He pushed open the door to the scientists, who were anxiously awaiting his comments on their greenhouses. He didn't disappoint them, towering over them though physically he wasn't taller as he said, "Pretty sad what I saw back there."
To a man, they cringed. "We were busy with the crops in the fields. We planned to get around to the greenhouses when we could."
The Captain pointed to me. "This lady has a degree in botany. She isn't busy and you are. So I'm assigning her to the greenhouses as soon as she can get out of her current job."
"When will she be available?" The head grower tried to look happy while sending daggers in my direction.
The Captain smiled so broadly that everyone knew he'd caught that nasty look and was ignoring it because he knew no one would dare flaunt his wishes. "How soon do you think, Elle?" I was under his protection and they'd better not touch a hair on my head.
"I have to give notice and train a replacement." As if harvesting apples required lessons. But I was determined to put off my employment in the greenhouses as long as possible.
Once outside, we found the Captain's wife on the sidewalk, all dressed up, young and lovely and in love with her important husband. He groaned under his breath and said, "I forgot. I promised to meet Darlene for lunch. Guess your little demonstration sent everything else out of my mind." He waved to her and she came close and tipped her head in question. "Yes, Darlene, she's the real deal."
Darlene stared at me in awe and, propelled by her husband who wanted to get her away from me and my abnormal genes as soon as possible, they disappeared in the direction of one of the more elegant restaurants in the government center, leaving Cullen and me staring at each other.
He didn't know what to do. He gazed longingly after the premier couple on the Destiny as he backed away a couple of feet. Then he remembered that we were supposed to be lovers and drew close again, tentatively putting an arm across my shoulders. His fingers barely touched my shirt.
"If that's the best you can do no one will believe we're lovers." The arm came around me more closely. "You call that progress? I look like a prisoner." I shrugged until his arm slid across my shoulder and his fingers touched my neck.
"I wish you were a prisoner. I know how to deal with prisoners."
"Well I'm free. Captain's orders."
"I know." He sighed, a sound pulled from his toes. He looked so woeful that I had the insane urge to soothe his brow but I didn't. Instead, I remembered that we were supposed to be lovers, so I reached up and stroked his forehead with a touch as light as a feather. Then I planted a kiss on his cheek.
My gesture was clearly not sexual. But as my fingers left his forehead and my lips left his cheek, I pulled back, stunned by my body's reaction to that feather touch. I felt splintered into a thousand pieces. I actually looked down to be sure I was still there.
As for Cullen, he kind of cocked his head and tried to pretend the kiss was okay. To smile, even, but I saw in his face that it was hard for him not to brush me away like a pesky fly.
Chapter Ten
I am paroled.
That got me angry. How dare he think of me as an insect! My muscles tensed in preparation for slugging him as hard as I knew how. Then I stopped. We were supposed to be lovers so instead of slapping him across his face, I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him again. And again, all the time knowing that no matter how he hated what was happening, he'd not dare do anything about it.
There were several people nearby, going about their business. They paused to watch so, as Cullen loomed over me and I made sure that our kiss lasted as long as possible I could almost feel the rumors spread out from that sidewalk to the farthest reaches of the Destiny, through every field and orchard and nook and cranny and maybe beyond, into outer space. Cullen Vail and Elle Olmstead were an item.
And as the kiss went on an on, I was blown to smithereens again but this time I didn't check myself to make sure I was still intact because I knew the disintegration wasn't physical. But as I finally pulled away, I was disgusted that a simple kiss could affect me so profoundly. Me, Elle Olmstead, woman of intelligence and many degrees who knew ease and comfort and exactly what the world was like and where in it I belonged.
Problem was, I wasn't on that world any longer.
I leaned back and looked up into those night eyes. I pecked him again on the cheek just to show that I was the one in control. "We put on a good show, didn't we?"
His arms were steel and held me tight as one dark eyebrow rose at my words and he fought to get his breathing back under control. Good! At least he wasn't totally immune to me.
But he hadn't splintered like I had. His lips twitched complacently leaving me to hope I matched his self-control. "Guess we should go now." He dumped me and started away, long legs striding in double-time, leaving me to find my balance as best I could. "Got to figure how to fit your things in my house."
He wasn't heading for either the elevators or his bike. He was heading for the houses where the important people on the Destiny lived. Of course it would be where the head of Security was housed. I yelled after him, uncaring who heard. "I will not live in Center City."
"Yes you will." The nearby watchers turned towards us in order to hear better. Yep, the gossip mill was in high gear. "My job is in Center City so we live in my house."
"I hate cities." He snorted and kept walking. The watchers held their breath over this fascinating lovers' quarrel. I cringed thinking of the story about to make the rounds. Then I ran after Cullen and whispered so none of them could hear. "I'll lose my powers if I stay here." I do work best in the country, that was true even if the rest was a bit of an exaggeration.
"You're lying. You won't lose them." His own voice was low enough to keep the conversation between the two of us though a woman nearby held her breath in an attempt to hear better.
"I will." I put my lips to his ear. Nuzzled him, let my lips drift over the skin behind his ear, knowing what any onlookers would make of my gesture, fighting my body's reaction because I didn't want to come apart a third time in one day. "My gift doesn't come easy. I can't just wave my arms and make everything right. I have to concentrate and I can't do that when I'm tired or tense and I'm both in a city. The noise drives me crazy not to mention that there's a dearth of plants here."
"There's green, living stuff all over the Destiny. Almost every square inch." He didn't move, didn't turn to me, did nothing to stop my lips from grazing his neck. I breathed deeply and licked his skin, gratified by his sudden intake of breath. "There are plants in Center City." He inclined his head enough to indicate a nearby park. "Look around."
"No matter how lovely, it's still a city. I'm a country girl."
He turned and as simply as that our lips were almost touching. "What do you consider country on the Destiny?" He saw the Destiny as a ship, I saw it as a self-contained world, complete with meadows, forests and towns. "Where, exactly, do you need to be in order to do what you do?"
I brightened. I was about to get what I needed. Wanted. "Home. The orchard. Or my apartment in New Rochelle."
He rolled his eyes and shuddered. "A small town. A tiny apartment."
"Surrounded by farms and orchards."
His wiggled his shoulders. Stared at me. Scowled. Gave up because he couldn't prove I wasn't truthful. "Okay." He pulled back a few inches. Our lovers' quarrel evidently settled, people around us moved on about their business but I knew their comunits were working overtime spreading the word that Cullen Vail had a girlfriend. "I need some things, clothes, stuff like that. It won't take long." He started off but turned when I didn't follow. "Come on"
"I'll wait here."
"You can't do that. We're joined at the hip, remember?" Then he did something unexpected. He smiled, a slight flexing of facial muscles that looked to onlookers like a real smile but that told me he was about to get back at me for our very public kiss. "We're supposed to be lovers. What's more natural than for the two of us to disappear into my place for a while?" My
face flamed but I trudged beside him to a building that was smaller than the ones around it but still imposing and then he led the way on up the porch steps.
His house was spare, with little furniture and no pictures of family or friends so there were few things for him to stuff into the backpacks he pulled from under his bed. He filled one with clothes and tossed it aside, then filled the second with still more clothes and a few personal care items. He started to close it. Then he stopped.
I pretended to look out the window while surreptitiously watching to see what he'd almost forgotten. Cullen Vail never forgot anything. I almost lost my breath when he pulled a set of lovely, handmade pan pipes from a drawer and placed them quickly into the bag, wrapping them in several layers of clothes to keep them safe, all the while looking my way to see if I'd noticed. I stared hard out the window so he'd not know I was watching.
He was the musician in the orchard. Seeing the pipes I had no doubt and the knowledge knocked me speechless. He was the man whose music had moved me. The magical shadow who took me back to Earth and all I held dear. Cullen Vail, man of no emotion, had made the music that had brought me to tears and laughter.
But he didn't want anyone to know. He'd slipped into an orchard he'd thought deserted and only played his pipes in the middle of the night. Because he was the head of Security, a man of no emotion, an armed policeman capable of doing whatever it took to keep order?
I continued to pretend to look out the window at the city beyond as inside of me everything I'd known about Cullen Vail changed. Morphed. I stared at buildings and people but I was seeing the orchard at night and the outline of a mysterious man playing love songs.
He, of course, thought I was watching a slice of city life through his window. He closed his backpacks and joined me warily, afraid for a moment that I'd jump on him, but I didn't so together we looked at the scene beyond the window while I managed to avoid staring at the backpack with great effort. And I tried to think of something to say. Anything. "I hope you don't mess up your job because of moving to New Rochelle."
He shrugged. "No problem. I can live anywhere. I can keep in touch from every corner of the Destiny."
"Unlike what you told the captain."
"I told the captain the truth. My job is here, things would go better if I stayed in my own house."
"I hope you can manage."
"I can." His voice wasn't strident any longer. It was quiet, soft almost. Human.
I was close enough to see the dark hairs on the backs of his hands. I turned slightly to see the rest of him, this man who was suddenly an unknown quantity. It was an odd feeling. He was the same man as five minutes earlier and yet he was entirely different and all because of the pan pipes. He stood stiff as I made myself continue with more small talk, blurting out the only thing I could think of. "I'm sorry you have to watch me yourself. I'm sorry I'm such a bother."
His answering look sent a bolt of electricity through me head to toe and back again. "I'm just doing my job." He stared at me and licked his lips. Then, as if he couldn't stop himself, he took a step until we were almost touching and I could see that his eyes now, unlike other times, were all the colors of a living, breathing night. "And right now you are my job, Elle Olmstead. You. Just you."
If I touched him … just touched him … my insides would skitter in every direction and I'd come totally apart from the strain of trying to fit the two completely different people he'd become into one body. So I stayed still and stared at him from a distance of a few inches.
He cleared his throat again but his voice was still scratchy as if he was catching a cold. "We should get going."
We left his house and climbed onto his bike and set off with me behind him and my arms around his waist. I was glad for the layers of clothing separating our bodies.
It was soon apparent that he didn't like my apartment. "It's not like when you were doing whatever it was that you did to bring the crops back to health. Then I knew I wouldn't be here long." He sighed, ran his fingers through that black hair until it was actually tousled. Then he pointed at my couch with a look of pure hate. "But I refuse to sleep on that thing any longer than necessary."
I offered him my bed but he refused. Of course. So, when I crawled into my comfortable bed several hours later, I pictured him scrunched on my couch and I felt so guilty that I couldn't sleep because he was forced to watch out for me and that meant that he was sleeping on a couch a foot shorter than he was.
I wiggled a few times and deliberately thought about kittens and pink clouds, but I still couldn't sleep. I tried one side and then the other but that didn't help either. I checked the time on my comunit and groaned. The night was passing. In the morning Cullen would take one look at me and think that being in my own apartment wasn't helping and he'd insist we live in Center City. I didn't want that.
So I picked up a pillow and threw it across the room to vent a little frustration. It hit the wall with a thud as Braveheart scrambled as far from me as possible and mewed loudly. I silently apologized to Braveheart for scaring him but throwing the pillow had felt good.
"You okay in there?"
"I'm fine."
"I heard something."
"My pillow fell on the floor."
"Pillows don't make that kind of noise unless they are thrown."
I blew hair from my eyes. It was growing out, had grown a lot since I'd cut it and the brown dye had faded during my incarceration until I was now almost back to my original bright orange, insanely curly, long hair. I'd felt Cullen's gaze on it several times and once he'd said something about not needing a light at night. It was hard to pull fingers through those curls but I was so frustrated that I managed, yanking out a few hairs in the process. "Okay, it didn't fall. I threw it."
Silence, then, "I'm sorry that you wish I was elsewhere. But I'm staying."
Time for truth. Sort of. Not the whole truth but I did appreciate the fact that he was nearby. "I'm not angry with you."
He sighed so loudly that I heard it through the wall. "Liar." His baritone penetrated the walls easily. "As far as you are concerned, I'm the devil incarnate."
I padded across the bedroom and reassured Bravehart that I didn't hate him, then I retrieved my pillow and brought it back to my bed where I curled around it, telling myself I shouldn't feel the need to apologize to someone who'd throw me out of the airlock if the Captain so ordered. "You're not the devil." It was easy to hate Cullen Vail, head of Security. It was harder to hate someone who played pipes in the middle of the night and made music that filled my heart to bursting.
Not just harder, it was impossible.
The first thought I had the next morning as I uncoupled myself from that pillow and cuddled Braveheart until he butted me with his head and left my bedroom was that Cullen would make some lucky woman a wonderful housewife, a thought I'd had every morning during the time when I'd done my thing with the plants on the Destiny and come home exhausted each night. As on those mornings, today the table was set for two and I saw muffins and fruit on it. Breakfast smells wafted from the stove where sausage and eggs were being kept warm. I could use someone like Cullen around the house.
Cullen was eating his food with gusto, wide awake. He was a morning person. "I went for a walk already." He shoved a plate at me. "I ran into Wilkes Zander. We talked."
"About what?" I ignored the table, found a muffin and slathered it with jam, wandering the room as I ate while Cullen remained at the table with a full plate.
"He's getting us a different apartment. One with two bedrooms."
I couldn't argue with that even though I'd turned my apartment into a comfortable home. "Where is the new place?"
"Close. An apartment down the hall happens to be vacant."
I licked jam from my fingers. "When?"
"Today. The movers will do everything, we just have to get out of their way."
We looked at his backpacks in a corner. One was closed, the other open where he'd dug in it for clothes. Bravehear
t was checking them out, weaving around them. "We can go to the orchard while we wait. It's time to harvest apples." Kittens like to crawl inside things. I started after Braveheart before he slipped into Cullen's backpack.
Too late. He was in it and mewing happily. Cullen panicked. "Get out of there!" He moved to drag Braveheart out but the kitten was slippery. Instead of removing Braveheart, Cullen knocked the backpack over and the contents spilled onto the floor, including the pan pipes.
They skittered across the rug with Braveheart in pursuit and Cullen not far behind. "Hey, cat! Leave them alone!" He grabbed them and held them high while he stared suspiciously at Braveheart. "Leave my pipes alone."
"They are beautiful." He froze as I said the words because they meant that I saw the pipes, possibly the first person ever. He was white with some emotion I couldn't understand but I knew that I had to say something, had to get him moving again, had to get him past whatever fear he had of people knowing he was a talented musician so I blurted out the story of my aunt. "She made her own pipes. Did you make yours?"
"I won them in a poker game."
"I bet you play beautifully."
"I don't play. I liked the look of them, that's all, so I kept them."
We stared at one another. He dared me to argue farther and I knew he'd never acknowledge his ability. So I changed the topic. "It's going to be a busy day. There are apples in the orchard ready to be harvested and since we're joined at the hip, you're about to be educated on the finer points of picking fruit." I pointedly ignored the expression on his face. "Got a pair of heavy, cotton work gloves?"
Earth Legend Page 11