Stardust Dreams (11 page)

Cherry swallowed hard. "I
beg your pardon?"

"He insists he does
not have a strong sexual appetite, but we believe his desire for privacy has
more to do with his avoidance of females than a lack of need. Although, we
cannot really be sure. After all, I have offered him the use of my body, but he
has never been so inclined."

Cherry's curiosity got the
better of her good manners, again. "You mean, you can…"

Dot chuckled. "Of
course. Mar and I each function normally in that way. In fact, we have the
unique ability of enjoying the other's pleasure, which works out very well
since we cannot always find a male and female who are both attracted to us at
the same time." She lowered her eyes for a second. "Mar agreed not to
interrupt, but he wanted you to know that he would be most happy to accommodate
if you wish a demonstration."

Cherry had thought she'd
heard it all before now, but the he-she managed to surprise her. "I, uh,
thank you, but I don't think so."

"Good. Then you will
share only the captains bunk. I believe he might prefer that."

Cherry's smile vanished. "Ill
do nothing of the sort."

Dot looked truly confused. "But
it is quite obvious that he wants you."

"And what the captain
wants, he gets, right? Wrong. On all counts. First off, your captain hasn't
shown the slightest interest in me, but even if he had,
I'm
not
interested in him. Not only is he a kidnapper and a liar, but I got the
impression he didn't particularly care for women even before you told me he
avoids them.
When
I choose to bed a man, I prefer him to have a little
heat in his blood."

"Hmmph. The heat in
the captain's blood is part of his problem."

Before Dot could explain
what she meant by that, Mar was facing Cherry. "I believe that's enough
girl-talk. Let's get back to your navigation lesson."

Cherry gave Mar most of her
attention, but a small portion of her continued to mull over all the little
hints Dot had given her to the puzzle of the captain. She wouldn't admit it to
Dot, but, with each passing hour, she was growing more
interested
in
the captain… and his secrets.

It was not until much later
that day that Cherry and Gallant were alone on the bridge.

By the time she passed in
front of him a second time, Gallant was ready to strap her to the seat. "Don't
you ever stop moving?" he asked, clearly exasperated.

Cherry grinned.
"Occasionally, like when I'm sleeping. I always seem to have all this
energy just busting to get out." Thoughts of sleeping made her recall
Dot's assumption that Gallant would soon have her in his bunk.

She forced herself to set
aside her annoyance with him and let her intuition take a reading. His brow had
raised a fraction when she had mentioned sleeping, then he'd immediately looked
away. Yet, now that she considered the possibility, she thought she might have
detected a momentary flash of male interest. But since
she
wasn't
interested, there was really no reason to pursue it.

Unless it would help her
unearth some more of the puzzle.

Cherry strolled around
behind the captain's chair and peered over his shoulder, knowing it bothered
him when she did that. Purposefully, she exhaled close enough to his neck for
him to flinch in reaction. "I'll stop pacing if you'll play with me."

Gallant's hands stilled,
and for a moment Cherry thought he may have stopped breathing as well. She
eased away and sat on the bench, facing him. "We can even play for credits
this time. Of course, if I lose, you'd have to take me home before I could pay
you back."

"Cubit," Gallant
murmured, then took a breath as he turned toward her. "You're challenging
me to a game?"

"Well, there sure
isn't much else to do, is there? But if you're too busy, I'll just—"

"No,"
he interjected
before she got up again, and he pulled out the table between them. He couldn't
believe his mind had detoured that way. It had been a mistake to even allow
certain thoughts to enter his consciousness earlier. It was almost as if just
considering sex with Cherry was more than he could handle. What would happen to
him if he actually— His body's sudden strong response finished the thought for
him and acted as an alarm at the same time.

He quickly began setting up
the game. Aside from the infrequent, impersonal encounter, his experience with
adult females was pretty much limited to his adoptive mother and Dot, neither
of whom would help him analyze Cherry's behavior. But even without extensive
knowledge of how her mind worked, he had the distinct impression that Cherry
had not only been teasing him, but had guessed his reaction as well. Since he
couldn't imagine why she would tease him while she was still angry with him, he
decided she must be up to something.

Reminding himself that he
needed to gain her trust, he politely asked, "Are you sure you want to
play for credits already? Yesterday, you accused me of trying to… to…"

"Con
me,"
Cherry supplied. "Yesterday, I was a novice, but I think I can hold my own
today. After all, winning cubit takes more luck than skill, and I'm due for
some good luck after the way this week started."

Gallant frowned. "Is
that a hint that I'm supposed to apologize again?"

Her eyes twinkled with a
life of their own. "If you feel the need, then by all means, get if off
your chest." She instantly regretted her choice of words, as she followed
his gaze down his partially covered chest. Up to that moment she had been doing
her damnedest not to notice what a perfectly splendid body he had. She forced
her eyes back to his face again. "Sorry. Another Terran expression. I've
never completely abandoned my roots, I guess."

With his plan to befriend
her uppermost in his mind, Gallant picked up the colored cubes and rolled two
reds and two blues. "Tell me about your roots. I'm familiar with Terra and
its people in a general sense, but even when I attended academy in Innerworld,
I didn't get to know any Terrans." He re-rolled the two blues and got
another red and a green, which he immediately rolled again.

Cherry smiled when the last
cube came up blue and he had failed to make his quad. As she scooped up the
cubes, she asked, "You lived in Innerworld before?"

"Yes. That's how I
know Romulus." He watched her make her first roll and try to decide which
color to go for since there were no matches. "What was your life like on
the surface?"

Cherry left the purple and
retossed the other three, but failed to get another purple. "Damn!"

"You should have
thrown them all."

She picked up the same
three cubes, rolled them between her palms, blew on them, then dropped them on
the table. When all three turned up purple, she let out a squeal. "You
play your way, and I'll play mine."

As she set aside her purple
marker, he snatched up the cubes. "You haven't answered my question."

"What do you want to
know?"

"Everything."

She laughed. "You must
be more bored than you look. All right, you asked for it. The first eighteen
years of my life was spent on a farm in Georgia— that's in the southeastern
part of the United States. After that, I hitched my way across the
country."

While she told him of that
journey, the places she saw, people she met, their game continued. Occasionally
he would stop her with a question, then encourage her to continue.

Several hours later, they
had each won two games, and Cherry was getting hoarse from talking. She was
fairly sure she had touched on every aspect of life in the United States as
well as her personal history.

"We have to play one
more game to break the tie," Gallant told her. "I think you're ready
for a wager."

"
Now
you want
to make a bet?"

He grinned at her. "I
didn't want to take advantage—"

"Ha! Where have I
heard
that
before?"

"Well, we do seem to
be evenly matched now."

"Okay. How much?"

"Not credits. I don't
take promise payments."

Cherry narrowed her brows
at him as she drew her own conclusion about what he was leading up to, but she
wanted to hear him say it out loud before she told him off.

Gallant's instincts still
told him that sharing confidences was the quickest route to establishing a bond
between them. By telling her about his mission, he had already told her more
than he should have. Now it was her turn. Unfortunately, she was a very open
person. Her childhood had been the only subject she seemed somewhat secretive
about, so he honed in on that. "If I win," he said slowly, "you
tell me about the first half of your life. I noticed that you carefully avoided
talking about those years."

That was far from the
forfeit she had expected him to demand. With a shrug she said, "Only because
there's nothing interesting to tell." She considered her chances of
winning rather than losing. "Okay, and if I win, you explain why you wear
that patch over your eye."

He hesitated only a second
before nodding his agreement and passing her the cubes. As she made her initial
toss, his fingers casually closed over the front edges of his vest and slid
downward. A moment later his special set of cubes was in his left palm, ready
to be exchanged for the honest ones on the table. She was going to share a confidence
with him even if he had to cheat to force it out of her.

Cherry was amazed at how
quickly he won the final game. The odds against rolling three quads of
different colors on three initial throws had to be astronomical, but Gallant
hardly blinked over his unusual good luck.

As agreed, Cherry told him
the tale of her dismal youth and described the ramshackle farm she had grown up
on. "My parents truly believed that it was God's will that they have ten
children and spend their lives struggling to exist. If Pa had put as much
effort into that farm as he did trying to beat the devil out of us kids, we
might have been fairly well off."

Cherry's voice retained its
joking quality in spite of the bitterness her words suggested.

"You were beaten by
your own father?" Gallant asked with surprise.

Cherry waved her hand at
him. "Oh, it was no big deal. Outerworld Earth is a far cry from Norona
and Innerworld, you know. Lots of parents treat their kids worse than mine did.
Anyway, I turned out okay." Smiling, she winked at him and added, "As
long as I always get to be the center of attention!"

Gallant tried to return her
smile, but her light-hearted attitude failed to hide the pain he sensed beneath
it. He had known only love and kindness from the Noronian couple who had raised
him and experienced only comfort in their home. Cherry's story made him
remember how very different his life would have been had someone not tampered
with it.

Though it would have been
more comfortable to change the subject, his perverse emotions made him ask for
more. "Don't you miss your brothers and sisters? Even with so many, there
must have been at least one you were close to."

Cherry started to give him
another flip answer, but something about the way he was looking at her cut it
off. She was always the one who cheered up everyone else, quickly shrugging off
any offer of sympathy in return. Why she should act any differently at this
moment made no sense.

The feelings his question
triggered prompted her to rise and walk to the glass. Staring out into the
darkness, she wondered why a look from this stranger had been able to evoke a
memory buried so deeply she had consciously forgotten it. A heartbeat later she
realized the reason. He was not looking at her with sympathy, but
understanding… just as Rose had the day Cherry took off for California.

"Rose," Cherry
said aloud for the first time in eighteen years, and in her mind's eye she
imagined seeing her baby sister's face. "She was ten when I left Georgia;
too young to take with me. The day Rose was born, I claimed her as my own. There
was a special quality about her that I couldn't resist. Of course, as she grew
up, it was obvious what that was—she was just like me. Full of energy and
curiosity, and a need to be free that no amount of punishment could wipe
away."

An image of the two of them
slipping and sliding in a muddy sty while trying to catch a family of piglets
made Cherry smile in spite of the sadness the memory caused.

"What happened to
her?"

Cherry could tell Gallant
had walked up behind her, but she didn't turn around. "I don't know. See,
we knew Pa would never let her receive mail from me once I'd left. After all, I
was the devil's handmaiden. And it might have even made it worse for her if I
had tried to write. So we agreed that I would come back for her on her
eighteenth birthday."

She closed her eyes and
took a deep breath. "I had it all planned to surprise her. Ten years ago,
a group of us were going on a fishing trip out of Fort Lauderdale, and I
figured I'd make a detour through Georgia on our way back to California."