Something Different/Pepper's Way (6 page)

“He wanted to annoy me. I tell you, that cat doesn’t like me!”

“Well, if you keep on calling him
that cat
in that tone of voice, I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually did start disliking you. Besides, it’s obvious that you know nothing about cats.
If
he disliked you, he’d shred your curtains or attack you when you weren’t looking, or something like that.
Not
steal your keys.”

“He stole my keys.”

Gypsy stared up into stubborn jade eyes. “Of
course,
he did. He just sat down and decided very logically that since he didn’t like you, he’d steal your car keys. Then he’d let you chase him three times around your living room. Then he’d let you chase him up a tree—”

“All right, all right!” Chase sighed in defeat. “Obviously I imagined the whole thing.”

“Obviously.” Gypsy went back to work with the trowel.

There were several rustling noises from above. Then a muffled “Damn!” Then a long silence. Gypsy kept working; another weed poked up an unwary head and she attacked it lethally

“Want to give me a hand here?”

Gypsy murdered another weed. “A grown man can’t get down from a tree by himself?” She had to swallow hard before the question would emerge without a hint of the laughter bubbling up inside of her.

“I’m not too proud to ask for help.” There was a pause. “Help!”

She sat back on her heels and looked up at him. She was trying desperately to keep a straight face. “What do you want me to do? Climb up and get you down, or cushion your fall?”

There was a frantic gleam in the jade eyes. “Either way— when I get down. I’m going to murder you!”

“In that case, stay where you are.”

“Gypsy—”

“All
right!
What’s the problem?”

“I can’t look over my shoulder to see where to place my feet. Every time I try, I lose my balance. And stop grinning, you little witch!”

“I’m not grinning. This isn’t grinning.” Gypsy struggled to wipe away the grin. “It’s a twitch. I was born with it.”

“Sure. Tell me where to put my feet.”

Gypsy swallowed the instinctive quip. “Uh… slide back a little. Now a little to the right. No,
your
right! Now…”

A few moments later Chase was safely on the ground. Gypsy, who hadn’t moved from her kneeling position, looked up at him innocently. “That’ll teach you to climb trees. What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?”

“Perished in agony. I thought you were supposed to be working.”

“I told you I worked odd hours.”

“What’re you doing now?”

“What does it look like? I’m planting weeds.”

“You have a sharp tongue, Gypsy mine.”

She ignored the possessive addition to her name. “One of my many faults.” She tossed him the keys. “Don’t let me keep you,” she added politely.

Deliberately misunderstanding her, he asked solemnly, “Would you keep me in comfort and security for the rest of my life? I have no objections to becoming a kept man.”

The unexpected play on words knocked her off balance for a moment—but only for a moment. She and her father had played word games too many times for this one to throw her. “I won’t be a keeper; the pay’s not good enough.”

“But there are benefits. Three square meals a day and a place to rest your weary head.” He sat down cross-legged on the grass beside her, still grave.

“Not interested.”

“A live-in proofreader.”

“I can read.”

“Typist?”

“I’ll ignore that.” Gypsy weeded industriously.

“That’s not a weed,” he observed, watching her. The word game was obviously over for the moment.

“It is too. It’s just pretending to be a flower.”

“What are you pretending to be?”

“A gardener. If you’re not leaving, help weed.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Chase searched through the wicker garden basket, obviously in search of a tool with which to weed. “Why is there a dictionary in this basket?”

“Where do
you
keep dictionaries?”

“One would think I’d learn not to ask you reasonable questions.”

“One would think.”

“Do you do it deliberately?”

Gypsy gave him an innocent look. “Do what deliberately?”

“Uh-huh.” He sighed. “There’s a fork here; shall I use it to weed?”

“Be my guest.”

“Would you like to have lunch?” he asked, using the fork enthusiastically to destroy a marigold in the prime of life.

Gypsy gently removed the fork from his grasp. “Not just after breakfast, no.”

“Funny.”

“Sorry.” She hastily took the fork away from him a second time. “No more help, please. I don’t want Mr. and Mrs. Robbins to come home to a bare lawn.”

“Are you criticizing my gardening skills?” he asked, offended.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“No wonder you hire a gardener.”

“You made your point. I didn’t rub it in that I cook better than you.”

“Not better. You cook—I don’t. Period.”

“Whatever.” Chase sighed and got to his feet. “Well, since you won’t let me weed, I’ll be on my way. Do you need anything from town? I have to run some errands.”

Gypsy paused in her work long enough to look up at him. “Now that you mention it—I could use a gallon of milk.”

“Is Saturday milk day?” he asked interestedly.

“No, Monday is.”

“You’re going to drink a gallon of milk on Monday? It’ll spoil if you don’t.”

“I use it for cereal. That doesn’t count as a drink.”

“Right.” He nodded slowly. “Uh… what’re you doing this afternoon?”

Glancing past his shoulder, Gypsy saw Corsair about to launch himself. “Step back!” she ordered briskly.

Instinctively Chase did so, and Corsair overshot him to land with a disgruntled expression in the grass beside Gypsy. The cat’s face seemed to proclaim irritably that not even a cat could pause to correct his aim in midair.

“I told you he didn’t like me.”

Gypsy swatted the cat firmly. “Leave!”

Corsair stalked toward the house with offended dignity.

“Sorry,” Gypsy murmured. “I can’t understand it; Corsair likes everybody.”

“Everybody but me.”

“I may have misjudged you about the keys,” Gypsy said slowly.

“Good of you to admit it.”

“I’m nothing if not fair.”

“I won’t comment on that. You didn’t answer my question. What’re you going to be doing this afternoon?”

“I usually go for a walk on the beach, but I won’t know for sure what I’ll be doing until then.”

“Don’t believe in planning ahead, eh?”

“I treasure spontaneity.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. One gallon of milk coming up.” Lifting one hand in a small salute, Chase headed across to his house.

Gypsy stared after him. It occurred to her that anyone listening to one of their conversations—particularly if he or she came in on the middle of it—would be totally bewildered. Neither she nor Chase ever lost the thread. It was as if they were mentally attuned, on the same wavelength.

It was a disturbing thought.

She put more energy into her attack on the weeds, slaughtering without mercy while frowning at the thoughts that flitted through her mind.

She was in trouble.
Definite
trouble. Chase possessed a sharp intelligence, a highly-developed sense of the ridiculous, and an indefinable talent for holding her interest—no mean accomplishment, considering her wayward mind. He was also fatally charming.

Besides … she’d always had a thing about redheads.

Gypsy uprooted a marigold by mistake, and hastily replanted it. Damn! She was thinking about him too much. It didn’t help to remind herself of that. Long hours at her typewriter had taught her that the mind was a peculiar instrument, given to absurd flights of fancy all mixed up with spans of rational thought.

If only there were a lever that she could switch from ABSURD to
RATIONAL.
But no such luck.

Her lever was stuck on ABSURD. Or something was. Why else was she kneeling here on the grass and wistfully contemplating a relationship with a man? Particularly
that
man?

“Face it,” she told four marigolds and a rose. “You’d drive him crazy inside a week—once you really started to work. And he’d play merry hell with your concentration.”

She worked vigorously with the trowel to loosen the soil around her audience. “And you don’t want to get involved. You
don’t.
Just think… you’d have to live in one house for
years.
And he’d expect you to learn how to cook—you know he would. And he wouldn’t like whatisits in the refrigerator, or dirty clothes strewn through the house, or cat hair on the couch. Especially Corsair’s hair.

“The smart thing to do would be to sink your scruples and settle for an affair,” she told her audience, dirt flying like rain as she unconsciously dug a hole at the edge of the bed. “At least then you wouldn’t have to go to court whenever he decided that enough was enough. You’d just politely help him pack his suitcases—or pack yours—and call it quits. Nice and civilized.”

She frowned as a drop of moisture fell onto her hand. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she muttered angrily, swiping at a second tear with the back of one dirty hand. “It hasn’t even
begun,
and already you’re crying because it’s over!”

Gypsy filled the minor excavation with dirt, dropped the trowel into her basket, and rose to her feet. She picked up the basket and stared down at the colorful flowers for a moment. Then she turned and made her way toward the house.

“Everybody talks to plants,” she muttered aloud. “They make good listeners; they don’t butt in with sensible suggestions, and they don’t warn you when you’re about to make an utter fool of yourself!”

Since Chase had arranged to have Daisy towed to a garage for repairs (Gypsy didn’t hold out much hope), she was pretty much housebound. Chase hadn’t specified any length of time for his “errands,” but the morning dragged on with no sign of him, and Gypsy was bored.

She didn’t feel like writing. Gardening had palled decidedly. She played fetch with Bucephalus for an hour, but then
he
got bored. She tried to teach Corsair to play the same game; for her pains, she got a stony glare from china-blue eyes and a swishing tail indicative of cold contempt.

“Why do I put up with you, cat?”

“Waurrr.”

“Right. Go away.”

She watched as Corsair headed for the shade of a nearby tree in the backyard, then glanced at her watch. Twelve o’clock. The morning was gone, and she hadn’t accomplished a thing. Wonderful.

Gypsy walked across the lawn to the redwood railing placed about two feet inside the edge of the cliff. She leaned on the railing for a few moments, gazing out over the Pacific and thinking muddled thoughts. Maybe a walk on the beach would clear the cobwebs away.

She followed the railing to the zigzagging staircase leading down to the beach. On the way down, she absently glanced across to the twin staircase leading from Chase’s backyard. The beach below was narrow as beaches go, but it was private for a quarter of a mile in either direction. North and south of the private stretch were various small towns, and, of course, other privately owned properties.

But only these two homes possessed the eagle’s perch of the cliffs. In this area anyway.

Gypsy loved it.

Barefoot as usual, she walked out to the water’s edge and
stood listening to the roar of the surf. It was a comforting sound. A
comfortable
sound. Endlessly steady, endlessly consistent, though at the moment it possessed the disturbing trick of reminding one of one’s own mortality.

Frowning, Gypsy turned and walked back a few feet toward the cliffs. She stopped at the large, water-smoothed rock jutting up out of the sand. It was a favorite “place of contemplation” for her, and she sat now in the small seatlike depression in its side.

Mortality.

It was one of those odd, off-center, out-of-sync moments. Gypsy wasn’t generally given to soul-searching, but in that moment she searched. And she discovered one of life’s truths: that complacency had a disconcerting habit of shattering suddenly and without warning.

How many times had she told herself that her life was perfect, that she had no need to change it? How many times had she asserted with utter confidence that she needed no one but herself to be happy?

Gypsy’s frown, holding a hint of panic, deepened as she stared out over the ocean. Had she been wrong all these years? No. No, not wrong. Not
then.
She’d needed those years to work at her writing, to grow as a person.

But had she grown? Yes … and no. She’d certainly grown as a writer. And she was a well-rounded person; she had interests other than writing, and she got along well with other people. But she’d never opened herself up totally to another person.

For
person,
she thought wryly, read
man.
No relationships, other than the strictly casual. No vulnerability on that level. No chance of heartache. And… no growth?

She was more confused than ever. Who, she wondered despairingly, had conceived the unwritten rulebook on human
relationships? Who had decreed long ago in some primal age that total growth as a human being was possible only by risking total vulnerability?

Reluctantly Gypsy turned from the philosophical and abstract to the concrete and specific. Chase.

She was reasonably certain that she didn’t
need
Chase—or any other man—to be happy. At the same time she had no idea whether or not that mythical man could make her
happier.

And for her—more so, she thought, than with most other women—any relationship would be a great risk. She already had one strike against her: She was difficult, if not impossible, to live with. And she wasn’t even sure that she could live for more than a few months in one place.

And then there was—

Gypsy’s thoughts broke off abruptly as a sound intruded on her consciousness. If she didn’t know better… it sounded like hoofbeats. She got to her feet and stepped away from the rock, looking first to the south. Nope—nothing there. Definite hoofbeats, and they were getting louder. She turned toward the north.