He asked if she did windows, and got hit in the middle of his chest with a ball of yarn.
And the truce went on.
But it was wearing thin in spots.
Pepper was finding it increasingly difficult to be relaxed in Thor’s company. She caught herself watching him with a fixed intensity, and had to bite her tongue more than once to keep from blurting out in plain words how she felt about him. She tossed and turned at night, restless, her body punishing her for sticking to her rules. When she looked at Thor, a desperate need to touch him haunted her.
There were times when she would have willingly and deliberately broken her rules, times when the need to belong to him—however briefly—tortured her. And it wasn’t the fear of defeat that kept her from breaking her rules, but a new fear of what would happen afterward if she did. She had discovered that love was not a gentle emotion, and that it was not something she’d be able to put behind her without regret. When— if—she had to leave him, it would be bad. Very bad.
Toward the end of that second week their relationship altered in a far from subtle manner. And it was all Thor’s fault. Whether he realized that she was wavering or was just following his own instincts, he’d apparently decided that a truce didn’t necessarily mean a laying down of all arms.
Along those lines he employed the one weapon Pepper couldn’t fight with her wits or her ability as a gameswoman, the one weapon that would break her in the end if anything did.
He began to act like a lover.
It was small things at first. A light touch. A playful slap on the fanny. A hand toying absently with her hair whenever he was near enough—and he almost always was. A kiss on her nose.
Then the light touches began to linger, and the kisses fell on her lips more often than on her nose. He watched her like a cat at a mousehole, and his smile made her increasingly nervous. He smiled at her, she thought, as though she were chocolate cake… and it were time for dessert.
“You’re staring at me.”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“I like staring at you.”
“It makes me nervous.”
“Good.”
“What d’you mean, good?”
“I want to make you nervous.”
“Again, why?”
“I believe I told you once that these days a man needs every edge he can find or steal.”
“Get Brutus off the coffee table, will you?”
“Changing the subject?”
“Why don’t we roast marshmallows?”
“You’re cute when you’re nervous.”
For the first time in her life Pepper had the uneasy suspicion that she’d painted herself into a corner. And though she was not a woman given to panic, Pepper was halfway there. Falling back on her wits, she decided finally to show Thor a few more puzzle pieces in the hope that it would distract him from his own strategy. And since she always felt uncomfortable talking about herself, the tactic called for a couple of her nutty friends.
It didn’t take her long to choose between them. After casually asking Thor if he minded, she called Cal and Marsha Brenner and invited them to visit. They were more than willing to drive up from New Hampshire, mostly intrigued by Pepper’s current residence and what she was doing there. Of all her friends they were the friendliest and most talkative, and she had no doubt that either of them would talk about her to Thor if he asked.
Pepper wasn’t quite sure what she hoped to accomplish by the tactic. She told herself sternly that Thor needed to know more about her, but a wry little voice in her head said that she just wanted a buffer for a day.
She ignored the voice.
The Brenners arrived late on Sunday morning, driving their beat-up Mustang and radiating good humor. Introductions were performed, and all four stood for a while near the garage and talked casually.
Cal Brenner was average in height and build, with a lazy voice and rather penetrating blue eyes. His wife, Marsha, was several inches taller than Pepper and had copper-colored hair and green eyes. She was quite strikingly beautiful. Her voice was deep and rich and seemed constantly full of laughter.
The conversation was innocent and causal at first, consisting mainly of descriptions of the scenery along the newcomers’ route from New Hampshire. But it took an abrupt and bewildering turn within moments of their arrival.
Marsha, who had been watching Pepper narrowly for some time, suddenly emitted what sounded like a gurgle of suppressed laughter. Then the laughter was gone as though it had never existed, and she was leaning forward slightly. Placing her hands on Thor’s shoulders, she gazed up into his startled eyes with an expression of heartrending pity.
“Oh, you poor man!” she said intensely.
Thor stared at her blankly for a moment, then looked over at Pepper. She was leaning against her RV and gazing pensively up at the clear blue sky. Helplessly Thor turned his pleading eyes to Cal.
The other man stood with arms folded across his chest. Obviously taking pity on his host’s bewilderment, he said gravely, “You’ll have to excuse my wife. She’s always wanted to be an actress; sometimes she gets carried away.”
“I can’t bear it!” Marsha wailed suddenly, turning away from Thor to prop an arm against the garage and rest her forehead on it. “I can’t bear it—another free spirit shackled!”
A bit desperately Thor asked Cal, “What part’s she playing now, Lady Macbeth?”
Marsha momentarily dispensed with the histrionics to tell him reprovingly, “You don’t know your Shakespeare.”
Thor shook his head slightly to clear the mists, then glanced at Pepper again. She was solemnly studying her fingernails and whistling softly between her teeth. He looked back at Cal. “D’you mind throwing a little light on the situation?”
Cal looked thoughtful. “Well, as I said, Marsha wanted to be an actress. But before Broadway or Hollywood could discover her, Pepper did. And Pepper gave her to me.”
“I beg your pardon?” Thor asked, thoroughly baffled now.
“Threw her at me actually. Of course, she was throwing me at Marsha at the same time. A veritable clash of the Titans. It took nearly a year, and some fancy footwork, but our Pepper got the knot tied in the end.”
“I’m still in the dark,” Thor protested.
“She’s a matchmaker, you know. Renowned worldwide. In fact, I personally know of one sheikh who’s taken up monogamy because of Pepper. Shocked his entire kingdom. An Arab sheikh without a harem? Boggles the mind.”
While Thor was still swimming through the seas of bewilderment, Marsha lifted her head and directed a stern glance at Pepper. “Does he go to his fate blindly unsuspecting?” she asked.
“Oh, no.” Pepper smiled gently at Thor. “He’s been warned.”
Marsha abandoned her role to turn around and lean back against the garage. “Boy am I going to enjoy this! We ought to sell tickets; the whole gang would turn up for ringside seats.”
“Somebody tell me what you’re talking about,” Thor requested, but he already knew.
Marsha smiled at him, devilment dancing in her green eyes. “Well, since my husband has been at great pains not to put the matter bluntly, I’d be glad to. You see, we have a slight advantage over you; we’ve known Pepper longer. So we know that once Pepper gets her hook into a fish, he’s landed.”
Thor looked from her laughing face to Cal’s bland one, and then at Pepper. She was still smiling at him. “I see. I’m the fish.”
Marsha nodded. “That’s it. And what makes it so enjoyable for us is that Pepper has never hooked a fish for herself before. Her footwork this time should be well worth watching.”
Dispassionately Cal said, “She doesn’t look it, and God knows she doesn’t sound it, but Pepper is the most dangerous woman I’ve ever met. Heart of gold, mind you, but ruthless as hell.”
Thor stared at Pepper. “I think I should have paid more attention to that warning.”
“Too late now,” she murmured, a
nd came forward to link her arm with Marsha’s. “Come along, friend. Let’s go and see what we can dig up in Mrs. Small’s kitchen.”
“Isn’t it Thor’s kitchen?” Marsha asked interestedly.
“No. His home and her castle.”
“Ah. Lead the way.”
They strolled off.
Thor stared after them for a moment, then looked at Cal. “And I thought Pepper was the only nut. I think there’s a tree-ful of them. No offense.”
“None taken.” Cal grinned. “Welcome to the tree.”
“It isn’t an accomplished fact, you know,” Thor reminded him, wondering if he should be worried that he felt more amused than trapped.
“Isn’t it?”
Thor decided to avoid the polite question. He leaned back against the Corvette. “So tell me—since you’ve known her longer—about Pepper. One short paragraph, if possible.” Thor was determined to find out everything he could from these friends of Pepper’s, no matter how underhanded it might be to pump them.
“Can’t be done, I’m afraid.” Cal smiled slightly. “Unless you’d like the definition we’ve accepted for years.”
“Which is?”
“That Pepper is an enigma wrapped up in a puzzle within a mystery—followed by a question mark.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Ten years. She was three years behind me at Stanford.”
“Stanford?” Thor blinked. “Well, well. She didn’t mention that.”
“Uh. Phi Beta Kappa. Summa cum laude.”
Thor’s eyebrows rose. “Didn’t mention that either. What else hasn’t she mentioned to me?”
“Probably most of her life.” Cal shrugged slightly. “She’s an odd one, our Pepper. Doesn’t talk much about herself. What she does say is just mentioned in passing—people she’s met, or places she’s been. She doesn’t try to be mysterious, she just thinks that other people are more interesting than she is. Our gang, the crowd formed during college days, has pieced together some things. But not much.”
“For instance?”
Cal looked at him directly. “Does it matter?”
Thor met the steady gaze and realized that Pepper had loyal friends. And that this one, at least, wasn’t going to reveal anything about his friend to a man with only a casual interest. “It matters,” he told Cal, and knew then that it did matter. Dammit, it was no longer a game—if it ever had been. And, whatever it was, he was no longer certain that he wanted to win.
Without pushing or questioning, Cal simply nodded. “She was born and raised in Texas, but since she hasn’t been back there in more than ten years, we assume she doesn’t consider it home.”
Thor was a little startled by this first bit of information. Texas? An odd coincidence. She certainly didn’t possess a Texas drawl; in fact, her breathless little-girl voice had no accent of any kind. A result of her years of travel, perhaps? Before he could consider the matter further, Cal was going on.
“Started at Stanford at seventeen. Her father died about then, and apparently he left her an inheritance and told her to see the world. She always took off during vacations and holidays, bringing back gifts for the rest of us from all over the world. She never talked about her trips except for bits and pieces mentioned in passing. We learned not to ask questions about where she’d been. Pepper has a marvelous ability to head you off until you find yourself talking about something entirely different.
“Since college… I know a little, and can guess a little. She travels regularly now, out of the country more often than she’s in it. She leaves the RV and the pets with her mother, who lives here in the East. If we want to contact Pepper, we call her mother, who usually has a number where we can reach her. And—well, she just goes.”
“Alone?”
“As far as I know. She sometimes comes back with company though. She found Marsha stranded in London and brought her back. And several other members of our gang were discovered by her in various improbable parts of the globe. And I do mean improbable. Mae—who’s now married to Brian, who was one of the founding members of our group—is from Hong Kong. Pepper brought her over to visit, she said, and had them married before the visa expired.
“Then there’s Heather from Scotland and now married to Tom. And Jean-Paul, who came, of course, from France—”
“Jean-Paul?” Thor queried with all the American male’s distrust of Frenchmen.
Reading the tone correctly, Cal chuckled. “You should meet him. He’s an artist—a damn good one, as a matter of fact—and absolutely adores his Angelique.’ He and Angela were married last year. Another of Pepper’s matches.”
“She sounds like the United Nations,” Thor said in astonishment.
Cal shrugged. “What can I tell you? She likes her friends to be happy.”
“And are they?”
“Oh, yes. Pepper has an uncanny knack for matching people with the right partners. Not a divorce or separation in the lot, and for some of us it’s been a few years. She’s batting a thousand.”
Thor was silent for a moment, trying to fit pieces together and come up with a complete picture of a woman who was still largely unknown to him. Finally he shook his head. “The more I hear, the less I know.”
Cal looked at him with a certain amount of sympathy. “Yeah, I know the feeling. There isn’t much more I can tell you. She usually manages to drop in on us whenever she comes back to the States. We don’t ask questions; she doesn’t offer answers. In spite of her sometimes talkative ways, Pepper doesn’t let a lot of herself out into the open.”
Suddenly, and for the first time in his life, Thor felt a feeling so strong and so savage that he had to look away from the other man. And in that moment he was literally afraid to move or speak, because he didn’t think he could be responsible for his actions or words. It had been building within him for long moments now, and he’d known it without recognizing the sensation.
Intellect struggled with two million years of instinct, and Thor wasn’t sure which would win.
His scant knowledge of both Pepper and Cal told him rationally that theirs was a friendship and nothing more, but instinct as old as the cave fiercely resented the ten years they had known each other. Resented those years with an irrational and bedeviled jealousy.
Intellect won the struggle, but it left Thor feeling shaken and oddly out of his depth. He could neither forget nor ignore the jealousy, but he was at least able to shut it away in a small room in his mind where it chased itself in vicious circles. Not a solution, of course, but that way it wouldn’t savagely attack Pepper’s friend.
Thor dragged his thoughts from that subject and realized Cal was watching him curiously. But before the other man could question what, Thor surmised, had probably been a peculiar expression, Marsha stuck her head out the front door and called to them.
“Hey, you two! Pepper’s found some stuff and she’s going to make shish kebab. Think you heroes can start a fire in that monstrosity of a barbecue out back?”
“We’ll do our best,” Cal called back dryly. As she disappeared back inside the house, he looked at Thor. “We have our orders.”
“Uh-huh.” Locked room or no, Thor badly needed an outlet for the various types of frustration building within him, and that very emotion was reflected in his voice when he went on irritably. “Shish kebab. Dammit, is there anything that woman can’t do? She cooks, sews, knits, and drives that monster RV of hers as if she’d driven a semi for years. She’s got my ‘vicious’ stallion eating out of her hand. She plays the piano beautifully. She’s a cardsharp. She knows enough about football to call the plays at a Super Bowl game, and enough about chess to be a grand master at the game—”
“She is,” Cal murmured helpfully. “Bona fide. Won an international competition in Bonn a couple of years ago. Impressed the hell out of the judges since she was so young. Of course, an unkind soul could point out that she probably rattled her opponent by looking dumb and sweet, but—”
“But?
??—Thor interrupted with a goaded glare—“she was probably born a grand master.” He released a sigh compounded of a groan and a growl. “She’s not real. I don’t believe in perfection, particularly in people. She has to have a fault somewhere—she has to!”
Cal frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then lifted a triumphant finger. “She’s stubborn!”
Glaring at him, Thor muttered, “You’re a lot of help.”
“Sorry.” Cal was smiling.
“Hell. Let’s go get that fire started.”
“Cheer up,” Cal advised gravely. “It could be worse, you know.”
“Yeah? How, for God’s sake?”
“She might not have warned you at all. At least you don’t go to your fate—uh—blindly unsuspecting.”
“Dammit.”
“Looked like they were having quite an interesting little chat,” Marsha announced to her friend, coming back into the kitchen.
Pepper was chopping meat on the cutting board, and glanced up with a slight smile. “I’m not at all surprised, considering that little scene you and Cal were playing.”
“Who was playing?” Marsha was cheerfully unrepentant. “Besides, it was a scream. Did you see Thor’s face?”
“I saw it.” Pepper laughed in spite of herself. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, and so should I; the man must think I’m after his scalp by now.”
“Well, aren’t you?” Marsha asked with a grin.
“Not with a knife.”
“So he keeps his hair but loses his freedom, huh?”
Pepper bent her head over her task and was silent for a long moment. Then, with unusual asperity, she burst out, “Is that what I’m doing—depriving him of his freedom?”
Startled, Marsha looked over from the sink, where she’d been washing tomatoes and onions. She turned off the water and slowly dried her hands on a paper towel, staring at her friend. “Hey I was kidding, Pepper.”
Pepper shook her head slightly. “I know. But the question’s still there, Marsha. If I win… does he lose?”