by Cait London
“Mmmft.” In the shop, Fiona took the fork from her mouth and stuck it into the casserole, devouring it. Amid a clutter of bows, greenery, huge tubs of flowers and the various gladiolus stuck in her apron’s big chest pocket, Fiona seemed like an oversize, lean and sexy elf. A pink baby carnation had been tucked over her right ear and a blue one over her left ear. A huge ribbon circled her head, the bow resting on her crown. She pointed to a chair cluttered with paper, indicating that Joel should sit down.
Taking care not to hurt Abe and George, Joel eased off his leather jacket. Fiona glanced at him, stuffed the fork into the casserole again and lifted it to his mouth.
Joel stiffened and then slowly opened his lips, allowing Fiona to feed him. The new experience and the intimacy of the act shocked him. He realized how little experience he had with considerate women; he’d chosen his previous associations to equal his uncomplicated, structured life.
“Mmmf?” she asked, asking if he liked the food, a smile on her lips.
“Mmm,” he murmured, agreeing that it was good...good to be cared about, good to be appreciated and good to be her prince.
In her stride, Fiona hummed Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” and added gyrations and fancy footwork as she moved, whirling between flowers, bows and ceramic pots. While Fiona snipped bows and stuffed stems into a ceramic bootie filled with green, damp foam, Joel tried to make sense of her notes and ordering system. Apparently Fiona had her own business systems and none of them organized or legible. She hurried past him, stopped and raised on tiptoe to kiss him.
Joel folded his hands together and waited as she hurried off, down into the nursery to return with a huge potted hydrangea. She stopped, studied the calla lilies in the tub at her feet and muttered, “I’ll never get all this done. Poor Mrs. Wailey...poor Mr. Wailey. He was just ninety-five—”
She glanced at Joel, tears brimming in her eyes, and with a bouquet of red carnations between them, came to stand against him, her head on his shoulder. The gesture was so trusting and needing that it startled Joel. He slowly, carefully enfolded her in his arms. She leaned closer, snuggling to him and he swallowed, unused to the emotions circling him. He gently placed his cheek along hers and opened himself to the wave of tenderness.
She sniffed once, and he took a tissue from the box to hold to her nose. “Blow.”
Fiona looked at him, her lashes damp from tears. “You would have liked Mr. Wailey. He was the best small-motor man around. I learned a lot from him. Mrs. Wailey won’t know what to do without a putterer around. Everyone will have to reclaim all their lawnmowers, washers and whatever he wasn’t able to repair.”
Unused to sharing himself, or comforting, Joel struggled to say the right thing. He cleared his throat. “I’ll visit Mrs. Wailey and see if I can help. Meanwhile, there are babies coming into the world. There are ceramic booties and bassinets to stuff with flowers. I think Mr. Wailey might like that, don’t you?”
She rested against him again as if he were her anchor in a stormy sea, and Joel stroked her back. Comforting Fiona felt right; he realized that he had offered little comfort in his life and that it was awkward for him. Yet he intended to try—Fiona looked tired and sad. “Is there anything I can do to help you tonight?”
She sighed tiredly and arched against Joel’s hands as he massaged her tight shoulders. “I’ve done the funeral things. You know, he never said anything about my arrow he found in the sheriff’s garden tractor. I was really rather good with a bow, though I never killed anything. I couldn’t.... There are just the centerpieces for the showers—forty of them.”
“Lead me to them,” Joel murmured, pushing back his sleeves. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on the flowers. “What’s the theme? Round? Square? Or one of those Japanese designs with a stalk here and one there?”
Around the daisy stalk between her teeth, Fiona mumbled, “I don’t know about you helping me with arrangements, Joel. This isn’t as easy as it looks.”
Fiona studied herself in her apartment mirror. Joel’s flower arrangements were strictly linear, arranged in a row and all having equal heights. He seemed so pleased with himself that Fiona couldn’t bear to correct them while he was there. She’d artfully added different layers after he’d gone out the door whistling Bach.
She’d delivered the arrangements to the appropriate places and found Joel speaking quietly to Mrs. Wailey at the funeral. When she’d come to his side, he’d taken her hand, holding it.
The first Friday night in November found her fearing her first real date with a potential suitor...a candidate who terrified her and made no effort to hide his attraction for her.
Fiona angled her head to one side and adjusted the huge red silk bloom above her ear. The last few nights practicing the tango with Joel always led to contact, sooner or later, and an immediate desire to have him.
Fiona removed the red flower and drew Una’s blue beaded necklace around her throat. She tied it, running her fingers over the three strands, sky blue beads against her neck. She wasn’t prepared to feel so feminine with Joel.
She was terrified and shy of this first real date with him. She’d been to proms and dated other men, but more for the event than the male she needed at her side. Fiona turned her back to the full-length mirror and looked over her shoulder to study the simple black dress with tiny straps and a thigh-high, fringed hem.
Joel was to pick her up at the apartment; he’d insisted. Fiona had the odd, sinking feeling that this set a new standard, a landmark, in their relationship.
Her hand trembled as she smoothed the short skirt, and the longer lace dance pants beneath it. The strapped heels completed the Latin American look.
She heard Joel’s pickup crunch in the alley behind her greenhouse; she clicked the switch to unlock the back of her greenhouse door for him.
Fiona brushed her fingertips across her lips. She’d never tried to be feminine, appealing to a man. She’d never played he-she games—except in the line of duty, a rescue or a cause—she’d never...she’d never cared this deeply, or allowed herself to. If Joel didn’t react so marvelously to her, she wouldn’t be so excited by him.
He would want structure—life run on a calendar, proper etiquette and table settings, with dinner at a regular time.
Fiona knew she couldn’t live her life by a tidy checklist. She held her breath as Joel’s footsteps came up the stairway to her apartment. “This is no good,” she muttered. “Tangoing with Joel, entering this contest is as good as telling everyone that we’re...we’re seriously involved.”
She opened the door, and beneath the hallway light, Joel stood dressed in a high-collared black silk shirt and flowing pants. His dressy black shoes gleamed. She slowly looked all the way back up to his chest and studied it. “Suspenders. Scarlet ones. How perfect.”
When Fiona’s father wore suspenders, something always lit in her mother’s eyes. Once her mother had whispered to Fiona, “You can never go wrong when a man is careful about his suspenders, dear.”
She loved Joel in suspenders. She loved him in nothing at all. Fiona shivered. A relationship, one with P’s and Q’s and crossed T’s, with Joel wouldn’t do.
“Just an impulse,” Joel stated tightly, defensively, as if she’d tease him.
“You’re perfect,” she whispered, her throat drying as she ran her fingers up and down the suspenders and tugged them lightly. Her mother had been right Joel in black silk was one thing, but the suspenders added just the right sense of excitement.
She shivered slightly, awareness streaking under her skin. Joel had the look she’d seen on her brothers’ faces—that male predator look when they wanted to claim their ladyloves. Fiona wasn’t certain she wanted to be claimed, or restricted. Joel looked too dominant, too male, too...
“Are you shy of me?” he asked softly, trailing a finger down her cheek. “I thought we’d passed that.”
“You know very well this is different. It’s so formal.” She threw out her hand. “It’s like serious dating. This is not
like me going to your house or you coming here, Joel...this is dating. Dating means courtship. Courtship means—Well, it used to mean—”
His eyebrows went up, questioning her. She floundered. She wasn’t all that modern when it came to Joel.
“Don’t be nervous of me, Princess. I thought you were the bold one who liked uncharted waters. Formal dating might not be so bad.”
“Oh, sure, for you. People will talk. They’ll start marrying us and the first thing you know—”
Joel sighed dramatically and shook his head. “Some people are just prone to logic. I think you’re beautiful tonight.”
He edged aside the long fringes to view the lace dance pants. “Only you could pull off an outfit like that. You are an exciting woman, Tallchief.”
She backed into the room as he handed her a flat box wrapped in a huge red bow. “What’s this?”
She dove into the wrapping, tearing it apart while Minnie swatted the bow. The silken shawl, complete with fringes and huge scarlet flowers spilled into her hands. Joel swept it around her shoulders, adjusting the folds. “A little present. Would you wear it for me tonight?” he added formally and kissed her bare shoulder.
Fiona’s body moving smoothly, elegantly against his, was a dream. They could move through life, just like this, he decided confidently as they were announced the winners. Because he felt wonderful, elated, floating, Joel couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than to give Fiona a Valentino kiss, bending her over his arm.
He grinned when she straightened and blinked up at him. “Now that was impulsive, Joel. Palladin’s Iron Man is slipping.”
“You betcha,” he tossed back as Maddy announced the talent contest.
“Tangos assume that the male is dominant and that the world is his,” Fiona stated very softly. “But I think you need to know, Palladin, that keeping up with me won’t be easy.”
Forty minutes later, after Sally Jo Black had sung a husky, sensual rhythm and blues, Pete Spade had clattered his spoons to music, Ellie Mae White had twirled her baton, an Elvis impersonator had gyrated, and Mo Bookman had chimed his bells, Maddy announced, “Everyone here has listened to Miss Fiona Tallchief sing for years. She’s got three songs tonight, then the tango contest. Give her a hand, folks.”
Joel settled back in the shadows, leaning against the bar. He wasn’t certain how he liked Fiona singing for other people...still it was charity, he reminded himself. The four-man band tuned up, and Fiona moved onto the stage. Fiona had been shocked when she’d discovered that they were in a structured courtship pattern; Joel would have to analyze the situation. Maybe he was moving too fast; maybe he wasn’t romantic enough. Maybe his flower designs showed too little promise and imagination. Catching a butterfly wasn’t that easy.
Living separately wouldn’t do. He couldn’t sleep and he worried about her.
He’d never shared himself with anyone. His intimacy with Fiona seemed to come naturally, because he wanted her to know what made him tick. It only seemed honest.
Joel frowned. There was always that element of his father’s legacy. Could he trust himself?
Fiona adjusted the microphone to her level; Joel settled deeper into his thoughts. While she was singing “Greensleeves,” he’d decide how to ask her for their next date. He hadn’t asked her yet, and he wanted Fiona to have everything, including proper invitations—women should have something to remember...little dance programs to put in their diaries, bits of flowers and little love notes. He would start making a list of appropriate romantic phrases and words and practice them.
From the stage, Fiona studied him coolly, assessingly.
Joel shifted uneasily. Accustomed to business memos, he’d have to practice love notes and study perfumes. No perfumes, he added a second later. He preferred her natural scent like wildflowers on the mountain.
The kiss to her bare shoulder had been an impulse and one he would repeat.
The heady rhythm began, and Fiona started moving slowly, sensuously, doing nothing more than clicking her fingers to the guitar’s beat. Her eyes locked with Joel’s. He sat up as she began Tina Turner’s “Steamy Windows.” With appropriate steamy moves, Fiona leaned back and let the raw sensuality pour from her.
The men in the room were instantly taut, even Mel Jensen, who had just reached his hundredth birthday. Joel pinpointed three males he knew had dated Fiona briefly. They were in her past, while he was in her future.
He coolly surveyed the room and his gaze shot back to the three men again, whose eyes were slitted, locked to Fiona’s gyrations.
But she wasn’t focusing on them, directing the song to Joel.
He relaxed slightly, then shivered, his body hardening and his senses telling him that Fiona was very carefully explaining to him that he was too conventional for her rebellious lifestyle. Joel inhaled sharply. Or she was making it clear to the audience that she was merely having a fling with him. He definitely was not a “fling man.”
Hips swaying, fringes flying, arms lifted and feet braced wide on the stage, Fiona launched into the sensual rusty-toned beat of “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”
Then to shock him further, she began a sexy introduction into “Addicted to Love.” He knew exactly what she was doing—pointing out to him that she wouldn’t be the conventional mate, conforming to his corporate standards: Tina Turner and Bach wouldn’t mix. Joel recognized the addiction-to-love symptoms instantly—they were his own.
By the time the beat was heavy and Fiona was damp with sweat, Joel had enough. He grabbed their coats, strode through the audience, held them up to Fiona and said, “Hold these.”
When she reached for them, he grabbed her wnst and pulled her over his shoulder. He began carrying his woman to a more private place, where she could issue all the challenges she liked. While she squirmed and threatened him, he tugged down a handful of fringes to cover her dance pants, whipped the shawl over her backside and blew a clinging fringe from his cheek.
The three Tallchief brothers immediately launched to their feet, only to be pushed back by their respective and laughing wives.
Joel dumped Fiona in his pickup, watched her gather her temper to tell him where to fly and reached for her. He spared her nothing of his desire for her, his hands keeping her close as his mouth fused to hers, slanted and dived deeper.
“There. Is that what you wanted?” he asked, shaking with desire as she stared at him.
“Not quite.” Fiona looped her arms around his neck and drew his lips to hers. Her tongue flicked at his lips, her teeth nibbled around his jaw.
He began to shake, realizing that he wanted her badly enough to haul her over him—right on Amen Flats’ main street! He’d carried her off over his shoulder like a macho, arrogant male. Joel blinked. With Fiona, he did feel proprietary, unique and up to breaking his personal rules.
“What was that about?” he asked unevenly, trying to recover from Fiona’s sensual suckling of his earlobe.
“You looked too smug,” she whispered smugly. “You sat there, leaning back with your arms crossed. You were frowning, concentrating on just how to handle the situation, plotting, and confident that you would succeed. Your expression said you had everything under control and it was purring along nicely in the direction you had intended. You reminded me of Palladin’s Iron Man, the first time I saw you sitting behind your desk—scratch, scratching at notes, looking cool, efficient and complete, without anyone in your life. The temptation was just too much—I had to do it.”
He had to ask. “Was all that for me, Tina?”
Fiona placed her hands along his cheeks and kissed him softly, tenderly. She plucked his suspender strap gently. “Just for you, my prince.”
Nine
Fiona dragged the cold mountain air into her lungs. Morning Star, a descendant of Tallchief’s stallion, moved through the one-inch blanket of snow, easing upward on the familiar trail leading to Fiona’s parents’ meadow.
October was over and November and hard winter wer
e beginning. Restless with her thoughts after Joel had left her at two o’clock, Fiona had left before dawn. This could be the last chance she had to visit her parents on Tallchief Mountain before winter prevented it. In the spring, Fiona would come with Elspeth to plant the heather starts, while their brothers and Alek cleaned the small meadow of broken limbs.
Joel. Joel, you frighten me.
Was the legend true? Did circles complete?
To finish the circle, an unlikely love of the battlemaiden will come calling, bearing his angry dragon on one arm and the chest to win her heart. Then the magic circle will be as true as their love.
Magic. If there was magic, why had her parents died? Why wasn’t her mother weaving and holding her grandchildren upon her lap and her father talking about cattle and lambing and—
Fiona shivered, memories chilling her. Yesterdays were gone, yet through her ran a solid thread, woven into her life and Joel’s. A man battling against his dark legacy, Joel wanted more for his son.
Fiona studied the familiar trail. The nearby meadow was covered by a light blanket of snow; the meadows and rocks of Tallchief Mountain had reminded Una of Scotland. While he was staked out for torture, Liam, son of Una and Tallchief, had first met Elizabeth. To save her sister from the lawless gang, the English lady had bowed to their tormenting demands and had later married Liam. Their love had grown.
Then high on those rocks, LaBelle had been chased by Jake Tallchief. LaBelle, a world-class jewel thief and matador, had mamed and desperately loved the dirt-poor, tough Westerner.
Pauline and Matthew Tallchief, Fiona’s parents, had been deeply in love throughout their marriage.
Fiona tugged down her knitted cap against the chill. Each of Una’s legends had come true, her brothers and sister happily married.
Joel had entered her life only a month ago, when October came to haunt the Tallchiefs with the death of their parents. Now October was gone, and her reckoning with Joel had sliced through the threads of her life.