by Sandra Brown
“But I only—”
“Please, Kathleen, time is of the essence,” he cut in.
She glanced around at the expectant faces and realized she had no choice but to get up and follow him.
“What are you trying to pull?” she asked out of the corner of her mouth as they crossed the large room. “I’m not at all familiar with the equipment.”
“No, but I need you anyway.”
“Why?”
They had reached the small dais that B. J. used whenever he had to make important announcements to the whole group. Erik turned on the camera, slung it upon his right shoulder and placed his eye to the viewfinder. Kathleen noticed that he didn’t shut his left eye. That must be hard to do, she thought objectively. How could he focus his vision?
“Just stand still a minute,” he said as he turned toward her.
She was appalled when he placed the lens of the camera to within inches of her breasts and began turning the awesome dials that ringed the lens.
“What—” She jumped back in shock.
“Just stand still, I said.” He reached out with his spare hand and drew her close again.
“Would you get that thing away from me? I know you think you’re very funny, but I don’t.”
He took his eye away from the viewfinder and fixed her with an exasperated expression. “I’m only using your white blouse for my color balance.”
“Exactly what does that mean?” She was partially pacified, but still suspicious.
“It means,” he said with the slow, measured tone one would use on a simpleton, “that I have a meter built into the camera. Each time I shoot a scene, I have to check my lighting and balance the color level against something solid white. I promise you my motives for using your blouse are honorable.”
“Why didn’t you use a tablecloth?”
One corner of his mouth tilted into a sardonic grin. “I only promised that I was honorable. I’m not stupid.”
Kathleen shoved past him and strode back to the table. When she had flopped into her chair, B. J. turned to her and asked, “Everything all right? Is Erik set to shoot?”
“I think so,” she mumbled, and didn’t add that Mr. Gudjonsen’s actions were no bloody concern of hers!
For the next half-hour, she chatted with the other members of the staff and studiously kept her eyes off Erik, who managed, despite his size, to remain almost invisible as he moved among the tables recording the antics of the children as they launched into a series of organized games. When he finished, he whistled loudly to get everyone’s attention. His voice boomed out across the room. “My name is Erik. Would any of you like to be on television?”
The response was deafening. Kathleen knew a smug satisfaction when he was stampeded by clamoring children all demanding equal time to cavort idiotically before the camera. As he did everything, he handled the mob with aplomb.
For another half-hour, he let the children ham in front of him. When he called it quits, he safely returned his camera to the dais and strolled to the staff table, wiping a perspiring forehead with his sleeve.
“You are either a saint or a glutton for punishment.” Edna laughed. “Why would you put yourself through such torture?”
“I’ve learned that there is nothing more intimidating than the lens of a camera. Even the most gregarious become tongue-tied and inhibited in front of it. So, I thought I’d let them act as foolish as they wanted to, let some of the mystique wear off. Tomorrow night, I’ll show them the tape on the monitor. Hopefully, the magic will have worn off and they’ll start ignoring me. That’s the only way I’ll get candid reactions.”
“You missed your calling, my boy,” B. J. said. “You should have been a child psychologist.”
The night bell sounded and the children began to grumble objections and pleas for a fifteen-minute extension. As they knew it would be, it was denied, and they didn’t need much persuasion to troop off to their cabins.
Each counselor, except Kathleen, who again was saved by her seniority, was responsible for checking to see that everyone was properly tucked in. Goodnights were called across the compound, and gradually the crowd dwindled down to the Harrisons, Kathleen and Erik.
“Erik, we start early,” Edna warned. “Breakfast is at seven-thirty.”
“I’ll be here. Do you think one of the ladies in the kitchen would brew me a thermos of coffee to take along tomorrow?”
“Sure,” B. J. said. “How do you like it?”
His white teeth flashed in the darkness. “Black as pitch and hotter than hell.”
B. J. slapped him on the shoulders and laughed. “I’m beginning to like you better and better, my boy. Come on, honey, I’m tired.”
Edna rose. “Kathleen, I’m assigning you to Erik, since you know more about the camp than anyone. He’ll stay with your group for the next few days and observe. Any problems with that?”
An awkward silence ensued, with only the cicadas in the trees brave enough to break it. Kathleen wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being observed by either the camera or the photographer.
“Kathleen?” Edna’s worried voice penetrated the darkness.
“No, there are no problems. I was only trying to think of… uh… of interesting things we could do.”
“I’ve given that some thought,” Erik said. “I’ve typed up a very loose script. It’s in the car. Walk back with me and I’ll give it to you tonight. We can talk about the feasibility of my ideas in the morning.”
“That’s a good idea,” B. J. said. “Now, let us old folks go to bed. Edna?”
“Okay. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Kathleen and Erik said in unison.
The couple was swallowed up by the blackness that was almost absolute. Here, on the mountaintop, there was nothing to interfere with the night. No city lights robbed the darkness of its glory or the sky of its truly infinite scope. It was blanketed with stars that one forgot were there when they were obscured by man-made light.
Kathleen was seething inside, but she refused to let her anger show and give Erik Gudjonsen the pleasure of knowing he had upset her. She walked by his side, surefooted in the darkness, and stifled a gratified giggle when she heard his muffled curse as he bumped his head on a low limb.
He was carrying both the camera and the tripod case, but she noticed that his breathing remained normal. Apparently, he was accustomed to that particular exertion. Just wait until she put some of her plans into action! That would show quick enough who was hale and hearty.
“Let me open the car door so we’ll have some light,” he said as he opened the passenger side of the Blazer. “I think that script is back here,” he said, going to the rear of the truck and lowering the tailgate. He replaced his camera in its padded case with the care of a mother toward her infant.
He straightened up and faced Kathleen. Before she realized his intention, he splayed his hands on her back and pulled her close. Ducking his head, he let his tongue lightly trace her lower lip. Then he kissed her hard and quick.
She was aghast. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“That much should be obvious.”
“I’m not amused or interested, Mr. Gudjonsen. And if this video didn’t mean so much to the camp, I’d send you packing. As it is, I’m forced to cooperate.”
“Just what I thought. Peaches!”
“Where is that damned script?”
“There isn’t one. I lied about that just to get you alone in the dark woods.”
Kathleen turned her back on him and stalked away.
Like a taunting challenge—or a sweet promise—he called to her, “I’ll see you first thing in the morning, Kathleen.”
Chapter Three
The beginning of the next day was inauspicious. Kathleen hadn’t slept well, and her cranky disposition didn’t improve when she arrived at breakfast to find Erik already there. He was smiling, teasing the children, flirting with the counselors and looking rested and exuberant.
Normally, she indulged in the homemade biscuits that were lighter than air and melted in the mouth, though she wasn’t a regular breakfast eater. This morning, the biscuits could have been chalk, which she chewed mechanically and washed down with lightly creamed coffee. The aroma of freshly grilled bacon and scrambled eggs wasn’t at all appetizing. It was as if overnight her whole world had gone sour. It was Erik Gudjonsen’s fault, and she resented him for it. She had resigned from her job to escape the unsolicited attention of a man with an inflated ego. She now thought David Ross an amateur compared with the videographer.
Only in the secret parts of her mind would she admit how his kiss had affected her. It had been quick, almost playful, but effective. When she felt the tip of his tongue against her lip2, a spear of pleasure had penetrated her breasts and pierced downward to her very center, leaving a wound like a hollow emptiness.
* * *
Kathleen admitted now, as she covertly watched him from beneath the screen of her black lashes, that she had played right into his hands. Everything she had done since meeting him had been a defensive reaction to his masculine forcefulness. Obviously it amused him to goad her.
Resolving not to let him provoke her, Kathleen made plans for the coming day. She was a capable, independent woman, and by the end of this day, he’d know it. As for her attitude toward him, she would treat him with cool politeness, professionalism, and meet his insinuating bantering with condescending tolerance.
Determinedly, she stood up, checked her wristwatch and then imperiously blew the whistle around her neck. “All of you in Group Four, meet outside on the steps. Pronto.” She was proud of the strong confidence in her voice, and carried her head high when she returned her tray to the large service window leading into the kitchen.
As she sailed out the door and strode toward her group, Erik turned to face her. He stood ramrod-straight and saluted briskly, making all the children laugh.
“Reporting for duty, Sergeant.”
Swallowing her vituperative comeback, she said graciously, “Have you got everything you need?”
“Yes, I’m ready,” he said solemnly.
That’s what you think, Kathleen thought to herself. “All right,” she said aloud. “Let’s go.”
She had a full schedule of exhausting activities. Hoping to put Mr. Gudjonsen in his place, she was disgruntled to find that he did everything well, indeed excelled in everything. He took to the steep, rocky trail up the mountain like a goat, and all the while carrying his camera on his shoulder, ready to use it at an instant’s notice. How could he do that? she asked herself in exasperation when they had reached the turnaround point of their nature hike. She collapsed on a grassy area to rest.
Meanwhile, Erik was taping the children as they uncapped their canteens and took great gulps of water, emptied gravel out of their sneakers or ventured off into the woods seeking new discoveries.
Kathleen’s eyes were closed as she leaned against a tree trunk. They flew open when she felt Erik’s large body plop down beside her.
“Whew!” He expelled his breath in a long sigh as he blotted his forehead with a handkerchief. “How do you do this every day?”
“You’re tired?” she asked with a trace of incredulity.
“Sure. Aren’t you? If I did this kind of thing all the time, I’d be dead within a week.”
He smiled and she answered with a soft laugh. Was that one small point on her side of the scoreboard?
After they had returned to the compound and eaten a hasty lunch, they traipsed to the archery grounds for target practice. The children pressed Erik to try his hand with the bow. His aim was far better than Kathleen’s, and the children clustered around him in awe as he repeatedly zinged the arrows into the heart of the targets. Then his ever-present camera was slung back onto his shoulder and he taped the children’s efforts as Kathleen coached them.
By the middle of the afternoon, she had put down some of her bitterness and afforded Erik a grudging respect. He never forgot his job. The camera was like an extension of his arm and he guarded it constantly. But his rapport with the children surprised her. He was patient, answered their multitudinous questions, joked, teased, admonished and placated with equal aptitude.
When she blew the whistle for swimming, they shouted excitedly and dashed for the river. As she ran to keep up with them, Kathleen glanced over her shoulder to see Erik walking back toward the compound. She shrugged off her faint disappointment and followed the campers to the river.
She had worn a bikini, though a conservative one, under her shorts and T-shirt. She stripped these off unselfconsciously and ventured out into the swift current. It didn’t take long for the children to include her in their horseplay, and soon she was struggling to keep her head above the water as they tried to dunk her.
Finally, laughing and shrieking, they heeded her pleas for mercy and released her. She came up out of the water, pushing the clinging hair off her face.
That was when she saw Erik standing on the shore, stripped down to swimming trunks but with his camera up to his eye and aimed directly at her. She hesitated, then smiled tentatively before turning away to commission the kids not to get too rambunctious.
She walked up the shoal and wrung the water out of her hair. “I thought you had called it quits for today,” she said unevenly, wishing he would look somewhere else besides at her body in the cinnamon-colored bikini.
He had secured his recorder and camera up on a high, dry, flat rock under a shade tree. The breath caught in her throat at the sight of his physique without the camouflage of clothing. The crinkly carpet of blond hair that matted his chest tapered to a silky line that disappeared into the low waistband of his blue trunks. His legs were muscular and tanned that same dark color as the rest of him and sprinkled with blond hair that showed up in sharp contrast.
“I had to get another tape and put on a swimsuit.”
“Are you going in?” she asked.
“Yes. I can’t resist. I nearly melted up there.” He indicated the steep hill that they had taken on their nature hike.
She sat on the bank while he went in the water. He played rough with the boys, more gently with the girls, but none were deprived of his attention. Even Jaimie, who had followed Erik around all day like a worshipful puppy, was included.
Kathleen had been combing through her hair with her fingers, and it was almost dry by the time Erik called “uncle” and came out of the water.
“If I stay here too long, I’m going to need more vitamins,” he said as he fell onto his back. The skin on his stomach stretched taut and formed a deep cavern beneath his ribs. His chest rose and fell with heavy breathing.
She laughed. “You don’t have any trouble keeping up.” Before she could rationalize her motivation, she confessed, “I was trying to trip you up today.”
He rolled over onto his side and looked up at her with his piercing blue eyes. She refused to meet them and stared at the splashing children.
“Why?” he asked softly. He wasn’t smiling.
Shaking her damp hair, she said, “I don’t know. Maybe I have an instinctive aversion to someone who follows people around with a camera as though trying to catch them in some compromising situation. I think I had you pegged as a cynic, looking for ulterior motives behind our program here. Mountain View is ecumenical and supported strictly by private donations. Edna and B. J. take very little out for their own salaries and work hard each fall and spring to book groups for sales meetings and such. The money they make off of that goes right back into the camp. They’ve assumed this summer camp for orphans as their personal mission, but they also leave themselves open for criticism. I guess I saw you as a modern-day witch-hunter.”
To her surprise, he laughed. “A few years ago, you would have been right.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I was a cynic. I thought the world and everything in it stank. I knew all the answers to make it right, of course, but I wouldn’t share them with anyone. That would
put me on the same low plane with all the other idiots who tried to rectify universal injustices.” He laughed bitterly at himself and sifted several small pebbles from one hand to the other.
“What made you so bitter toward the world?” Kathleen asked. “You see, I excused myself for feeling that way. My parents had been taken from me.”
“That’s the hell of it. I had no excuse. I think I acted that way out of immaturity and boredom more than anything else. I was a perfect example of the ‘me’ generation. If the whole world was bent on destruction, then I was determined to show it that I didn’t give a damn if it went to hell in a bucket. I would look out for Number One. Me.”
“What changed you? Not that I don’t think you’re still a smart-ass,” she qualified.
He laughed at her admission, but then grew serious. “I was sent to Ethiopia on assignment. I spent six months there. I went convinced that the whole world was ugly.”
“And you found even more ugliness?”
“No,” he said gently. “I found beauty.”
She shook her head in bafflement. “I don’t—”
“Let me explain. If I can. One day I was in a refugee camp. God, Kathleen, you can’t even imagine the deprivation, the misery. We have no concept of…” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “There’s just no way to describe the devastation, the… the putrefaction.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes as if to wipe away the image.
“Anyway, I was shooting tape, and in my eyepiece, I saw a young mother with her baby. Both of them were well past critical as far as starvation levels go, emaciated, really. But unaware of my seeing her, the woman squeezed the last drop of milk out of her breast and put her nipple in the baby’s mouth. She wept. The infant reached up and touched her cheek. It was as though he knew that was all she had to give and was grateful for it.”
He became quiet, staring off into space. Even the sounds the campers were making seemed to be absorbed by his intensity.
“Amid all that ugliness, I saw something beautiful. I don’t mean to get too preachy, but I think I realized that there could be something good found in everything if you look hard enough. The world just might be worth saving after all, if only for the sake of one child.”