by Nancy Morse
He walked into the room and turned around, and whatever resolve Rennie had to remain calm flew right out the window. It was like seeing him for the first time all over again. He was beautiful, with a dark, wild kind of appeal that stole her breath away. Even his imperfections were thrilling.
“How’d you know where to find me?” she asked.
“From the address you gave when you called for a cab to take you home.” His face retained its stoic expression, but his coal-dark eyes moved over her with the intensity of a hungry man. She looked utterly provocative in a peach-colored satin robe that kept slipping off one shoulder. She smelled fresh and intoxicating from her shower, her tawny hair curling in damp, undisciplined waves around her face.
His gaze returned to her face that was pale and beautiful. “Who’d you think it was?”
Rennie felt herself heating up under John’s stare. Nervously she drew the robe tighter around her body, unaware that doing so only made the curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts even more obvious to him. She answered honestly, “Craig. I had it out with my stepfather last night and I figured he’d heard about it.”
“Do you think he’ll come?”
She shrugged and the robe slipped again off her shoulder. Aware that his eyes were on her, she hastily pushed it back up. “Hopefully I’ll be gone by then.”
Something flashed in his dark eyes. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Just not here.”
“You’re not afraid of him, are you?”
Not since loving you gave me the courage to fear nothing, she thought. But that was only partly true. The thing was, she felt uncomfortable here. This place, these things, belonged to a past life. The simple fact was she didn’t know where she belonged.
“Because if you are, I can—”
“You can what?” she interrupted. “Talk to him in my behalf?” Or do something worse, depending upon what time of day it was, she thought with a shiver. “No, thanks. I’m not afraid of him. Not anymore.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
She noticed the way he shifted nervously from foot to foot. He was obviously uncomfortable and out of his element. “Because it has nothing to do with who I am or what I want.”
“What is it you want?”
“Did you come here to play twenty questions with me, John? Because if you did, I’m in no mood for games.”
There was something different about her. He could see it in her eyes, which were clearer and brighter than he’d ever seen them, and in the way she was standing, taller, prouder, it seemed, as if she had come to some kind of understanding of herself that he was not privy to. Whatever it was, the change he detected in her was overwhelming to his senses. Before, her beauty had an ethereal quality. Now she radiated the beauty of a woman fully aware of her own inner strength, and it thrilled him even more.
“I came to see if you’re all right,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t I be? Like you, I have my work to keep me busy. My battle with my stepfather has, I think, cleared the way for a better understanding between us. If Craig calls, I’ll tell him to go to hell, and that will be that.”
He gave a derisive little snort and said, “It’s great that you can tie things up so neatly like that.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
Come back. Be with me. Help me to get past the pain. “Whatever you feel in your heart is right.”
Why was he making this harder than it had to be? Why couldn’t he just let her nurse her broken heart in private? Didn’t he know that seeing him again only made it worse? “Why did you come here.”
“I told you.”
“You told me what you’re telling yourself.”
He shook his head with frustration. “I could give you a thousand reasons for my coming, and they’d all be lies.”
“Then why don’t you try the truth? You do know what that is, don’t you, John?”
He answered haltingly, “It’s not that easy.”
“Why?”
John expelled a long, deep breath that had been trapped in his lungs for what seemed like forever. Because I’ve seen things and done things I can’t tell you about. Because I want you so much, not just now, this moment, for tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that, and it scares me.
His silence, and the look of uncharacteristic helplessness on his face, was all the answer she needed. “It’s all right,” she said. “I know about it.”
Every fiber of his being tensed. “About what?”
She couldn’t give him anything less than the truth, not when she had asked it of him. “About how it is for you. Why you go out every night. Why you keep that part of yourself secret from me.”
John felt as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. She knew! But how?
“I understand,” she said. “You can’t love me because of what you are.”
And what was he? A husband who had failed to protect his wife? A Seminole who hunted and would kill and told himself it was for a good reason? A man who was desperately afraid to love again?
He swallowed down the lump in his throat and asked in a ragged voice, “Who told you?”
“Willie Cypress.”
John looked at her quizzically. Willie Cypress had assured him that he’d only told Rennie about the legend. Something didn’t make sense.
“I don’t blame you for thinking I wouldn’t understand,” said Rennie. “I didn’t think you would understand my situation. Until I got to know you and trust you and I realized that I could tell you anything. You can do that with me, too. You can tell me anything. It wouldn’t matter how terrible you thought it was.”
Despite her assurance, even now he had trouble finding the words. “Some things are just too difficult to say out loud,” he said, trying to explain what he himself didn’t understand. “It’s as if saying it would make it so. You cling to the hope that you’re not the thing you really are.”
She came closer, but not so close that he could reach out and touch her. If he touched her, she’d be lost to all reason. “This thing you are,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, “I can’t even imagine how terrible it must be, living by day as a man, by night as…” He was right. It was harder to say than she thought it would be. “…as…something else.”
“Something else?” The surprise was evident in his tone. His ebony eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “What are you talking about?”
Rennie bit her lip. There was no turning back. “The panther, John, I know it’s you. But it doesn’t matter, at least not to me.”
She went to the window where she stood silhouetted against the sunlight, looking out at the water. “It doesn’t matter. I love you, anyway.” She held her breath for his reply, but when her confession was greeted by stony silence, she turned back to him, and with matter-of-fact resignation, said, “It’s true. I’m in love with you, John. I know what you are, and I love you, anyway.”
John took a staggering step backward as an army of emotions converged on him. So, she didn’t know the truth about him after all. But what she knew, or thought she knew, was so much worse that it stunned him. He found the idea of her love startling. Were it not for the look of utter truth in her eyes, he never would have believed her.
That she thought he was the warrior of the legend and loved him anyway was even more shocking. Of all the reasons he’d given himself for not telling her the truth, and of all the ways she might have reacted if he did tell her the truth, this was one possibility he had never even considered. Were it not so poignant and sad, he might actually have laughed.
Rennie sighed and turned away from the window to see a look of pained shock on his face. “Even if you walk out that door and I never see you again, I’m not sorry I told you. I’ve never felt this way, and it’s a feeling I won’t give up for all the world. But neither will I lie to you and pretend that all I am is grateful to you for taking care of me.”
He could see the outline of her legs through the t
hin fabric of the robe. His throat went dry at the honeyed skin that was revealed by the gradual slipping of the satin over her shoulder. She looked so beautiful, like a peach ripe for the plucking. He could have covered the distance between them with two long strides over the marble-tiled floor and taken her, and he knew she would have let him. But he couldn’t move. She loved him. Her words, no more than a whisper, ricocheted off the walls of his mind as if shot from cannons, resounding in his brain and paralyzing his movements as fear and joy ripped through him.
Misreading the shock she saw on his face, Rennie said, “Don’t worry, John, I don’t expect you to love me back. I know from experience that you can’t make somebody love you.”
He took a step toward her and stopped, not daring to get any closer for fear that an even more basic instinct would get the better of him. “You asked me before why I came here. It was to tell you something about myself.”
“I know you didn’t want me to find out,” she said, “but now that I have, are you going to deny it? Are you going to tell me that you don’t carry a terrible secret inside of you?”
“No, I’m not going to tell you that. I do carry a secret, Rennie, but it’s not what you think it is. In some ways, it’s worse. That poor warrior acted without thinking. My sin is that I knew what I was doing, and I did it, anyway.”
She looked at him with a blank expression, her brows knit delicately with confusion.
“I’m not him, Rennie. I’m not the warrior of the legend.” He took a deep breath, held it for an indeterminate moment in which his whole life seemed to hang in midair, and let it out slowly. “There’s something I have to tell you, and after you hear it, if you decide that you don’t love me, I’ll understand.”
He walked to the sofa and sat down with his elbows on his knees, head in hands. For many long minutes he said nothing as he gathered his thoughts and emotions and searched for a way to begin. He was tired. It wasn’t the bone tired that came from a night of relentless hunting in the swamp, but the kind of weariness that came from a struggle within. It was time to stop running from the truth.
The words came haltingly at first, each one cutting like saber-sharp blades of saw grass. He flinched from the pain of remembering. Bit by torturous bit he told her about that night a year and a half ago, and about the guilt that was eating away at him. His eyes were downcast, his gaze following the streaks in the marble tile at his feet. He dared not look up at Rennie for fear that her beautiful face would reflect the shame and horror of what he was feeling.
Rennie remained motionless at the window. She could not read the expression on his face, hidden in his hands, but she could hear the torment in his voice, and she knew the courage it must have taken for him to say it. Torn by conflicting emotions, she listened to his story. Her heart sank when she heard that he’d had a wife. She had never considered the possibility of another woman in his life and was surprised by the pang of jealousy it inspired. It was followed in seconds by an instant stab of guilt upon learning that the woman she was jealous of was dead. But the guilt she felt was a mere shadow compared to that which was painfully evident in John’s deep voice.
He spoke about the panther that killed his wife with a sharp, unforgiving edge to his voice. This was a side of him she had only sensed in her sightlessness. Seeing it mirrored in the dark eyes that looked up at her made Rennie realize how much a part of him his vengeance was. She turned back to the window in anguish, saying nothing.
The water was unusually bright, the sky uncommonly blue. Twenty-one floors below people went about their business. It was hard to imagine life going on as usual when her own life was falling apart around her, for discovering that John was not the half man, half animal creature that wandered the swamp only deepened Rennie’s agony. Was his guilt over his wife’s death, and his obsession with killing the panther the only things that mattered to him? Where did she fit into his life?
A great chasm of silence filled the room. Rennie was no longer sure where John’s suffering ended and hers began. But she did know one thing. She owed him an apology for thinking he was less than human. If there was any doubt of it before, there was none now. Only a human heart could hurt as much as this one was hurting.
She was standing before him in her bare feet. He commanded himself to look at her, to see once and for all if what he feared the most was written in her eyes. Slowly, haltingly, his gaze came up to meet hers. But there was no hatred, no disgust or shame raining down on his from her blue eyes.
She sat down beside him and placed a soft white hand upon his, drawing it up from his lap and touching the back of it to her cheek. “John, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
A shudder coursed through him at the incredible softness of her skin. He withdrew his hand and ran his fingers through his hair, sweeping the black locks from his face with a weary gesture. “Don’t be. You had nothing to do with it.”
“I meant for thinking…” She lowered her gaze guiltily. “You know.”
John laughed in spite of himself. “Right. For thinking I walk on all fours in the middle of the night.” He smiled that rare and wonderful smile that melted her heart. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”
She shook her head. How could she be? This made things different…or did it?
“It’s not disappointment I feel,” she said. “It’s confusion. Where does this leave us?”
The smile faded from his face. “I don’t know.” He saw the wince in her eyes and said earnestly, “I have no place in your world, Rennie.”
“Oh John, don’t you see I have no place in my world.”
“You’d be giving up too much to be with me.”
“Like what?”
His hand moved to the satin robe that dangled off one shoulder. The fabric was soft and slippery between his fingers. “The Everglades is no place for the pretty things you’re used to.”
She looked pleadingly into his dark eyes. “How can you know me so well, as I know in my heart that you do, and have such little faith in me?”
He let the fabric slip from his fingers. This, he was discovering, was an even greater torment than the one he’d known before. This woman loved him. He saw it in her eyes, bright with tears, and heard it in her softly beseeching voice. She loved him. But it wasn’t as simple as that. How could he give her the complete and committed love she deserved when he had unfinished business to take care of?
“After I do what I have to do,” he muttered. “Maybe then.”
Rennie drew back with the soft gasp of disbelief. “You’re still going after him?”
The dark eyes which only moments ago had caressed her face now flashed with steely determination. “Nothing’s changed in that regard. He’s out there and I’m going to find him. And then—” He shrugged his broad shoulders fatalistically. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”
She was hurt, and he knew it. “Please understand, Rennie,” he implored.
Stiffly she replied, “I understand perfectly. Some things are just more important than others.”
He wanted to take her in his arms and show her just how important she was to his very being, but he knew she wouldn’t have let him, not now. What was the point of telling her? he bitterly asked himself. He’d told her the truth, and now there was a distance between them even wider than before.
He got up and began to pace in that way he always did when he was troubled, his lean body moving with long, graceful strides bearing a chilling resemblance to the cat he hunted. “I can’t do it. I can’t take you back there, not feeling about you the way I do. Didn’t you hear what I told you? That animal is a killer. I won’t put you in that kind of danger.”
But for Rennie the only danger was in losing him. She went to him and blocked his path, forcing him to cease his pacing and look at her. His gaze locked with hers for many moments with no words spoken. There was a rock-hard look in his eyes, the look of a man whose mind was made up. But what about his heart? Was that made up, too?
Bearing up bravely
to his intimidating stance and the iron-clad determination that drove him, she said, “If you don’t want me, John, then let it be because I’m not the woman for you, not because you’re too stubborn to let go of the past.”
Anger ignited in his eyes. “Is that what you think this is all about? My being too stubborn to let go of the past?”
“Isn’t it? You’re driven by the past. You’re going back there to hunt down an animal that has nothing to do with the present, only the past. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re not meant to catch him? That you’ve been going through all these motions for something that will never happen? Would you jeopardize this thing between us…this connection…and any possibility of a future, for that?”
In a lightning-quick move his hand shot out and clamped down hard over Rennie’s forearm, fingers squeezing tight. He knew he was hurting her, but he had to get her attention. He had to make her understand.
In a tightly controlled voice, through gritted teeth he said, “Don’t you see? If I can’t reconcile the past, there is no future. Not for me. If what I feel for you is to have any chance at all, I have to go back. I have to settle the score.”
Stubbornly clinging to his vendetta against the panther, John dropped his hand and walked to the door, leaving Rennie heartbroken that he would sacrifice their chance of happiness, the flesh on her arm still bearing red marks from where his fingers had bitten into it long after he was gone.
Chapter 13
John stood beneath a canopy of cypress that kept the ferns and moss in speckled shadow. Deep into his being he inhaled the moist odors of green that permeated the still summer air. The smell of the Everglades was dark and rich and eternally damp, and conjured up a host of memories of growing up in this wild, tangled place…growing up Seminole.
The leaders were worried about losing the culture. But here in the swamp, where so much of Seminole history resided, the culture might not be the same as it was, but neither was it slipping away. These days the leaders didn’t sit around council fires, but that didn’t mean they weren’t leaders. The people didn’t live like their great-grandfathers lived, but that didn’t make them any less people of their culture. The Seminoles hadn’t lost their culture. They were just living a different kind of culture, one that, out of necessity, included the white world and everything that came with it.