“In the Grand Floridian, at the restaurant out on the lake. They serve it as a steak, and they make the most wonderful bread spread out of it, too.”
“Oh, do they?” His brow was arched high; he was still smiling.
“Yes.”
“Damn. Then it will have to be koonti bread,” he told her. “Or do they serve that at Disney World?”
Ashley laughed. “Who knows? Maybe they do, but I haven’t tried it. What is koonti?”
“A root. We survived on it for years and years, and women like my grandmother still grind it the old-fashioned way and make bread from it. I think she’s convinced that if I eat enough of it, I’ll come to a good end after all.”
“Oh? Are you heading toward a bad end?”
“A terrible one,” he assured her. “Iced tea?”
“Umm. Love some.”
He went back to the refrigerator for a pitcher and poured them each a glass of tea.
Ashley watched him. “Seriously, do you often eat alligator meat?”
“Only after the season.”
“The season?”
He nodded. “Once, they were endangered. They’ve made a remarkable comeback, so now there’s a yearly alligator season, and so many hunters are given licenses.” He smiled. “That’s when you really have to watch out in the swamp. Reporters follow the hunters and it’s as if a pack of wild animals had been let loose!”
“You don’t mean that,” Ashley said with a laugh.
“I do. Have you ever met a newsman hungry for a good story?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have,” Ashley said. Media people had come after Tara like vultures at times. “Okay, so they can be bad. But not as bad as an alligator, I’m willing to bet.”
He shrugged. “Alligators aren’t my favorite creatures, but they’re fascinating. As old as the dinosaurs, as simple in their being. There have been some horrible incidents with them lately. ‘Nuisance’ alligators, that’s what they’re called. Gators that get into canals and make it to the residential sections, things like that. There was a little girl killed just a few years ago. A beautiful, blond girl. An alligator took her right down. I hated the creatures like crazy when I read that. But I’ve seen the hunters out here, too. They kill the alligators using everything, and it can get quite gruesome. I doubt, though, that the alligator meat at Disney came from hunters. There are alligator farms all over the northern part of the state now. People breed them for their hides and their meat.”
“And yours?”
“Brad bagged him. He’d taken to playing around too close to the house.”
Ashley shivered violently. Eric grinned gently. “That’s why you shouldn’t just go running out of here,” he said softly, then added, “but don’t worry. They’re usually very wary of humans and since they’ve been hunted again, they’ve grown shy.” He returned to the refrigerator and rummaged around. “I’ve got it!” he cried.
“What?”
“Ham and cheese?”
Ashley started to laugh, and she was amazed because it was so easy. “Perfect. Want me to help?”
“No, I think that I can handle ham and cheese. Mustard or mayonnaise?”
“I like surprises,” Ashley told him.
He smiled and turned to the task. A few minutes later, he tentatively set a plate before Ashley. “You’re not going to throw it today, are you?”
“Not unless you’re absolutely obnoxious,” she told him sweetly.
“Maybe we’d better eat fast.”
“Can’t control that nasty streak, eh?” she teased. But then she wished that she hadn’t spoken because something dark clouded his eyes. She thought that it was truth, that there was something in his behavior toward her that he couldn’t quite control. She looked quickly at her plate. “Hmm. Looks wonderful.”
“Thank God. I was worried. Not a drop of caviar or pat;aae in the house.”
She glanced up at him. “For your information, Mr. Hawk, peanut butter is one of my very favorites. I can’t bear to eat anything at all that’s green or greenish or mushy brown, such as pat;aae. I never, never liked fish eggs.”
“Excuse me,” he told her lightly.
“I will try,” she promised.
He chewed a bit of his sandwich, watching her. “I like you that way,” he told her.
“What way?”
“Without the makeup.”
Ashley shrugged, wondering if he meant it. She wished that he wouldn’t look at her so. It made her feel as if her flesh came alive. She became achingly aware of herself all over. She let her lashes fall over her eyes. “Thanks.”
“So tell me about New York.”
She glanced at him again. He had about downed his sandwich and she was still picking at hers. “What’s to tell? Have you ever been there?”
He nodded. “Interesting jungle.”
She laughed. “Yes, it is.”
“Do you live alone?” It was a pointedly personal question. Of course, Ashley thought quickly, they’d already been as personal as it was possible to be. But then he had been the one to start building the walls.
He had also been the one to call the truce.
“I live alone. I have an apartment on Columbus Avenue, not far from the Museum of Natural History.”
“And what do you do when you’re not wearing a bikini in the Everglades?”
“What do you when you’re not rescuing women in bikinis in the Everglades?”
“Bikini bottoms,” he reminded her.
He wanted to draw a reaction. She wasn’t going to let him. “Bikini bottoms,” she agreed sweetly.
“I asked first.”
“But you should humor the weaker sex.”
He offered her a very slow, amused and strikingly sensual smile. His words had a soft drawl when he spoke. “I’m not at all sure that there’s anything weaker about you, Miss Dane.”
“All right. I design clothing. With Tara Tyler. We both worked for a man name Galliard for years—”
“Galliard?” He frowned. Ashley was certain that he must have read something about it in the papers. Galliard had been a very well-known designer. When he had been arrested in Venezuela for murder, the news media had played up the story.
“Of course, Galliard,” he said. “I remember reading something about it in the papers. I looked it all up again when Rafe Tyler reached me about using the property.” His eyes were very sharp upon her. Wary even. “It must not have been a very good time for you,” he said.
“Well, I don’t think that I was ever more frightened in my life. Tara had been involved with a man named Tine Elliott. By accident she met Rafe’s brother who was working for the authorities. Tine was trying to steal priceless artifacts, and Tara got involved in a shoot-out. They tried to accuse her of murder. Later, when we all came to Venezuela together, Tine kidnapped me to get to Tara.” She shivered violently.
She saw his hand move on the counter, as if he would reach out to her. But he did not. Ashley frowned. “But I wasn’t alone, you see. Rafe’s brother was there, and Sam, an old friend and employee. And then finally Rafe and the authorities arrived, and everything was all right. But I’d never been so scared in my life, and never was again until…” Her voice trailed away. She flashed him a furious glance. “Until I saw that murder take place in the swamp.”
He had been chewing. He stopped. “All right. So maybe I didn’t believe you,” he admitted.
“Do you believe me now?”
“I don’t know. I believe that you think that you saw something take place.”
“That isn’t the same thing at all. I’m not given to hallucinations, and I’m not the delicate type to fly off the handle at anything.”
“You’ve said that you hate the swamp. The rain was coming down in torrents, and you were frightened of everything already. Maybe you did—just this once—hallucinate a tiny bit.”
“I did not!” Angry, Ashley stood. “I can’t wait to get out of here!”
He stiffened like a
poker, straight and hard, and something as cold as ice fell over his eyes. He stood, too. “Well, we’ll get you out of here just as fast as we can, Miss Dane,” he promised her. He came around the counter. “Excuse me, will you? I’ve got work to do.”
He walked away down the hall. Ashley followed his departure, wishing her temper wasn’t quite so explosive.
He opened the door to his office and disappeared into the room. The door closed with a slam. Ashley even heard the lock bolt home.
“So go sulk!” she whispered after him. But, she thought, he wasn’t sulking. He was angry with her. And she would never change his mind about her.
“And why should I care?” she muttered. He was just a temperamental stranger who had dragged her out of the swamp. She couldn’t wait to leave. She wanted to be with buildings, not saw grass. Her type of jungle was concrete, not this overwhelming swamp and muck and canal and wilderness. It was best if they kept their distance.
“Stay in there!” she told the empty hallway softly. “You just go ahead and stay in there!”
She felt like throwing a dish again, but that seemed to be what he expected of her. Instead she inhaled and exhaled slowly, picked up the few dishes and determined to wash them.
Despite the storm, his water was still running, and it seemed clean and fine. Ashley decided that he must have his own well on the property. She was glad of it. She not only washed the dishes but also scrubbed the sink and the counter, not that they were particularly dirty. Eric Hawk seemed to be neat and organized.
When she was done she sat in the living room for a moment, studying the buffalo skulls with their feathers and etching. They were wonderful art pieces, she decided, and she’d love to have them herself.
Then she noted that it was growing dark again. She rose and looked around the kitchen and dug through the drawers until she found candles. She walked around the living room picking up the holders and digging out the previous night’s candles, then setting the new ones into them.
Eric still had not appeared.
With the candles lit, it seemed that night came on completely. Ashley had no idea of the time; she wasn’t wearing a watch. The clock over Eric’s mantel said that it was one, and she knew that that wasn’t true. Her stomach was growling, though, so she dug through his refrigerator. When she opened the meat drawer, she found that his meat was neatly wrapped in white butcher paper and clearly labeled. She stared at the markings, annoyed that her fingers moved over the handwriting. She even liked his script. His letters were big and bold, well formed and slanted, and somehow, they endeared him to her even more.
She glanced down the hallway and her lip tightened. “Damn him!” she muttered. She almost shoved the package of meat back into the refrigerator and slammed the door. She held on instead and read the wrapper. A slow smile curved her lips. It was alligator tail.
Newly determined, she lit the sterno and found a covered frying pan. She dug around in his cupboards for seasonings.
A half hour later the kitchen smelled deliciously of garlic, butter, cayenne and black pepper. She’d cooked the meat along with some green peppers and onions and potatoes, and whether it was a recipe or not, it even looked really good, too.
She found a bottle of German Riesling, poured a glass and added a few of the remaining ice cubes. After preparing herself a plate, she sat down to eat. She tasted her creation and decided that it was really darn good. But Eric Hawk still hadn’t appeared.
She sipped her wine and took her time. He still didn’t come. Finally she gave up. She washed her plate and set out one for him. She poured herself a second glass of wine and went to knock on his door. He didn’t answer. She didn’t care. “There’s dinner in the kitchen if you want. If you don’t want, make sure you go blow out the sterno. I just put your stuff back on to warm.”
She quickly went down the hall, balancing her wine and a candle.
In his room, she set down her candle and wine, plumped up the pillows and lay down, finding the book she had chosen earlier from his study. She opened the pages and looked at the door. She still hadn’t heard a thing.
She wouldn’t be able to concentrate, she thought. But she opened the book to a page past the introduction and started to read. Without realizing it, she quickly became absorbed.
The first chapter was on the advance of the Seminoles, an offshoot of the Georgia Creeks, into Florida during the beginning and middle of the eighteenth century. The next chapter focused on the First Seminole War, and Ashley found herself more engrossed. The narrative spoke about Andrew Jackson’s dead-set determination to eliminate the Indians, and it spoke, too, of the Indians’ desperate struggle to survive. Their way of life had already changed. The “chickee,” the thatched-roof house on stilts, had not always been their home. They had built houses of logs at one time, but these were burned time and time again, and so they adopted the cool shelter of the chickee.
The stilts protected them from creatures of the night, from the Florida alligator, from the snakes, from any other hungry creature. But nothing had protected them from man. Nothing but the swamp itself.
The telling was wonderful. It was not fraught with detail, and yet everything was there. Her heart was torn for a people trying desperately to survive, but there was an explanation about Jackson’s hatred—he had lost kin to an Indian attack. If there was a message or a moral in the book, it was not that the white man was to be entirely mistrusted or abhorred, or even hated for the endless treachery practiced upon the Indians. Savagery created more savagery, and to this day, the United States and her native sons and daughters were working on coming to terms.
A slight sound finally caught her attention. She looked up. Eric Hawk had made his appearance at last. He was standing in the doorway, leaning there actually, watching her. She thought that he had probably been there some time. She didn’t know why she was so certain, but she was.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people that way,” she told him.
“I didn’t sneak up on you. You just weren’t paying attention.”
“I was reading. Can I help you?” she asked sweetly.
A slow smile came to his lips. “I just came to say thanks.”
“Oh?”
“That…that whatever it was, was delicious.”
“Oh, the alligator tail.”
“Umm. I enjoyed it thoroughly.”
“Good.”
He came into the room. She was looking right at him, and he was staring right at her, and she still had the sense of being stalked. He moved with such utter silence, with such smooth confidence. He was completely dressed, but she discovered herself imagining him naked again. He was so beautifully built, offering everything in a woman’s fantasy, even when the woman didn’t even know that she’d had fantasies.
His green eyes flashed when he came to the foot of the bed. He rested an elbow on the bed and grinned up at her. “Like the reading material?”
She flushed, then forgot his eyes with a rush of enthusiasm. “Yes! I love it. It’s the most marvelous book. It’s all history, it’s factual, but it reads like a novel. It made me feel as if I knew them all—the Seminoles, the whites, all of them. I love it.” She cast him a semisweet smile. “I’m going to finish it right now, even if I read all night, because of course I know you would never dream of lending it to me, and I want to get in every single word of it.”
She thought that her sarcasm would irritate him. It didn’t. “You’re just saying that,” he told her.
“I’m not.”
“You are. To appease me.”
Ashley sat up straight, tossing her brilliant red mane over her shoulder. “First off,” she informed him, pointing a finger straight at his nose, “I wouldn’t dream of appeasing you. Secondly, why on earth should I appease you by liking a book? Just because it’s about the Seminole Nation?”
“Because I wrote it.”
“What?” Ashley gasped, looking into his eyes. They still danced with humor, but there was a seriousness there,
too. He was telling her the truth.
She looked at the book again. The title was in huge print. The author’s name, down at the very bottom, was much smaller. But it was there, sure enough. Eric Hawk.
Startled, she stared at him again. “You did write it.”
“Yes,” he said softly. Then he crawled forward, very much like a circling cat, pulled the volume out of her hand, and let it drop to the floor. She stared after it. “Why—?” she began.
“Because,” he interrupted her. He was beside her then, sitting cross-legged and facing her. Close. “You don’t have to finish it now. And you don’t have to borrow it. It’s yours. Take it with you when you go.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yeah, I do,” he said. He reached out and stroked her cheek softly. That rough and tender touch evoked a whole new tempest of longing within her. His eyes continued to hold hers. His fingers moved, his knuckles brushing the length of her neck, then grazing down over her breast. He touched her lightly, and she realized that she ached to be held by him, ached to be bare and to feel his hands hot and demanding, upon her. But still she didn’t move. She met his eyes because the things that couldn’t be said out loud were spoken there. He had to want her without the bitterness, without the dreams of a past. And then she realized that he did. He still might not like her, and perhaps he even still judged her, but his wanting was for her. And at that moment, that was enough for her.
She cried out softly and threw her arms around him and he captured her within his own embrace. Their lips met and simmering passions exploded. He delved deeper and deeper into her mouth with his tongue, searching and hungry, as if he demanded the soul of her. Their lips parted and met again, and she sought the liquid thrust of his tongue with her own. Then she broke away from him, panting, yearning.
“I should stay away from you,” he whispered.
“Why?” she demanded.
He sat back again, touching the ring on her finger. “Because you’re like a Tyler emerald. Beautiful to look at…and far beyond bounds.”
“I’m not a stone!” Ashley protested. “I’m not a thing, or an object, or an ice-cold piece of rock. I—”
“No, no, you’re not rock!” he agreed heatedly, lacing his fingers through her hair, then catching hold of the buttons on her blouse. They opened easily beneath his practiced fingers and he held her bare breasts in his hands. Rising up on his knees and bringing her with him, he kissed her again. His lips trailed from her mouth to her earlobe. His thumbs found the peaks of her breasts and rubbed them, creating twin streaks of fire that shot through the length of her to the very center of her longing. His lips hovered above her again. “And you’re not cold. There’s nothing about you that’s cold in the least. And there is everything, everything that’s beautiful.”
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