Showdown at Lizard Rock (8 page)

“Only in your case, darlin’.”

The silence that descended was rife with meaning. King struggled to get his breathing under control. By pinning his attention on the sound of the rain on the trailer’s aluminum roof, he hoped to sidetrack his urge to carry Kaylyn to his bedroom.

“Why didn’t you join me at the springs?” she asked. “I thought you enjoyed provoking me.”

He laughed dryly. Staying in the trailer had been the hardest discipline he’d ever forced on himself.

“At the time it didn’t seem like a very smart idea,” he answered. “I was taught in high-school history that consorting with the enemy is called treason.”

“What do you call this situation tonight?” She bit her lip to hold back a nervous giggle. She never giggled. She never even had to consciously keep
herself from giggling. But then, she’d never been half dressed in a small trailer with a man like King Vandergriff before.

He grinned crookedly. “This, Ms. Smith, is a temporary truce for humanitarian purposes.”

“You mean humanitarian as in rescuing Harold and giving him meaningful work?”

“Exactly.” He turned to face her. “And humanitarian as in feeding the homeless and taking in pregnant donkeys.”

“Where does it say that kissing is a humanitarian act?” she asked quietly.

His eyes gleamed with amusement. “On the third page of the book on humanitarianism. Didn’t you study that in school?”

“Of course. In the history text it’s right after the page that says feed and—”

“Clothe,” he interjected. “Feed and clothe the enemy in order to create diplomacy. I’ve done my part. When are you going to do yours?”

“Mine? Oh, yes. Feed the enemy.” She stood nervously, tightening the belt of the velour robe.

“Whoa, darlin’. The kind of care
this
enemy craves doesn’t have to do with food.” He paused and his expression became serious. “It’s physical and emotional. And I don’t know what to do about it. Kaylyn … something’s happening here, something very special. I’m not at all sure what we ought to do about it.”

She tried desperately to sound nonchalant. “What’s happening is that you’re offering shelter to a rain-soaked woman.” She changed the subject. “Sounds like the rain is tapering off. Maybe Luther and Sandi
will be able to get the van over here in the morning, after all.”

“Why? Do they need food and clothing too? Or … 
I
know. Luther is the father of Sandi’s unborn child, and Sandi has been turned out of the Pretty Springs Girls’ Reformatory. She’s in disgrace and broke, and Luther is bringing her to you because you’re the most tenderhearted person he knows.”

“My, my, Mr. Vandergriff! What an active imagination you have!” Kaylyn laughed. “Luther is seventy-seven years old, and Sandi is only twenty-nine. She is neither pregnant
nor
his girlfriend. At least I don’t think so. She went out with your foreman last night, so I can’t be sure, of course.”

“She went out with Mac? Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Mac is very nice, King, and so is Sandi.”

“I’m very nice,” he said slyly. “And
you’re
very nice. Maybe
we
should go out on a date.”

She made a gentle huffing sound that dismissed his teasing. “Don’t you want me to heat up the soup for you?”

“No, Kaylyn.” He walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her very lightly, as thought he’d just discovered kissing and wanted to be careful not to bruise her mouth. “What I want,” he whispered, “is to love you, to take that robe off that sweet body and put my seal of approval on every inch of you. What I want is to wake up in the morning with you in my arms. What do you want, Kaylyn?”

“No, King, no,” she said shakily, stepping back. “We can’t do this. What I want is to save the springs, finish the section for wild animals we’re building over at the animal shelter, and start a mission for the homeless. The only personal thing I want is …”

“You want something for yourself? Just name it, Katie, and I’ll give it to you tonight.”

“I’m afraid it’s not a good idea,” she muttered.

“Speak, speak,” he ordered in a deep, teasing voice.

She sighed. “What I really want,” she admitted, “is for someone to rub lotion on my poison ivy.” What she really wanted was for King to make good on every sensual word he’d spoken, but she wouldn’t allow herself to think about
that.

He threw back his head and laughed. “Kaylyn, darlin’, do you know how tempting your request is?”

“Would you rub some lotion on my back? It’s driving me crazy and I can’t reach it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Will this mean that we’re engaged?”

“It means that I trust you to be a
responsible
doctor. Harold said you have some calamine lotion in your medicine cabinet.”

“For once in his life Harold said the right thing. Come with me.”

He took her hand and pulled her along a narrow corridor to the room at the end. “Just lie down and I’ll get the lotion.”

Kaylyn looked at his bed and began to laugh. It was big and it was red.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’ve heard of
king
-size beds, but this is ridiculous.”

“Well, I’m a big man, and it didn’t seem to matter if there’s room to walk. I told the builder to leave me just enough space to make the bed up.”

Kaylyn eyed the room. An open door indicated a bath area on the far side of the bed. “He obviously ignored you. There’s no place to stand.”

“I just get in the middle and spread out the sheets from there. Let me see your rash, Kaylyn.”

“I don’t suppose you could do this in the dark, could you?”

“Kaylyn, darlin’, if we turn out the lights, what we’ll do in the dark won’t have any effect on your poison ivy.”

“Ah. Good point.” She stretched out on her stomach on the bed and shrugged the robe down her back. King went into the bathroom and returned with a small bottle of pink liquid and climbed on the bed with her. He straddled her body with his powerful thighs and began spreading the lotion between her shoulder blades.

“Hmm, it’s warm,” she murmured. “I’m surprised.”

“It was cold until it hit my hands,” he said rakishly.

He caressed her back lightly, sliding his fingers across her shoulders and down her spine.

“You’re tense,” he said, following the corded muscles up the side of her neck and under the base of her skull. “Relax. I once knew a lady who had fingertips that could practically commune with the spinal column. Let me show you.”

She took a deep breath. The fingers kneading her back were bringing new meaning to the term
show-and-tell.
She felt the heat emanating from his hands. It dug into her pores like the heat of the sun on a white-hot Florida beach in mid-July. And the heat skittered across her skin and down her legs, where she felt the slight, instinctive movement of her inner thighs.

“Thank you,” she said. “I think I’m relaxed now, as relaxed as I’ll ever be on this bed.”

“Oh, no, you’re not. Sooner or later you’ll be much
more relaxed—on this very bed.” His hands stopped and lay still on her back. She felt the rise and fall of his touch as he breathed. There was no mistaking his arousal, pressing hotly against her.

There was no mistaking the noise outside, either. Something large and probably expensive had crashed into something equally as large and probably just as expensive. King leapt off the bed and headed for the door to the hall. Kaylyn took a moment to pull his robe back over her shoulders and followed.

He threw the trailer door open, and she stopped beside it, watching him pull on rubber boots and a rain poncho. She peered out into the darkness, but all she could see was a frightened-looking Matilda.

“What is it, King?”

“I’m not sure, but it sounded like equipment crashing. You stay here. I’ll check it out. I’ll be right back.”

But he didn’t come right back, and when the rain stopped, Kaylyn stepped outside and listened to the distant sounds of machines moving. Mac, dirty and disheveled, walked by the trailer.

“What happened?” she asked.

“One of the men left a tractor out of gear. It rolled down a hill and into several other machines. King and I have a night’s work cut out for us.”

He politely avoided staring at her, but she knew that he was wondering what she and King had been doing inside the trailer. Feeling embarrassed and vulnerable, she went back inside and gathered her clothes. How in the world had she let herself get in this predicament tonight? she asked herself repeatedly. One more minute on the bed with King and she would have made love with him, not caring
what happened to Pretty Springs or Lizard Rock or her goals.

She returned to her tent and huddled miserably in her damp sleeping bag. When sleep finally came, her dreams were vague and sad, as if she’d lost something that she’d never regain.

At dawn King came back to the trailer. He was exhausted. His boots were covered in mud, and his hair was slicked to his head with rain. Kaylyn was gone. Only the indention of her head on his pillow was evidence that they’d shared a few minutes of gentle, thrilling camaraderie. The pillow smelled of her, a wildflower fragrance. After he showered, he lay down on his stomach and burrowed his head against that fragrance.

His body’s reaction to her scent was powerful and frustrating—too frustrating. He didn’t need this kind of distraction. He’d never allowed anyone to sway him from his goals before, and last night Kaylyn had nearly done it. He realized with alarm that he’d been a heartbeat away from telling her he’d drop the whole construction project, and she could keep enjoying her beautiful springs and her whimsical notions about their healing powers.

He suddenly threw the pillow onto the floor. Later that day he had a new tent delivered to Ms. Kaylyn Smith, Humanitarian, Pretty Springs.

“I don’t know what to think, Sandi,” Kaylyn said to her friend a few days later. “After all that happened—his arrest, Matilda, the storm, the equipment crash, and my sit-in—the man actually sent a new army tent to the springs the next morning.”

Kaylyn was in the activities room preparing the bulletin board that announced the annual Fourth of July Pretty Springs Founders’ Day Picnic. She should have been focusing on the perennial manpower shortage for the picnic’s crews. All she could think about was King Vandergriff’s black satin bathrobe.

Sandi Arnold was standing in the doorway, sipping a glass of iced tea as she watched Minnie Rakestraw next door in the therapy room gamely lifting a small weight with her good hand.

“Not only did he send a tent for me,” Kaylyn went on, “but he had one of his men erect a temporary shelter for Matilda.”

“The donkey?”

“Yes. And a supply of hay appeared the day after that.”

“Well, personally I think any man who shows compassion for a donkey can’t be all bad. Has he said anything?”

“No. I haven’t … spoken to him since the night of the storm. He comes in very late. But he doesn’t cross the rocks to my side of the camp until after I’m in bed.”

“Whoa, now. After you’re in bed?” Sandi swallowed hard. Kaylyn could see she was trying not to choke on the liquid that threatened to go down the wrong way. “Want to explain that?”

“He swims in the springs—every night.”

“I see. He just walks past your tent every night, and you never say a word.”

“That’s right. He doesn’t say anything, so why should I?”

“But you watch.”

“Yes. I mean, well, he’s swimming right next to the window in my tent. And he splashes around like some great whale in the moonlight.”

“Great-looking guy, isn’t he?” Sandi said casually, rolling her now empty glass in her hands.

“I suppose you could say that he’s … attractive,” Kaylyn admitted as she stepped back to survey the finished board.

“Yes, I suppose. If you call the most gorgeous specimen of manhood to hit this town in the three years I’ve been here ‘attractive,’ he’d qualify. I heard he looks great in red.”

Kaylyn’s chest constricted, and she tried to conceal a sudden gasp for breath with an obvious cough. “Well, yes. He does have rather interesting taste in
clothing.” Obviously Sandi was referring to King’s red socks and underwear that first day on the rock.

“You can tell that in the dark, can you?”

Kaylyn didn’t answer. She opened the supply cabinet to begin assembling the games and craft materials for the afternoon activities session. Discussing King Vandergriff was making her uncomfortable.

Sandi walked over to the bulletin board. “Say, Katie, have you thought about asking King to the Founders’ Day Picnic?”

“Me? Invite King Vandergriff to the picnic? What earthly reason would I have for doing that?”

“I don’t know. It just occurred to me that he might enjoy getting to know some of the townspeople.”

“Introduce him to Pretty Springs … Great Jehoshaphat! Wait a minute. Maybe that isn’t such a bad idea, Sandi. If I could involve him on a personal basis, he’d get to meet Minnie, Luther, and the others. He’d see what his Golf and Tennis Club would destroy. I’ll bet my last penny that he’s never been to a town picnic.”

“Well, that isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Sandi said dryly. “Have you considered the possibility that he might like to go to the dance with you?”

“With me? Why?”

“Come on, Kaylyn. Sometimes I think you fell off a turnip truck. It’s possible that the man’s interested in
you
—not the fine citizens of Pretty Springs. Besides, if you take him to the dance, Minnie will win two dollars.”

“What? Why will Minnie win two dollars if I invite King to the Founders’ Day Dance?”

“The nursing-home residents have decided that
you and his highness are perfect for each other. They all sat down and put money in the pot. Then they mapped out the course of the romance, and each of them drew events. Minnie got the dance, and the dance paid two dollars.”

“Oh, lordy, they’re betting on our having a romance? What other events have they planned for me?”

“Well,” Sandi admitted, “I missed the end of the session, so I don’t know everything, but you know how romantic this group is.”

Kaylyn knew about the nursing-home residents, all right. She’d lived in the nursing home itself for the first year, then in her own small trailer parked behind the home for the last three. The residents were like her family. And they weren’t above helping her with her latest project. She was still worried about the stray cat that the residents had managed to conceal from the management for over a year.