? Come on, Walker, admit the truth, at least to yourself if not to anyone else—you had to know that there was something suspicious about his coming up with all the money needed for you guys to come to Canada, and yet you did nothing. You didn’t ask questions, you didn’t probe, you just accepted it because you wanted to come. You wanted to see your team compete, and probably, buried deep down inside, hidden behind the fear you hold so tightly to, you want your turn at glory again.”

He was truly angry now, his eyes spitting little silver sparks at me. “You don’t know anything about it.”

I pulled the shirt over my negligee, walking over to stand before him. I smiled and traced my finger along his jaw. “Your muscles are so tight, it’s a wonder you haven’t cracked a tooth.”

He stared down at me, silent, angry, and sexy as hell.

“The bottom line is that you have to do this not for Vandal, not for Fenice, not for Butcher or Bos or anyone else. You have to do this for
you,
because I truly do believe you’ve been living in a hell of your own making for the last three years, and it’s time to move on. What happened was an accident—a horrible, tragic accident—but unless you went into the ring with the intention of wounding that man, then it was just an accident. You are older and wiser now. You’ve learned.”

He stood stiff for a minute, and I was sure he was going to reject my comfort again, but a little tremor shook him as he bowed his head, his eyes closed. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him. After a moment, his arms tightened around me as well, his breath brushing my ear as he spoke. “I don’t want to hurt anyone again.”

“I know you don’t. But that’s part of the chance you take, isn’t it? It’s part and parcel of jousting. Would you love it so much if you jousted with foam-rubber lances?”

He rubbed his chin against my head, silent for a few minutes. “What if . . . what if I’m not good enough? What if it happens again? What if I
didn’t
learn?”

I kissed his jaw, my heart aching for him. “You’re unbeaten, Walker. You are the most skilled jouster in all of England. How many times were you world champion?”

“Eight.”

“Eight?” My mouth gaped a little before I realized what it was doing. “Eight years? In a row?”

He nodded.

“Good God, you’re, like, the best jouster in the world!”

“The best jouster in the world doesn’t ruin other people’s lives.”

“Walker.” I cupped his jaw in my hands, putting every iota of emotion I possessed into my face. I wanted him to see the belief I had in him. “That man made the decision to get on his horse and joust with you. You didn’t make it for him. He must have known the chances that he took doing so, and he was willing to accept the possibility that something could go wrong. Didn’t you accept that every time you entered the list?”

“Yes.” His eyes were dark, fathomless pools of anger and frustration. “But it didn’t have to end that way.”

“But it did. And you’ve learned from the tragedy, and now the time has come for you to confront your fear. So the real question is, are you man enough to face that fear and beat it, or are you going to let it win and spend the rest of your life hiding?”

His gaze held mine for a minute; then it dropped away. I wanted to press him, to make him agree to what I wanted, but I knew that this was a decision he had to make on his own. He had to stop running away from himself, or there would be nothing left of him.

I kissed him on his lovely blunt chin, whispering, “I have faith in you, Walker McPhail. I believe in you.”

He stood silent, watching me as I gathered up Moth and his tin of cat snacks, but I didn’t look back as I shoved the heavy material of the tent flap aside. I had done all that I could; the rest was up to him.

Walker’s tent faced east, which explained why I was momentarily blinded as I left his tent. I put my hand up to shade my eyes, and found myself staring at five very shocked faces. Fenice and Gary, who had evidently been to a nearby Starbucks, were setting down several lattes on the table next to the lawn chairs. CJ, in a T-shirt that went to her knees, was yawning as Butcher handed her a pastry. Bliss was breaking up a large bunch of grapes. Vandal sat with his head in his hands.

I looked back at all of them, then down to where my sexy red negligee was clearly visible below the hem of Walker’s shirt. “Oh. Uh. Hi. Morning. Um. Moth ran into . . . uh . . . Walker’s tent, and I . . . uh . . . I went to get him. And . . . um . . . he barfed, and Walker gave me a shirt. Because he barfed. Moth did. A hairball. And I needed a shirt. Er . . . that’s all.”

They stared with unblinking, stunned expressions until the material behind me parted and Walker emerged fully clothed from his tent, a scrap of red lace and satin in his hand.

“Gah!” I shrieked, and grabbed my underwear. “Gotta run. Lots to do this morning! Later!”

As I lumbered off (being burdened with Moth slowed me down considerably), Vandal said in a voice rife with awe, “Bugger me, she did it! Pepper seduced Walker!”

The morning was not without its moments of irony. I fully intended to give Walker the time he needed to think things through, but despite my best intentions to avoid him, I kept running into him.

“Oh, hello,” I said as he entered Marley’s stall, obviously there to do the very same thing I was doing. “His leg looks great. See—no swelling, no tenderness, and the wound appears to have closed already.”

As he squatted down next to me to look at the horse’s leg, every atom in my body stood up and shouted a demand to throw myself into his arms. His long fingers ran lightly over the wound, and I shivered with the memory of the desire those fingers could stir up inside me.

“Good. How soon do you think we’ll be able to work him?”

I got to my feet and moved back a few paces, more to put distance between myself and the temptation that Walker posed than to avoid Marley. “I’d say you could take him out for a little gentle exercise today and see how he feels. I doubt if he’ll even notice it, though, if you were wanting to . . . oh, say,
joust
with him today.”

“There’s no need for that,” Walker said, his eyes shaded.

Damn and blast the man! It sounded like he was still being obstinate. I bit back the urge to ask him what he had decided, instead saying simply, “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

He nodded.

“Today on
Pepper’s Dishy Englishman Show:
alpha males and the women who fall in love with them,” I muttered to myself as I walked away.

 

An hour later I ran into Walker again. I had fed Moth, cleaned myself up, and strapped my breasts into the red-and-black bodice before setting out for the day’s Wenching. No sooner had I zipped up the tent and straightened Moth’s devil horns than I heard a familiar voice.

“. . . don’t know who told you that, but it’s false. The Three Dog Knights have not been disqualified from competition.”

“But it is true that one of your team members is in the hospital?”

I scooped up Moth and hurried down the line of tents to where Walker was holding a breastplate and mail hauberk. Red-haired Claude was in front of him.

“No. He was released this morning with two cracked ribs and a broken wrist.”

Claude’s eyes widened. “He can’t joust with a broken wrist, can he?”

“No, he can’t.” Walker’s gaze lifted to meet mine. I didn’t say anything, just held my breath and willed him to say he was going to take Bos’s place. He didn’t, of course. That would be far too sensible of the man. Instead he nodded at me, saying in an extremely noncommittal voice, “Pepper.”

I nodded back.
Drat the beastly man.
“Walker.”

Moth purred at him until he turned without another word and walked off.

“But . . . but . . .” Claude watched Walker’s back for a few seconds before turning to me to ask, “Who are they going to get to replace the injured man?”

“That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” I said, and hoisted Moth up higher.

 

“Need a ride, stranger?” I asked an hour and a half after our last run-in.

Walker, tromping alongside the road that led through town, stopped and peered into CJ’s VW. He was wearing normal clothes: a pair of khaki pants and a light-colored T-shirt, the latter stuck to his back with sweat. “What are you doing here?”

I smiled as he carefully folded his long body into CJ’s small car. “Probably doing the same thing you’re doing—making a run to the nearest grocery store. His highness back there ran out of his favorite flavor of pricey kitty food. How come you’re walking?”

He shrugged, his eyes closing in relief as the full force of the air-conditioning hit him. “No one had a car I could borrow.”

“Ah.” We drove the mile and a half into town in silence. I kept taking little glances at him, trying to get used to seeing him out of his knight clothes. Either way you cut it, he was mighty darn fine.