Through Eyes of Love

by Pamela Browning

  At least he hadn't hooked his thumbs under his belt and tilted his pelvis forward in that self-conscious macho swagger of a man on the make. John Howard was not such a man—of that she was certain. His eyes were too sincere, and he never tried to mask that sincerity.

  "May I use your phone? I think I'd better report it right away. I don't trust that hanging wire." His eyes on her face were friendly, and he seemed unknowingly surrounded by an electromagnetic field so highly charged that it received as much energy as it sent.

  Determined to let him know that she was not about to respond to his sexually oriented signals, she picked her way gingerly toward him, clutching her skirt to her body. "I don't have one," she said. "I'm afraid I can't help you."

  John found himself captivated by the tinselly tone of her voice and the whispery quality underlying it. "No phone?" His expression was incredulous. "'Way up here on the mountain?"

  "I'm used to it," she said. "It's no big deal. Now if you'll excuse me?" She brushed past him, heading for the house.

  He refused to be squelched. "Cassie, wait," he said, and his hand on her arm sent a shiver through her. "Go with me to town. I need to check with the phone company and find out what's going on. We could... we could have lunch together."

  Her startled eyes found his. "I'm busy," she told him. "I don't often lunch in town."

  "After eating one of the Hungry Cafe's greasy burgers, I understand why. Coleslaw on a hamburger?" He made a face.

  She snickered, and he felt a sense of satisfaction. At least she was interacting for a change.

  "Try the barbecue," she said. "It's fantastic. Sauce made out of vinegar with hot pepper."

  "That's why it's absolutely necessary for you to go with me," he raced on, talking fast. "It's your neighborly duty to help me find a decent meal around here. And anyway, why shouldn't you be treated to lunch once in a while?" He addressed the loneliness in her eyes.

  "I—I can't," she said, ducking her head and fleeing.

  He followed her. "Cassie, wait!" he called in exasperation. He wanted her company, and this wasn't a ruse. His phone really was out of order and there really was a wire hanging down an outside wall of his cabin.

  But by the time he reached her door, she'd shut it. Slam, right in his face. Nonplussed, he took two steps backward and cursed under his breath. She didn't reopen the door, and he heard no sound on the other side. No one had ever slammed a door in his face. Who the hell did she think she was?

  He resisted the impulse to plant a well-aimed kick right in the center of the door and stalked furiously back through the forest to his own cabin, a small three-room place shingled in gray bark. It was adequate but nothing special after the standard of living to which John was accustomed; the bathroom ceiling leaked and the mattress was lumpy. He'd only signed the lease because the property abutted hers, and its discomforts suddenly seemed like a lot to put up with when she wouldn't even talk to him.

  Easy, man. Her friend Morgana tried to warn you, didn't she? Cassie wants nothing to do with you, and you knew it before you brashly insinuated yourself into this situation. So take it easy, play it cool. There's plenty of time before you have to leave. They wouldn't be looking for him at the office until September. Thanks to competent managers, he could handle the details of running AirBridges Cargo Transport by telephone and woefully inadequate dial-up internet. Once the telephone worked, that is.

  John cooled off before he got in his rented Explorer and headed down the winding road toward town. He wondered what he could have done to convince Cassie to join him. He knew that there was a tragedy in her past but not what troubled her so deeply that she'd chosen to retreat to this mountain. It amazed him that she worked so hard in that garden of hers and put herself at the disposal of people who thought nothing of showing up to ask for her remedies day and night.

  He'd heard the slamming of car doors and hollered good-byes at all hours. Cassie offered remedies for everything from morning sickness to hangnails. She gave unstintingly of herself to others; why would she give none of herself to him?

  Riding in the car gave him a chance to think about Cassie undistracted, but he braked at a particularly rough patch of road. The mountain blacktop was treacherous, with curves and switchbacks. Where it leveled out for the first time, he had to swerve sharply when a chicken skittered across the road with a child in full pursuit. The child—boy or girl, he couldn't tell—captured the chicken and stood staring after him as he sped past, feathers fluttering in his exhaust.

  The kid must belong to the tumbledown house on the right, thought John, consulting his rearview mirror for one more glance. The windows of the shack were broken and mended with plastic film, and the door hung lopsided on its hinges. The people who lived there were Cassie's nearest neighbors besides him.

  Which made him wonder again for the eleven-hundredth time: What in the world was a classy lady like Cassie Muldoon doing on Flat Top Mountain?

  Cassie was such a puzzling entity that on the spur of the moment, John decided to do some snooping around Scot's Cove. The logical place to start was with Ned Church, his landlord and the prosperous proprietor of the town's gas station and minimarket.

  "Say, Ned," John said when he went inside to pay for gas. "I've been seeing a lot more traffic on Flat Top Mountain than I'd expected. What's going on up there?"

  "Oh," Ned said, his mouth working a wad of tobacco, "that's just folks going to see Cassie Muldoon. She gives 'em medicines she makes from herbs. Her grandma used to do the same thing years ago."

  "She pretty friendly? Easy to get to know?"

  A spark lit Ned Church's eyes. "What you got in mind?"

  John laughed, man to man. "I thought I might ask her to go to dinner with me. It gets lonely up on the mountain."

  Ned Church chuckled before becoming serious. "Cassie's not the friendly type, if you know what I mean. Doesn't see anyone much except the people who stop by for her remedies. I heard she gets along with the oldest Ott girls okay. One of them works in her garden, the other runs that roadside stand of hers. But Cassie, she keeps to herself. Don't think you'll get anywhere." Ned stepped to the door and spat a brown bullet of tobacco juice toward the highway.

  "You know her long?"

  "Cassie used to visit her grandma in the summers. She came back a couple years ago, and she's been living there since. I get a few words out of her when she comes into town, which isn't often. No, Cassie's kind of a hermit."

  "Mmm," said John, thoughtfully. Unfortunately, he hadn't learned much that he didn't already know.

  Reaching Cassie Muldoon was proving to be a difficult task indeed, but for him, there was no turning back.

  He'd crossed the continent to find her, and he wasn't ready to quit.

  Chapter 3

  At the very moment that John was prodding information out of Ned Church, Cassie was lying across her bed crying her eyes out.

  Why, why had she shut the door in his face? John Howard had only meant to be nice to her. Why couldn't she have refused him more graciously, why had she had to run?

  Oh, but he was too much. Too worldly. Too outgoing, too likable. Too sexy by far. He was the kind who was proud of himself, of who he was, and he wanted others to approve of him as much as he approved of himself.

  That was part of the trouble. They weren't anything alike.

  Blotting her eyes with the ruffle of the embroidered pillow sham, she picked herself up. Bertrand rambled past and brushed her ankle, which was dangling off the edge of the bed.

  "Oh, Bertrand, there's no end to the guilt." Why was it in her nature to feel guilty about everything? Had she been that way before?

  "I don't think so," she said out loud. She had been carefree and ambitious and loving and... but what was the use? She was a different person now.

  She got up—or, more accurately, down—from the tall old-fashioned brass bed, Gran's bed, and straightened the coverlet with its embroidered bluebirds of happiness.

  Gran's bed was one of her fa
vorite things about this house. With its gleaming spirals and curlicues culminating in four massive bedposts that flared at the tops like the ends of tubas, it was the most elaborate brass bed she'd ever seen. Cassie remembered arriving on Flat Top Mountain one summer from the small Piedmont North Carolina town where she'd lived as a child. It must have been shortly after the Fourth of July celebration when the big brass band marched down Main Street. Since Cassie had been only three or four at the time, she'd thought Gran was calling her bed a "brass band." To the tiny Cassie, awestruck at a piece of furniture the likes of which she'd never seen before, the bed had in fact looked like a whole brass band. She'd fully expected loud oompahs to come crashing from the bedposts.

  She smiled at the memories. Gran's brass bed. How she wished there'd been time to show it to Rory. He would have loved it.

  Bertrand scuttled into the closet and reappeared with a pair of panty hose in his mouth. One nylon foot was caught on something in the closet. He tugged at the nylon until it ripped.

  "Bertrand," she said reprovingly. It was her last pair.

  The skunk laid the shredded hose at her feet and licked her bare toe. She bent over and scratched him behind the ear.

  "Trying to make it up to me, are you?" she said as she smiled, but her words gave her pause.

  "As maybe I can make it up to John," she murmured thoughtfully as Bertrand skidded around the room, his toenails clicking on the plank floor.

  Tigger emerged from under the bed and interrupted her thought processes. Yawning, the big marmalade cat stretched to his full length before hopping on the bed and starting to wash his face with one tiger-striped paw. Tigger ignored the cavorting skunk, his usual practice. Skunks and other such creatures were below his lofty dignity.

  Cassie's behavior toward John had been inexcusable. She was ashamed of the way she'd acted; she could have been more polite.

  "It was the way he looked," she explained to the animals. Tigger blinked up at her, then switched his attention and his tongue to one of his elegant rear legs. At least he didn't pass judgment on her. Cassie was grateful for that.

  She chattered to Tigger, who jumped down and followed her to the kitchen, where she consulted the freezer. "What do you think, Tigger? I've got two or three casseroles of frozen shrimp Newburg. I could take one to John as a peace offering."

  Tigger blinked inscrutably and jumped on the kitchen counter, which was his habit when he wanted attention. Absently Cassie shooed Tigger away. She sat down with him on the floor, scratching him under his chin until he rewarded her with a happy, guttural purr.

  "I'll drop the casserole on John's doorstep with an apologetic note, knock on the door and run," she said, thinking out loud. Tigger opened one eye briefly, declining to comment as long as Cassie continued to scratch.

  What Cassie failed to realize was that the ploy she had in mind wouldn't work with a man like John Howard.

  * * *

  A flutter of movement in the woods caught John's eye as he inexpertly fumbled with the Nikon. The damned thing was beyond him, with its apertures and its f/stops and all manner of lenses long and short. For a moment he watched to see if deer were coming close to the house, but he saw nothing. Not that he would have wanted to take pictures; he was sick of the fiction that he was a photographer.

  He wished he'd told Cassie he was a biologist. There must be a number of things a biologist could do on Flat Top Mountain. Classify plants or something—yeah, that would be good. Crawl around peering at leaves with a magnifying glass. That he could handle.

  He set the camera aside and moved closer to the window. Yes, there was something in the woods, and he was amazed to see that it was Cassie. Despite the limp, she moved like a wood nymph from the shadows of the forest into the soft lemon-yellow sunset of the clearing. Her hair swirled up and out and around her, a crisp frame for a face that looked tense but determined. With a certain detachment and a raised eyebrow, he waited until she set the basket she carried on his doorstep. Then he yanked the door open.

  She stared openmouthed.

  "Come in," he said, all courtesy.

  "I—" She whirled to go.

  He was too quick for her. He was down the steps in less than a second, his strong hand circling her wrist.

  "Let me go!" she said, outraged.

  "Not until you explain why you're creeping through the woods so quietly, and what's in the basket. What are you, Little Red Riding Hood?"

  She glared at him. "Yes, and you must be the wolf."

  "Grandma, what sharp claws you have," he said. He thought he saw the hint of a smile.

  She nodded toward the basket. "I left you that," she said grudgingly.

  "I believe you expect me to ask why." He waited expectantly.

  "I'm sorry for this morning?" She tipped her head, which sent a ripple through her hair. He found her immensely appealing in that moment. She looked like a little girl who had been caught doing something wrong.

  With a skeptical look, he released her wrist and picked up the basket, which he now saw contained a casserole, salad greens, and a loaf of bread neatly wrapped in a cloth napkin. An envelope addressed to him was taped to the casserole lid.

  She stood watching, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

  He unfolded the note and read it. The words were simple and to the point, apologizing for closing the door in his face. That was all, except for instructions about heating the shrimp Newburg.

  "You're so contrite that you'll stay to eat dinner with me. Besides, you cheated me out of lunch."

  "I didn't..." she began, then thought better of it. She detected a curl of amusement at the corners of his mouth, and it was hard to resist.

  He grinned at her. "So come in and help me figure out how the gas stove works."

  Cassie wasn't sure she wanted to do this, but she found herself replying anyway. "Mine's electric. I won't be much help."

  "That's okay. You can stand around and hand me matches. The pilot light's gone out."

  He started into the house with the food. She felt herself exhale, though she hadn't realized she was holding her breath. She had the feeling that she should go while the going was good, but at the moment, she was inordinately curious about how he lived.

  She followed him inside and glanced around. His place was small and simply furnished. Everything was neat and clean, with a laptop computer open on a desk in the corner of the living room. Camera lens cases occupied most of the coffee table, and through the bedroom door, she spotted a double bed, neatly made.

  The kitchen was basic, with the oldest stove Cassie had ever seen. John struck a match. His hands were big and sinewy and capable, with long fingers and squared-off fingernails. She let her eyes drift up his arms to his shoulders, so square and so masculine, and down to his chest. Her unobserved study ended when the pilot light lit with a whoosh!

  "That was easier than I expected," he said in relief. He set the oven temperature and turned to her.

  "While the oven preheats, I have a bottle of—" he took a bottle from the refrigerator—"well, it's nothing special. Ordinary Chablis, available in any supermarket. Scot's Cove doesn't have much of a wine selection, does it?"

  "Maybe that's why Grandma used to make scuppernong wine. When I was twelve, I got tipsy on it."

  He laughed. "You can tell me that tale on the porch while we watch the sun go down. Okay?"

  "All right," she said. His attraction to her was obvious, but she didn't want to encourage it. Still, she was beginning to enjoy this. John wasn't bad company.

  He slid the casserole in the oven and handed her a glass of wine. On the porch, he pulled up two chairs. They didn't talk as they sat in the deepening twilight inhaling the fragrance of honeysuckle from the woods. In the distance a small plane glided soundlessly, too far away for them to hear the sound of the engine. Cassie averted her eyes from it and focused on a bumblebee circling a rosebush. She saw few airplanes up here, which was a blessing.

  "So what happened after you im
bibed too much of Grandma's wine?" He leaned forward with interest. It had been a long time since anyone had paid her so much attention, and her shyness, if that's what you'd call it, seemed to dissolve.

  "She sat down and drank a glass with me. Then she told me if she ever caught me doing it again, I would be sorry I'd ever been born. From the way my head hurt the morning after, I didn't care to repeat the experience." She smiled at the memory. Her grandmother had not only been a skilled healer, she'd also understood the psychology of the pre-adolescent.

  "My dad did something similar. He caught me lighting a cigar in the garage. He made me smoke it to the end, and I threw up all over my bike. Washing the bike afterward was one of our major father-son bonding moments."

  Cassie smiled and leaned her head against the chair back. It was hard to imagine John as a kid. She wondered if they'd have liked each other.

  The sun slipped down, shooting a golden aureole up from the peak of the mountain. The wine sent relaxing signals to her elbows, her knees, her fingers, her eyelids. Her lips.

  After a time John said, "I'm going to check on the casserole."

  She nodded. "Need some help?"

  "Maybe later. Another glass of wine?"

  She shook her head. While he was gone, she rubbed a finger curiously against her bottom lip. The flesh was slightly numb, the way it felt when she had just come home from the dentist's office after having a tooth filled.

  John stepped out the door as Cassie was rubbing her finger across her lip. Her mouth had relaxed, and her face in the glow of the sunset was stunning in its irregularity. He wished he really were a photographer. He would like to have a photograph of her, of each half of her face flip-flopped so that he could see what she would look like if her whole face was the same. Which side would he like best? The left or the right? They were both equally beautiful.

  She dropped her finger away from her mouth and shot him a guilty look. Why guilty? Was she embarrassed that he had caught her in the act of doing something so sensual? He longed to touch her lips with his own finger. But no, he reminded himself. His attraction to her wasn't sexual. At least, it hadn't been.