by Gail Dayton
"I am desolate," Rudi said. "I am forced to wait until tomorrow to see my Annabelle? How can I eat when I am deprived of her company?"
Bill snorted. "You may think I'm no-count enough that you can flirt with my wife like that, but I'm thinkin' your bodyguard here can straighten you out right fast."
Annabelle was Mrs. Chandler. Ellen caught herself when she heard Rudi's laughter, stopped her glare from shooting at him. She didn't care who Annabelle was. Rudi's flirtations were none of her business. None.
But the shape of the situation shifted again, back to her original assessment of his purpose in bringing her here. Rudi had seduction on his mind.
Well, he could just wipe it right out of there, because Ellen wasn't playing. She was here for one reason and one reason only. To do her job and guard his body.
"How far is it to the house?" she asked.
"Another couple miles," Bill said.
"What kind of security does it have?"
"State of the art." Rudi stretched his arm across the back of the seat, and incidentally around Ellen. Step one of his plan, she was certain. "I do not use motion-sensor sound alarms because of the wildlife, but everything else is installed. Also, the house cannot be approached unseen."
"Good." Ellen nodded her head once, briskly. Keep everything businesslike, and she could keep it under control.
"Relax." Rudi smiled at her. "There is no danger here. Not from terrorists, at any rate."
Ellen shrugged. It was her job to make sure. He was probably right. She couldn't envision terrorists braving this no-man's-land of New Mexico. But it was still her job to stay alert.
She sat up straight in the center of the seat and watched the bushes jolt by, as the truck alternately lurched, crawled and jounced its way along. Rudi's head settled against the back glass of the pickup's cab. When Ellen glanced his way, she saw his mouth had dropped open, and he slept, despite the rattling of his head on the window.
The truck hit a bigger-than-usual rock, and Rudi's head bounced hard. He blinked awake and pulled his arm in, straightening slightly on the seat, as if determined to stay awake. But in seconds his eyes shut again, and his head fell back on the window as he slumped low in the seat.
Ellen sighed. It was a conspiracy. The whole world conspired against her, forcing her into niceness. She was not a nice person. She didn't want to be a nice person. Nice people got dumped on.
And yet. Ellen found herself tipping Rudi's head forward, off the back glass, and sideways. Against her shoulder. She hoped he didn't drool in his sleep. If he drooled, the niceness was over.
Bill was apparently as taciturn as cowboys were reputed to be. The remainder of the trip passed in silence, except for the roar of the motor and the occasional very soft snore from Rudi.
The sky had darkened to a deep navy blue just a shade lighter than the black horizon and stars were beginning to appear when the truck heaved itself up onto an almost-paved road and turned left. The surface was graded and graveled, and much smoother than the rutted track they'd just left. A few minutes later, lights winked on, triggered by motion sensors, illuminating what Ellen guessed to be some dozen acres. Rudi's house sat in the center of the light pool.
Ellen stared. This was no little cabin in the foothills. This was the Ponderosa. It was Tara. Manderley. A house like this deserved a name. Half log cabin, half glass palace, it nestled into the rocks jutting from the hill behind as if it grew out of them. It belonged in this wild place, and yet, somehow, it promised luxuries beyond Ellen's most fantastic dreams. And she could dream some pretty big fantasies.
Bill pulled the pickup to a halt in front of the wide stairway leading up to the entry deck. Rudi jolted awake, springing upright before he blinked. Ellen brushed off her shoulder, brushing away the touch of his head.
"We're here," Bill said. "You need anything else?"
"No. Thank you." Rudi opened the pickup door and slid out, stumbling once before his knees caught and held. He turned and offered his hand to Ellen.
She ignored it, preferring to rely on herself, to bypass his little courtesies. They were all part of the web he tried to weave, a web she had no intention of getting caught in. In fact, she was no slouch at weaving her own webs, which was how she came to know all about them.
"Your keys are in the usual spot," Bill said through the still-open truck door. "She's gassed up and serviced. Ready to roll."
"Thank you, Bill. I will see you tomorrow, then."
Rudi shut the door, and Bill and his pickup rumbled off.
Rudi gave Ellen a little bow and gestured toward the stairs. "Shall we go in?"
Scowling, Ellen started up. "Who knows you're here?"
"Besides my family and the Chandlers?" Rudi climbed the few steps at her side, and led the way across the broad deck to the front door. He unlocked the door. "Only your office, of course."
Ellen didn't bother answering. She reached inside and flipped on the interior light, the gun out of her handbag and in her hand this time, as she stepped into Rudi's house.
She could see almost all of the lower level from the door. A massive native-stone fireplace rose on the north wall. The kitchen, with cabinets matching the unstained pine log walls, took up part of the western side of the house, and Ellen surmised that a bedroom or two lay beyond the doorway on the south wall. A stairway made of split logs suspended from yet more logs rose from near the middle of the room's expanse, leading to a loft above, and possibly more bedrooms. Comfortable, masculine, rustic furniture divided the vast open space into areas for dining, relaxing and conversing according to its placement.
Quickly Ellen checked the rooms she couldn't see into, locating a luxurious master bedroom and bath complete with whirlpool on the first floor, and four more bedrooms upstairs beyond the loft area. Decks surrounded the house, void of occupants save for an annoyed squirrel. Ellen lifted the cover off the hot tub on the deck outside the main bedroom, just to be sure.
"Are we safe?" Rudi asked, a smile curving his lips as he pulled a casserole dish from the oven.
"For now." Ellen put her weapon away. She had to smile herself at the picture he made. "You look real cute wearing that oven mitt. Real natural."
"Why, thank you." Again he made that little flourishing bow, still holding the hot dish.
Ellen wished she had said nothing, hadn't even noticed. The oven mitt somehow emphasized his exotic masculinity, the breadth of his shoulders and strength of his arms. Didn't the man own a shirt in the right size? Surely he could find something that didn't strain at the seams.
Rudi set the dish on the table. "Are you hungry?"
"I guess." Ellen shrugged. "What is there to eat?"
Steam rose, redolent of tomatoes and spices and things Mexican, as he peeled away the foil. "I do not know the name of it, but I assure you, it is delicious. Annabelle could cook a sow's ear and make it delicious."
"Just who are Bill and Annabelle?" Ellen asked, opening kitchen drawers at random, hunting silverware.
"Sit down." Rudi took her by both arms, turned her toward the table and gave her a gentle push. "You are my guest. I will take care of everything."
This was a new kind of seduction scene, watching a man wait on her with his own hands, rather than snapping fingers at a restaurant waiter. She kind of liked it. Not that it would work.
Rudi set a plate in front of her, creamy blue-painted stoneware. Then he set a napkin, cloth, in the middle of the plate and a fork, real silver, on top of the napkin.
"We do not need knives for this," he muttered as he collected wineglasses from where they hung upside down on a rack. He rinsed them out and dried them quickly before setting one at each place. Instead of wine, he pulled two amber bottles from the refrigerator.
The label was unfamiliar to Ellen, unreadable. "What is this?"
"Beer." Rudi found a serving spoon and stabbed it into the casserole. "Mexican beer for the Mexican food. I learned to appreciate it when I was at university." He surveyed the table. "Do you
need anything else?"
Ellen shrugged, hiding her pleasure at being asked. Rudi sat down in the chair beside her, at the place he had prepared. He opened his beer, poured it into the glass, then held it up in a toast. "Drink with me."
She drank straight from the mouth of her bottle, then held it out to answer his toast. "What are we drinking to?"
She knew, of course. The toast would be to her, or to both of them, or to beautiful women. But it would be about sex and seduction.
Rudi's perfect mouth curved in that perfect smile. "To conversation," he said.
Conversation? Ellen blinked and belatedly tipped her bottle up to her mouth. Damn the man for being able to confuse her. Again.
Maybe that was how he planned to seduce her. Get her all confused until she didn't know which way was up, then pounce when she was helpless. Well, Ellen Sheffield was never helpless. Ever. But she was definitely confused.
Rudi served Ellen's plate with the food Annabelle had prepared for them, and then served his own.
"Eat." He picked up his fork. "I promise you, it is not poisoned or otherwise tampered with." He took a bite, hissing faintly as the fire of the peppers hidden in the meat hit his palate. "It may be a trifle spicy, however."
He could not resist chuckling at Ellen's suspicious expression as she poked at the cheese and tortillas.
"You never did answer my question." She finally stopped poking and took a bite.
Rudi could tell when the peppers hit, but only because tears started in the corners of her eyes. She disguised the rest of her reaction, reaching casually for the beer as if flames were not about to shoot from her ears.
"Is it hot?" he asked.
"Not at all." She cleared her throat, obviously unwilling to either choke or cough. "Bill and Annabelle—who are they?"
"Bill manages the property. And Annabelle cares for the house, and for me when I am here." Rudi smiled.
He found one of the sliced jalapenos and deliberately, making sure Ellen saw him, stabbed it with his fork and carried it to his mouth, where it quickly re-minded him why he usually left the peppers sitting on the rim of his plate. He shoveled in a big mouthful of starchy tortillas and beans immediately after the pepper, to dilute some of the burn.
"Do you like it?" he asked, pointing at the food on Ellen's plate.
"Delicious." She blinked back tears.
"If the peppers are too hot, just leave them on the side of your plate." Rudi uncovered another and ate it, even as his conscience and his tongue chided him for his wickedness. "Sometimes women find them more than they can handle."
"No, they're not too hot. They're good." Ellen took his dare, snaring a pepper from her own plate and popping it into her mouth, where she swallowed it virtually whole.
Rudi, Rudi, you are an evil man. And he ate another, hoping his digestion could stand up to the assault.
"So, Ellen, now that we can finally have that talk you promised…" He paused to smile, hoping it looked as guileless as he wished it to. "Tell me about yourself. Have you family?"
"And then some." She looked up from her plate where she had been stirring and gave him a shy smile that jolted him clear to his toes. "Although I guess I can't complain. I only have half as many brothers as you do."
"Only four brothers, then. Allah is indeed merciful to you." He grinned, and she laughed. "Are they older or younger than you?"
"I'm the middle child, unfortunately." She sighed.
"Usually it's the middle child who feels invisible, but being the only girl, I wasn't so lucky."
"Be glad you were not. Invisible is not a pleasant thing to be." As Rudi well knew. Being number seven among nine brothers was about as invisible as a boy could get.
"I can't believe you've ever felt invisible," Ellen said. "Not the way your family comes unglued when you're not where you're supposed to be."
"Ah, but there is invisible, as in unseen, and there is invisible, as in seeing only what the viewer wishes to see. I have always been seen as no more than a copy of my brothers. A body to fill in the gap between Hamid and Ahmed."
Why was he telling her this? He had intended to pry out Ellen's secrets, not lay his own out for view, as if asking for her pity. Angry with himself, he stabbed the pepper he had just uncovered and ate it, enjoying the burn.
"Actually," Ellen said, toying with a shred of meat, "I think I do know about that kind of invisible."
Rudi's eyebrows went up, his gaze fastened on her, as his internal detector of secrets signaled wildly. "Because you were the only girl and everyone expected you to be sweet and feminine?"
Ellen looked at him, surprise in her expression. Then she threw her head back and laughed, a full-hearted, joyous laugh such as he had not heard from anyone in too long, and never from Ellen. It was possible she frequently laughed this way, and Rudi had simply not been near her enough to know it, but he did not think so.
"No," she said, wiping her eyes as she took another bite.
Rudi noticed she left the jalapeno on the plate. Then she noticed that he noticed, and she oh-so-casually scooped it up and ate it, coughing only once.
"No," she repeated. "I did everything my brothers did, from baseball to ice hockey. And if anyone tried to tell me I couldn't, I knocked him down."
"Oh, I had Barbie dolls and Wonder Woman boots, but my Barbie dolls went out on bivouac with Steve's G.I. Joes—Steve is my next younger brother—and got blown to smithereens with Roger's firecrackers. Roger is the oldest. We had to steal his firecrackers because we were too young to have any of our own."
Rudi liked this side of her, wanted to know all of it. "Tell me more. Tell me about the Wonder Woman boots."
Ellen's eyes grew wistful. "I loved those boots. I got them for Christmas when I was six, I think. And I wore those boots everywhere, until I outgrew them. Even to school if Mom didn't catch me. I had Danny's old Superman cape. Danny comes between me and Roger. I wore the cape pretty much everywhere, too. Until Danny convinced me I could fly in it."
"He what?" Rudi sat up straight, alarmed. But she must have come to no harm from it, for she sat here before him eating Annabelle's delicious fiery food.
"Well, he didn't really convince me." Ellen's fond chuckle did not do much to reassure Rudi. "I was pretty sure the cape didn't have any Superman powers. That's why I didn't jump off the roof."
"Thank goodness." Rudi almost collapsed in his chair as the relief rushed through him.
"I just jumped out of my second-story bedroom window."
"What?" His heart could not take this jolting. "You jumped from a second-story window thinking you could fly because of a stupid red cape?"
Ellen laughed, a gleeful chortle this time. "Don't forget the boots. The boots were supposed to be these superpowered pogo-stick things. Like landing on a trampoline. If I didn't fly, I'd just jump right back to the window."
"What possessed you to do such a foolish thing?"
"He dared me." Ellen shrugged. "Don't tell me you never did anything like that, because I won't believe you."
"I never jumped off a roof."
She lifted one skeptical eyebrow.
"Or out of a window."
Her other eyebrow went up. Rudi resisted that cool appraisal for approximately ten seconds before he broke.
"Oh, very well. I once tried to dive to the bottom of the pond in our garden because Fahdlan told me Aladdin's lamp was hidden there. But the pond was only four feet deep."
"How old were you?"
"Four years old. However, I remember it very well."
"And who had to haul you out when you almost drowned?"
Rudi shot her a sharp glance. How had she known that? "My brother Ibrahim. And how many bones did you break in your brave leap into the sky?"
"Only two." She grimaced. "Both arms. Danny had to feed me till the casts came off. His punishment for daring me to jump. And mine."
"Do you always accept dares?"
Ellen held his gaze a moment, then she speared a jalapeno,
put it in her mouth and chewed very slowly. Tears again gathered in the corners of her eyes, and she had to clear her throat before she swallowed. Rudi watched her throat work, wishing he could kiss his way along the path the pepper took.
"Always," she said.
Rudi had to clear his own throat and remind himself what her word referred to. "I shall have to remember that, if there is something in particular I wish you to do."
He licked his lips and noticed Ellen watching his tongue travel across his mouth. Then she copied the action, and he could only stare at her tongue darting out and across her lips. What madness had possessed him to bring her here?
That madness, obviously, but had he been required to give in to it? Too late to change anything now. Impulse had carried him into deep waters once more.
And he did not know whether, this time, he could get himself out again.
Five
Ellen stared into Rudi's deep, soulful, melting, coffee-brown eyes, framed by the thickest, curliest lashes that no man had any right to possess. What had he just said? Something about things he wanted her to do?
He licked his lips again, and again Ellen fought the tingle at the back of her neck as his tongue traveled across those eminently kissable lips. They parted.
And Ellen caught herself before she leaned toward them.
What was wrong with her? She had to be in control of this little seduction scene, had to keep him off balance and slavering, ready to do whatever she wanted. So how did she wind up being the one off balance?
She glanced down at her plate, intending to distract herself with food, and discovered that some gremlin had climbed onto the table and eaten everything on her plate when she wasn't looking.
"Would you like more?" Rudi asked, his hand on the serving spoon.
Ellen looked at him and almost lost herself in those dark eyes again. She could not do that Not ever again.
"Much as I've enjoyed our little pepper-eating contest," she said, "I think I've had enough. Which bedroom is mine?"