Hard Day's Knight (26 page)

Twelfth was Gary, Fenice’s guy. “He’d just better stay out of Walker’s way, that’s all I’m saying.”

She grinned.

Bliss’s name came up fourteenth. “Well . . . you’re okay, I guess,” I allowed.

“Thank you
so
veddy much,” she said in a rich upper-class voice.

Twenty-fifth was the Norwegian Tomas. “He smells like cheese.”

Geoff spewed soda pop out his nose.

Twenty-eight was Vandal. Fenice leaned back and cocked an eyebrow at me. “He’s nice,” I said, mindful that she was a very good shot with her bow. Satisfied, she turned around to look at the scoreboard again. I added, “In a flirty, can’t-keep-it-in-his-pants sort of way.”

“Pepper!” CJ gasped.

“Sorry. I meant that in the nicest sense, of course.”

“It’s okay.” Fenice shrugged. “It
is
true.”

Various other jousters appeared on the list, and with each name there were occasional cheers and scattered applause from the other jousters and their supporters. As name after name scrolled by the big screen, all names that weren’t Walker’s, the tension inside me tightened and tightened until I couldn’t breathe.

“How many jousters will there be?” I asked Bliss quietly as everyone in our section of the arena went quiet.

“Forty-six.”

I looked at the board. Number forty-five scrolled up. It was one of Farrell’s team. My guts lurched, imploded on themselves, and dropped to my feet. He wasn’t going to do it, he wasn’t going to do it. . . .

The occupants of the arena held their collective breath as the last name scrolled up from the bottom of the screen. I clutched Moth, sick to my stomach, sick with dread that I had forced Walker to do something he didn’t want to do, only to have him fail at the attempt. I knew just how frail an ego could be when it came to feeling worthless. . . .

“Oh, thank God.” Bliss sighed.

It was there. Number forty-six. The lowest-scoring man to qualify—Walker McPhail.

As I slumped in relief, a tingle on the back of my neck heralded the fact that Walker was nearby. I looked to my left and saw him, his face utterly blank as he watched his name scroll off the board.

“Now, we are going to have a very romantic dinner, so I don’t want you misbehaving. Don’t snap at your food, don’t talk with your mouth full, and don’t go potty while we’re eating! There’s nothing less conducive to romance than the smell of poop wafting everywhere.”

Moth, sitting on the cooler next to my sleeping bag, gave me one of his indignant looks, as if the last thing he would do would be to use his litter box while we were dining.

“And don’t give me that look,” I said, shaking my finger at him. “I know you too well, cat. Just behave yourself. This is my first real date with Walker, and I want everything to go well.”

I looked around the tent to make sure everything was perfect. I had cajoled two chairs and a small table from neighbors, covering the table with a big red shawl CJ had packed. Camp lights were set low, dim enough to be romantic, but bright enough to see what we were doing. The pizza and salads I’d ordered from a delivery place had arrived, and I had a bought a bottle of wine off a couple who strolled through the tent city selling libations. It was a bit cramped even in CJ’s huge tent, but I felt privacy was more important than legroom. I was in the sexiest of all the garb CJ had brought me, something called a Guinevere gown, a dress that had a low scoop neck and easy-to-undo side lacings. “We’re as ready as we’re going to get. What do you think—do I look sexy?”

Moth gave me a yellow-eyed stare before proceeding to do a little personal hygiene on areas prone to such care.

“Gee, thanks. You’re so good for my ego. Whoops, that sounds like the man himself. Remember, you’re to behave or there will be no pepperoni and sausage for you!”

I shoved aside the unzipped door of the tent and struck a provocative pose next to it. Walker had been stopped just outside the tent by one of jousters who was congratulating him on his reentry into competition.

“Hi,” I said as the jouster drifted away, suddenly feeling shy. “I hope you’re hungry.”

He eyed the Guinevere gown. “For you or food?” “Ideally both.” I held open the tent flap and gestured inside. “Look! I made room for a table in here. Dinner awaits, good sir knight.”

He glanced longingly into the tent, but shook his head. “I should check on Marley’s leg—”

“Already done. His leg is fine—no swelling, no signs of infection or tenderness, and it looks to be healing extremely well.”

“Ah. That’s good.” He looked tired, his shoulders slumping a little as he hesitated. The fact that he was still outside rather than inside being smothered by my kisses—or eating the dinner I had provided—was explained in part by his fatigue, but not wholly.

The thought occurred to me with a swift rush of horror that perhaps his sudden reticence to be alone with me had something to do with my reference earlier to my falling in love with him. That had been nothing but a joke, of course, something to take his mind off the fact that Veronica was kicking his butt. I may have told CJ that I wanted to experience love at first sight with my ideal man, but I never expected it to happen. So it was all a joke. Not seriously meant. I couldn’t fall in love with someone after just a few days, after all.

How pathetic is it when you try to lie to yourself?

I sighed and waggled the tent flap. “What’s it going to be, Walker? Are you dumping me after a one-night stand, or are you coming in and letting me feed and molest you?”

His eyes glittered in the setting sun. “What sort of molestation is involved?”

“I thought I would give you a full-body massage. I figured you’ve got to be a bit sore after falling off your horse so much.”

His mouth tightened, but at least he entered the tent. “I didn’t fall off my horse. I was knocked off.”

I shrugged and offered him a glass of wine. “Same difference. Oh, all right, stop glaring at me; it isn’t the same thing. After jousting with Bliss, I know just how hard it is to take a hit and stay in the saddle. Now will you stop being all prickly, and sit down and allow me to woo you into a romantic mood? This dinner didn’t come cheap, you know!”

He frowned at the pizza box.

“No, it isn’t haute cuisine, but I did get wine!”

Walker slumped into the closest chair, raising his hands as if he wanted to protest something, then letting them fall. “I’m sorry, Pepper. I’m just not very good company tonight.”

My heart, that volatile and sometimes fickle organ, shriveled up at his words and turned to something that resembled a runty lump of coal. “Oh. I see. Gotcha. You don’t want to . . . well, you don’t have to. But since I got a large pizza, you might as well eat that before you go back to your cold, lonely tent and your cold, lonely bed.”

A little tiny smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “I doubt if anything is cold in this heat.”

“Fine,” I said, turning my back to him so he wouldn’t see the tears filling my eyes. The poop. “Go back to your lonely hot bed. Whatever. Makes no difference to me.”

“Sweetheart, don’t cry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.” His voice shivered down my back as his hands settled on my arms, warm and strong.

“I’m not crying,” I lied, trying to shake off his hands. “I’m . . . I’m allergic to Moth! That’s why I couldn’t be a vet. Allergic to animal dander, I am. Oh, great, now I’m starting to talk like Yoda!”

“Pepper,” he said, his breath warm on my neck, his voice rich with laughter. I allowed him to turn me around and sank bonelessly into his embrace. His lips nuzzled my neck as he said, “I’m just not very good company tonight. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.”

“Disappoint me?
You?
I don’t think that’s physically possible,” I said, giving his Adam’s apple a little kiss just to let it know I liked it.

“Not just sexually.” I pulled back to look at him. There was something in his voice, a note of despair that I didn’t like. His eyes were dark and haunted, and as soon as I looked into them, he turned away, his hands dropping from where they had been caressing.

“What do you mean, you’re not good company?” Hope flared to life within me. “Are you bummed out because you’re last on the qualifying list?” He flinched and returned to the chair, his body language shouting defeat. I knelt in front of him, sliding a hand up each thigh until I was caught between his knees. “Are you depressed because you’ve made the right decision, but don’t want to admit that to yourself? Is that what’s making you so glum?”

A very disgruntled look—one almost identical to the expression Moth had adopted the first time I strapped his horns on—flitted over Walker’s handsome face. “You don’t have to look so bloody hopeful about it.”

I leaned forward and nuzzled his chest. “I’m sorry; I can’t help it. I thought you were being skittish because of that bit about me falling in love with you. I’m sorry you’re stressed and unhappy because of the jousting, but I’m am relieved that it’s not a relationship thing between us. A sore ego is no fun, but it’s
nothing
compared to the horror of trying to fix a broken relationship. Hey, what are you wearing beneath this tunic? Do you have a codpiece? Can I see it?”

I lifted up the hem of his tunic to peek, but he hauled me up until I was leaning against his chest, my hands braced on his heavily muscled thighs. “It was a joke? When you said you were . . . er . . .
you know
?”

“Was falling in love with you? What is it with men that they can’t say the word
love
? It’s just four little letters, Walker. It won’t hurt you to say them. I promise.”

He shook me—gently, but still, he shook me. “Was it a joke, or were you serious?”

His eyes, truly one of his best features, were warm pools of liquid silver. Did I want to admit to him that I wasn’t joking as much as I would like to think I was, or would he run screaming into the night at that thought? Walker didn’t seem to be the kind of man to do that, but I hadn’t really known him for all that long. “Serious? Me? Ha. So can I see your codpiece?”

He tipped my chin up so my face was open to his, vulnerable to his all-too-clearly seeing eyes. “You weren’t serious about what you said?”

I turned my head and pressed a kiss to his palm. “I was in earnest when I said I had faith in you, that I knew you could qualify. You can do anything you want to do, Walker.”

Was that a flicker of pain I saw in his eyes?

“I see,” he said, and I felt him withdraw from me. Not his body—that was still there warm and hard and reassuringly solid under my hands—but a barrier suddenly appeared between us, and I knew that it was there because of what I’d said.

But what was I supposed to say?
my Inner Pepper wailed. Misery twisted in my belly as I watched him, wanting to tell him what was in my heart, but aware that my feelings for him were so new, I didn’t even know for certain what I felt. Other than that I liked him. A lot. And I wanted to be with him. Also a lot.

I stood up with a little sigh for the tangled mess my life had become, and popped open the lid to the salad. “Look, I don’t know what I think anymore, other than I’m hungry and I assume you are too, so why don’t we eat? If you still want to talk about this later, we can. Or you can take off all your clothes and allow me to rub a fabulous frankincense-and-myrrh massage oil that I found at one of the vendors into every available square inch of your body. The choice is yours.”

His eyes did the cutest little bugging-out thing I’d ever seen. “Do we have to eat first?”

“Yes,” I said, a whole lot more firmly than I felt. “You’ve had a hard day, physically, what with squiring everyone, then jousting twelve times in a row, not to mention getting tossed on your butt innumerable times.”

“Five,” he said, frowning as I served him a plate of salad. “Five isn’t innumerable. Five is very numerable.”

I took the seat opposite him and poured the wine. “All right, then it’s ‘not to mention getting tossed on your butt five times.’ So we’ll have dinner; then I’ll massage those poor, aching muscles of yours while we discuss just exactly what this relationship is all about, and then after that I’ll take off all my clothes and lick off that massage oil, and we’ll have wild, unbridled sex. Sound doable?”

He choked on the sip of wine he’d just taken.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Here. Have some food. You’re going to need the energy later, if you know what I mean.”

He stabbed his fork into the salad, shaking a piece of lettuce at me. “You’re incorrigible, Pepper. Just when I think you’re nothing but a sweet, sincere, slightly mad, but loving woman, you say something lecherous like that to me. I’ve told you before, I do not like aggressive women.”

“Well, drat, I guess that means you won’t want to wear the studded dog collar, or call me Mistress Pepper?”

“You know what I mean,” he said, munching a mouthful of salad.

“Yes, I do,” I answered, wondering just how much of what he was saying was a little courtship teasing, and how much was ingrained into his psyche.

We talked about his life in England, mine in Seattle, and a lot of trivial subjects, but beneath the easy conversation there was an unmistakable sense of anticipation, a kind of electric excitement that left us both periodically silent.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Walker asked after one such moment.

I smiled. “I told you before—I like looking at you. I like listening to you. I like pretty much everything about you, although sometimes you’re a bit frustrating, what with that whole obstinate male thing going on. But even that I’ve learned to like—you just wouldn’t be the same wonderful Walker if you weren’t quite so stubborn.”

He set down his glass of wine with exaggerated care. “One moment you’re arguing with me, trying to boss me around, and the next you say something like that.”

“Argue?
Moi?
” I tried hard to look innocent. “I don’t argue. I debate.”