Larger Than Life

by Kay Hooper

  “Out with it,” Saber ordered.

  “Well, we’re not crowded this time of year, but the main house is full. I’d reserved a cottage for you, of course, but the others are being redecorated. The furniture’s all shoved together under covers and there are paint buckets and the like. Well, anyway, the point is that you two are going to have to share a cottage.”

  Saber stared at her.

  “It’s a two bedroom,” Cory offered, ridiculously hopeful.

  Travis could have kissed her, but he maintained an expressionless face and waited for Saber to speak.

  “What about my good name, friend?” She didn’t look at Travis.

  “You’re a superstar—who expects you to have a good name?”

  “Cory.”

  The redhead laughed. “Everybody minds their own business here, Saber, and you know it; that’s why you come here. There isn’t a journalist, gossip columnist, or any other kind of troublemaker within thirty miles of here. No fuss and no bother. Now, shall I make up a bed for Travis on the living room couch in the main house—where he’ll quite likely be sat on—or are you going to share your cottage with him?”

  Sighing, and with a feeling of trying to close the barn door after the livestock had escaped anyway. Saber gave in. “All right. Anything to keep you from telling everyone I’m a monster. And you would. I know you.”

  “I should hope so after ten years,” Cory answered cheerfully.

  At that moment, a harassed-looking young man appeared on the porch. “Cory, I need you!” he wailed, the fingers of both hands clutching his blond hair in a manner that appeared desperate rather than dramatic.

  Cory dropped the single bag she’d managed to wrest away from Travis at the helicopter, saying obscurely, “Damn the woman. She’s meddled with his paints again. It’s number four, Saber.” And as she dashed up the steps, she tossed over her shoulder at Travis, “D’you mind? I have to—” Then she’d taken the young man by the arm and steered him firmly into the house.

  Travis only realized he was standing there with his mouth open when he heard Saber laughing. Closing his mouth, he stared down at her. “Mind telling me what that was all about?” he requested.

  Saber bent to pick up the abandoned bag since Travis had his hands full with the other two. “The plea for help came from Mark,” she explained, beginning to lead the way along one of the graveled paths. “He’s sort of … a project of Cory’s. He stays here several times a year and paints. As an artist, he’s quite talented, but at day-to-day living, he’s utterly hopeless. He has no temper whatsoever and depends on Cory to keep his world on an even keel, which she does.”

  “And what woman did Cory damn for meddling with the paints?”

  “Jenny, the housekeeper. She’s a jewel of a housekeeper, which, I suppose, is why she hates the smell of oil paint; she’s always putting Mark’s paints away neatly where he can’t find them. Hence his very real panic.”

  Bemused, Travis shook his head. “Are the other … guests as strange as the artist?”

  Saber turned off the main path onto a more narrow one leading through the trees. “Didn’t you notice the plaque hanging at the main house?”

  Travis vaguely recalled seeing a discreet sign but couldn’t remember what had been written on it. “Yes, but not what it said.”

  “The Hideaway.” Saber smiled up at him as they reached a small but lovely house tucked away in the woods. “This place was built twenty years ago by Cory’s father. People come here for rest and peace. Average people, of course, but also very important people.” She opened the door and led the way into a spacious, comfortably furnished living room.

  Setting the bags down by the long couch, Travis looked around approvingly. But his mind returned to Saber’s comments. “So you were pulling my leg by calling this place a dude ranch,” he said.

  “Something like that. Any preference as to bedrooms?” She had looked in both the rooms by then.

  “No. You’re taking these unforeseen arrangements very calmly, I must say.”

  She turned to show him a solemn face. “The bedroom doors have locks; I checked.”

  He realized then that his voice had been mildly aggrieved, and he had to laugh. “All right, so you’ve surprised me. In fact, you keep surprising me. In thirty-two years, I’ve never encountered anyone like you.”

  Smiling, she picked up her bags. “I’ll take this bedroom,” she said, choosing the one to the right of the living room.

  Travis carried his bag to the bedroom on the left, and they unpacked in a companionable silence broken only by occasional comments.

  “You didn’t come prepared for this trip like I did,” she called to him at one point. “You went to the city to meet a singer and ended up crossing the country to a ranch. If you need anything in the way of clothing, there’s a store on the grounds that sells everything. And the laundry service here is as good as anyone could want.”

  “I’ll have to take advantage of both services,” he called back. Finishing his own unpacking first, he went out into the living room and from there to the adjoining kitchen. He explored thoroughly, finding the cabinets stocked with snacks and the refrigerator with soft drinks and various fruit juices. When Saber came out of her bedroom, he was seated comfortably on the couch with a glass of orange juice in his hand and a second glass on the coffee table.

  She picked up the second glass and sat in an overstuffed chair across from him, smiling. “Won’t anyone be concerned about you? Dropping out of sight so suddenly, I mean?” she asked.

  Travis shook his head. “Nope. I travel fairly often and never keep to a firm schedule. The book I’d planned to do on you was an idea I’d kept to myself, so my publisher isn’t expecting to hear from me.”

  “No lady friend to be alarmed by your absence?” Her voice was light.

  With another slight shake of his head, Travis replied, “No.”

  Peculiarly conscious of his steady gaze, Saber rose hastily. “Come on—I’ll show you around the place.”

  Having admitted to exhaustion after following Saber through only four cities of her tour, Travis requested that they spend a couple of days just resting without taking advantage of some of the more strenuous activities offered by The Hideaway. Saber had a sneaking suspicion that he was more concerned with her exhaustion and his own promise, but she said nothing about it.

  So their first few days were spent quietly together. Neither had placed an undue emphasis on sharing the cottage—Travis because it suited him perfectly and Saber because of a loneliness she would never have admitted to him—and that unplanned intimacy put them rapidly on companionable terms. They took short, leisurely walks around the grounds, talked easily about likes and dislikes, and generally found they had enough in common to surprise them both. They argued mildly over Travis’s fixed intention of paying for half the cost of “their” vacation, spent quiet evenings in the clubhouse listening to the small band, and developed a nodding acquaintance with most of the twenty-odd guests staying in the main house.

  Between the warm, soporific, late summer days and the undemanding friendship, Saber all but forgot that Travis posed any threat to her peace. She had never before known the male companionship of a brother, friend, or lover and was surprised by how much she enjoyed his company. And it was a new experience for her to spend time with a man who wanted nothing from her—except the truth.

  Whether his tactics were deliberate or not, Travis was following exactly the right path toward that truth. Saber, for the first time in a long while, was tempted to confide the past he was so interested in. She found it easy to talk to him, easy to laugh with him. A lifetime of guardedness was melting away.

  Still, it was easy to be unguarded when there was no threat, easy to relax with no tension in the air. And inevitable that there would be a change.

  If asked, Saber could have pointed to the moment when her own awareness roused her from the limbo of serene acceptance. Just as the veils had lifted briefly from her eye
s in weariness late one night—and in the fleeting moments when a part of her had slept—so those veils were lifted again by a few chance words. Lifted for good.

  They had taken a picnic lunch out into the rolling pasture, finding a peaceful, shady spot on the bank of a small stream. Horses grazed in the distance, incurious, and a faint breeze stirred the trees and the meadow grass. The scene perfectly suited the quiet mood of the past few days, and neither of them was in a hurry to pack up the remains of lunch.

  Lazy conversation had died into a sweet silence as they sprawled on the blue-checked blanket borrowed from the cottage closet. The silence was shattered, however, when Mark appeared suddenly with a large sketchpad, a handful of charcoal pencils, and a hopeful look on his amiable face.

  “Would you pose for me?” he asked, looking from one to the other with his shy smile.

  “Do we have anything better to do?” Saber asked Travis.

  “I’m game.” Travis had been formally introduced to Mark the first day, although he couldn’t help but realize that to the artist every human being but Cory was no more than a possible subject.

  Laying his pad and pencils aside, Mark proved the force of this realization by briskly and critically arranging his subjects as if they were a still life of fruit or flowers on a table. He placed a meek Travis on his side and raised on one elbow with his other arm lying over an upraised knee, a wide tree trunk at his back. Saber was commanded to sit demurely at his waist and lean back, turning slightly so that her back rested against Travis’s raised thigh and her left forearm lay across his ribs.

  The position, both silently realized, was one that lovers might have assumed. They were left gazing at one another in an amused silence that insidiously became something else.

  Mark, happily unaware of having disturbed his subjects, settled himself some little distance away with his sketchpad on his knees. “I’ve wanted you two for days,” he murmured, turning to a blank sheet and setting to work. “The perfect couple. No, don’t frown at me,” he admonished Saber as she turned her head to stare at him. “It’s lovely, but it isn’t you. Look at Travis. Yes. Pensive. And he looks at you as he always does. Waiting. Yearning.”

  Saber gazed into green eyes that flickered briefly in surprise, then steadied to a faintly questioning look. She felt breathless beneath that look, and confused. Mark’s comments unsettled her; was the artist simply creating a mood, or was he, as seemed obvious from his words, merely looking for expressions he’d seen on them both these past days? And if he had seen Travis gaze at her with yearning—why hadn’t she seen that?

  “Oh, damn—I’ve broken the point on the number three. I’ll have to go and get another. Don’t move,” Mark ordered his subjects, then tenderly put aside his pad and hurried off toward the main house.

  Saber took the opportunity to look anywhere but into those green eyes.

  “It looks like our amiable artist has let the cat out of the bag,” Travis said quietly.

  “Really?” She forced a lightness into her voice.

  “He caught me wearing my heart on my sleeve. I should have remembered how perceptive any good artist is.”

  She felt the warmth of his thigh through his jeans and her thin cotton blouse, and her fingers were suddenly far too aware of the lean ribs beneath his knit shirt. Green eyes drew her gaze, caught and held her captive. “He … must have been mistaken,” she finally managed to say.

  “No. He wasn’t mistaken.”

  Saber would have drawn away at that, but the arm behind her abruptly encircled her shoulders and pulled her so close she could feel his warm breath on her face.

  “You’ve treated me like a friend these past few days, Saber, and I’m glad you trust me enough for that,” he said huskily. “Can you trust me enough to believe that I love you?”

  Stunned, Saber couldn’t think. And there was no resistance in her when his hand slipped to the nape of her neck and drew her head toward him until his lips found hers. Hungry, demanding, he kissed her as though afraid he would never get another chance, and Saber could no more stand against that than she could willingly stop breathing.

  She was not a reckless or naive woman, but she forgot everything in that moment. It didn’t seem to matter that they’d known each other for such a short time, or that he actually knew very little about her. The only thing that mattered was the warmth of his embrace, the compelling need of his kiss. Her body came to life in a way she’d never known before, vibrantly alive and aching with desire. Her hand lifted to touch his cheek, and Saber renounced the world.

  But the world wouldn’t go away.

  “You moved,” Mark said indignantly. “Yes, that’s very pretty, but not what I had in mind!”

  FIVE

  SABER WAS FORCED to call on all her reserves of self-control to remain placid while Mark concluded their “sitting.” Obeying the artist, she gazed into Travis’s eyes, forcing her expression into the mold Mark requested. Pensive, he insisted.

  Pensive? She thought about that, because it was slightly less unsettling than thinking of what the artist had seen in Travis’s face. Pensive. Sad, wistfully reflective.

  What had she to be sad about? As Travis had said—she had fame, success, more money than she could ever spend. She had youth, health, friends. Why, then, had Mark seen sadness?

  “Saber!”

  Startled, she looked toward the young artist to find him frowning at her.

  “You’re moving,” he complained.

  Glancing down, Saber realized that the heel of her right hand was rubbing steadily, unconsciously, against her upper thigh. She halted the movement and turned her eyes back to Travis.

  Softly, he said, “You do that often.”

  “What?” she murmured.

  His green gaze flicked downward to a point half-way up from her knee, then lifted again to her face. “Rub your leg as if it aches. But you never seem to realize you’re doing it.”

  It was another mental jolt, and one Saber could have done without. Though the gesture Travis and the artist had noticed was unconscious, she knew, of course, that it had become a habit. Now, she couldn’t think of anything to say in response to Travis’s comment.

  Suddenly the artist closed his sketchbook and rose, a look of mild disgust in his amiable face. “It’s no good,” he told them. “I’ve lost you today. Maybe we can try again later?” He didn’t wait for a response but immediately headed toward the main house.

  Saber occupied herself with scrambling to her feet and gathering their picnic things together. She didn’t look at Travis. So Mark had “lost them” for the moment? Travis’s face had gone unreadable, she’d noted, and her own expression had most likely become unreadable, too, in an effort to guard against betraying her thoughts. She wondered vaguely if Mark would ever be able to capture expressions of which both she and Travis were now painfully aware.

  And why had she gazed into Travis’s eyes and felt—again—that she was seeing him for the first time? Still waters run deep. Now what, she wondered, did that cliché have to do with anything? It was just Mark making her aware, of course. Had to be.

  “Saber?”

  His quiet voice caught all her attention, but she still refused to look at him as she folded the blanket they’d so recently lain on. “Yes?”

  “Don’t let it spoil things.”

  She realized he was on his feet and standing close behind her. Too close, she thought, and experienced the unnerving certainty that it was not his physical nearness but something far more elusive that had panicked her. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, again imposing an iron self-control.

  He caught her shoulder suddenly, turning her to face him; she looked up instinctively—and wished she hadn’t. There was an understanding on his face, in his green eyes, that she’d never seen before.

  “You’re like a touch-me-not flower,” he said quietly. “Someone comes too near and you close up. What is it you’re afraid to let anyone see, Saber? What are you hiding?”
/>   She didn’t say, “Nothing,” because it would have been a lie. But Travis didn’t seem to expect an answer.

  He held her shoulders gently, ignoring the folded blanket she clutched almost like a shield between them. “I don’t want to rush you. I don’t want you to feel I’m asking more than you can give. But I can’t deny my own feelings, Saber.”

  “You don’t know me.” It was someone else’s voice she heard, and it was gritty with emotions she wouldn’t let herself understand.

  “I know what I feel,” he insisted firmly. Green eyes searched her face. “I love you, Saber.”

  She stepped back. “No.”

  “Saber—”

  “D’you mind taking everything back to the cottage?” She tossed him the blanket. “I want … I need to be alone for a while.”

  Clearly reluctant, his expression anxious, Travis nonetheless nodded in acceptance. “All right. But Saber … don’t go too far?”

  She knew he wasn’t referring to physical distance. Nodding, she headed off through the woods, making instinctively for a mountain path she knew well. It took an hour or more before she reached her favorite spot: a cluster of large boulders that jutted out from the mountainside, providing a breathtaking view of the valley below.

  Saber climbed onto the largest of the boulders, allowing her legs to dangle over the edge. She had no fear of heights, and the dizzying drop from her seat to the valley floor earned no more than a careless glance from her. She looked out over the valley, absently watching the distant movements of Cory’s guests.

  The panic died away only gradually; she didn’t try to think until even the faintest echoes of alarm had vanished. Then, very carefully, she etched an analysis in her mind.

  Travis’s avowed love frightened her. Why? Because she was afraid of love? No. Afraid of him? No. What was it he’d called her? A touch-me-not flower.

  His understanding seemed to be—had to be—instinctive. He knew nothing of her past, nothing of the months “missing” from her life. Yet he saw a touch-me-not plant wincing away from contact. A flower that would open cheerfully to warmth and light but shrink from a touch. Not a physical touch, but the touch of someone … too close.