by Kay Hooper
“Well, all right then.” She plucked the puppy from its temporary resting place in Gideon’s arms and handed it to the boy. “You take Alexander back to Tina and I’ll find Leo.”
“ ’S okay with me.” Sean accepted the puppy with a charitable nod and expertly tucked it under one arm as he strode away.
Gideon discovered that his dark suit was liberally covered with white hair. He brushed at the clinging stuff, then gave up and prepared to address himself to the woman. Except that she was wandering away. He went after her, avoiding one large dog sprawled out between two tents and the ample rump of a huge horse grazing peacefully and completely untethered on thick green grass.
She was standing at the edge of the woods and frowning slightly when he caught up with her. And before he could say a word, she turned to him with a faintly anxious air.
“Do you think Leo could have gone into the woods? Even after I told him not to?”
He stared down at her, wondering inconsequentially how such a tiny woman could be so…so richly curved. Her filmy outfit made the fact obvious. Very obvious. He tried not to think about it. The top of her head didn’t even reach to his shoulder, and something about the way she tilted her head to look up at him was peculiarly moving. No. A ridiculous idea.
Then her question sank in. The suspicion that she might be a little less than all there crossed Gideon’s mind, but he dismissed it. Those eyes might be enigmatic and contain a gleam of devilment, but there was also sense there. He hoped.
“Who—or what—is Leo?” he asked with what patience he could muster.
“Well, he thinks he’s a lion,” she explained.
Gideon wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but asked anyway, “What is he really?”
Bafflement crossed her features. “We’ve never been quite sure. Maybe you’ll know when you see him.”
“I don’t think I want to see him. Look, if you run this—this carnival, I came here to talk to you.”
“All right,” she said mildly. “But first I have to find Leo before he scares somebody. Especially himself.”
Gideon discovered he was addressing the back of her silver-blond head as she turned away, and he wasn’t surprised to hear a note of frustration in his voice. “At least tell me what the hell he looks like.”
When she glanced back over her shoulder at him, he could have sworn there was a fleeting gleam of sheer laughter in her fey eyes, but her sweet voice remained vague. “Oh…he’s sort of brown. He looks like a cat. But not really. Bigger than a cat. Smaller than a lion.”
After that masterly description Gideon was prepared for almost anything. Telling himself that this odd woman was obviously unable to think of anything but her misplaced animal, he got a grip on his patience and began to follow her into the woods.
He lost her almost immediately. It surprised him, because with her silvery hair she should easily have been visible; though shadowed in places, the woods weren’t particularly dark. He debated briefly and silently, then cursed under his breath, took his suit jacket off, and rolled up his sleeves. He left his jacket hanging on a handy limb as he set out.
He wasn’t worried about becoming lost since he had an excellent sense of direction. And if it occurred to him that the diminutive lady, who, according to Sean, was the manager of Wonderland, would hardly treat him with such childlike friendliness once she found out why he was here, he tried not to think about it. Even though he had an uncomfortable awareness that it was his reason for engaging in this absurd hunt: anything to delay the inevitable.
Being a methodical man, he worked his way methodically through the woods. Bordered on two sides by winding, two-lane country roads with fields beyond, the forest was a roughly triangular section of towering oaks and maples and other hardwoods bisected by a tumbling stream complete with a small waterfall. He estimated the total size of the forest at about ten acres.
He searched ten acres. Then, hot, tired, and irritable, he found himself back where he’d started. His jacket was just where he’d left it. So was something else.
It was crouched on the same limb, the very tips of two forepaws resting on the jacket’s collar. It was, without doubt, brown—several mottled shades of brown, in fact. And it was smaller than a lion by several feet and a considerable number of pounds. But it was definitely bigger than a cat. Even though that was what it was.
Ridiculously long, funnel-shaped ears topped the traditional wedge-shape of a cat’s head. A ringed and bushy tail lay alongside the mottled-brown body with its tip twitching lazily. And huge, startlingly round, yellow eyes peered at Gideon doubtfully.
“Leo?” He felt a bit absurd asking, but something about the hesitant stare made him feel he ought to.
“Wooo?” the animal replied.
Gideon blinked. Not exactly a catlike sound, he reflected. Still, it had to be Leo. And he was sick of the search. “Come down from there,” he commanded firmly. Somewhat to his surprise, Leo instantly jumped down from the tree’s branch and stood looking up at him with a comically dubious expression on his pointed, furry face.
Gideon lifted his jacket from the limb and draped it over his arm. “Come along,” he ordered, and began making his way out of the woods. A glance down showed him that Leo was obediently pacing beside him. He was a large animal; the point of his shoulders nearly reached to Gideon’s knee, and he had to be almost three feet long from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.
“Oh, good! You found him.”
For an instant Gideon’s feelings threatened to overcome him. She was sitting just outside the woods in cool shade, her seat a canvas camp chair. A bundle of colorful material was in her lap, and she was mending a tear with small, neat stitches. Opening his mouth to say something that probably would have scorched her, Gideon was forestalled when Leo, making the most absurd chattering sounds, hurried over to her.
She seemed to listen seriously, gazing at the cat gravely as he reared up with his forepaws on her knees. Then, when he fell silent and looked at her expectantly, she shook her head and said, “Well, it isn’t my fault. I told you not to go into the woods. Tina saved your lunch for you, so go and eat it.”
“Wooo?” Leo asked dolefully.
“Yes, I expect so. She has every right to be angry with you. You’d better hurry. If you ask her nicely, she might make you another one.”
Leo removed his paws from her knees and loped—peculiarly, since his back legs were longer than his front ones—toward the scattered wagons.
Gideon gazed after him for a long, silent moment, then looked down at the woman. “Make him another what?”
“Collar.” She held her sewing up and studied it critically, then neatly finished off the row of stitches and removed the needle from the cloth, tucking it away in a small sewing kit, which she slid absently into a pocket of her skirt. “He lost his in the woods. Didn’t you hear him say so?”
Several possible responses to that mild question occurred to him as he watched her rise and fold the camp chair, then tuck it under one arm along with the bundle of material. Gideon really—really—wanted to believe that this woman was absolutely batty. It was the simplest and safest explanation. She was quite mad, and it would be in his best interests to say what he’d come to say and then leave this place with all speed.
He half convinced himself of that. Then she looked up at him, brows slightly raised in question. And he felt a curious mixture of shock and satisfaction when he saw a brief glimpse of cool, tranquil intelligence in her green eyes.
She was not crazy.
Gideon had always been fascinated by puzzles. He couldn’t leave one unsolved; he had to understand. He rediscovered the trait within himself at that moment. This woman was the most enigmatic puzzle he’d ever stumbled across, and he couldn’t leave without at least trying to understand her.
That’s what he told himself.
“How did you scratch your arm?” she asked, looking at a small cut on his forearm.
He followed her gaze, rememb
ering that he’d rolled up his sleeves at some point. “Thorns, I suppose. Do you mind telling me your name?”
“No. It’s Maggie. We should put some antiseptic on that so it won’t get infected. My wagon’s this way.”
Walking beside her, he glanced down and had to ask, “Did you really understand Leo?”
“Didn’t you?”
He decided not to answer that. “Maggie what?”
“Durant.”
“My name’s Gideon Hughes.”
“Yes,” she said tranquilly. “I know.”
“You do?” He was a little startled.
“Of course. Balthasar’s attorney contacted us after the tragedy so we’d know what had happened. Sad, isn’t it? That he went all that way, I mean, and almost made it. If the authorities hadn’t stopped him in Dakar, the rhino would never have gotten so upset and gored him. But you can’t get probate for months, so we weren’t really expecting you yet.”
Her gentle, childlike voice was disarming; it took Gideon several moments to digest what she’d told him. “Expecting me?” he ventured finally.
“Naturally.”
Gideon was about to question her further when they rounded the back of one of the wagons and saw something that made him forget everything else.
The carnival was camped along the edge of the forest about a hundred yards from the road so that several of the wagons and tents could take advantage of the shade. Between a faded pink tent and a mauve-colored wagon, a red-and-blue checked circular tablecloth had been spread on the ground in the shade. Around the edges of the cloth were five people frowning in concentration at the cards they held in their hands.
Only one of them looked familiar to Gideon; he was the absurdly dressed man who had asked the time. By comparison, he didn’t look so ridiculous now. On his left was a lean, aristocratic gentleman with fine silver hair who seemed to be wearing a white toga. Clockwise around the circle, next was a clown in full makeup and costume, a woman with wild black hair dressed colorfully as a gypsy, and a redheaded man somewhere in his twenties who was wearing a Scottish kilt and a garland of wildflowers in his hair.
Gideon stopped in his tracks and stared at them. The tablecloth was covered with the remnants of tea, complete with a delicate pot and dainty cups and saucers as well as a number of plates holding nothing but crumbs. The clown had a monkey on his shoulder that was busily eating a banana, a cockatoo roosted on the shoulder of the toga-clad man, and Leo was chattering insistently in the ear of the gypsy.
“Go away!” she muttered, elbowing him sharply.
“Bet, Tina,” the toga-clad man said in an irritable tone.
“Can’t you see I’m trying—” She turned her head to glare at the persistent cat, finally holding her cards down close to his nose. “Look at this!”
Leo peered, then emitted a squeak and hastily sat down.
“Fold,” the four men chorused instantly as they tossed their cards down.
Tina looked at the small pile of pennies in the center of the tablecloth, then turned her head again to glare at Leo. “I’ll give you a collar,” she said. “How do you feel about a hangman’s noose?”
Leo said, “Wooo,” miserably, and hung his head.
Gideon shook himself out of the stupor and continued walking, finding Maggie waiting patiently at a huge wagon some little distance from the others. He hardly looked at the wagon. Jerking a thumb backward, he asked incredulously, “Are they kidding?”
She looked past him at the tea-and-poker party, then lifted her puzzled gaze to his face. “About what?”
He stared down into utterly limpid green eyes. She was very lovely. He decided he should leave. Immediately. Her eyes were like wells, so deep he could only see the placid surface reflecting light and just hinting at all the possibilities of what might lie underneath. Treasures were hidden in wells. It was also possible, he reminded himself, for one to drown in them.
“Never mind,” he murmured. “I don’t think it matters.”
For an instant, so brief he might have imagined it, he saw again that flash of sheer intelligence, the utterly rational and shrewd humor. Then the surface of her gaze was unbroken once more, serene and without even ripples to hint at things moving in unseen depths. Her smile was warm, like sunlight through a cloud, catching at his breath.
“This is my wagon.” She turned and climbed the steps to the open door.
Gideon felt bereft for a moment, rudderless. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation for a man of thirty-five, especially when that man had never taken an unplanned turn in his life. But a small voice in his mind whispered now, seductively, that treasures weren’t found on the predictable and neatly paved walkways where a thousand feet passed daily. He tried to ignore the voice; he’d never heard the damned thing before, and it promised, at the very least, a lack of control that appalled him.
“Gideon?” She looked out at him, brows lifted. “Aren’t you coming in?”
After a moment he climbed the steps and went into her wagon.
“Sit down,” she invited, gesturing toward a bright green love seat as she leaned the camp chair against the wall, put the bundle of cloth on the foot of the bed, and opened the door of a big wardrobe to begin searching through it.
He was glad to sit. The interior of the wagon struck his senses like a blow. He looked around slowly, his gaze lingering on the scarlet velvet bedspread and tasseled pillows covering the bed that took up most of the space. He closed his eyes, opening them again when she settled beside him. She was holding a first-aid box open on her lap.
While he watched silently, she got out a tube of antiseptic and some gauze and put the box on the floor, then took his wrist and guided his arm until it rested across her thighs. He could feel the warmth of her, and a soft scent like wildflowers in a meadow rose to his nostrils. Her long, clever fingers were bare of rings.
“Are you married?” he asked.
She was carefully spreading antiseptic cream over the scratch on his arm and didn’t look up. “No.”
“Involved with anyone?”
“No. Are you?”
He gazed at her profile and felt more than heard a sigh escape him. “I wasn’t when I got here.”
Finished with her task, she tossed the used gauze into a small trash can near the door. “It’ll heal better if it isn’t covered,” she said, capping the tube of cream.
“Did you hear what I said?” he demanded.
“Yes.” She put the tube back into the box and then sat back, looking at him. A tiny smile curved her lips and her fey eyes were completely unreadable.
“I just made a verbal pass,” he explained.
She considered the matter, then shook her head. “No. You indicated interest. A verbal pass is something like—‘Why don’t we have breakfast in bed?’ ”
“Why don’t we have breakfast in bed?”
“You do come straight to the point, don’t you?”
He eyed her, a little amused at both of them, and very surprised at himself. It was totally unlike him to move so fast, and even less like him to be so blunt. Still, having begun in that vein, he kept going. “We’re both over twenty-one. At least, I hope—?”
“I’m twenty-eight,” she supplied sedately.
“Then you’ve certainly heard quite a few verbal passes.”
“A few.”
He wanted to ask how she had responded to passes from other men, but bit back the question. She would say it was none of his business—or, at least, any other woman would. And she’d be right. Her past was no concern of his, and that had never troubled him in previous relationships with women; in fact, he’d never even been tempted to ask.
“Are you just going to ignore my pass?” he asked.
She looked at him, an uncomfortable perception surfacing in her vivid eyes. Rising up out of the depths, he thought, like some mysterious, all-knowing siren. “Unless and until your motives change, yes, I think I will.”
“My motives?”
Mildly
she said, “You don’t like giving up control to anyone else, and as long as you don’t understand me, you feel it puts me in control. You don’t want the vulnerability of a possible relationship, just the control of knowledge. Sex, you believe, is a means to finding that knowledge. In your experience, women tend to give up all that they are to a lover, whether he responds in kind or not. How am I doing?”
Gideon cleared his throat and leaned back in the corner of the love seat, removing his arm from her warm thighs. He devoutly hoped he didn’t look as unnerved as he felt. She had neatly—and with devastating accuracy—stripped his motives bare while becoming even more of an enigma herself. “That makes me sound like a selfish bastard, doesn’t it?” he said, neither admitting nor denying what she’d said.
“Most people are selfish; it’s the nature of the beast. You have a logical mind and it’s perfectly logical to think that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
“Are you saying it isn’t?”
In a very gentle voice she said, “Not between people. Between people, shortcuts are usually painful.”
She was right—and he was even more surprised at himself. Did he really feel so out of control? Had he been so shaken by his confused response to her that his first instinct had been to reach for an immediate, shallow intimacy? Such an abrupt leap, assuming she had accepted, virtually guaranteed that there would be little more than a brief fling between them. Because she was right about something else; intimacy without knowledge was seldom anything but damaging.
And he knew that.
After a moment he said, “I apologize.”
Maggie looked faintly surprised. “I wasn’t offended. I just want you to understand that I don’t believe sex is a means to an end. By the time two people become that intimate, most of the questions should already be answered.”
“You’re right.” Gideon was mildly surprised at his own lack of defensiveness; he was, more than anything, intrigued by her insight into his motives, and disturbed by those motives themselves. “But how did you know? About me, I mean. Did it show so plainly?”