“No.” Brian took a step toward her. “All kidding aside, Shelley, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’ll bring the van back tomorrow.”
“Anything I can do?”
She looked at the sculpture. “Yes. Carry this out to the van for me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have a renegade lily to gild.”
“Remington, huh? About time.”
But that was the only comment Brian made while he carried “I Love You, Too” out to The Gilded Lily’s delivery van.
Shelley secured the sculpture in one of the van’s many padded compartments. Then she got in and drove home, trying not to think about what would come after she finished Cain’s penthouse.
What will I do? I can’t live with a traveling man and I’m afraid I can’t live without him.
She had only one hope. She clung to it more tightly than she did the steering wheel.
Once Cain sees how wonderful I’ve made his home, how warm and inviting and just plain perfect it is for him, he’ll see that he doesn’t have to roam. Everything he needs is here.
Holding onto the wheel until her hands ached, she said the same words over and over to herself, desperately wanting to believe they were true.
Desperately afraid they weren’t.
Two distant smudges against the mountains caught her attention.
Smog? she thought, distracted.
A quick look convinced her that the dark streaks didn’t come from smog. The autumn day was hot, brilliant, swept clean by the powerful, seasonal Santa Ana winds. The air was oven-dry and crackling with static electricity.
Fire, she decided. At least two.
With the critical eye of someone who has weathered many fire seasons, Shelley measured the distant smoke plumes. One was nearly white, which meant that firemen were already at work pouring water on flames, turning midnight smoke to a pearl gray. The second plume was still dark and untouched, a dry, black thunderhead boiling toward the mountains.
She kept an eye on the dark column after she got on the freeway. By the time she turned off onto surface streets again, the smoke was showing billows of white and gray, thinning before her eyes. Someone had reached the fire.
Sirens blared and honked behind her. She pulled over to the curb as a fire truck raced by. Two more trucks followed quickly. A fourth truck lagged.
She waited patiently for the heavy truck to catch up to the others. As the owner of a hillside home surrounded by chaparral, she had nothing but approval for the city, county, and state firefighters who kept the lid on southern California’s easily burned wild lands.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, the firemen managed to do the impossible, holding the fires down to a handful of acres. The remaining one percent was a preview of hell. Flames one hundred feet high, smoke that blackened the day, incandescent embers that rode the back of the hot wind and spread burning seeds of destruction.
That was when the Sierra Deuces came, heavy-bellied planes flown by certified madmen. The aircraft swooped down through a blinding chaos of smoke, flying low enough for the pilots to see the shape of the land and the fire that was consuming it. Then, when they were over the worst of the flames and the updraft from the fire raged around them, shaking everything, the planes opened their bellies and dropped maroon veils of fire retardant.
On the flanks of the fire below the planes, hundreds of men fought with shovels, brushhooks, bulldozers, and curses to stem the flaming tide. Eventually the firefighters won and the skies were swept clean again by the very wind that had fed the flames.
Silently Shelley prayed that this wouldn’t be the fire that got away, burning the land down to bedrock, leaving nothing behind but black scars.
It looks like they’re getting a handle on it, she told herself, staring through the hot windshield. They’ll hold it down to a few hundred acres. Unless the wind shifts.
A fifth fire truck blasted down the boulevard. No more equipment followed. Gradually cars pulled back into the traffic lanes, resuming whatever business had brought them out into the hot day in the first place.
Shelley took her place in the shifting steel river of cars. Traffic thinned to nothing as she turned off on the narrow, two-lane road that snaked through the hills toward her home. No smoke stained the sky here. There was nothing but pouring sunlight, dry chaparral whispering, and shadows rippling and changing, made and remade by the restless desert wind.
As soon as she parked the van and walked up to the front door with the key in her hand, Nudge appeared out of the shrubbery. She yeowed softly, rubbing her supple body against the back of Shelley’s knees with unusual vigor.
“Take it easy. You’re going to knock me off my feet.”
But even as she spoke, she bent down and rubbed the cat’s broad head. Nudge leaned into the touch. When she stroked down the muscular feline back, Nudge purred and arched against the stroking hand.
“Cain’s right. Just like a woman.” Then her breath caught. “Or a man.”
Memories of his response to her touch poured through her—his body tightening until every inch of him was hard, gleaming with heat, and then his deep groan when she explored him with her curious, hungry mouth.
The door key dropped to the flagstones with a small, ringing sound.
“Shelley,” she muttered to herself, “if you keep thinking about Cain like that, you’re going to drop something that’s a lot more valuable—and breakable—than a house key.”
The interior of the house was cool but not cold. Her air-conditioning was the kind that came from open windows and a built-in system of air recirculation.
She descended the stairs to her bedroom in a controlled rush, stripping off clothes as she went, organizing what had to be done in her mind. First on the list was some comfortable clothes. Then came the packing boxes in the garage.
“The gilding is going to begin, Cain Remington, with or without your help. I just hope I choose the things you want.” She took a deep breath. “No, I know I’ll choose what you want. We like a lot of the same things.”
With a feeling of cheerfulness that bordered on insanity, she changed clothes, bounded up the stairs, and began gathering boxes from the garage. She piled them in the upper-level living room, along with huge plastic bags full of packing material.
“All right. Now it begins.”
She went to a large storage closet that was concealed behind red cedar identical to the rich paneling she had chosen for Cain’s home. Inside the closet was everything she had collected for use in her own home. With each season, she changed some of the living room displays, refreshing her eye and keeping her appreciation of the art sharp and new.
Since the day she had agreed to gild the penthouse, she had begun gathering things from her own home, selecting the art that had pleased him. One such piece was the framed Landsat photo of the Sahara that had been in her shop; an identical photo had hung downstairs in her home. Now it was in the closet, waiting to be taken to a new home.
A Japanese screen painted with a flying crane and a spray of bamboo came from her living room. The piece was one of her favorites; it raised simplicity from a virtue to an art of unsurpassed serenity. Cain had looked at it for a long time. When he had finally turned away from it, he had seemed refreshed.
“Definitely the screen,” she said under her breath. “And the geese, symbol of the north and freedom.”
The geese were modern decoys done by a master carver from Maine. Part of her winter art, the birds were graceful, elegant, both lifelike and an abstraction of life. The tension between what was real and what wasn’t gave the birds enormous power.
Working quickly, she pulled out a tawny piece of eighteenth-century Peking glass and set it next to the geese. Her next choice was a Korean Kin chest for Cain’s bedroom, then two seventeenth-century Chinese fur storage chests.
“Yes, I’ll need those,” she said, scanning the closet shelves, “and that, and this, and . . .”
The s
helves rapidly emptied. Soon a flawless, deadly samurai sword lay next to the Peking glass. It was followed by an intricately carved Aztec weapon called an atlatl.
“Now . . . yes, the rugs. And the mask. And the . . .” She laughed and shook her head. “Why don’t I just admit it and empty the closet?”
Navajo rugs, whalebone masks, cedar carvings of bear and salmon and killer whales. A brass telescope that was more than a hundred years old. A four-hundred-year-old copy of a Tang Chinese horse that was so alive she was tempted to tether it to a lamp so it wouldn’t prance away.
When the closet shelves were bare, she went to a special cupboard that held framed oils and watercolors. Among the oils were California landscapes done by turn-of-the-century American Impressionists. The paintings’ sensual colors and textures beckoned like a refreshing breeze.
There was also a series of waterbirds and birds of prey done by a Native American artist trained in France. The combination of a hunter’s appreciation for the life-and-death reality of the birds, plus an abstract artist’s eye for fluid lines, summed up the birds in a few strokes and muted colors.
Then she added a wild card, a Charles Maurin pastel of a dancer. Surrounded by her rippling, floating costume, the woman was like a butterfly with endless, filmy wings, an innocent temptress poised amid shifting colors.
Even after the closet was empty, Shelley still wasn’t satisfied. She went to the various display cases in her living room, removing the pieces. that had most appealed to Cain. The fact that they were also her favorites didn’t stop her.
He had been drawn to them. They would be his.
Carefully she removed the Balinese dancer, the ivory chessmen, and the Eskimo woman. Other, smaller things followed. Soon the display cases were as bare as the closet.
“No big deal,” she said to Nudge, who was warily circling the items laid out on the floor. “I can fill in with stuff from the shop.”
If l need to.
But that was something she wouldn’t say aloud, even to herself.
Gently she lifted out the last item in the display case. It was the bemused opal jaguar with a ruby butterfly resting on its golden claw.
“I’d love to hang St. George and the dragon over Cain’s bed,” she said to the cat, “but Billy has it for now.”
Nudge ignored her mistress in favor of investigating the jaguar.
“The universe of stars! Of course. It will be perfect.”
She raced downstairs to her office, where the dragon had once hung. It had been replaced by the art she had found while shopping for Billy’s birthday.
For a few moments she stood in front of the luminous universe of the painting, watching the swirling stars and enigmatic faces, worlds without end, mysterious landscapes unknown to man. The painting haunted her. It hinted at something about time and space and the tiny, stubborn condensations of energy known as life.
Cain had been drawn to the painting as surely as he had been captured by the jaguar and the butterfly. After he had looked at it for a long, quiet time, he had turned to her.
What do you see there, Shelley?
I don’t know. I only know that once I saw it, I had to have it.
He had smiled suddenly, a take-no-prisoners kind of smile, but he hadn’t said another word.
“What did you see, Cain?” she whispered in the empty room. “What is there in this ageless, limitless sky that made you smile at me like a man who had just been given everything he ever wanted?”
There was no answer. There wouldn’t be until he came back home.
To her.
Chapter Nineteen
It was midnight before Shelley finished gilding the penthouse. Soaring and at peace, excited and serene, content and on the edge of tears, she walked alone through the rooms. Everywhere she looked, she saw the proof of what she felt for Cain. In every color and texture, in every unique piece of furniture, in every carefully chosen piece of art.
There’s nothing more I can do. His home is as perfect as I can make it.
Come home, love. Come and stay with me.
Torn between hope and fear, tears running down her face, she stood in the middle of the home she had created. She didn’t hear the front door open and close, didn’t hear Cain’s sudden intake of breath when he saw her.
Then his arms closed around her and she hung on to him until she ached. The rasp of his beard stubble across her cheek felt more wonderful to her than a silky caress, and the heavy male smell of wool and sweat was sweeter to her than the fragrance of flowers blooming beneath the moon.
“I rn-made a home for you,” she whispered.
“I know. When I hold you in my arms, I’m home.”
His voice was as uneven as hers. For a time they simply held each other. Then, slowly, her arms loosened and she smiled up at him.
“Come with me. I want to show you your home.”
“I’m looking at it.”
But he wasn’t. He was looking at her.
A shaft of disappointment went through Shelley. She wanted to share with him the home she had created, to give him the gift she had thought so long and so deeply about.
Doesn’t he care about his home even a little bit? she wondered in despair.
Just as she opened her mouth to protest his lack of interest, she looked at Cain—really looked at him. His face was streaked with dirt, his eyes were puffy and ringed by darkness, and his skin was drawn. Even his lips were pale, almost bloodless. Instantly she forgot about the gilded home and her disappointment.
“Oh, love,” she whispered. “What did you do to yourself?”
He smiled crookedly. “I worked triple shifts.”
“Why?”
“To get back to you.”
“I—you didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to. My only regret is that I’m too tired to do much about anything right now. I flew the first leg of the trip and then stayed awake on the second to make sure Miller didn’t need a hand.”
Gently Cain kissed her lips and ran his fingers lightly over her face, her shoulders, her arms, as though trying to convince himself he wasn’t dreaming. She stood on tiptoe and returned the undemanding kiss.
“You’re home,” she said. “That’s all that matters. Come on. I’m going to scrub your back and tuck you into bed.”
“Sleep with me. And that’s all it will be. Sleep. I’m beat.”
“I like sleeping with you.”
“Even when that’s all we’re going to do?”
“Of course. Being with you is . . . good.”
His laced his hand through hers and followed her down the hail. Paintings called silently to him, a handful of fluid lines evoking birds in flight, birds courting, birds raising their young, a bird of prey soaring in a transparent sky.
“The falcon,” he said, slowing.
Her face lit with a smile. “Do you like it?”
“I love it,” he said, smothering a yawn. “But it keeps blurring.”
“That’s because you’re asleep on your feet.”
When she urged him along, he followed her, only to be distracted again by an inviting room opening off the hall.
“Those colors,” he said, yawning. “They remind me of a northern forest. And isn’t that a Haida carving on the wall?”
“Yes.” She tugged on his hand. “Come on. I’ll give you a full tour in the morning.”
Adrenaline went through Cain like cold lightning, focusing him in spite of his exhaustion.
“You’re finished?” he said sharply.
“Yes. You can see it all tomorrow. Now it’s more important for you to sleep.”
“Shelley? Love?”
She smiled up at him and saw his hunger to know her answer. She also saw the sheer tiredness beneath his need. He had worked around the clock to get back to her.
“It’s not gilded until you have the tour,” she said. “That will be tomorrow. You’re too tired for anything now except sleeping.”
For a few moments he fought t
he truth of her words. Then he gave in to the exhaustion rising in him like a black tide.
“Damn it,” he said roughly.
“It’s all right. You’re home. All the rest can wait. Truly.”
He looked at her, trying to read her answer in her eyes. He saw concern and caring and a need to take care of him.
It’s all right. You’re home.
And he was, for Shelley was there.
Sighing, Cain kissed her fingertips and allowed her to lead him down the hail. She took him straight through the master bedroom, not giving him time to look around. There was no point in stopping to look around. He wouldn’t have been able to appreciate anything. His eyes were heavy-lidded, nearly closed. He was a breath away from being asleep on his feet.
While she started filling the huge bathtub, he fell asleep in a dressing room chair. He awoke long enough to help her get his clothes off and slide into the hot, swirling water. She pressed a button and air bubbles thundered through the water.
“God, that feels good,” he said. “I’m sore all over.”
“Don’t fall asleep until I get in.”
He smiled slightly. “Don’t worry. I won’t drown.”
Quickly she undressed and got into the water, shampoo in hand. She washed his hair first, laughing when he went under the surface to rinse and blew a mighty stream of bubbles. Then she bathed him with shampoo for bath soap and her hands for a washrag.
And she smiled at him, enjoying being with him, touching him with no thought of being touched in return.
Her pleasure in him was like sunrise for Cain. He watched her face while she washed days of work away from his body. He cupped her breasts in his hands, caressing her simply because she was beautiful to him and he enjoyed that beauty.
She bent, kissed his hands, then resumed washing him, savoring the solid reality of his flesh sliding beneath her fingers. Eyes closed, he sighed and gave himself to the dreamy, undemanding pleasure of her touch.
“Wake up,” she said finally.
“Time to go to bed.”
Yawning hugely, he pulled himself out of the hot water. He cursed under his breath when his back and chest muscles reminded him of mossy rocks and a hard dunking in an icy stream.
Where the Heart Is Page 24