The Heart of a Hero

by Janet Chapman

  Well, other than the lovely lady.

  Hearing the water running in the bathroom sink, Nicholas stretched out on the rug and reclined back on one of the colorful pillows, absently scratching his bare chest where he distinctly remembered lovely feminine claws digging into him—only to sit up when he heard the cat door open.

  “Psst,” he whispered, making Sol stop in midstep as the cat silently exited the cupboard. He pointed outside. “This is not a spectator sport, so scram.”

  Being a very wise cat, Solomon silently reversed direction, his paw curling to pull the door closed behind him. Nicholas waited several heartbeats before softly growling, “All the way out,” then grinned when he heard the exterior door close with a soft thud.

  He reclined back on the pillow and laced his fingers behind his head, gazing up at the pine ceiling being illuminated by the lights beneath the floor as he wondered yet again about Julia’s reluctance to find her woman’s pleasure—twice now. Thinking she may have been overwhelmed by his size last night, he’d reversed their positions tonight in hopes she’d feel more in control. He grinned, remembering she certainly had taken control, again with glorious abandon. But then he frowned as he remembered how he’d once again realized she had no intention of even seeking fulfillment, instead artlessly trying to entice him into moving on without her. And guessing it hadn’t exactly been the time to discuss the matter, he had once again conceded to her wishes.

  But they had plenty of time now, he thought as he looked over at her clothes stacked in the far corner of the living room. Well, he hadn’t found her bra—not that he knew why she bothered with one. He recalled Duncan telling him, during a camping expedition they’d taken together to lay out a carriage path along the fiord last spring, how the highlander had had a woman move in with him one bra and panty at a time before he’d met and married Peg. Nicholas softly chuckled, figuring he could have Julia moved in here in about a week if he hiked down the cliff tomorrow and found her missing bra, then tucked it in his bureau next to the one he’d picked up off the floor of the event planner’s cottage last night.

  Assuming she ever came out of the bathroom. He used a bare toe to scratch his leg through the jeans he’d gone upstairs to put on, worried they wouldn’t have any discussion if she came out and found him still naked. He probably should also broach the subject of contraception, seeing how they hadn’t talked about it before they’d stormed each other’s castles—twice now. But last night all he’d really been looking for was a little kissing and maybe some exploratory touching, whereas tonight the lady had once again surprised him by seeking him out on her own. And considering he was a healthy, hot-blooded male, he hadn’t even considered defending himself against a full-out passionate attack.

  Yes, poor Julia; she wasn’t having much success ignoring their mutual attraction, and it appeared she still couldn’t decide how to deal with the problem. He wondered if she’d even comment on finding his bathroom window nailed halfway closed. He sat up again when he heard the door open, and made sure to hide his grin when Julia came striding down the hall looking as if she were primed for battle, wearing one wool sock and his bathrobe that all but swallowed her up.

  She stopped suddenly and blinked down at the glass floor that began at the kitchen island. “Oh, wow,” she whispered, stepping out over the lighted ledge and slowly turning around. “It’s beautiful.” She looked up, beaming him an equally beautiful smile even as she shook her head. “Okay, I get it now. But aren’t you afraid the house will shake loose during an aftershock and go sliding down the mountain with you in it?”

  He shrugged. “Even an earthquake like the one three years ago wouldn’t shake the house loose, as it’s anchored by over a dozen steel rods the size of my arm running deep into the ledge.” He patted the rug beside him. “Come sit down, Julia.”

  Her smile disappeared and she looked around again, her gaze stopping on her clothes sitting over gently illuminated air that dissipated into nothingness. She looked back at him. “Um, I should probably head home.” She smiled again. “Before security is forced to evict four teenagers and five cats partying like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Bastet will chaperone them,” he said, patting the rug again.

  “Bastet?” she repeated, not moving.

  “The bronze spotted lady named after the Egyptian cat goddess.” He reached over and grabbed the two bottles of beer, then held one out to her. “The evening’s still young, and I thought we might have a . . . conversation,” he said, lowering his hand when she glanced at her clothes again.

  She looked back at him, and Nicholas watched her add another knot to the belt on the robe as she pulled in a deep breath and finally walked over and sat down—at the far side of the rug, he couldn’t help but notice. She then stretched out her hand for the beer, making him have to lean over to give it to her after he twisted off the top.

  She took a long guzzle and then glanced around his home again before giving him a rather direct look. “You do know there’s a small warehouse of furniture under the third hotel segment, don’t you, and that Norman probably wouldn’t even notice if a couch and dining table happened to . . . go missing? In fact, when I was there getting an end table for one of my cottages, I saw boxes full of tumblers and wineglasses.” She smiled rather smugly. “Maybe you should blackmail those two paintball-happy idiots into helping you help yourself to enough stuff to furnish your new home.”

  Nicholas also took a long guzzle of beer. Yes, he definitely liked an abrasive woman who was determined to keep fighting even after the castle had been captured. “Thanks for the idea. Maybe I’ll have Tom stay late Monday night and help me help myself. I’ll tell him breaking into the facility director’s warehouse and lugging off furniture without being caught is part of his training.”

  That wiped away her smugness.

  He shook his head. “I had several pieces of furniture custom-made that should be delivered next week, but my mother suggested I let my wife pick out the dinnerware and kitchen furnishings,” he said—only to jerk upright when Julia suddenly scrambled to her feet.

  “Your wife,” she whispered as she backed away, her face having gone deathly pale. “You’re married?” But then she flushed deep red. “You jerk! You’re married!”

  Nicholas jumped up when he realized she was about to hurl her beer at him and grabbed the bottle with one hand and snagged her around the waist with the other. “There is no wife,” he said with a laugh, having to lift her off her feet when she tried to punch and kick him at the same time. He lugged her back to the hearth and sat down, set the beer out of her reach, then tucked her beneath him and tossed a leg over hers to pin her down. He brushed her riot of curls off her scowling face. “Much to my mother’s dismay,” he said gently, “I’m not married.” He grinned. “Yet.”

  Her eyes widened. “Does that mean you’re looking?”

  He nodded.

  She started struggling again, forcing Nicholas to capture her fist when she took another swing. “Then what are you doing messing around with me? Practicing?”

  He closed his eyes and dropped his head beside hers with a heavy sigh. “Please tell me you don’t really believe that,” he muttered into the pillow. He lifted his head to glare down at her. “I’m trying to court you.”

  She stilled again, all the blood draining from her face as her jaw slackened. But then she suddenly exploded, her flailing elbow jabbing him hard enough to make him grunt as she somehow managed to slip out from under him. Only instead of running, the woman grabbed one of the pillows, then threw herself on top of the pillow on top of his face as she held him down—but only because he was trying so hard not to laugh that he wasn’t fighting her.

  “Are you insane?” he heard from the other side of the pillow, sounding like she was also fighting laughter. “Or so desperate that you—oh!” she yelped when he slid his hands under the robe and grasped her bare bottom.

  Nicholas gave another grunt, jackknifing to protect his groin when she
scrambled off him, and just barely managed to catch the hem of her robe as she twirled away. He grinned up at her flushed face and slowly pulled her toward him.

  She burst out laughing and hurled herself at him again, and Nicholas wrapped his arms around her when the lovely lady landed with her nose inches from his and suddenly sobered. “Nicholas,” she whispered huskily, “you’re barking up the wrong tree, because I’m never getting married again. Not ever.”

  “Why?”

  She blinked, her jaw going slack again. “Because I don’t want to,” she snapped.

  He pulled her head down beside his with another heavy sigh.

  “Try courting Wanda Beckman. She definitely wants to get married again.”

  Nicholas involuntarily shuddered.

  “What part of ‘I don’t date’ didn’t you understand the other night?”

  “The part where you exploded in my arms not twenty minutes later.”

  She lifted her head. “Please don’t take it personally, because it really has nothing to do with you.” She patted his cheek and straightened to sit straddling him, smiling sadly as she pushed her hair back over her shoulders. “It’s just that I’d like to think I’m intelligent enough not to make the same mistake twice.”

  “And if you became pregnant last night or just now?” he asked—only to jackknife again when she pushed off him and ran across the room before he could snag her robe.

  “If I am,” she said tightly, sweeping up her clothes and heading down the hall, “I promise you’ll be the first to know.”

  Nicholas waited until he heard the bathroom door close, then scrubbed his face in his hands with a curse. Wonderful; he’d taken another two steps forward tonight and ten back. What was the woman’s problem?

  It obviously had something to do with her ex-husband, but had the bastard hurt Julia badly enough to never want to get married again? Despite what she’d told Trisha in the church about it only being teenage lust, could Julia truly have loved her husband and felt her heart was irrevocably broken? Or had something else happened between them that had stolen her confidence in . . . what? Marriage itself? Or her ability to hold on to a man, as her father had claimed?

  The lies her ex-husband had spread around town before he’d left—with his new wife—didn’t bother her, as Nicholas had decided that night in the church that Julia considered her tarnished reputation nothing more than a nuisance. And she certainly didn’t fear men in general, and definitely not him in particular, judging by her seemingly eager willingness to openly spar with him, almost as if she needed a good rousing battle to burn off some of that overload of energy she had.

  Nicholas got to his feet and stood staring toward the bathroom, trying to reconcile Julia’s obvious enjoyment of sex with her reluctance to enter a relationship that would provide her with all the lovemaking she could handle. He walked to the outside door and picked up his boots, then went back to the hearth and sat down, pulled out the socks he’d stuffed in the boots, and dressed his feet. He finished tying the laces, then rested his arms on his knees and stared down at the illuminated ledge. No, if he had to take an educated guess, he believed Julia’s reluctance to remarry—or even enter into a relationship—had something to do with the act of making love itself.

  Why did she explode so passionately at his touch, yet brush off his attempts to bring her to fulfillment? He had some experience with women who were shy, simply uninterested, and even frigid, but he’d never known one who turned to molten lava in his hands only to then balk at taking her pleasure. And that made him wonder if it might be a control issue, with Julia being afraid to give a man that kind of power. Or, considering how quickly she lost control, maybe she was merely determined to hold on to that final piece of herself.

  Nicholas stood up when he heard the bathroom door open and walked across the room to get the shirt he’d brought downstairs off the banister, shrugging it on and buttoning it up as he intercepted Julia walking to the side door. He put on his jacket without bothering to tuck in his shirttails, followed her outside, and fell into step beside the silent woman as she headed out the driveway.

  But once they reached the road and started toward the resort, he felt Julia slowly inching closer until her arm brushed against his. He gently clasped her hand, relieved and immensely pleased when her fingers closed around his. Not wanting to break the mood, Nicholas continued on in companionable silence, the low-hanging half-moon doing little to light their way as it winked in and out of the clouds.

  “How come you have six cats?” she asked when Sol stepped out of the ditch and began walking up the road ahead of them. Nicholas knew without glancing down that Julia was looking up at him, and he knew she was smiling because he could hear it in her voice when she said, “Don’t you know dogs are supposed to be man’s best friend, and little old spinster ladies have six cats?”

  “Dogs are noisy and demanding and always tracking in mud,” he said, hearing the lightness in his own voice, “whereas cats are quiet and clean and take care of themselves. And I have six,” he drawled, “because I’m a sucker for a good sob story.”

  “They’re all rescued cats?” she said in surprise.

  Nicholas nodded. “Ajax was the first of them to find me.”

  “Ajax?”

  “The black and gray tabby that always has a blank look on his face,” he said with a chuckle, “named after a Greek hero who was big and dumb but always meant well—which perfectly described the ten-month-old kitten that unwittingly caught Lina’s tent on fire when we were traveling through Scotland . . . some years ago.”

  “Lina?”

  “Carolina Oceanus.” He grinned. “Soon to be Lina MacKeage, if she knows what’s good for her.”

  Julia smiled up at him. “Olivia told me you were Carolina’s bodyguard from almost the minute she was born.” But then she frowned. “Only she also said you were just a kid yourself at the time.”

  He went back to watching the road. “I was seven when Lina was born, but almost fifteen when Titus and Rana finally let her run loose on the island.”

  “Which island would that be? I can’t even figure out what nationality you all are, because none of you have any sort of accent.”

  “The Oceanuses are Mediterranean. Then came Bastet,” he continued. “I found her starved nearly to death wandering the Sahara and figured she’d gotten separated from a caravan. Then came Eos, the little gray with the orange eyes; I woke up to find her sleeping on my chest one morning in northern France.”

  “Carolina did a lot of traveling, apparently.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, wondering what Julia would think if he told her that all his cats came from different centuries, since his travels with Lina had traversed time more than distance. “Then came Solomon,” he continued, using his free hand to gesture ahead of them when Sol glanced back at the mention of his name. “But instead of finding me, I actually went looking for the unusually large cat I’d heard was in town. I suspect there’s some Asian leopard in him, as they’re about the size of your lynx. Sol’s owner had him displayed in a cage in the town market and was trying to entice the locals to place wagers by pitting their dogs against him in battle.”

  Julia pulled him to a stop. “Their dogs?”

  Since the moon was behind a cloud at the moment, Nicholas ran a finger down one of her cheeks, confirming his suspicion that she was flushed with anger. “I named him Solomon,” he said soothingly, “because the big guy wisely didn’t battle me when I took him out of his cage so I could stuff his owner in it.” He started them walking again. “Although it did take me the better part of a year to get Sol to step foot inside a house.” He sighed. “Only now I have to all but push him outside to do his business if it’s even threatening to snow.”

  “You don’t have a litter box?”

  Nicholas looked down, wondering at the relief in her voice. “Why would I want to deal with a litter box if everyone is healthy enough to go outside? Then came Gilgamesh,” he continued with a chuckle
. “He’s the fat yellow tabby. And I should have expected he’d cause me nothing but trouble, considering what I went through sneaking him away from that small gang of street urchins.”

  She pulled him to a halt again. “You stole him from kids?” she growled, trying to shake off his hand, then just glaring up at him when he refused to let go.

  He gave her a small tug to get her moving again. “They were in the process of fattening him up to eat him.”

  She suddenly skipped ahead as far as his hold would allow and began walking backward. “They were starving street urchins?”

  He maneuvered Julia around to walk beside him again, deciding that if he wanted to have a conversation with the lovely lady, he merely needed to take her for a walk. Because even though she still became passionately engaged, there appeared to be a better than even chance they wouldn’t both end up naked in under ten seconds. “You needn’t worry,” he assured her, giving her hand a squeeze. “The next morning they found a small bag of money tied to the rope they had tied around Gilly.”

  She in turn gave his hand a squeeze—he assumed to let him know she approved. “Um . . . I’m almost afraid to ask, but what about the white one that’s missing half its tail? Where did you get him—or her?”

  Nicholas hesitated. “Snowball has been with me three years,” he finally said, “although he spent most of the first six months in a pouch on my father’s back as Dad tended his gardens.” He stopped and turned Julia to face him. “I can only speculate on what he’d been through, which is why I decided to name him Snowball.”

  “W-why?”

  “Because he’d obviously been through hell and survived.”

  She went silent at that, staring at his chest, then leaned in as she slipped her hand free and wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, Nicholas,” she sighed against his jacket. “You’re nothing but a bighearted sap, aren’t you?” She tilted her head back to look up at him just as the moon emerged to reveal her smile. “You’ve spent your whole life protecting a princess, running around saving women from their drunken father and clueless girls from guests, and rescuing cats.” Her arms around him tightened. “You do know you can’t save the whole world, don’t you?”