Lover in the Rough

by Lowell, Elizabeth

  She hadn’t wanted to go back to the Objet d’Art. He hadn’t wanted to take her. Nor had she seen him that night. She had had clients coming in to view a portion of Jeremy’s collection. As the clients had flown in from Egypt just for the appointment, she could hardly refuse to see them. But she had wanted to. They had stayed until two A.M., too late for her to call Chance at his hotel. But she had wanted to. Since she had opened the shop at nine there had been wall-to-wall collectors, guards, and nervous insurance agents. There hadn’t been any time or privacy to call Chance.

  By four o’clock it had become obvious to Reba that the Objet d’Art was too small to contain the interest Jeremy’s collection had aroused. She had neither the time nor the energy to oversee an endless stream of collectors, or to answer their endless questions, endlessly repeated.

  She had cleared out the last client at four and spent the next hour making arrangements to show Jeremy’s collection in a few weeks at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado. There would be a day of viewing the collection, then dinner, an evening auction and a midnight ball. Jeremy would have approved. He had loved combining champagne sophistication with the primal competitiveness of collectors bent on owning the same rare objet.

  Smiling softly, Reba ran her fingertips over the Tiger God. Even with her eyes closed she could visualize the powerful lines of the sculpture. It wasn’t an idealized or incredible figure of a man, a Hercules chiseled out of stone. It was simply very male, with solid shoulders and narrow hips, well-muscled arms and powerful legs, masculine ease and assurance in every line. The face was strong rather than handsome, compelling rather than perfect.

  If the Tiger God could talk, she wondered, would he have a deep voice with a suggestion of a drawl?

  “May I?” drawled a deep voice.

  Reba’s eyes flew open and she made a startled sound. Chance Walker was standing in front of her, his hand held out to the statue. Wordlessly, she gave him the Tiger God. He turned the statue over slowly, admiring the fine specimen of tiger’s-eye and the artistry of the figure itself. His brown fingers moved over the stone’s satin surface, delicately following the lines of stone and sculpture.

  “Extraordinary,” he said quietly, giving the statue back to Reba. “I’ve never seen a finer specimen. Not a fracture, not a displacement, not a single flaw. A mineral worthy of the artist who worked it.”

  “It was part of Jeremy’s collection,” Reba said as she set the statue in its niche behind her desk. She gave the tiger’s-eye a final stroke before she turned back to Chance.

  “I’m glad he’s only stone,” Chance said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the sculpture were alive, he’d be hard to take out in the desert and lose.” Chance looked at the tiger’s-eye sculpture, smiling slightly. “He’d be a mean one to tangle with. He’d be fair, though. No ambush. He wouldn’t have to. He’s strong and he knows it. He’d go hunting the devil himself with that solid gold bow.” Chance looked back at Reba. “Will this be for sale?”

  She shook her head. “The will gave me two choices from Jeremy’s collection. The Tiger God is mine.”

  “Tiger God,” Chance said softly. “It suits him. You named him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Delicately, Chance’s fingertips traced from Reba’s eyebrow to her chin. “Never thought I’d be jealous of a damned stone,” he said, his voice almost harsh.

  “Don’t be,” she said softly, caught by the changing density of silver and green in his eyes. “I chose the statue and the name after Death Valley.”

  She felt the change in him as he understood what she was saying. His eyes closed and his fingers tightened on the curve of her chin. When he looked at her again, she forgot to breathe. His eyes focused on her with an intensity that was almost tangible.

  “Chaton,” he said, bending to kiss her. “We have to talk. There’s something I have to—”

  Tim walked into the office, talking as he came. “Boss, old man Mercer says—Oops. Sorry. Your door was open.” He turned to go.

  Chance muttered a pungent word before he smiled sardonically and stepped aside. Reba silently seconded Chance’s muttering before she turned to Tim.

  “It’s all right,” she said, her tone denying her polite words. Reba heard her voice and threw up her hands. “It’s all right even though it isn’t.”

  Tim smiled. “Umm, yeah, I get what you mean.” He held out his hand. Nestled in his palm was a tiny, shocking pink Chinese tear bottle. “Mercer thinks our price is too high.”

  Chance looked at the crystal bottle, then at Reba.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  He plucked the bottle off Tim’s palm. After testing that the bottle’s tiny stopper was securely in place, Chance adjusted the high-intensity light on Reba’s desk so that the beam was behind the crystal bottle. A fine network of fractures glittered through, scattering and refracting light until the bottle glowed with a hot pink radiance that was characteristic of the mineral from which it had been carved.

  “Pala tourmaline,” Chance said, turning the bottle slowly, letting the beam illuminate each curve of the objet. “Beautiful specimen. Single piece of mineral. Just enough fracturing to ensure its legitimacy, not enough to endanger the integrity of the bottle itself. The color is superb. There’s no other rubellite—pink tourmaline—in the world to equal that found in north San Diego County. Absolutely unique.”

  Chance picked up a thick magnifying glass from Reba’s desk and resumed his informal appraisal of the brilliant crystal bottle in his palm.

  “I don’t know enough about Chinese carving techniques to date the bottle exactly. Latter part of the nineteenth century, most likely. The Empress Dowager of China had an obsession for Pala’s tourmaline. The entire output of Pala’s mines went to her. She had a world monopoly on pink tourmaline. When she died in 1908, the market for Pala tourmaline collapsed.”

  Chance bent and examined the carving on the bottle. “Nicely done,” he continued. “Original stopper, sharp edges on the carved design, symmetrical and elegant, not shopworn. Whoever owned this tear bottle took care of it. The others I’ve seen were all dulled by handling, chipped, or repaired in some way. This is the clearest pink I’ve seen, too.”

  Silently, Reba held out the appraisal sheet she had finished on the pink tourmaline tear bottle the day before. He scanned the sheet quickly.

  “A fair price,” said Chance. He smiled lazily as he handed the bottle back to Tim. “If your client doesn’t want it, I know a collector in Australia who’s almost as obsessed with pink as the Dowager was. Red Day will meet your price and thank you for the chance.”

  Tim grinned. “You’ve made my day. Mercer is a wealthy, loud-mouthed pain in the butt.” Tim left, pointedly shutting the door behind him.

  “My wonderful mine,” Reba said, her tone inviting Chance to share the joke on herself, “isn’t far from the mine that gave us this specimen. Same geography. Same geology. Not enough gem-quality pink tourmaline to fill a baby’s fist. All the Farrall women ever got out of the China Queen was hard work and danger for their men, and just enough crystals to give each succeeding generation tourmaline fever.”

  Chance’s expression changed subtly. His features sharpened, emphasizing the masculine angles of his face and the blunt strength of his chin. “Did you ever get tourmaline fever?” he asked with a lightness that belied the tension of his body.

  “Sure. I didn’t do anything about it, though. I haven’t been to the mine since Mother tried to open it when I was a kid. She’d saved enough money to pay for shoring up the entrance of the mine. The money ran out before she found anything more than a few crystals so badly fractured that they came apart in her hand. Junk.”

  “What about you? Have you tried shoring up the China Queen?”

  “I thought about it,” Reba admitted. “The dreams I had … mounds of tourmaline glittering, piles of never-melting ice crystals in shades of pink and green.” She laughed quietly at herself. “Th
e reality was a bit less spectacular. As soon as I finished paying for my divorce and reclaiming my maiden name, I had someone estimate the cost of making the China Queen safe to work in. More than a hundred thousand dollars, and that was only if no blasting was ever done. To make the mine safe for blasting would cost two or three times as much.”

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t find a bank that would lend a thousand dollars to me, much less a hundred times that much. Not that I blame the banks. What sane person would hand over that much money to a starry-eyed young woman with a half-interest in a mine that never produced more than a few hundred dollars worth of Pala tourmaline?”

  “Then sell the Queen,” said Chance.

  Reba looked up, caught by the intensity of his voice. “It would be like selling a dream. Whatever money I got wouldn’t be worth what I lost.” She smiled crookedly. “I know it’s silly but that’s how I feel about the China Queen.”

  “Even though you haven’t seen the mine since you were a kid?”

  “Yes.” Reba hesitated, choosing words carefully, trying to make Chance understand why a useless mine was more important to her than it should be. “It’s all I have left of my childhood. I have no family, not really. I don’t even know my father’s name. Mother and I have gone very different ways. I never saw my grandparents; they threw Mother out before I was born. My mother’s twin sister lives in Australia, somewhere in the Outback. I’ve never seen her. She and mother never write. Not even a postcard at Christmas. There’s a girl my age, my aunt’s daughter. Sylvie. That’s it so far as I know. My family.”

  Reba’s smile slipped. She looked at her hands. “That and half of an abandoned mine is my heritage. I may never find a single pink crystal in the China Queen, but half of her belongs to me. One hundred acres outright, plus mineral rights to several square miles.” She looked away from her tightly laced fingers. “It’s beautiful country,” she said softly. “Broken and wild, hot in the summer and green velvet in the winter. Someday I’ll build a house there. Until then it’s enough just to know the land is there, waiting for me. Homecoming.”

  Reba looked up and saw Chance’s eyes narrow as he studied her. His expression was a mixture of anger and sadness and frustration. “You’ll never sell it.”

  “No.” Then, quickly, “It’s not as crazy as it sounds, Chance. The taxes on the mine are almost nothing. And … and I can camp there whenever I want.”

  “Do you?” he demanded.

  “Camp there? No,” she admitted. “I drove out to the mine turnoff once after my divorce. The mine road looked awful. I was afraid to try it alone. I suppose it would have been all right.” She thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure it would be fine. I’ll do it, soon.”

  “Not alone,” he said harshly. “It’s dangerous.”

  “How do you know?”

  Chance hesitated. “You’d be tempted to go into the mine. Besides, any area that isolated will always be dangerous for a woman alone. But with a man who knows rough country …” He smiled suddenly, transforming his face. “Want to go camping?”

  Reba’s eyes lit with sudden excitement. With Chance along she wouldn’t be jumping at every sound, every shadow, afraid even to sit in the sun and close her eyes. The thought of sharing the emptiness and silence of the rugged land with him was intoxicating. She smiled up at her Tiger God like a child on Christmas morning.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Take me camping.”

  “For a smile like that, chaton, I’d take you anywhere on earth.”

  His lips were as warm and gentle as sunlight. She sighed his name, letting her hands slide up his arms and neck as his tongue teased the corners of her smile. She savored the silky-rough textures of his hair between her fingers, his male scent and taste filling her senses. She felt the sudden tension of his body as she shared the kiss, her tongue shy and warm against his.

  The phone rang. They ignored it.

  The intercom buzzed.

  “Damn!” flared Reba. “What is this, a conspiracy? All I want is—” She stopped abruptly. What she wanted was more than an uninterrupted kiss. What she needed was more complex and enduring than a simple easing of the hunger that burned in her whenever Chance looked at her, touched her, held her.

  Her hand slammed open the intercom switch. “What is it?” she demanded.

  “Your five o’clock appointment has been waiting for fifteen minutes,” said Tim.

  “Mrs. McCarey?” asked Reba, thinking quickly.

  “Yes.”

  “Give me a minute,” she said, switching off. She looked at Chance. “Mrs. McCarey flew in from Tahiti when she found out I had made my two choices from the collection. She’s eighty, one of Jeremy’s oldest friends.”

  “Will she be here long?”

  “Hours. And she’s not my last appointment.”

  Chance swore in a language Reba was glad she couldn’t understand. It didn’t sound nearly so musical when he was angry. “I’ll pick you up here at noon tomorrow. Be ready to go camping.”

  Reba mentally rearranged her schedule. “I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll be here with golden bells on.”

  “Just bells?” he murmured, his voice very deep. “I’d like to see that.”

  Suddenly she realized how easily he could have misunderstood when she had agreed to go camping with him. “I’ll go camping, but I’m not promising to …” Her voice faded.

  “Make love with me?” Chance asked. His eyes searched hers, found confusion and shadows. His expression changed. “You’re as innocent as you seem, aren’t you?” he said softly. “What were you married to, a bloody ice cube?”

  She stiffened. There was no pleasure for her in remembering her marriage.

  “Just understand,” Chance continued softly, relentlessly, “that I’m not innocent. I want you. I’ll do everything I can to make you want me in the same way. But I’ll never force you, chaton,” he said, touching her lips with his fingertip. “You’ll need hiking boots and rough clothes. Do you have any?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he promised, kissing her with a gentle restraint that reassured her.

  With reassurance came a shiver of heat and hunger that she associated with being touched by him. He was hard and gentle and very male. Each time he caressed her he taught her about her own body, her own needs, awakening something strong and wild deep inside her, something that reached hungrily toward him.

  The buzzer rang. Several times.

  “Is Tim always so bloody punctual?” rasped Chance when he finally lifted his mouth from hers. Then, before she could answer, he spun and left the room in three catlike strides. “Noon,” he said without looking back. “Ready or not.”

  At noon, Reba sat behind her desk listening to the interminable reminiscences of a man who couldn’t believe that other people were less fascinated by his memories than he was. She looked at her watch frequently, hoping that the man would take a hint. It was like hinting to a boulder that it should get up and do a jig.

  Chance walked in precisely at noon. “Ready?” he asked, ignoring the man sitting across from Reba’s desk.

  She looked at Chance’s desert shirt and jeans, his hiking boots laced to his knees, the battered western hat losing its battle to control the thick, curling pelt of his hair. She wanted nothing more than to be able to stand up and walk out of the room with him.

  “Not quite,” she said, nodding toward the man who was waiting impatiently to finish a mumbling recital of his fiftieth birthday party.

  “What time is it?” said Chance to the man.

  Reba’s client looked at a thick silver watch encrusted with Arizona turquoise. “Twelve and seventeen seconds.”

  “Right,” said Chance. He walked around the desk, lifted Reba out of her chair and said to the startled client, “I told Reba I’d pick her up at noon. I’m a man of my word.”

  Chance strode out of the office with Reba laughing in his arms. Tim gave them a startled look, fla
shed the thumbs-up sign and opened the front door.

  “Have a nice trip,” said Tim, bowing like a doorman at a Spanish hotel. Then, to Reba, “I’ll take care of the old boor,” he whispered. “Don’t hurry back.”

  Reba expected to be put down once they left the Objet d’Art behind. Chance never paused when he reached the sidewalk. People stared at them for a moment, then smiled and looked around for the cameras and production crew. For every odd thing that happened on Rodeo Drive, the immediate explanation was that someone was shooting on location.

  “You can put me down now,” said Reba, laughter still rippling in her voice.

  Chance kept walking.

  Impulsively she took off his hat and ruffled his hair. “Did you see the look on Mr. J. T. Lavington-Smythe’s face? Wonderful! God, I’ve wanted to do something like that for years. He always takes up twice the time allotted to him. Every time I have to listen to him, I wonder if boredom isn’t one of the tortures of the damned.”

  “Remind me to ask the devil the next time I’m in Venezuela.”

  “Does he live there?”

  “When he’s not mining diamonds in Brazil.”

  Reba watched Chance’s profile for a moment, enjoying its uncompromisingly masculine lines. “There’s only one thing wrong with being carried this way.”

  “Afraid of heights?” he suggested, smiling.

  “No,” she said, touching his mouth lightly with her fingertips. “I can’t thank you properly for rescuing me.”

  She was shifted in his arms so suddenly that she didn’t have time to do more than gasp. His lips covered hers in a hard kiss that showed how much of himself he had held in restraint beneath his smile. After the first instant of surprise, she returned his kiss with the hunger that hadn’t slept since he had awakened it in the silence and shadows of Death Valley.