Florida Knight

by Blair Bancroft

  “No!” Kate choked. Her ice cream wobbled.

  “What’s the matter?” Genuinely puzzled, Mona stared at her friend. “What’s wrong about joining the rest of the world? Come off it, Kate, this is Mona you’re talking to. I know you’re crazy about the guy. Who wouldn’t be? He’s superhero quality, girl. Don’t mess this up.”

  Super authority figure, more like. He’s a cop. He carries a gun. He’s into control, control. And more control.

  “I’m having some pretty serious second thoughts,” Kate admitted. “I don’t think we have much in common.”

  “You love him, he loves you, that’s all the common you need.”

  “We’re not talking love here, Mona.”

  “That’s not the way I see it. You two have been smelling of orange blossoms since the day you met.”

  “Silly,” Kate grumbled, “that’s because they were in bloom at the time.”

  “Fate,” Mona declared. “Anyone looking at you two could see you were a real couple, like me and Bubba, not just a sometime date.”

  “Well, you’re wrong,” Kate countered stubbornly.

  “Not.”

  Her napkin saturated with melted ice cream, Kate threw the remains of her cone in the wastebasket, grabbed for the box of tissues on Mona’s desk and wiped her hands. “Maybe that’s why I came,” she confided quietly. “I knew what you’d say. I needed someone to tell me I’m wrong to be so fainthearted.”

  “You’re wrong,” Mona obliged. “In fact, you’re downright nuts. He may not be cute, but the man’s a walking miracle. Get down on your knees and thank the Lord, girl.”

  Oh, dear God, how could she have been so insensitive? The ice cream roiled in Kate’s stomach, threatening to come back up. Idiot that she was, she was confiding doubts about love to someone whose devotion was so strong, so enduring that she had not wavered in the face of genuine adversity. Permanent adversity.

  “You’re the strongest person I know, Mona. The love you and Bubba have is the stuff poets write about.” Kate’s lips curved in a wry smile. “I don’t think Michael and I can aspire to your level.”

  Mona finished her cone, licked her fingers clean. “You’re a stand-up woman, Kate Knight,” she declared, “but a little more confidence, a few less doubts wouldn’t hurt. You have to know you have a heart before you can give it away. Yours has been ice-bound too long.”

  “But—”

  “It’s simple. Do you want him or don’t you? If you want him, then you take the bad with the good. Not that I can imagine anything bad about Raven,” Mona added judiciously. “I mean, with that face he’d be cast as a villain in the movies, but otherwise, what’s not to like? You want to throw him away, fine. Just be very sure you know what you’re doing.”

  Kate shifted in her chair. “I didn’t say I wanted to throw him away.” She couldn’t. They were still working an investigation together.

  What a wicked excuse for not doing what she didn’t want to do anyway.

  But every time he came near her, tried to touch her, she’d see him in gray and black. The gun would grow to the size of a club, the van, a mountain. The rest of him, towering over her like a giant, an evil giant who would not grant her so much as a modicum of control over her life.

  Intellectually, she knew her objections were absurd, that Mona was one-hundred-percent right. But . . .

  Kate stood up, managed a smile. “Thanks, Mona, I needed a good kick in the teeth. Did you find a sub for next weekend?”

  “Terry said she’d keep an eye on the place. So we can all be off to the wilds of Clearwater, no problem.”

  “Good.” Kate waved goodbye, headed for the van, her smile disappearing as if it had never been. She could put Michael off for the next few days, but this weekend . . . in the tent . . .

  Just the thought, and her body twitched into life. Traitor, she hissed to her assortment of quickening body parts. Haven’t you got sense enough to be afraid of him?

  “Raven, Cat? You in there?” The husky whisper penetrated the dark interior of the tent, cutting off the hoarser, hotter words being tossed around inside.

  “Yeah?” Raven’s challenge sounded so unwelcoming, Cat almost smiled. Though the visitor’s timing was bad, her truculent lieutenant sounded like the giant grinding out, “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.”

  “It’s Corwyn, I need to talk to you. Uh–sorry,” the king added most humbly.

  Cat fumbled in the dark for the lantern, hit the switch. “Maybe the dark’s better,” Corwyn suggested, gracefully waving Raven and Cat back to their chairs. Once again, Cat hit the switch, plunging them into darkness, but not before they’d gotten a good look at LALOC’s king dressed in his traveling clothes, faded blue jeans and a T-shirt decorated with towering monoliths against an orange-red sky. Stonehenge at sunset.

  “I apologize for coming so late,” Corwyn said, well aware the heated words he’d heard as he approached the tent had been far from normal conversation. “But I figured the less fuss the better.” He hunkered down on his heels, spoke only loudly enough to carry to the two people seated in front of him. “I checked my e-mail before I left home. There was a message from Kiri. She’s on to something. Since we’re in a dead zone here, she’s waiting for an e-mail from Michigan. She seemed to think it was really important.”

  “Did she say what?” Raven asked.

  “Well, she’s had a whole slew of people checking the registrations here in Florida. As we expected, the list of members who’ve been at each event where there was trouble is long, almost impossible to work with.” Corwyn paused, enjoying the drama of the moment. “Not so with the vendors. Kiri ended up with a very short list. Short enough to send off to the out-of-state fairs where there was trouble. Fortunately, all the big fairs are listed on the Net, so it wasn’t hard to come up with e-mail addresses for the organizers.”

  “I’m impressed,” Raven said. And meant it.

  “We have almost as many computer nerds as fighter jocks,” Cat explained.

  “So?” Raven urged.

  “That’s all she said. Guess she was being cautious. I’ll let you know the minute I see them.”

  Raven’s soft chuckle filled the tent, surprising both his companions. “A little scrap of a woman about half the size of her husband, and she’s done more for this case than all the rest of us put together.”

  “I didn’t think she’d get anywhere either,” Corwyn said. “But she and her crew slaved over this hunt. I hope it works out. If it doesn’t,” he added thoughtfully, “I’d appreciate it if you still gave her a big pat on the back.”

  “Of course,” Raven and Cat echoed as one.

  “King Corwyn rose nimbly to his feet. “Once again, my apologies for interrupting.” Pausing just short of the doorway, he looked back at Raven and Cat, indistinct figures in the gloom as they stood, respectfully awaiting his departure. “I know it’s none of my business, but I don’t like to see my subjects quarrel, particularly when they’re as well matched as the two of you. Goodnight.” Corwyn ducked through the tent flap and was gone before either of his listeners could react.

  Cat sank back into her camp chair, her knees suddenly weak. Raven, not so respectful of LALOC royalty, remained standing. Damned interfering busybody. Who’d he think he was?

  King of the Known World. LALOC’s Florida World, anyway. So powerful, the members bowed to his g.d. empty chair!

  “Where were we?” Raven growled.

  “I can’t remember.” Which wasn’t true. Cat remembered every agonizing minute of this awful week. Telling Raven, when he called on Monday night, that she needed time to think. That, no, she couldn’t even explain why, because she herself hadn’t figured it out yet. She’d reacted badly. Irrationally. There had to be a reason. She’d let him know when she found it.

  But reason had eluded her. The next two nights, when Michael called, Kate continued to evade. He stopped calling. And now it was Friday night. On the relatively short drive to a campgrou
nd north of Tampa, they’d let Mona do the bulk of the talking, chatting about new innovations at the Grove’s gift shop, the activities she planned for LALOC children on Saturday afternoon. Bubba had startled them with a tale of helping a biker who spun out in the heavy traffic of the Tamiami Trail. Mona fussed. Michael heaped on the praise. Kate frowned through the bug specks on the windshield, once again worrying over what to do about Bubba. In spite of his handicap, he had so much left to offer the world.

  Another black mark against Michael. If she weren’t so damn busy coping with a take-charge-of-everything-in-sight cop, she’d have had more time to figure out how to help Mona and Bubba . . .

  “I believe you’d just informed me my uniform makes me a control freak,” Raven declared softly, finding his seat more by feel than by sight. “And I said I’d be glad to strip for you anytime. Anything else?”

  “Do you have your gun with you?”

  “Under the circumstances, yes.”

  “You think I’m dangerous?”

  “Dammit, Kate, there you go again!”

  “Cat,” she corrected automatically. “Besides,” she persisted, “isn’t that ‘carrying concealed’?”

  “I’m allowed.”

  Cat struggled with perceptions versus reality. When she dug far enough down, when she forced herself to confront what had been dancing just out of reach, she discovered an unpalatable truth. She was not only afraid of Michael; she was afraid for him. His arrogance, his natural assumption of power could, with time, be reduced to a minor annoyance because she truly believed he cared for her and would not hurt her. But the other . . .

  “I thought I understood what you were,” Cat said. “I didn’t. I saw a man from the mundane world floundering through the maze of LALOC culture and, frankly, I was vastly entertained.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You were so funny,” Cat chortled. “Big macho cop takes on a bunch of medieval buffs and thinks his wits have gone south.”

  “That wasn’t all that went south.”

  “Naughty, lieutenant. Very naughty.”

  “Well? You were making a point, I hope?”

  “I was the one who was out of her element,” Cat said. “I could cope with Raven, the supposed cellphone tower jock. I could almost cope with Michael Turco, who was brother to Mark and had a real honest-to-God family on a ten acres of ranch land. But I totally forgot about—or maybe totally rejected—Lieutenant Michael Turco of the Florida Highway Patrol. I wasn’t prepared for him at all. He wasn’t the man I’d . . . well, you know,” Cat finished lamely.

  “Okay, I can understand that, but I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to get over it. Five days is a pretty long time to stay mad over a simple adjustment to reality. Unless you never gave a damn about me at all.”

  The challenge lay there, demanding an answer.

  “You know that’s not true,” Cat returned.

  “No, I don’t.”

  A sliver of moonlight drifting through the window netting caught his frown. Cat winced, turned away, combing through scattered thoughts for a way out of the mess she’d made. Outside, the breeze rustled softly through the heavy woods behind them. “Okay, here it is.” She sighed. “I’ve only just realized this in the last few minutes, and it’s not easy to admit I’m such a coward. I’m scared by what you do. I’m terrified when I see you wearing a gun. I think of all that could go wrong. I suppose I have no right to look ahead, to think of a future, but what’s a girl to do? I’ve spent too many years ignoring my past and refusing to think of the future. It’s time to come out of the tunnel, look at the world the way it is. And that says, Michael Turco is a cop. He wears a gun, lives a cop’s life. Any woman who wants him has to live with that as well.”

  “I thought you were a Florida Knight, a rough, tough warrior.”

  “That’s make-believe. My sword is bamboo wrapped in duct tape.”

  “And your heart is made of marshmallow?” Raven taunted.

  “Hardly,” Cat snapped.

  “Then call it a night, come to bed,” Raven said. “Separate sleeping bags,” he added hastily. “I’m not so horny I can’t wait until tomorrow. Give us both time to cool off.”

  Cat whirled on him. “That’s it, that’s all you have to say?”

  “I’ve found out what I wanted to know. We’ve cleared the air, but it’s easy to see we’re not going to settle this here and now. Tackling things when we’re not so tired seems the sensible thing to do.”

  “Sensible! You want to be sensible about love?”

  “Love is it?” Michael scoffed. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t be so damned difficult!”

  Cat nearly bit her tongue. Adding love into the argument was like tossing a bomb into a minefield. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  She shot to her feet. “Okay, separate sleeping bags.” She headed toward the deeper darkness that was the entrance to the tent’s back room.

  Behind her Michael grinned from ear to ear. She was afraid for him. She cared. She’d even been startled into mentioning the word love. He should be scared shitless, running for cover, maybe dragging his sleeping bag into the front room, distancing himself physically and mentally, from this menace to the routine of his life. Instead . . . instead he felt the surge of adrenalin of the boxer about to enter the ring. What a fight this was going to be.

  Chapter 22

  The lyst field, a long hike from their campsite, was large enough to put a gleam in the eye of every LALOC weekend warrior. A vast expanse of green grass surrounded by forest, the field could accommodate every type of combat, most particularly the melee, which smaller lyst fields could not. Raven, who had listened to the eager talk from the fighters the night before, examined the grassy expanse from one end to the other. Surrounded by woods, the field was the length of two football fields end to end, and two more laid side by side. Hard to believe that condominiums and other pricey housing came right up to the campground’s entrance gate. When the camp was originally built, it must have been far out in the Florida wilderness.

  Forests were good, Raven conceded. But not today when he couldn’t tell if any two-footed animals roamed within. Then again, unlike the archery field where Garth had been shot, the woods here were a good distance from the central area the Lyst Marshal had designated as the tournament field. Which only eliminated one aspect of the problem. Sabotage could come from within. From someone standing in the crowd, watching . . . waiting. Smiling. Someone who had already made a clever substitution of something lethal for what was supposed to be safe and innocuous. Under all that duct tape, what . . . ?

  Raven watched while Max helped Cat into her armor, then dropped the green surcoat with heraldic design of pink rose, silver sword, and sewing needle, over her head. He should be casing the crowd, keeping a wary eye on the pile of weapons at the fighters’ feet. But every time he watched Cat rig herself out in that ridiculous outfit, he was torn between wanting to rip it off her and thinking she was the most magnificent sight he’d ever seen. The bold and beautiful woman of dreams so deep-seated he hadn’t recognized they were there until he’d met Kate Knight.

  Around him, eager jocks were still speculating on whether or not the Earl Marshal would allow a melee. Melees were fun, they insisted. Everybody charging at once, just like the movies. “’Course we’re not supposed to do it that way.” Thor looked up, grinned at Raven. “But sometimes Drakon bends a little. I mean, hey, when we’ve got all this room, he knows if he doesn’t sort of look the other way, he might get dunked in the lake.

  Silently sympathizing with the Earl Marshal’s dilemma, Raven thunked Thor on the back, assured him a melee sounded great. Turning toward the royal pavilion, he caught Corwyn’s eye. The king shook his head, shrugged. No Princess Kiriana as yet. Raven dumped out the camp chair from the sack slung over his shoulder and settled down to watch the lyst. They had to complete full rounds of single combat before they could even think of having a melee, declared Drakon Fitzwalter with fire in his eye. The fi
ghters grumbled, grinned behind the Marshal’s back, sure he would give in. Inspection complete, they listened as the pairings were read, then straggled into some semblance of a waiting line. Each wore full armor, from helms, coifs, and gauntlets to a variety of metal protective pads whose names Raven couldn’t remember. Their swords all had metal basket hilts for a firmer grip and very likely so they wouldn’t look so much like rattan mummified in duct tape. The wooden shields were large and colorful, those of the more experienced fighters scarred and dented from serious use.

  Dammit! He hated this. Hated watching Cat bob and weave, score points, take blows that had him wincing, frowning, biting his tongue. She was good out there, but Raven took every blow Cat took, felt the hurt far more. Admitting he was a fool didn’t keep him from being one. So far he’d avoided the many invitations to teach him to fight LALOC-style. He couldn’t, of course, offer his phone number to those who wanted to invite him to practice sessions, so he used Cat as a shield. Another thing that didn’t sit well with him. No, thanks, he’d said at least a dozen times, I might have to fight Cat. He’d shake his head, wink, and add: Not good for a relationship, you know. So now they left him alone. Which was too bad, because every time Cat took a blow he wanted to be out there bashing heads together, or at least dealing out vengeance. He would never get used to this. Never.

  The booming voice of the Earl Marshal faded, the harsh thud of sword on shield. For a moment he was Michael, looking at these people as if they were on a movie screen. Unreal. Definitely unreal. Another week or two, a month at most, and he was out of here. Rid of these strange people who surrounded themselves with anachronisms of another age.

  Not unless he rid himself of Kate Knight, who was also Lady Catriona MacDuff.

  And that was likely to be when hell froze over.

  There were worse things, he supposed, than having your fate sealed while watching knights and would-be knights battle with bamboo sticks in balmy weather under a cloudless blue sky. What had he done with his days off before he met Kate Knight? Not much. Spending one or two weekends a month camping out in what little was left of Florida’s wilderness wasn’t so bad. As long as Kate was there to share it with him. Even if it rained. His lips curled into a secret smile as he contemplated being trapped in their tent in the pouring rain.