“No!” Snig cried. “We’ll be good! We swear!”
“We’ll do everything you say!” Snag added. “You can be the master, and we’ll be your slaves!”
“We’ll even call you King Sterling!” Snug offered hysterically. “We’ll make you a crown—”
“And a throne too!” Snig promised, and fell to his knees, his hands locked together in a pleading gesture. “We’ll kiss your feet and—”
“Very well,” Sterling said quietly. “As King Sterling, I command my slaves to go to the shed.”
The triplets’ faces fell. Realizing that nothing they said or did was going to prevent him from spanking them, they left for the shed, muttering under their breaths the entire way.
“Why do you think I made you lead Gus around, Archibald?” Sterling asked, and wiped blood from the cheek Snug had scratched. “Why did I make you rub his ears? Are you more afraid of him now than you were before?”
Archibald frowned, then smiled again. “No, sir.”
“So what have you learned, son?”
The boy caressed Gus’s velvety snout. “That...that doing things that upset you is the only way to overcome them?”
“A lesson well-learned, Archibald. Now, give Gus some fresh hay.”
Archibald left to do as ordered, but called over his shoulder, “I’m not going to ride through. Sterling. Not ever.”
“We’ll see,” Sterling answered too softly for the boy to hear, and advanced to the woodshed, where the triplets awaited their punishment. He understood clearly they’d only been trying to protect their big brother, but they’d done it in an unacceptable way. He truly hated spanking them and longed for the day when the woodshed’s sole purpose was for firewood. With a deep sigh, he entered the shed and closed the door.
From the woods, Chimera watched him. Sitting hidden, she’d witnessed the events of the entire afternoon. And if she hadn’t seen Archibald do what he did, she’d never have believed it. It’d been almost more than she could bear to see the sensitive boy so upset and, more than once, she’d almost left the forest to intervene.
But something inside her had forced her to remain unseen, and now she was glad she had. Sterling had handled Archibald well. He’d been firm but not brutal; understanding, but unbending.
She hugged her bent knees and smiled when the whacking sounds and screaming came from the shed. She knew now that Sterling wasn’t trying to kill the boys, as they so often tried to convince her he did. They screamed more from sheer horror than any pain, and it was clear to her now that Sterling was right about the merits of discipline. Under his firm hand, the boys were becoming more obedient. They were still rambunctious, but he never tried to break their natural spirits. He only demanded that they behave.
He came out of the shed then. She saw him return to the fallen trees, the triplets following meekly behind him. Leaning against a thick juniper trunk, she watched him and thought about how very well his new orange pants fit him. With his gun belt and vivid pants he looked quite dashing. A cozy warmth settled over her despite the cool, dim freshness of the woods. The ache began. The same wild yearning she always felt at the beautiful sight of him.
He was everything she’d ever dreamed of a man being. Pleasing to the eye, warming to the heart. He was gentle when he needed to be, stern when he had to be. He kept his promises. He cared about the children. His kindness seemed to have no bounds, and he’d proved unable to ignore his conscience. He laughed easily at both himself and the situations that struck him as humorous, and the sound of his laughter often made her laugh too.
She liked to laugh. Life was good when it was filled with love and laughter.
“Love and laughter,” she whispered, still mesmerized by the tantalizing sight of Sterling’s bare, gleaming back. “Love?” she asked loudly, the sound of her own voice startling her. Did she love Sterling? Was it love that caused this ache inside her? She’d thought it passion, and maybe some of it was. But it was also something else. She was more convinced of that with each passing day. Love. Was that what caused her heart to beat so wildly every time she thought of him? The question filled her with awe, and a long while passed before she roused herself from her wonder-filled daze.
A new question came to her. If she did love Sterling, how was that possible? She could like him, but love him? Love went deeper than liking, and how could she love a man she knew so little about. Yes, she knew some things about him, but he was still so private. Why was he so private? It was almost as if he was afraid to let her know him. But why?
“Ah, Sterling, from your own lips has come the solution for hesitancy. The advice you have given Archibald is the advice, you yourself will now hear.” She rose and walked purposefully toward him. “I would like a word with you, please.”
He dropped the heavy log he was carrying and looked at her. In her eyes, he saw that mysterious shine. He’d avoided that glow for weeks. He knew it was silly to think she had the power to see the void inside him, but he couldn’t shake the belief.
And now that strange glimmer was directed at him again. “I can’t,” he said, and bent to pick up the log. “You want a barn, I’m building it. There’s no time for—”
“Yes, there is,” she disagreed, and put her booted foot on the log.
He stared at her foot. “You need new boots. Those look about twenty years old.”
“They were Xenia’s, and I imagine they’re closer to fifty years old. But I would like to discuss something more important than the age of my boots.”
“You wear fifty-year-old boots?” he asked, and chanced an upward glance. Dammit, the glow was still in her eyes. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“What?”
He straightened. “If you want to talk to me, turn around to do it.”
She frowned. “Why? Am I that ugly?”
He resisted the temptation to see if her eyes were still shining. Instead, his gaze traveled the length of her body. Her snug yellow-green skirt and lavender blouse clung to her invitingly. “Ugly? No, Chimera.”
“Homely?”
“Not in the least.”
“A bit harsh to the eyes, perhaps?”
“Are you fishing for compliments, enchantress?”
“Do you have any to give me?”
He smiled and felt ridiculous for avoiding her gaze. Whoever heard of someone reading another person’s soul? Taking a step closer to her, he gave an exaggeratedly intense look into her eyes. She backed away at his odd behavior. He snickered, put his arm around her shoulder, and led her away from the triplets when he saw they were listening to the entire exchange.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked as they approached the bubbling creek behind the cabin. “Can’t get any tinkle out of Athena? Depressed because the gnomes haven’t swept your floor lately?”
“It’s you,” she said bluntly.
“Me? What have I done?”
“It’s what you haven’t done.”
Dammit, there was that glow again, he thought, and had to force himself to continue gazing into her eyes. “What haven’t I done?” Was the glow really becoming brighter, or was it only his imagination? “Why do your eyes—they—Never mind.” Bending, he picked up a handful of pebbles.
She watched him throw the stones into the creek. “What about my eyes?”
“They shine. Like stars. I guess that’s why I call you estrellita.”
“You want to know something?” she asked, and ambled over to stand behind him. Curling her arms around him, she pressed her cheek to his sun-warmed back.
Sterling nearly gasped with the desire that crashed though him at her simple embrace. He clenched his fist around the pebbles in his hand and tried to control his reaction. Ravishing her on the creek shore was definitely not the right thing to do. The time would come, but only when he knew it to be the right time.
“Chimera,” he said, straining to keep his passion from thickening his voice, “since when do you ask permission to say what’s on that ever-spinnin
g mind of yours?” He turned within the circle of her arms and looked down at her before gently easing her to the ground. “What is it?”
She reached for his hand when he sat down beside her. “I heard what you told Archibald this afternoon about facing things that upset him, It was wonderful advice.”
He smiled with pride. “Thank you.”
“Yes, superb advice,” she repeated, and returned his smile. “Simply divine advice. How well do you follow it?”
The shine in her eyes fairly blinded him. He became instantly wary.
“Sterling, why are you so hesitant to talk to me? Everyone likes to be private sometimes, but you’re abnormally so.”
He jackknifed to his feet. “Abnormal!” he thundered, and flung the pebbles at a tree as he stormed away from her. “You’re a fine one to talk about abnormality! You with your caldron, your spells, your—I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again, Chimera!” he yelled, pointing his finger at her. “You’re nosy! You’ve no right—”
“I’ve every right.”
“Yeah? What gives it to you?”
She rose from the creek shore and, her hands clasped behind her back, sauntered over to where he stood. “Love gives me the right.”
“Love?” he repeated as if he’d never heard the word in his entire life. “What has love got to do—”
“It has everything to do with this,” she interrupted him, and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. “You see, Sterling Montoya, man of mystery, sire of secrets, I’m almost positive I love you.”
Chapter Eight
“Love me!” he yelled. “You don’t even know me! How can you love a man who is a stranger to you?”
She lifted her face to the heavens. “‘It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.’ Thomas Carlyle. I suppose,” she ventured, a finger to her lips, “that my heart has fallen in love with you, and now my head is trying to catch up. I really do think I love you, Sterling, and I’d like to discuss that with you. Maybe if you helped me, we could understand why I love you. Of course even if you refuse to discuss it, I’ll still love you. If you love someone, you just love him. Sometimes you don’t know why, you just do. Pascal wrote, ‘The heart has its reasons which reason doesn’t know.’ I’m sure that must be true, but even so, I’d still like to know the reasons. It’s not that I have any disrespect for Pascal, and not that I think reasons would make love better, but—”
“Chimera—”
“—knowing the reasons for falling in love would be wonderful,” she continued without pause, and clasped her hands together tightly. “But like I said, I’ll love you regardless. Nevertheless, I’m sure the reasons will show themselves sooner or later. Don’t you agree? Don’t you think—”
He placed his hand over her mouth and tried to understand everything she was telling him. “Chimera, please! Give me one minute to straighten out the mangled thing in my head that used to be my mind.”
Love, he said to himself, his hand still against her mouth. How the hell had the subject turned to love in the first place?
His muddled mind retraced the steps of the last fifteen minutes. Hadn’t the beginning of the conversation been about the age of her boots? She’d taken a pair of boots and turned them into love, his privacy, Thomas Carlyle, her reasons for loving him, Pascal, and how she’d probably know all her reasons for loving him before too much longer. All that in fifteen damn minutes! God only knew where she would have ended up had he let her go on.
He raked the fingers of his free hand through his hair and thought about her desire to know why she loved him. Bitterness rose; he struggled to push it down. He couldn’t give her any reasons, nor would she find any. There were none that he knew of, none he’d ever seen or been told about.
But how the hell could he get her off the subject that so upset him? Would it do any good to even try? In every instance she grabbed the threads of his intelligence, tangling them so intricately that before he even understood what was happening to him, he was totally bewildered, with no hope of ever loosening the knots.
The woman was mad. She was clever.
She was a lunatic genius.
Chimera saw clearly the distrustful look on his face, knew exactly what he was thinking, and snatched his hand from her mouth. “You know what you are, Sterling? You’re suspicious. You read manipulation into everything I say or do. I told you I don’t resort to trickery, yet you continue to think the worst of me. I believe that’s about the meanest thing anyone has ever done to me, and do you know, it hurts my feelings?”
He saw the pain in her eyes and wondered if it was real or feigned. He didn’t know whether to take her in his arms and apologize or shake her till her teeth rattled. His confusion irritated him further. Dammit, how the hell did she get him so flustered so quickly? “Chimera—you—I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, it’s just that...you love me? Do you know how many women have told me that? How many have lied about love to achieve their own ends? How many—”
“No, I don’t know how many, and I don’t care to know. Why are you asking me that anyway? Are you trying to compare me with them?”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t?”
His question took her off-guard, and it was a moment before she could find an answer. “‘A whole bushel of wheat is made up of single grains.’ Thomas Fuller. The entire female race is made up of individual women. Does that answer your question, Sir Sterling Suspicious?”
He saw her shining gaze. Instantly, he spun her around, his other hand sweeping up to cover her eyes. He pulled her to him, his palm pressing against her face. “Stop it, Chimera. Stop whatever it is you do with that glow in your eyes. You can’t see inside me. I know you can’t.”
“Then why do you cover my eyes?”
Why indeed? he raged, and grit his teeth. His hand dropped from her face, but he kept her back to him. “Stop it. Stop making me crazy!”
“You aren’t crazy?”
“Hell, no, I’m not crazy!”
“All right, you’re not crazy. At least you’ve told me one thing about yourself. Can you think of any more?”
“Back to that again,” he growled. “Fine. All right, Chimera, fine.” He spun her around to face him. “I’m Sterling Montoya. I’m thirty years old, have black hair and silver eyes. I weigh about one hundred and eighty pounds, I’m six feet tall, and I hate the taste of fish. Because I hate fish, Fridays were always my hungriest days since meat was not allowed. Even now I could eat an entire cow on a Friday and still hate the day because of the memories I have of it. My favorite food is—hell, I don’t know what I like best. I just hate fish. My favorite color is blue, I never take naps, and prefer autumn to all the other seasons. I used to think if I drank holy water, I’d become a saint, but when I drank it, it was brackish, and I got sick instead. I have one freckle on my thigh, but that’s the only mark on my body. I can’t carry a tune worth a damn, but I sing when I bathe. I—”
“Can I see it?”
“What? Can you see what?”
“Your freckle.”
He defied the glow in her eyes with a glare of his own. She was nigh to understanding there was no one inside him, to discovering the void inside him. No one had ever even suspected its existence, and the thought of her seeing it both panicked and infuriated him. It was none of her business, and he’d be damned if he’d allow her to use his freckle to find it! He couldn’t for the life of him understand how a freckle would reveal it, but he refused to take any chances. However innocent Chimera might be of manipulation, her innocent curiosity invariably led her to ask all the right questions.
“No, you may not see it,” he snapped. “If I show it to you...you’ll look at its shape. You’ll say, ‘Oh, well, look at that. It’s a tiny circle. Perfectly round. Could that mean you have a well-rounded personality? Surely a round freckle is a sign of—’”
Her laughter cut him short. “Sterling, that’s ridiculous. Whoever heard of a freckle’s shape being a sign of someone’s c
haracter?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he responded gruffly. “If it’s not the shape you look at, it’ll be the color. It’s black. Very black. You’ll say, ‘Black. My freckles are brown. Do you suppose the color differences mean anything? Like maybe black freckles mean a dark character, or—”
“Nonsense. Utter nonsense, Sterling. There’s no way possible to understand someone by examining his freckles! Wherever did you hear such a thing?”
His eyes narrowed. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. But the stranger something is, the more sense you seem to make of it. You’ll start with my freckle and eventually end up—”
“Sweet heaven, back to the old manipulative me.” She sighed. “I just wanted to see the stupid freckle! One lone freckle on a person’s entire body...well, most people have a few more than that. And then there are moles too. I have a few on my stomach, and if you look at them carefully, you can see they form a sort of crescent moon. And in the middle of the moon, there’s a smaller mole where an eye should be.”
“A staring moon,” he said. “How privileged you are to have such interesting art growing right on your belly.”
“I never thought of it that way, but I guess that’s true,” she merrily mused aloud. “And I have a birthmark on my—Well, I have a birthmark too.”
“Where is it?”
“Why should I show you my birthmark when you won’t show me your freckle? Fair’s fair.”
He stared at her. She was chattering about freckles, birthmarks, and moles. The conversation had gone from boots to love to marks on their bodies. Was there really some sort of connection between the three things?
The thought struck him funny. He tried to concentrate on his irritation, tried not to laugh, but his amusement was too great to contain. A great guffaw escaped him. “Chimera, you’re...you’re something else, estrellita.” He pulled her into his arms and held her closely, his hands vanishing in the thick mass of her ebony hair. What a girl she was, he mused. She made him furious, then right before he was on the verge of exploding, she made him laugh. It was as if she had his emotions dancing on her fingertips.
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