She felt how badly her composure had slipped when her face showed how stunned she was at that. “You bastard,” she said, through thinned white lips. “What do you know about what I’m drowning in?”
He returned, swiftly and compellingly, “If not self-pity, then tell me what.”
Comprehension dawned in her eyes and she nodded slowly once. Then she said, almost viciously, “Oh, no you don’t.” And she turned to stalk out of the room.
She was making for the kitchen, and a terrible, shaking impotence filled her as he followed closely on her heels. He whipped her around with one hand and said angrily, “What the hell did that mean?”
She stabbed the air between them with her forefinger, refusing to back down. “I know what you’re trying to do!” she accused, and he looked more surprised than ever. “You’re trying to goad me, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying to understand you!” he shouted, and the sound of his raised voice shocked her into silence. “Why in the world would I want to goad you?”
“I don’t know! Maybe you’re trying to get me to make some great confession that will cleanse my soul, but let me tell you, mister, it’s not going to work!”
“Aren’t you making a few assumptions here?” he snapped, his eyes sparkling black and hot diamond-blue. His face was etched with his own anger, and Devan blinked at the sight of those forceful, hardened features, feeling herself lose ground. “I never said I wanted to listen to any confession!”
“Then what are you doing here?” she shot back, and his eyes flickered. The back door opened then, and they both whirled round as if struck to see Helen, Janie and Gary trudge indoors.
“You’re back,” said Janie, looking Ryan up and down with frank curiosity.
Helen, also, was looking from Ryan to Devan, thoughtfully, and she noted the anger still flushed in both faces. “I take it,” she said calmly, “that we came back too early?”
Devan threw up her hands in defeat and said disgustedly, as though in answer to Helen’s question, “I can’t get rid of him!” Gary was sticking his tongue through the gap in his front teeth while he scratched at his ear. Devan jerked her arm out of Ryan’s loose grip and stormed out of the house.
Barefoot, she swept across the back yard and down a short path that led to a small clearing. There, feeling at least as if she’d managed to put some distance between herself and the scene she’d just had with Ryan Forrester, she threw herself down on the ground and stretched flat. Her heartbeat was racing wildly, and she put a hand to her chest in wonder. She hadn’t been so upset in what seemed like ages, and she was amazed at her own reaction to Ryan’s persistence.
She stared up to the leafy-laced blue sky, and while her eyes traced the overhead tangle of branches, she forced herself to take deep, calming lungfuls of air. White clouds scuttled across the visible blue. Slowly she began to relax. Everything seemed so crazy. Everything was so tangled, like the canopy of branches that was shading her from the sun.
Him. Where had he come from, why did he upset her so? Why did he have to stick his nose into her affairs, and thrust his vital, sincere, masculine presence on her? Why was she so affected by him? Was it just because he reminded her of one of the most painful times in her life? Her face broke into a frustrated sob before righting again. Why wouldn’t he leave her be?
The bright blue and green swaying branches above her blurred as she blinked several times, feeling how heavy her eyelids were. She was so exhausted. The one time she would have slept, and someone had to come along and play rock opera. In spite of herself, before her eyes closed one last time, she had to grin as she thought of the crashing strains of music, and her own panting shock. He had nerve, she’d give him that.
The wind rustled restlessly through the surrounding trees and foliage. It muffled the sounds of Ryan’s approach, and he stood at the edge of the clearing for several minutes, looking his fill of the sleeping, slim figure now curled into a foetal position. Devan had tucked her arm under her head in her sleep, and the wind stirred her hair, blowing it across her face. Her expression was softened, vulnerable, exhausted. Then, very quietly, Ryan retraced his steps and entered the kitchen, where Helen was preparing lunch for Janie and Gary.
“She’s asleep,” he said quietly, as he took the seat Helen offered to him.
“I’m not surprised,” said Helen, and she placed sandwiches in front of the two children, who fell on them like ravenous wolves. “Please join us for lunch. You’re more than welcome.”
He hesitated, met her frank and friendly eyes, and then smiled. “I’d love to, thank you.” He watched her for a few moments while she deftly made more sandwiches, and then he asked curiously, “Why aren’t you surprised, if I might ask? I mean, why would you have expected that reaction, as opposed to another?”
“It was rather inevitable, actually,” said Devan’s sister, as she sat down to the meal she had prepared. “You see, Devan doesn’t do a whole lot of eating or sleeping. She’s been creeping around this last year with about as much vitality as a wraith.”
His brows, light brown and sleek, rose in surprise at that. “Do you mean she isn’t always so volatile?”
“Oh, she used to be. That kind of personality takes a lot of energy to maintain, though, and after last night and this morning, she must be feeling pretty drained.” Helen turned her attention to her son, who was systematically punching his half eaten sandwich full of finger holes. “Gary, stop that.”
Ryan was mulling over what Helen had said while he ate the sandwiches she had prepared for him. “What caused such a change in her?” he asked then.
Helen just smiled gently. “I don’t really think I’m in the position to be talking of Devan’s private life without her consent, do you, Mr. Forrester?”
After a moment, he smiled back and said, “Call me Ryan.”
“Yah!”
The bloodcurdling yell resounded through the forest and brought Devan to wakefulness with a shriek of her own. Then, from nowhere, a body landed heavily on her unprotected stomach, and she felt the breath go out of her with a whuff! Her glazed eyes swivelled wildly to stare at Gary’s triumphant, fierce expression. He stuck his grubby hand into her wind-tangled hair and then used a knobby stick to saw at it, and he leaped away before Devan had time to gather her wits about her.
“I got your scalp!” he shouted, gleefully bloodthirsty. She sat dazedly, and then thrust herself to her feet. He danced just beyond her reach.
“You!” she panted, fulminatingly.
“Yah, yah! I got your scalp!”
She started to march his way, slow and determined. He began to edge back as she looked at his empty, clenched fist and said grimly, “Give it back.”
He laughed with delight, a quicksilver, tow-headed urchin with pure devilry looking out of his eyes. “No way!” he shouted, waving his fist. “It’s mine! Yah, got your scalp, got your scalp! You’re a bald egg!”
Devan had to grin herself, and she said chillingly between her teeth in response, “And you are one dead kid.” His eyes grew wide with sparkling apprehension, and then he whirled and ran.
She pelted after his fleet figure as best she could in her bare feet, and the two raced across the lawn. He was screaming the whole way, and she was yelling a fierce reply, but couldn’t seem to catch up with him, and then he smashed through the back screen door and it slammed shut behind him.
Devan hit it full tilt and stopped with a painful, abrupt grunt. Gary was just on the other side, a shadowy figure out of the sunlight. She tried the handle of the door to make sure, and there was no doubt about it; he had definitely locked her out. “Gary,” she said, with a dangerous sweetness. “You are cheating. Now, unlock the door.”
“Yah, got your scalp!”
“You are a repulsive little monster who doesn’t play fair,” she said calmly, which didn’t bother him in the slightest. “And I quit if you are going to act like this. Now, open the door so I can come inside.”
Splash!
> A cascade of water exploded on Devan’s head and shoulders, and she stood in utter, complete, unbreathing immobility for three full seconds, her eyes screwed tightly shut in reflex, her shoulders hunched and her mouth open. Then her head hung, sagging from her neck in shock. She raised dripping hands and rubbed at her eyes, and then lifted her head again to peer at the upper-storey window. They had indeed set a brilliant trap, those ruthless two. Janie was hanging out, her carrot head shaking with merriment, the plastic bucket dangling from one slim freckled hand.
She could hear Gary whooping his own satisfaction, and then light footsteps clicked across the kitchen floor and Helen unlocked the screen door to peer up calmly at her daughter. By then Devan was breathing again, and she mopped her streaming hair off her face to say bitterly, “You, madam, did not give birth to humans. You spawned devils.”
Her sister didn’t turn a hair at this accusation. “You have only yourself to blame,” she suggested reasonably, “since they learnt it from you.”
Devan squinted up again at the imp above her. She couldn’t hold her own laughter back and was giggling as insanely as either of the two children. She pointed to Janie and warned darkly, “You realise, of course, that I’m going to get both of you for this.”
But threats couldn’t cloud Janie’s victory as she was now well removed from Devan’s reach, so she stuck out her tongue impudently before her head abruptly disappeared. Now free to enter, Devan stepped into the house while mopping at her brow with the soaking sleeve of her sweater. She would have to go upstairs to change, but was in no hurry as she was quite sure that both her niece and nephew would be well out of range by now. She would get no retaliation easily on that pair.
Her eyes were getting used to the darker interior of the house just at the same time as she was realising from whom a low, attractive masculine laugh was emanating. She glanced over to the table and involuntarily grinned as she took in Ryan, sitting with his face buried in one huge hand while his wide shoulders shook.
“I might have known you’d enjoy that,” she said drily, without heat.
His hand lowered and his brilliant laughing eyes met hers. Her own were dancing with amusement, and her expression was open and unguarded for the first time since he’d met her face to face. But then a kind of shock bolted though her at the sight of him, his hard face vivid, alight, his long body curled in indolent ease at the table. He must have been feeling something quite similar, for his eyes widened at her expression, and the laughter was dying from his face to leave him looking rather thoughtful.
She jerked through the room. “I’d better change,” she said shortly, and she raced up the stairs.
In the privacy of her room, she savagely towelled her hair dry and then combed it, and she changed into dry jeans and a sweater. She briefly thought about putting on socks and shoes but couldn’t find a good reason to, so she didn’t. She was beginning to feel distinctly shaky, so she headed down for the kitchen again, and made straight for the worktop to make a full pot of coffee; she stopped stock still when she saw no coffee maker sitting in the accustomed place. After a moment, so full of outrage and something else, something strange at this continual, damnable interfering, she said very softly, “All right. Where is it?”
She swivelled on her bare heel to glare at both Helen and Ryan. Helen gave a sigh. Ryan said courteously, “I locked it in my car boot, along with the coffee grounds, the tea, and the liquor.” A tidal wave of fury swamped her with such intensity, she barely held back the impulse to raise her arm and strike him. Their eyes met, and she could see that he had expected no less, and was waiting for it. He hadn’t so much as flinched.
She turned instead to her sister and spat, “How could you?”
Helen looked at the table, and sighed. “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” she said.
“You could have stopped him.” The words were measured, spaced for emphasis.
Her sister looked her full in the eyes then and said gently, “I know. But I happen to think he’s right.” Her eyes went to Ryan, then back to Devan’s, and she said quietly, “Excuse me.”
Devan listened to her leave, feeling utterly deserted, and then she turned to her persecutor. “You,” she said with great feeling, “are going to be the death of me, yet. Do you really expect me to put up with this?”
“Yes,” he said simply, with a singularly sweet smile on his determined, masculine features. Shock upon shock, and she was swamped with something else, a sensory overload, this stranger having wrung her through the emotional wringer in a night and a day. She stood there quietly, no less angry for her quietness, which was a manifestation of her busy thinking. He was regarding her with great interest. In the light of day, his light blue-grey eyes were striking against his deep tan. He was asking, while watching her with those alert eyes, “This morning, was there something you might have had to tell me, had I goaded you? Is there something more to this—problem than a mere block—all right, burn-out, or whatever the hell you’d like to call it?”
She was suddenly tired again, and shaking with it. She put down her head to rub at her forehead with one of her long, slim hands. “It won’t work,” she said softly. “Whatever method you choose to use, it’s not going to work.” All emotion had drained away, all of the bright amusement, friendliness, anger, all of the transient vividness that had brought to life her slim figure, her brown eyes, that expressive, delicately etched face, which now showed nothing but a dull certainty.
“What won’t work?” he asked her, very quietly. A bird swooped by just outside the door, warbling. He watched ever on with those light, assessing eyes. For the first time, her concept of him fully meshed together; she could see his keen, analytical mind behind those eyes. Now she knew him.
“You think you’re going to patch my leaky boat and get me to sail again,” she said calmly. She moved to the chair opposite him and sat down. “You think that if you can mop me up, put me together again, and sit me down in front of a typewriter, everything is going to be peachy keen. Sunshine and roses. I’ll belt out a bestseller in a frenzied four weeks, and your firm will ooze good will and the milk of human kindness all the way to the bank.”
“Actually,” he said, standing and going over to the refrigerator and opening it to peer inside at the contents. She watched him with a dull resentment. Their refrigerator, their food. He dragged out eggs and butter and milk, continuing, “When I came, I was working and getting paid to have a meeting with you. Last night I called the office and took a leave of absence. Where are the skillets? I was on company time, yesterday. Today, I’m on my own.” Lightning electric glance at her and a slow smile, creasing his lean cheeks and making her stare. He told her, gently, “They never would have countenanced paying me for any length of time to nurse a writer along, not even you, I’m afraid. One of my assistants would have been delegated that job.”
If she hadn’t been sitting, she would have then, and hard. Her eyes, already showing evidence of the many shocks he had piled on her that day, widened even further, huge pools of darkness, pools that a person could drown in. “You’re on your own time?” she repeated in a whisper, looking over the food on the worktop, his leaning, nonchalant figure, those wide shoulders angled over lean hips, and the long, outstretched legs. “But then—why are you doing this?”
It was a moment before he spoke, and when he did, he spoke straight from himself, with no pretension, no wavering of his gaze, no prevarication. “Because in these last three years, I’ve seen in both your letters and your stories a passionate brilliance. I’ve seen your writing develop from a raw talent to eloquent mastery. Because of that, because I know your past work and your potential, I can’t bear to see you as you are now, lifeless, hopeless, helpless. I—guess I wouldn’t be in the business at all, if I didn’t care to some extent to begin with.”
Life had thrown her some cruel twists in the past few years, but she rather thought this was one of the worst. All of the conviction and hope and drive she now lacked,
like a gaping rent in her personality, she saw in him as he stood before her. He really believed, deeply, truly believed, that somehow there had to be a way to rectify her present dilemma. She closed her eyes against it, her mouth a tragic bow of pain, and heard him move suddenly.
“By the way, you never did tell me where the skillets are,” he said conversationally, opening and shutting cupboards with a bang.
“What will it take to get rid of you?” she said expressionlessly, opening her eyes again to watch him move around the kitchen in concise movements. “If I were to sit down at my typewriter right now and prove to you just how completely it’s gone, would that satisfy you? Will that get you to stop tormenting me?”
He stopped and turned round, in his eyes compassion, gentleness, regret, but his tone was brisk and businesslike. “Of course not, don’t be silly,” he replied, turning back to crack eggs into the skillet he had found. “Today you are going to feel lousy. You are going to be an absolute wreck after you eat this meal I’m fixing you. I shouldn’t be surprised if you take to your bed with a bottle of aspirin. Helen tells me you’re quite a caffeine addict, and doing without coffee like you’re going to will give you one mother of a headache. In fact, you’re probably going to be worse than useless for the next two or three days.”
“Helen,” said she, with difficulty, “has a lot to answer for.”
“Helen,” said Ryan firmly, “can’t handle you, and you know it. That’s why she’s invited me to stay here for a few weeks.”
Devan’s head fell to the table at that last shocker. After a few moments, she said, the threat leaden, “You have my personal property in the back of your car. There’s nothing stopping me from calling the police and having you arrested once and for all.”
He sounded singularly unconcerned. “I know it. But you must know me a little now that we’ve met and talked. I won’t give up. I would be back.” He walked to the table and set a plate of fragrant, steaming eggs in front of her. “Here, eat this. When you’re no longer dependent on the caffeine, I’ll bring your coffee maker back in. Then we’ll see whether you are in any kind of shape for a serious writing attempt, and take it from there, all right?”
Rose-Coloured Love Page 4