by Jill Barnett
He shrugged and lit the other two stoves. “They’re all yours.” He turned to leave, but stopped as if he’d forgotten something. “Don’t come and get me. Bang on a pan when the meal is ready and we’ll come eat it.”
She nodded, watching him until he shut the door. She looked around the hut, a little of her bravado fading now that she was all alone.
Well, she thought, time’s a-wasting, and she picked up one of the dead birds. Holding it up by its webbed feet she stared at it for a moment. He’d said to remove the feathers. Or was it cut the feathers? She held the bird a bit closer and examined it, mentally reciting his instructions: remove the feathers, cut the fryers. Okay, he’d said “remove.”
Now, how did one remove the feathers? She looked around the kitchen for something to use and spotted some shears hanging on the wall. She marched over and took them back to the table. Cut the feathers. Holding the chicken’s wing between her finger and thumb, she lifted it and cut off the feathers.
An hour or so later, she hummed “Dixie” as she snipped off the last bit of fluff from the twentieth chicken. She plopped the bird onto the pile of others and swiped the floating feathers out of her face. The birds looked a little like porcupines. Those little spiky things must turn into that crispy stuff on the outside, she reasoned.
Now what had Sam said? “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “The baked ones go into roasting pans in the ovens.” Roasting pans . . . hmm. She eyed the wall where all the black cookware hung. Some of the pans were square and big enough for several chickens. Those must be roasting pans, she thought, marching over to pull two of them off the nails that held them on the wall.
She dropped both pans on the range top and gathered the whole chickens. They sure were prickly. They ought to be good and crispy. She stuffed five in one pan until they were tight as could be; then she filled the next pan. She opened the oven door, lugged the pan off the top, rammed it into the oven, and closed the door. She did the same with the other pan.
There! she thought, wiping her hands together. All done!
She turned back to the others, which still had to be cut up. She grabbed a knife from a nearby barrel and began sawing back and forth, trying to cut the bird, but the knife was too dull. She eyed a thick-bladed rectangular knife with a big handle and decided that was what she needed. She plucked it off the barrel, then spread the chicken out as flat as she could on the table. She raised the cleaver as high as she could, and with all the force she could muster she hacked through the bird with a loud smack-crunch!
Over and over she hacked at the bird until she had a whole mess of chicken pieces, none of which were recognizable except the neck and feet. She shrugged. Nothing she ate ever looked like the real thing anyway, she reasoned, continuing on with her massacre until half the birds were lacerated into bony, spiky chunks.
With a zip in her step she crossed to the flour barrel, scooped up a bowl of flour, and carried it back over to her table. She set it down and tossed the pieces in the flour, like Sam had said. She repeated the motion until she really got into the spirit of it, tossing the prickly little chicken pieces in the flour. A white cloud billowed upward as she hummed. She placed the last piece on the table and decided cooking was right fun. Then she sneezed, sending a shower of flour and feathers all around her.
She should have gotten rid of the feathers after she’d cut them off. She fanned them away and looked down at her clothes. They were caked white. She tried to brush them off but succeeded only in smearing flour deeper into the cloth and sending the feathers flying through the air like dandelions in March. She gave up and went over to the monstrous stoves.
She took the huge black iron pans, all six of them, off the wall and plunked them down on the stove tops. There was room for two pans on each stove, so she’d have to use three of the four stoves. She retrieved the lard canister and scooped out a spoonful of lard and tried to drop it into the first pan. It stuck to the spoon. She shook it a minute until it loosened and plopped with a sizzle into the pan.
Confidence recharged, she thwacked the lard-filled spoon against the rim of each pan and watched with satisfaction as it sizzled into liquid fat. This was great fun, and not too hard, either. She crossed to the table, scooped up an armful of floured, prickly chicken, then returned to the stoves, and dropped the pieces into the pans. A few minutes later she had all the chicken sizzling on the stoves.
Now what to serve with them? She rummaged through the sacks and barrels until she spotted some rice. That was perfect. She looked back at the chicken, sizzling away, and wiped some sweat from her forehead. This wasn’t easy, and the hut was getting really hot.
She filled a bowl with rice and walked over to the stove. She realized she’d have to boil the rice. She pulled a couple of big pots off the wall and placed them on the fourth stove. Then she walked over to the water barrel, ladled water into a bowl, and carried it back to the pot.
Over and over she repeated the motion until sweat poured from her damp head. But the pots were filled. She dumped in the rice, a couple of big bowls full in each pot. By the time she’d finished, the pots were filled almost to the top with rice. She placed the lids on the pots and checked the frying chicken.
Spoon in hand, she went to the first pan and stuck the spoon in to turn the meat. It wouldn’t budge. The grease splattered and sputtered, and she dodged it, still trying to jam the spoon under the chicken. Smoke started drifting upward. A distinct burning smell permeated the room.
A quick glance at the other pans told her the ranges were too hot. She moved like lightning between the stoves, trying to pry the burning chicken off the pans. Grease splattered on her arms and shirtfront as she worked.
The sudden hiss of water sizzled from the far stoves. Lollie turned just as the rice bubbled over in a pasty avalanche. The lid crashed to the floor along with a bubbling mass of gooey, watery rice. It spilled onto the stove, sending a cloud of steam upward to mix with the smoking chicken.
She panicked, running back and forth as rice glopped down the front of the hot ovens. Streaks of pasty, lumpy rice began to bake on the oven doors. The ranges were just too hot. She needed to hit the damper to lessen the heat.
Or was it the draft she needed to close?
Oh, rats! She’d forgotten which was which. Calm down, she told herself, trying to ignore the sound of erupting rice. She waved the smoke away and concentrated.
A damper is something that dampens. A draft is air. Smoke billowed out, turning blacker and blacker. Rice sizzled, then plopped and plopped. A drastic situation called for drastic measures. She grabbed a handle in each hand and closed them both.
The blast turned the head of every soldier on the artillery field, including Sam. His first instinct was that they were being attacked, until the half-burned, half-raw prickly chicken landed next to his foot.
“Aw, crap!” He dropped the shell canister he’d been holding and ran toward the cooking hut, rounding the corner seconds after the blast.
Black smoke billowed up from where the thatched roof used to be, and chicken feathers rained down like snowflakes. The front door hung on a single hinge, and as Sam stepped forward, he tripped on the back door. Barrels had splintered, tin canisters rolled, and one entire side of the building was white with what looked like flour.
“Lollie!” he yelled, stepping over the wreckage and into something slimy and white. “Lollie!” He moved deeper into the shell of the hut, looking all over for her, finding only a five-foot hole in the back wall.
Sam stepped through it and saw her crumpled form barely eight feet away. He rushed over and knelt beside her. Her breath was the shallow breath of the unconscious. “Lollie, answer me. Come on, wake up.”
She didn’t move. He ran his hands over her, eyeing the way she lay on the ground. Very carefully, he slid his arms under her, picked her up, and strode toward her bungalow. His gaze never left her pale face. She had no color. Her eyelids were closed and white. Soot smudged her cheeks, which were covered with sc
ratches and nicks. A small trickle of blood dripped from her split lip, and her blond hair was singed and black and five inches shorter.
Is she all right?” Jim came running up, followed by Gomez and the other soldiers.
“I don’t know. She’s unconscious.” Sam walked up the steps of her bungalow. Jim opened the door, and Sam stepped inside and carried her to the cot. “Get me some water and a towel, will you?” He watched the rise and fall of her chest, assuring himself that she was breathing fine. He looked at her face, at her singed hair, and he wanted to kick himself. He should have followed his first instincts and locked her in her hut until he could take her back to her father. He’d never met anyone who could create more havoc than this one irritating little woman.
Jim set the water bucket and a towel by the bed, drawing Sam’s attention away from Lollie’s drawn face. “Thanks.”
He dipped the towel in the bucket and began washing off the soot and dried blood.
“Is there anything I can do?” Jim asked.
“No, just see to the men for me, would you?”
“Sure.”
Sam finished cleaning her face, arms, and neck, then he wrung out the towel, folded it, and placed it on her forehead. He had time, lots and lots of time, to just sit there and watch her, plenty of time to castigate himself.
She’d talked him into letting her do something he knew she couldn’t handle. Of course there wasn’t much this woman could handle . . . but then he amended that thought. She had managed to trek through the jungle, even occasionally kept up with him. She hadn’t become hysterical except that one time at the bay when she realized that they had missed the ransom exchange.
She did have something that drove her, a spirit within her that contradicted what she should have been, a spoiled, pampered little rich girl who cared only about herself. That was the label he’d first given her, but he’d been wrong. She wasn’t a snob and a spoiled brat. She was someone who needed assurance, acceptance, encouragement. She genuinely wanted to be liked, and yet something about her said she didn’t expect anyone to.
Why? Why would a girl who had everything—money, family, social connections—have so little self-esteem? Granted, he hadn’t done anything to help her, but he knew he wasn’t the reason she felt that way. He was, however, the reason she was hurt, lying there so still and making him forget about guerrillas and guns and greed.
What he did feel at this moment was an intense inability to help her, and once again he felt guilty. How she could inspire guilt in him he didn’t know, but she managed it when no other person on this earth ever could. He cared. And he didn’t much like it, either. He believed that caring about something colored one’s judgment, and Sam prided himself on his ability to make decisions objectively.
Yet as he looked at her, he was overcome by such a strong sense of protectiveness that it almost made him humble. He couldn’t remember when he’d felt protective toward something, if he ever had at all. From the first moment she’d stumbled and stabbed her way into his life he’d felt it, even if he could only now admit it.
He had spent his rotten, mercenary life protecting nothing but his own butt, and that was just a game with him. It gave him a thrill to stare death in the face, spit at it, and still come out the winner. But he got no thrill when Lollie was involved. All he got was a feeling of intense fear.
He drew in a deep breath with that realization. His gaze drifted from her to the window, and as he stared outside, watching the sky turn pink with the sunset, the same shade of pink as that frilly dress and the deadly parasol, he wondered if maybe he was the one who needed protection.
Chapter 20
The door opened.
Lollie dropped the mirror she’d held and looked up. It was Sam, and he carried a couple of long, thick bamboo poles.
“I brought you these,” he said, walking over to the cot and looking down at her.
She felt like an ant, staring up at him, and she struggled to sit up a bit taller so there wasn’t as much distance between them. If nothing else at least she felt a little bigger.
“How’s the ankle?”
“It still hurts when I put any weight on it.”
“That’s why I brought you these.” He held up the poles. “Gomez made them for you. They’re crutches.”
“Gomez made them?”
He nodded.
“For me?”
“Yes, for you.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised that any of the men would give a fig about her.
He bent over her and picked up the mirror; then he stared at her for a long moment. She expected to see pity, disgust, or something similar, but his face didn’t reveal his thoughts.
She reached up to brush the hair off her cheek and froze the instant her fingers touched the ragged, burned ends of her hair. She let her embarrassed gaze dart to his, expecting to see a cynical smile. It wasn’t there. She quickly tucked the ends behind her ear.
He placed the mirror on the table next to Medusa’s empty perch and straightened. “Are you going to sit there all day or are you going to try these things?” He held the crutches out for her.
She stared at them for a minute.
“I take it from the way you’re frowning that you’ve never used crutches before.”
She shook her head.
He set them down on the bed and held out his hand to her. “Get up.”
She grabbed it and stood, careful to put her weight on her good ankle.
He slid his arm around her and pulled her close to his side. Immediately she felt the warmth from his body. She wrapped her right arm around his waist and slid her other hand over his chest, trying to steady herself.
His sharp intake of breath pierced the silence of the small room. He placed a warm palm over her hand and slid it down to his ribs before he bent and picked up the crutches.
“Here.” He handed her one. “Put this under your other arm.”
She did.
He gripped her upper arm in one hand and slid the other crutch under her arm. “Hold on to these small handles.” He placed her hand around a smaller piece of bamboo that stuck out about halfway down the thick pole.
“Now lift the crutches and move them forward.” His mouth was so close to her ear that his words brushed over it. She shivered. To avoid his breath on her ear and the way it made her feel, she planted the crutches a good foot ahead of her.
“That’s right . . . . Now, put your weight on the handles and swing yourself forward.”
She did.
“It worked!” she said, smiling as she turned back toward Sam. “Watch.” She did it again. “It’s easy, isn’t it?” Then she moved back toward him, taking a big step—too big a step.
The left crutch slipped on the slick wood of the floor, and she lost her balance. Her crutch clattered to the floor. Sam caught her.
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at him.
He looked at her for the longest time and in the most uneasy way. He had no smile on his face, and yet his eye wasn’t hard or tinged with that constant wry cynicism it usually had whenever she did something foolish.
She didn’t know if the lack of that cynical look should worry her or not. He reached up and fingered the ragged ends of her burned hair.
“I must look awful.” She averted her eyes.
He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face until she had to meet his gaze. He searched her face—probably looking at her bruises, she thought. She’d seen her black-and-blue cheek, scratched face, and puffy lip in the mirror.
“Yeah, you do.” His palm opened to cup her cheek, and his thumb drifted over her swollen lip.
Honest Sam. She should have been offended, but she wasn’t. She was too fascinated by the feel of his thumb. He began to lower his head slowly, his gaze never leaving hers. He’s going to kiss me, she thought, a surge of pure joy filling her chest. Her eyelids felt heavy and seemed to want to drift closed. She willed them to stay open, watching him and waiting for their lips
to touch, waiting for that brief whiff of his warm male breath to graze her mouth.
Barely an inch away from a kiss, he suddenly stopped. It happened so fast she blinked. He pulled back, took a deep, relieved breath, and turned to pick up her crutch. He stuck it back under her arm, then turned away again, leaving her with a cool, empty feeling. She took a deep breath, looking away while her mind raced to figure out why he’d stopped. Her gaze lit on the mirror, and she remembered her reflection; then she didn’t blame him. She looked worse than Jim had after that fight with Sam.
“I’m sorry about the cooking hut,” she said to his back. He rammed his hands in his pockets. “It needed a new roof anyway.”
There was nothing more to say. They both just stood there, silent. He spun around as if he had something important to say. The door banged open, and Jim walked in with Medusa perched on his shoulder.
“Raaaape! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!”
Sam’s heated gaze met hers. Her mind flashed with the memory of the last time Medusa had screeched that silly phrase. She could feel the flush heat her face and could see the memory on Sam’s face, too.
“I’m sorry I ever taught her that,” Jim said.
“So am I.” Sam’s stare never left hers.
The temperature in the room rose quicker than the tide at a full moon. She knew she should look away, but she didn’t want to.
“The note’s here.”
“What note?” Sam asked distractedly, still holding her with a look that made her wish Jim would leave.
“The note from her father. He’ll meet you in Santa Cruz in four days.”
She looked at Jim, his words finally penetrating her head. She was leaving, going back to her family. The oddest thing happened. Her stomach sank at the idea, the same way it sank whenever she was in a boat. She looked back at Sam, wanting to see his reaction. He had none. That hot tinge of longing was gone, replaced by the cynical look she hated.
“Well, well, I guess Miss Lah-Roo is going home to her daddy.” And without another glance her way, Sam turned and left.