“Just a sec.” She peeked inside her pouch. “One-twenty.”
“Damn, I’ve got a show at two.” He gave her a winsome smile. “Since I’ve blown lunch, what about dinner?”
“What about dinner?” she replied obtusely.
“Getting even, aren’t you?” He dropped one of his not-there kisses on her nose. “See you tonight. Cal, thanks for the match. I enjoyed it.”
“Yeah, me too,” her friend answered, but his voice lacked conviction.
“So I don’t have to trek all the way back to the car,” Tucker said to Quillen as he unslung his quiver, “do I have your permission to stow these you-know-where?”
“Yes,” she acquiesced with a nod.
“Thank you, mistress, you are most gracious.” Realgar swept her a bow, then Tucker winked at her and strode away through the crowd.
“Are you two dating, or what?”
“What do you mean—or what?” Quillen demanded sharply.
“Down, girl,” Cal soothed. “He just doesn’t seem your type.”
“Oh, really?” Quillen folded her arms and arched one eyebrow. “What is my type?”
“Hey, I’m sorry, it’s none of my business—”
“No, no, keep going,” Quillen encouraged him. “This ought to be good.”
“He’s just—I don’t know, Quill.” Cal frowned and looked puzzled. “He’s just so damn smooth he’s almost slick, you know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t, Cal.” She smiled sweetly. “Tell me more.”
“Knock it off, Quill.” He frowned impatiently. “You know I hate it when you play dumb.”
“Why? ’Cause it makes you look dumber?”
“Watch it.” He threatened her with his fist but grinned. “Don’t forget, I popped you in the nose once.”
“Yes, when we were eight,” Quillen reminded him, “and then I decked you and knocked out your front tooth.”
“Heartless, you know, you’re heartless,” he complained. “Why I put up with all this abuse—”
A red-headed boy in a burlap jerkin and dusty white tights with holey knees appeared at Cal’s elbow and tugged on his scalloped sleeve. “These yours?” he asked, and held up four arrows.
“No, but thanks, I’ll see that they get back to their owner.” The boy laid them in his outstretched hand and scurried off as Cal offered the arrows to Quillen. “See how spacey he is? He left these in the target.”
That is odd, she thought as she took the arrows from him and admired the distinctive maroon and teal blue fletchings. “How beautiful,” she murmured, stroking the stiff yet soft feathers. “I’ve never seen any like this.”
“Fletches them himself,” Cal told her. “Now I ask you, Quill, why go to all that work if you’re just going to take target practice? Only serious bowmen fletch their own arrows, but this guy says he throws up if he kills a rabbit. Does that make sense?”
“I know this comes as a shock to you, oh great white hunter,” Quillen replied solemnly as she laid her hand on his thick, hairy wrist, “but there are people who just like to look at furry little doe-eyed bunnies.”
“I don’t care what you think, I think he’s weird,” Cal grumbled. “You going to give those back to him?”
“No, you can.” She handed them to him and made a face as he tucked them in his quiver. “And I don’t care what you say, I say you’re just full of sour grapes ’cause he beat you.”
“Come on, Quill, my head’s not that big. It’s not just the arrows. I don’t like him snooping around. He makes me nervous.”
“Cal, he’s doing his job, just like you are doing yours. However”—she emphasized the adverb and paused for effect—“the next time I hear about you and your survey crews on my land, job or not, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
“He ratted on us, huh?” Cal smirked.
“No, you did, you big dummy,” Quillen shot back.
“I said job site,” he corrected her. “I didn’t say where. So, fine, Quill, have me arrested.” He jerked his folded, peaked cap out of his belt and tugged it angrily over his head. “And the next time you see the Space Cadet, ask him why he hit Cassil up for copies of the old assay reports. The ones for your mine, in particular.” He gave his cap a final, so-there pull and stalked away from her.
“Cal!” she called, a threatening edge in her voice as he began to jog and his long legs rapidly stretched the distance between them. “Calvin Coolidge Wilson—”
Several people eyed her quizzically, and through a gap in the crowd, Quillen saw one of the armored knights in front of the Society for Creative Anachronism crane his helmeted head toward her. Besides jabots, the Renaissance purists also frowned on performers who slipped out of character during the festival. On that point, Quillen agreed with them wholeheartedly, and nipped behind a cottonwood tree to hide her embarrassment at her faux pas.
“Very adult, Quillen,” she congratulated herself. “Would you like to take your ball and go home now?”
What in the world was wrong with her? Or better yet, what was wrong with Cal who, like Will Rogers, had never met a man he didn’t like? He was snippy—no, downright hateful—about Tucker.
Ahem. Her inner voice cleared its throat inside her head. If I could have your attention for just a moment—
“Shut up,” she snapped as she swung out from behind the tree and marched off toward the Children’s Dell to tell her tales.
So what if he wants to look at the old assay reports? He is a geologist; they might be helpful. But what’s an ore analysis going to tell him about a fault? asked her little voice. How do I know, she answered, I’m not a geologist.
Maybe he isn’t either.
That drew Quillen up short. She leaned against a broad-limbed oak.
“Quillen, listen to yourself,” she said out loud. “This is paranoia. Pure, unadulterated paranoia.”
So she kept telling herself throughout the afternoon as she threaded her way from the Children’s Dell, to the Guildmaster’s Glen, the Thieves’ Market and the Weavers’ Glade. Near dusk, as the crowds began to move toward the gates and the festival wound toward its close for the weekend, it dawned on her that she’d steered clear of the Gypsy Camp. Consciously or unconsciously? she wondered as she looked up the dusty hillside toward the Wizard’s Cave.
No time like the present to find out, she decided, and struck off across the wooden footbridge. She had two perfectly good excuses—no, reasons, she corrected herself—to drop by casually. One, to collect her cloak; two, to find out what time he planned to pick her up.
The empty Gypsy Camp lay half in late, pale autumn sunlight and half in the long purple shadow cast by the granite hillside. Well, she’d missed him. She walked to the cleft and found her cloak lying where she’d left it, a rumpled green patch dotted with windblown, russet leaves. She picked it up, brushed it off, and draped it over her left arm as she started down the hillside. He knew her address; hopefully he knew her phone number, too.
Idly, she glanced at the mine entrance as she passed it—then whirled toward it as she glimpsed a pinpoint of light in the rear of the tunnel. He wouldn’t—! Again she saw it; a faint flicker like an electric lantern or a flashlight, and her heart climbed up her throat.
It yammered there, trapped and frightened as her body went cold with a shiver of remembered fear and grief. Throwing her cloak around her, she retreated to the reassuring bulk of the hillside and leaned against its granite flank.
Like an echo chamber, the tunnel magnified sound, and Quillen heard Tucker’s unmistakable voice humming “My Darling Clementine.” A beam of light wavered unsteadily across the straw-packed ground, then he emerged from the mine, switching off his flashlight and brushing dust from his red plaid shirt and dirt-caked jeans.
“At least you had sense enough to wear a hard hat,” she said harshly as she watched him take off his iridescent orange helmet.
On one muddy boot heel he spun toward her. “Oh, jeez, Quillen,” he breathed as the hard
hat slipped out of his hand and hit a rock at his feet with a hollow thump. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“You just couldn’t stand it, could you?” she taunted, her voice trembling. “You just had to go down there.”
“Relax, will you?” he said, his smile smooth and confident. “I’ve been exploring caves since I was seventeen. That makes me an eighteen-year vet, Quillen. I know what I’m doing.”
“That isn’t a cave, Tucker!” she shrilled at him. “It’s a mine that’s already killed two men! Are you trying to make it three?”
“Quillen, listen—”
“No, you listen!” She jabbed her index finger at him. “That God-cursed hole in the ground belongs to me and I’m the one who’ll be held responsible if you get hurt or—or worse,” she faltered, unable to say the word killed. “I won’t have that on my conscience, Tucker. Now for the last time, stay out of it!”
“Okay, okay,” he soothed, holding his hands out to her as he came slowly toward her. “I’ll stay out of it, I swear.” He made a three-fingered pledge sign and smiled. “Scout’s honor.”
“You’d better,” she said coldly.
“I gave you my word, Quillen,” he retorted sharply, then smiled again. “So where do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“Separately,” she snapped as she swept her cloak around her and flounced away down the hillside.
Part of her felt hurt and disappointed that he didn’t follow her, but the rest of her frankly didn’t care if she never saw him again. Swiftly she exited the deserted festival grounds and made it as far as her Blazer before the tremor in her voice seeped into her body. Her fingers shook so badly that she could hardly open her pouch, and she bit back tears as she fought her keys to unlock and open the door.
Damn him, anyway! Tearing off her cloak, she flung it into the truck. Her elbows slid onto the soft, tan leather seat, and she buried her face in her hands. Why had he gone down there? Why?
Lights danced inside her head, lanterns, flashlights, red winking emergency lights mounted on police cars and an ambulance. Ropes and rubber hoses scraped against stones and the gurgling chug-chug of kerosene compressors pumping oxygen into the shattered, rock-choked shaft echoed in her ears as she began to cry.
“Oh, Daddy, why,” she sobbed, crumpling against the seat and cradling her head in the crook of her left arm.
She cried until her sleeve was soaked and she had no more tears. Slowly then she raised her head, plucked a corner of her cloak off the passenger seat and dabbed it against her wet cheeks.
“That’s it,” she resolved out loud, her voice warbling unsteadily as she clenched her fist around the cloak. “I don’t care how much it costs—I’ll sell Grandma’s house if I have to—but that damn, cursed hole is going to be filled in and no one—no one—is ever going down there again!”
Two warm, strong hands settled gently on her shoulders, and her whole body tensed. “Forgive me, Quillen,” Tucker said softly. “I didn’t think.”
Tears filled her eyes again, but she blinked them away furiously and stretched away from him to dig through the clutter on the console between the seats for the small box of tissues she kept there, somewhere. “Oh, hell,” she swore irritably to cover her embarrassment at being caught in such a vulnerable situation. “I cry once a year whether I need to or not, and then I never have any damn Kleenex!”
“Here.” He dangled a red bandanna over her shoulder, and she snatched it away from him. “Let me drive you home.”
“I’m all right, Tucker.” She wiped her face again and wished she could blow her nose. “You just”—her voice cracked—“you just scared the h-hell out of me.”
Cupping his hands around her arms, he turned her toward him and drew her closer. Quillen tried to resist, tried to hide her wet, streaked face in the dusty front of his shirt, but he raised her chin with one hand and then swept both his arms around her shoulders. Tears dribbled past her squeezed-shut eyelashes and she clung to him, trembling, her arms curled under and over his.
“Pl-please,” she begged, her voice breaking on a sob, “don’t ever go down there again.”
“I won’t,” he shushed her, his hands rubbing up and down her back and molding her to him. “I won’t.”
The slow rhythm of his palms soothed and relaxed her. Then, slowly, as warmth and friction built between them, Quillen felt the ragged catch in his breath as his mouth brushed her right ear. His left hand cradled her head while his right arm pressed the small of her back and arched her body against his.
So smooth he’s slick, she heard Cal say inside her head, but ignored his voice as she raised her head from Tucker’s shoulder. She knew he’d lied to her, she knew he’d go down in the mine again, but she kissed him anyway, parting her lips to meet his and lifting her arms from his shoulders to his neck.
“Quill…Quillen.” He breathed deeply as he reluctantly broke the kiss and caught her wrists in his hands as he backed away from her. “I ought to scare the hell out of you more often.”
Curving his hand around her cheek, he smiled, deepening the cleft in his chin, as his thumb traced her tingling lips. Abashed, and frightened again by the intensity of her feeling for this man she scarcely knew, Quillen squirmed her hand out of his and pressed herself against the door-frame of the truck.
A brief frown wrinkled his forehead, then he smiled. “Arrogant and brazen, right?” He held his palms up to her in a stick-’em-up gesture. “Look, no hands—I promise.”
“Tucker, I’m sorry,” she apologized, looking away from him to hide her confusion and embarrassment. “I’m really not a neurotic mess. I’m usually a very down-to-earth—”
“—very lovely, very desirable woman,” he finished gently, “who’s being pressured from all sides right now—I understand that—and I know I’m part of it.” With the barest touch of the tip of his middle finger against the curve of her jaw, he turned her face toward him. “Until you’re ready for us to be lovers, Quillen, I want to be your friend.”
“Now that”—she laughed shakily—“is an arrogant, brazen assumption.”
“Oh, yeah?” He grazed his finger along her jaw.
Steeling herself against the warm, lush shivers flooding her body, Quillen lightly slapped his wrist and managed to keep her voice even. “No hands, you promised.”
“Okay, okay.” He tucked his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “You won’t let me drive you, but I’m following you home. It’s my fault that you’re upset, and I feel bad about it. Besides”—he grinned—“I’m hoping you’ll ask me to stay for dinner.”
“We’ll see,” she hedged, and retreated into the Blazer. “And if you can keep up you can follow.”
“All right.” He clapped his hands. “I love a challenge.”
Quillen watched him trot away from the truck as she started the engine. “Somehow,” she said, sighing, “I knew that.”
Since high-speed chases were not high on her list of fun things to do, she made no attempt to lose or outrun the Jeep. Its dust-coated tan hood pulled in behind the Blazer as it bounced in four-wheel drive along the rutted lane leading to the access road. Once they’d reached the two-lane blacktop highway, Quillen switched the transmission to two-wheel and headed toward town with Tucker following a safe four carlengths behind. Occasionally she looked back at the jeep in the side mirror and wondered why she couldn’t stay mad at this man.
As she swung the Blazer around the corner onto her block, she glanced in her rearview mirror and pointed Tucker at the curb as she signaled a right turn into her driveway. She switched off the engine and started across the pavement. Tucker, a khaki-strapped, navy canvas duffel looped over his left shoulder, came trotting up the drive and met her at the corner of the house.
“I said dinner, maybe,” she reminded him, and raised one eyebrow at his bag.
“Do you want to eat with this?” he asked, pointing at his dirt-encrusted clothes. “Could I please shower and change?”
“How convenie
nt that you keep an overnight case packed,” she answered tartly, but smiled. “Is your toothbrush in there, too?”
“And my teddy bear,” he told her blithely.
Laughing, they climbed the steps to the front porch and Quillen unlocked the door. Inside, the hall was warm after the evening chill and smelled of the paste wax she used to polish the mahogany drum table which sat against the stair wall. The painted china hurricane lamp centered on one of Grandma Elliot’s doilies was lit and cast a funnel-shaped column of light against the oak panels.
Draping his arm on her shoulder, Tucker waited beside her as she slid her key into the lock. Faintly from upstairs, Quillen heard a click and muffled footfalls, and glanced up the green carpeted flight toward the second-floor landing.
“Miss McCain, is that you?” a small voice piped. “May I come down?”
“Yes, Mrs. Sipp.”
Smiling, Quillen looked over her shoulder at Tucker, then back to the stairs as her favorite tenant appeared on the landing.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” Mrs. Sipp trilled as she came down the steps, her tiny feet swathed in fluffy pink slippers that matched the flowers in her dress and the lace tatted around her collar. “But the oddest thing happened this afternoon.” She stopped on the bottom stair. As her eyes locked on Tucker, she patted her frothy white hair, then withdrew an envelope from her dress pocket. “Mr. Phillips moved out, lock, stock and barrel.”
“You’re kidding,” Quillen said stupidly as she reached out to take the envelope.
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Sipp assured her breathlessly as she fussed with her collar. “I wouldn’t kid, Miss McCain.”
“No, I know that,” Quillen replied as she tore open the flap and withdrew a note tucked inside with a check for the next month’s rent: “Sorry for the short notice. Hope enclosed will cover all inconvenience. M.J. Phillips.”
Baffled, she looked up at Mrs. Sipp’s mesmerized, wide-eyed expression, then quickly over her shoulder at Tucker. He stood directly behind her, smiling, his hands clasped in front of him.
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