LIGHT OF DAY

by Ruth Wind

  "No one knows. Only Allen, and he would never tell." Her voice weakened under the fury of his, and the sound pained him. "No one else has been here with me."

  He nodded, his mouth hard. "Well, then perhaps we have a day or two longer." He moved suddenly and took her arms in a violent grip. "But it will not be long, no matter how long it is. Don't ask me to risk your life."

  There were a dozen protests she wanted to make. But how could she, when the story was not clear to her? Seeing the torment in his eyes, she knew his demons were very real. Until he confronted them, there would be no hope for the love she felt growing between them like a vigorous young plant. Gathering her breath, she asked him one more question.

  "When this is over, Samuel, will you find me?"

  He let her go abruptly, shaking his head. "I cannot even make that promise, Lila."

  Dipping her head to hide the piercing blow his words had delivered, she said quietly, "At least you're honest."

  "Come," he said, and in his well-disciplined face, no emotion showed. "I am hungry."

  Lila shifted her backpack on her shoulders. How had she, the bohemian and carefree Lila Waters, who believed in hope and faith and all things airy and light, fallen in love with the one man whose demons she could never exorcise, the one man who could offer her nothing, not even an empty promise?

  It seemed doubly tragic that he would not allow himself even the few moments of time they could share. But she would respect his wishes.

  Instead of her love, she would offer quiet and peace in which he might rebuild his soul. Perhaps then, when he left her he would be strong enough to fight his enemies.

  For if he lived, he might reconsider. It was all she had.

  For the rest of the evening, a grim quiet lay between Samuel and Lila, one that disturbed and upset her. She didn't know if Samuel was angry with her, or if he had simply glimpsed the truth about her feelings for him and now thought it kinder to keep her at a distance. Whichever it was, she found herself reluctant to offer anything to start a conversation with. Somehow, it was easier to be silent.

  It was no small feat given the confines of the cabin. They occupied the same room for most of those hours, drawn by the warmth of the fire, and yet the only communication between them was limited to the questions and answers needed to perform tasks. Samuel read the book she'd brought him, or stared out the window at the grayness beyond, smoking restlessly.

  That night, he declined wine with his dinner and retreated upstairs as soon as the dishes were done.

  Sitting by the fire with Arrow at her feet, Lila tried to read her book of great battles, but it was impossible to concentrate. Her mind and heart were focused on the man upstairs who was as restless as she, if the pacing she heard was anything to go by.

  It was odd that he kept himself aloof from her, when before he couldn't seem to resist holding her hand or touching her arm. He'd even kissed her. Whenever he looked at her, his eyes glowed with warmth and appreciation and happiness. She knew she made him happy.

  Irritably, she stood up and walked over to the window, a heavy sigh coming from her lips. She wanted to make love with him. Wanted to lie with him, kiss his neck and arms, his palms and lips. Her hunger to hold him was fierce and unceasing, no matter how she argued to herself that she needed to let go of it.

  She was under no illusions about herself. No war would ever be waged on her account, an unsophisticated woman from the Midwest, with freckles and a certain distaste for revealing clothes. A strange fortune had brought Samuel into her life, a man from a culture and country and lifestyle alien to her. It had to be as much of a surprise to him as it was to her that they had found themselves falling in love.

  It wasn't just a sexual feeling. Her mouth curled wryly. That was part of it, of course. But it was deeper than that, both for her and for Samuel. He longed to hold her in the same manner, wanted the melding only making love would bring—she would swear to that. She'd read it in his eyes, and in the tender smiles he'd bestowed upon her. Instinctively she knew that he did not reveal himself to many people as he did to Lila.

  And yet he resisted her, allowing only the smallest of touches between them. Very few men would have exercised the same discipline.

  If she had any guts at all, she'd march up the stairs and seduce him very properly. She shook her head.

  That might be what another woman would do under the circumstances. Not Lila. She wouldn't be able to bear his drawing away the next morning. If they were ever to be lovers, he would have to come to her of his own accord.

  So throughout the next morning, she let him be. Left him alone to brood and pace, left him alone with his demons while she straightened and cooked and walked for a time with Arrow.

  But by lunchtime, she missed him. Over soup and bread, she looked at him. "Truce, all right?"

  He met her eyes. His expression was blank.

  She rushed on. "It's none of my business what you do, and I had no right to make judgments about it yesterday. I'm sorry."

  His mouth tightened briefly, then he reached over the table to take her hand. His voice was soft. "It is not you that should apologize."

  "Well, then, neither of us will. Let's just forget it and go on like we were. You'll be here a little longer, I assume, and we may as well be friends."

  "All right." He released her fingers.

  The rain had stopped, and while there was no sun, it appeared they might be able to go outside for a time. "I think you need to work on building your strength. Let's go for a hike this afternoon."

  "I'd like that."

  So after lunch, they bundled up once again in coats and scarves and set out. This time, Lila led them in the opposite direction from town, over a slender path in the woods. Fallen pine needles made it treacherously slick, but the air was crisp and scented, giving Samuel's face a healthy glow of color that satisfied her. "You've got good wind for someone who smokes as much as you do."

  He shrugged. "Good health." As they gained the top of a rise, he paused to glance around. "This is beautiful country—the sea and the hills. So quiet."

  Lila looked at his face rather than the scenery, at the black eyes shining as they took in the view, at the heaviness of his brow and the sharp planes of his cheekbones and jaw. In spite of everything, it was a face far more at peace than the one she had first encountered. Perhaps that was all she had been needed to do—give a moment's respite to this man who had grown so dear to her. She sighed, but without the struggling sense of futility and anger she'd felt yesterday. By now she thought she had learned how impossible it was for anyone to have any true control over events in their lives. Kissing him would have satisfied her more than looking at him, but sometimes that was the way things went.

  His sudden words sounded loud in the quiet woods, and yet he spoke very softly. "Why did you do it, Lila? Why did you come back to the airport?" He looked at her. "Why did you bring me here?"

  She bent to pick up a stick, hiding her discomfiture. What kind of answer did he really want? "I don't know," she said slowly, her eyes trained on the sea thrashing in the distance. "It seemed like the right thing to do."

  He studied her silently.

  Lila endured it a moment, then looked at him. "What do you want to hear?" She smiled to lighten her words. "That I'd fallen madly in love with you and couldn't bear to see you go away?"

  "You scoff," he said, eyes twinkling, "but you must remember how women faint in my arms."

  She laughed, relieved they had returned to their former ground. "Spare me," she said drily, turning to head farther into the forest. "How's the arm?"

  "Better, I think. I am better. That's something to be thankful for." Arrow had been running ahead and now he returned to trot beside them. Samuel patted the dog's head absently, then with a characteristic switch in conversation asked, "Have you never been married, Lila?"

  Lila sucked in her breath, then let it out on a sigh. "No. Have you?"

  He shook his head. "Never found any reason to marry, or
anyone I would have taken as a wife."

  "Even with all those fainting women?" She shot him a teasing glance. "Surely there was a suitable one somewhere."

  "Suitable?" He raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps there are men who marry for such reasons, but I am not one of them."

  It was a dangerous subject, but Lila couldn't resist. "Well, then why would you marry?"

  "There is only one reason. Passion."

  "But passion dies away, and then what do you have?"

  He didn't answer for a moment. The leaves crunching underfoot was the only sound. "A grand passion doesn't die, Lila. A true passion lasts always, through mornings in curlers and arguments and illness." He paused. "I am not speaking of the passion of the body, but the passion of the soul. That is the only reason to marry."

  "Do you really believe that exists, Samuel?"

  "Yes," he said firmly. "I have seen it in my parents. What were the odds that they could love one another? And yet they did. And my father still looks at my mother with such a look that it breaks my heart to see it sometimes."

  "And your mother, does she love him the same way?"

  He nodded, frowning a little. "But it is hard for man sometimes to love unto death as he does. Women are much stronger in the ways of the heart."

  "What a romantic you are," she said quietly.

  He shrugged. At the same instant, his foot slipped on the wet pine needles and he fell. One instant, he was walking beside her, the next he was at her feet, flat on his back.

  "Samuel!" Lila cried, kneeling next to him. "Are you all right?" Arrow, too, trotted over to peer in his face.

  He opened his eyes and gave her a rueful smile. "My pride is wounded, but everything else is fine."

  Lila licked her lips. "So this is how it feels," she said conversationally.

  He frowned. "What?"

  "To have people falling at your feet."

  Samuel reached out with his good left hand and pulled her against his chest. "But who is down here with me, hmm?"

  "Only to rescue you." She pushed against him, but he held her fast, a smile playing around his lips.

  "Is that all?" he murmured, and nimbly rolled to pin her beneath him. "I don't think so."

  "You arrogant man," she said, narrowing her eyes.

  He said nothing, just continued to look at her, his face only inches above hers. His hair had been tousled by the wind and his fall, and he continued to give her that tiny smile.

  "You have pine needles in your hair," she said.

  "I don't mind. Do you?" Very slowly, he lowered his face until his lips touched hers lightly. "And if it came to fainting," he murmured, his breath whispering over her mouth, "I do not think it would be me."

  Lila felt the familiar languor his touch aroused coursing through her legs and up through her chest. He seemed so much bigger when he held her like this, so powerful and male. And yet she forced herself to keep looking at him, as if she didn't care, as if she were unmoved. She smiled softly as she felt his arousal. "Beware of leprechauns, Samuel Bashir," she whispered, lifting her head to boldly kiss the lips so close to her own, then dropping back down to the pillow of soft needles. "Or you may find yourself bewitched."

  Samuel had meant to tease her, and the tables had been turned. Her green eyes danced with humor and passion. Against his chest, he could feel her breath moving quickly in and out. And yet it was he who was loathe to end the moment, he who wished to lower his mouth to hers again. Without thinking, he moved his hands over her shoulders, exploring the contours.

  Her smile broadened even as her eyelids fell in sultry anticipation. He shook his head. "Well, perhaps I would swoon," he conceded, and was about to kiss her again when an explosive force rammed him from the left, sending him sideways. When an overly eager tongue whipped his face, he laughed.

  "Arrow!" Lila shouted. "Quit that now!"

  The dog backed off, smiling eagerly as Samuel sat up, brushing dirt and leaves from his clothing.

  "I'm sorry, Samuel," Lila said. "He thought we were playing something he might enjoy." She offered a hand to help him up.

  Samuel smiled, accepting her help. "He might have at that. I certainly did."

  From the woods behind Lila came a pack of malamutes running wildly through the trees, a series of moans and yelps erupting from their throats. Before Samuel had a chance to react, they had surrounded Arrow, tumbling him over in joyous greeting.

  As the dogs wrestled and jumped, a man came out of the trees, nodding once toward Lila and Samuel before whistling softly at the pack. They responded instantly, all but Arrow, who whined pitifully before turning back to sit down next to Lila.

  Samuel felt a strange prick in his chest at the sight. Lila, with her curls wild over the shoulders of her worn bomber jacket, generous mouth tilted in a smile of comfort for the dog who leaned against her leg. The sound of the dogs faded away, leaving the silence of the forest to envelope them again. The sense of arousal he'd experienced a moment before returned, and he wanted to cross the small space between them, to finish the kiss that had been interrupted.

  Instead, he simply admired her in the cloudy day, recorded in memory the deep gloss of her hair against her pale skin, the lovely plumpness of her lips, the size of her hand against Arrow's fur. For soon the day would come when he would no longer enjoy the luxury of her soothing presence. The knowledge sent a crushing weight of sorrow through his chest. Ah, Lila, why did fate send you now?

  At that moment she looked up at him, as if she had heard his thought, and a wistful expression crossed her pale eyes. Then she smiled the smallest bit. "Are you ready to head back?"

  He nodded and turned to follow her back up the hill. As they reached the summit of the hill, she said, "I'm not sure what it is about this quiet and the forest, but sometimes it really makes me miss my dancing." She paused. "I think because it's so beautiful that you can't describe or express it except through something like music or dancing."

  "You studied a long time." There was no question in his words. In her movements the night he'd found her dancing, there had been the expertise born of long years of study.

  She nodded. "Nine years. Do you know that I had interviews set up with dance companies in three cities for one summer? And my parents were willing to let me go wherever I had to in order to find out if I had what it took." She smiled at him. "Maybe in some ways it's better that I never found out."

  Samuel took her hand, unable to resist. "You are a dancer, Lila, even now."

  "Am I?"

  "You are," he said, smiling. "And any way, by now you would be retiring, yes? Your knees would ache, and your feet would be horrid and all that lovely excitement that shines in your eye would have been erased."

  She stopped. He wasn't sure, but it seemed a sheen of tears brightened her eyes. "I would never have met you, either."

  And then, very softly, she kissed him. Samuel returned it, putting his arms around her to hug her. It was so simple a gesture, he thought as her hair tickled his nose and her arms embraced his waist, but it made him dizzy. His words to Lila echoed through his mind as he drifted in the simple pleasure of holding her. A passion of the soul.

  He released her wordlessly and they began to walk again.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  « ^ »

  Three days later Samuel stared moodily out of the upstairs window. Heavy clouds promised rain before dark.

  Lila had gone outside again, after starting a thick soup for the supper they would share in a few hours, and he could see her on the beach with Arrow. She was collecting things from the shoreline, her hair tossing in the strong breeze coming west with the rain. She was too far away for him to see details, only her energy was communicated. Her blasted energy.

  Since they had returned from their trip to town a few days before, she had never stopped moving. She baked and cooked, cleaned and rearranged, walked vigorously in the woods and along the beach. In the evenings she played solitaire and knitted and read her thick history
book by the light of the fire, twirling a curl around a finger, occasionally stopping to share some incredible fact she'd just stumbled over.

  And Samuel had prowled, unable to escape his increasingly bad temper even with the long runs he forced himself to take to rebuild the strength he had lost. His wound was healing more quickly than he could have imagined, although there was stiffness and some lingering pain in the joint. He needed his right arm if he were to undertake his next assignment.

  As he watched Lila prance about on the beach, he restlessly moved in his hands the strange little gadget she had picked up at the bookstore. It was a magic trick. The point was to take the single metal ring from a pair of horseshoes joined with a chain. Lila, with a flick of her wrists, had shown him the trick one time, then with her mischievous grin had handed it to him.

  In odd moments he found himself picking it up, turning it over, trying to find its secret. He approached it mathematically, knowing the immutable laws of nature would not be broken. But he could not seem to solve the puzzle.

  Now he wrestled with it again, putting the two pieces together, trying to understand how the ring came off. It was good therapy, and he was grateful to Lila for understanding him well enough to offer him such a distraction. It kept his darker thoughts at bay, kept him from despairing.

  He'd found himself thinking often of Mustapha as the uncertain and seeking boy he had been. A painfully awkward child, with hands and feet too large for thin arms and legs, his nose growing three times as fast as the rest of his face, he had been a target for the taunts of other children, who found him an easily wounded mark. Together with his insecurities over his parentage, the combination had been devastating.

  Samuel wished now that Mustapha had grown up before he'd understood the power of their father's money, for he had finally grown into his looks. In adulthood he had grown into a tall, imposing figure with severe, autocratic features and the soft, wide eyes of their mother. Had the transformation occurred before Mustapha had learned the power of property and cash, a woman might have healed his early scars.