Rainsinger (3 page)

He pursed his lips meditatively, staring at the blue screen without seeing it. It was hard not to respond to a woman like Winona Snow. A man would have to be a eunuch not to notice those siren curves. She’d looked like a celluloid goddess when she sat up, her hair tousled, her curves inviting the same treatment as lemon cream pie—long, slow, savoring.

He licked his lips without thinking, then caught himself and grinned ruefully. There was no avoiding certain realities—the woman must have the right pheromones or something. He responded to her on an adamantly physical plane.

With a sigh, Daniel clicked the icons on the screen to save his program. He wasn’t going to get any more work done tonight.

As the screen flashed its messages, Daniel tried to remember that Winona Snow was the enemy. He was going to have to battle her for this house and this land, for the trees and the ancient pathways his ancestors had carved through the bluffs beyond.

He’d have to stay aloof to do it, because there were bound to be sentimental attachments for her, or she wouldn’t have bothered to drive here from Wisconsin to claim the ranch.

From behind him, Joleen spoke. “Is that your little girl?”

Daniel stalled, clicking the mouse on a second set of icons. “Hmm?”

“That little girl in the picture. Is she your daughter?”

Although he had heard her the first time, Daniel looked in the direction she pointed. The photo of Giselle had been taken about two years before. She was holding an eight-inch trout she’d caught, smiling proudly for the camera. Her hair was woven in two long braids that hung over her shoulders, and her skinny little-girl legs poked out of a pair of dusty cotton shorts. When Daniel had taken the picture, Jessie had been standing behind him, laughing in delight at the child’s accomplishment.

He kept this particular picture on the wall for a reason. It was that golden afternoon that he’d decided he had waited long enough for Jessie Callahan. It was that afternoon he had made up his mind to somehow throw her and Luke Bernali together so their past could be solved once and for all. Then Jessie would be free to perhaps love Daniel in return, or he’d be free to overcome his broken heart.

She’d chosen Luke.

The picture reminded him that he’d taken the action to make it happen. He wasn’t a victim of anything but bad timing. “She’s the daughter of some friends of mine,” he said to Joleen.

“What’s her name?”

Daniel pushed the button to turn off the computer. “Giselle.”

“Don’t you like to talk about her?”

The insight startled him. He looked at her. “There isn’t much to say.” It wasn’t true, of course. Given the right prompts, he’d been known to brag about Giselle for hours. She was a bright, sweet, beautiful child.

And though he’d managed to more or less put Jessie out of his mind and heart, he still missed Giselle badly. The pain hung with him all the time, like a tooth on the verge of going bad, a dull, almost unnoticeable ache that flared every now and then with a fierce stab, then subsided. She’d been his child—in all but fact—for seven years, from the night of her birth until her real father, Luke, had moved forward to claim her.

Which had been the whole point, Daniel reminded himself.

“She’s pretty,” Joleen said.

He caught a note of wistfulness in her voice.

“I always wanted to have long, black hair like that. All the way to my waist.”

He gave her a quick grin. “You have hair?”

Self-consciously she touched her baseball cap. “Not very good hair.”

“People always want what they don’t have.” He slipped a disk back into its holder and put it away, then collected the pencils he’d used and put them in their container. “It’s human nature.”

“That’s what Winona says.” Joleen shifted her weight and fiddled with the bottom of her shirt. “You missed one.”

“What?”

“A pencil.” She tapped her ear to illustrate.

Daniel took the pencil from his hair and put it away. “Thanks.”

She inclined her head. “How long did it take you to grow your hair that long?”

He chuckled in spite of himself. “You know something? Girls always ask me that question.”

“They do?”

“Yep. And the little ones want to brush it.”

“Some of the girls I baby-sit for do that.”

He glanced at the clock and saw with a little jolt of surprise that it was past two in the morning. “Aren’t you tired?”

She lifted a shoulder, almost visibly retreating. “No. I’m really a night person, even if kids aren’t supposed to be. My sister said that even when I was a baby I had my nights and days mixed up.” She fingered a notebook on the desk. “She says it must have been meant to be, since the stage is—well, was—what I planned to do.”

“Is that right?” For a moment he measured her, wondering if she wanted a prompt to tell him the rest of that story. He decided she did. “Are you planning on the movies now, instead?”

Her answer was short, clear, firm. “No.”

He watched her, saw the quick shuttering of her face. Well, scratch one up to experience. He’d been wrong before.

Briefly he considered the situation. He wasn’t the slightest bit tired, and it was strangely pleasant to have someone to talk to in the middle of the night. His life at the ranch had isolated him from his usual web of support, and that was partly what he’d wanted—a fresh start. But it was lonely.

“A little owl, huh? I’m a night person, too,” he said finally. “How about we go fix something to eat?”

Her smile was quick and grateful, and went straight to his heart. Damn, why was it always so hard to keep his defenses up? The last thing in the world he wanted was to get mixed up with another fatherless child. He’d have to watch his level of involvement with this one.

But just for tonight, when she was obviously feeling lonely in this strange new place, it wouldn’t hurt him to be nice.

She trailed him into the kitchen, a big homey room with a round, adobe fireplace in one corner. The overhead light was plain iridescent, not the fluorescent that he loathed. It cast warm, yellow light against the golden pine walls and over the big, worn table near a window. By day the window showed a vast, unpeopled expanse of land that ended with mountains cutting a jagged line against the horizon.

“Let’s see what we’ve got.” Daniel tugged open the freezer. Cooking annoyed him, and he lived on frozen food, macaroni and cheese and canned chili, augmented with copious amounts of coffee and Kool-Aid. Perfect for a teenager and a longtime bachelor. “I’ve got the four major food groups here—sugar, fat, cholesterol and salt.”

She didn’t giggle, as he’d hoped, but when he shot her a glance over his shoulder, there was a crooked semblance of a smile.

“How about pizza?” He tugged out a flat, red box. “And for dessert, good old Boston cream pie?”

“Yum.”

He put the pizza in the oven, poured two fresh glasses of Kool-Aid and sat down. From a basket in the center of the table, he took a deck of cards and started shuffling them. “How long have you lived with your sister?”

“Almost six months. She came home from Africa to take care of me.”

“When your parents died?”

She nodded, but didn’t volunteer any details. The liveliness he’d been enjoying drained from her face. “Hey, there,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about them. Promise.”

Joleen looked at him, and he saw the misery in the big, owlish eyes. He wondered what she looked like without the cap and why she wore it, but didn’t push that, either. “Let’s play cards. What do you like?”

“Rummy?”

“You got it.”

* * *

When Winona next awoke, she had no idea how much time had passed. It was late morning, maybe even noon, judging by the light streaming through the uncurtained window. She’d slept deeply and without dreams, and when she moved experimentally, she knew the worst of this attack was over. Weakness and the faint dizziness would linger, but she could function.

Her body felt sweaty and sticky from the fever, and her clothes were twisted uncomfortably on her body. Tugging at a disagreeable pinch under her arm, she stood up. Nothing like sleeping in a bra and cutoffs to remind her why nightgowns had been invented.

There were no sounds from the rest of the house. If she knew Joleen, the kid would sleep for hours yet. Without Winona to nag her, Joleen had probably watched movies all night.

She tried not to think about the man.

Daniel.

Moving quietly, Winona went down the hall, listening, but heard nothing. No music. No voices. No movements. Outside, the familiar finches warbled in a juniper that sat beside the porch.

The door to the master bedroom stood open halfway, and though Winona told herself to mind her own business, her peripheral vision snagged hard on a swath of black braid. She halted. Last night she’d been feverish. Maybe her mind had embroidered a bit on reality.

The man from the night before sprawled facedown on the bed, covered to the waist by a sheet. His back was bare—bare and brown, smooth as finest leather. The glossy braid lay at an angle over his shoulder blades. She remembered the feel of his hair on her fingers, the wild look of it loose around his shoulders.

Acute emotion burst in her body, centered low. Impossible to want a man so much on first sight. Impossible and idiotic, especially considering the way men reacted to her. They didn’t like her height, her size, her big hands and feet. Men liked women who were delicate and fragile and needed protection, not Valkyries like her.

Besides, she had to remember that this particular man was her enemy. There was a war brewing, and the two of them would be on opposite sides. No ridiculous physical attraction could stand in her way.

She needed this land. It had shaped nearly every important thing about her—her love of working with the earth and the offerings it gave forth, her career, her need to serve mankind in some way.

But more than anything, Winona needed it for Joleen, who had not come to terms with the death of their parents. By removing Joleen from the environment she found so painful, by bringing her here to the ranch, Winona hoped Joleen might find a way to heal.

In his bed, Daniel shifted ever so slightly, throwing a leg to one side. The pose tightened the sheets around his rear end. High and round, it sloped clean away at the sides, as men’s rears were meant to. Heat pooled in her stomach.

Damn. It wasn’t fair that such a gorgeous creature should be the other warrior in this fight. Not fair at all.

Winona forced herself to move past the door and down the hall. On the couch in the living room was Joleen. Only her nose showed. The omnipresent glasses and baseball cap were close at hand, and Winona knew from experience the girl would put both on before she moved.

Winona tiptoed to the front door and opened it quietly. From the car, she pulled out the suitcase that contained nearly everything she owned, and returned to the house to take a shower.

As she stripped off the slept-in clothes, it was impossible not to notice how neat the bathroom was. The fixtures sparkled, the wooden floor was recently waxed, and in the narrow linen closet the corners of the folded towels were regimentally arranged. Winona paused in amazement. On the shelf below the towels were supplies of various sorts… soap in two varieties, extra toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste, enough toilet paper for a year—two with just a man living in the house. He must shop only sporadically, she thought. Not an uncommon trait in ranchers.

But the extraordinary neatness scared the hell out of her. After six years of living in makeshift camps or rough cabins during her service with the Peace Corps, it was more than a little intimidating. Especially since her mother had fondly called her “Pigpen”…where Winona went, a mess was sure to follow.

Maybe she ought to just skip her shower rather than risk disrupting the careful order she found there. She frowned. Her skin was sticky and dusty from the journey and the subsequent fever, and at some point today, she would have to face Daniel and figure out how to work out their problem. To hold her own against him, she had to at least be clean.

Very carefully, she took a towel from the top of the stack, making sure she didn’t dislodge any of the others, and a bar of lemon-scented glycerin soap. Odd that a man should have scented soap. She wondered if he had a girlfriend who visited. In that case, he probably would not be happy to have a single woman under his roof for long.

She would cross that bridge later.

Winona showered luxuriously. Even after six months back in the States, running hot water seemed sybaritic. The soap smelled heavenly, and there was a good brand of shampoo on the window ledge. By the time she emerged, her natural optimism was restored. Whatever happened, at least she and Joleen were together.

When she was dressed, her hair combed and already beginning to dry in the uncontrollable, wispy curls she’d fought all her life, Winona carefully removed every trace of her presence in the room. She lined up the shower curtain, adjusted the soap in its dish to be exactly square and took the wet towel with her to hang in the room where she’d slept. Confident the bathroom would meet the neatness standards of Heloise herself, she opened the door.

And ran straight into six feet plus of shirtless, longhaired male.

“S
orry,” Winona said, flustered, grasping her dirty clothes and wet towel to her chest. “I just...there was no one up so…I hope you don’t mind.”

He gave her a distracted nod. Winona recognized the signs of a slow waker and hastily moved out of his way, rushing down the hall to the back bedroom. She dumped the clothes on top of her suitcase, threw the towel over the back of a chair and hurried toward the kitchen. Coffee. She’d start some coffee, then go check out the orchards and let him wake up.

Her hands trembled as she measured coffee grounds into the basket, and Winona knew it was more than the lingering weakness of her fever. He rattled her. It was awkward, to say the least, to find someone living here, to have invaded his home this way, even if technically it wasn’t his to occupy.