“Is it a game?” her friend asked soberly.
“Maybe he thinks it is. Maybe he thinks that one of us can lose, and that we’ll both end up with a nice little memory.”
“But… ?”
“But…” Pepper sighed softly. “I don’t think it’ll end that way. In the beginning I thought that if I won, we’d both win. You know, in love and loving it.” She laughed suddenly, harshly. “Vain of me, I realize. But I’ve always believed that happiness meant love and sharing.”
“And now you don’t believe that?”
“I don’t know. It’s … it’s not a gentle emotion, is it? I never knew that.” She smiled crookedly at her friend. “Now I understand what kind of wringer I put the rest of you through. Would an apology on bended knees make amends?”
Marsha smiled in return. “No need. People rarely fall in love totally against their will, Pepper; not one of us regrets your matchmaking.”
“I’m glad,” Pepper said simply.
“You won’t get away with changing the subject this time,” Marsha said conversationally. “For once, you’re going to bend my ear—even if I have to badger you to do it. So. What makes you think Thor would lose if you win?”
“He doesn’t want permanent ties.”
“So?”
“So who am I to think he’d be happier tied to me?”
“Bad phrase, that,” Marsha remarked objectively. “‘Tied to,’ I mean. Conjures up images of slavery. We both know that’s not what you mean.”
Pepper stirred slightly. “I know, I know. But if he values his freedom so much, isn’t that what it amounts to?”
“He didn’t seem to me to be rabid about his freedom.”
“Not rabid. Just determined.”
“Whatever.”
“It’s just that… well, what right had I to move in on him? To plunk myself down squarely in the middle of his life as if I belonged here?”
“Do you love him?” Marsha asked bluntly, in the tone of a woman who’s sure of the answer.
Pepper stared at her fingers for a long moment, then lifted her gaze to her friend’s face. “So much so that I couldn’t bear for him to lose anything because of me. I want to add to his life, Marsha, not take away from it. And if that means I’ll have to leave him with a nice little memory and a triumphant victory … then that’s what I’ll have to do,” Pepper finished softly.
“Have you told him that you love him?” Marsha asked in an equally hushed tone.
“No.” Pepper smiled a little. “I won’t burden him with something he doesn’t want.”
Marsha stared at her for a moment, then said caustically, “If you ask me, you’re being unnecessarily noble. What makes you so certain it’d be a burden to him?”
“He knows how I feel about love. He knows that if I feel love, I expect something permanent. If I tell him I love him, it’ll be a burden to him. He’s that kind of man.”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” Marsha demanded, “that he might just possibly be changing his mind about his desire for ‘freedom’ even as we speak? Has it occurred to you that perhaps he thought he wanted no ties only because he’d never found the right woman?”
“Yes, it’s occurred to me.” Pepper laid the knife aside suddenly, aware of the dangers of slicing anything with only half her mind on what she was doing. “It occurs to me constantly.” She heard the hard-bitten sound of her own voice and was abruptly grateful that Marsha had stuck firmly to this subject; she needed to talk. “Don’t you think I want that to be true? Don’t you think I lie awake at night and wonder if I’ll be able to leave him when the time comes? Dammit, Marsha, I want to fling my love at him! I’ve had to choke back the words a hundred times. I want to … to touch him whenever he’s near me, and even more when he’s away from me. It’s hard to breathe when he’s there and even worse when he’s not.”
She laughed unsteadily, a laugh that was a talisman to ward off tears. “I look at you and Cal, and think of the others, and I wonder—my God, did I do this to them? Did I, in my insufferable arrogance, put them through this hell because I thought I knew what was best for them?”
“Pepper—”
“And now this!” Pepper cut off her friend flatly. “Thor. I fall in love for the first time in my life, and I launch a campaign with all the cocky arrogance of a paper-pushing general! And if Thor’s freedom is important to him and I win the battle, then he’ll be caged. Caged!”
She felt her fingers aching and realized that she was gripping the edge of the counter as though it were a lifeline. With an effort she spoke levelly almost neutrally. “Have you ever gone to a zoo and watched the cats? They pace. Constantly, endlessly. Do we have the right to do that to them? Animals should never be caged, even if they’re given an illusion of freedom. And people should never be caged, even if the bars are formed out of commitments.”
“We’re all caged,” Marsha pointed out quietly. “We’re caged by jobs, by a way of life, by people who love us and those whom we love. There are limits to everything, Pepper, boundaries we all observe. You know that as well as I do. And if we had the choice, most of us would choose to keep the boundaries. Because there’s something secure in knowing how far you can go.”
“But is it fair to place someone else inside our own boundaries?” Pepper looked searchingly at her friend. “That’s what bothers me. Thor has his own boundaries; is it fair to demand that he be limited by mine?”
Marsha returned the stare for a moment, then quoted softly, “‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.’ Thor strikes me as being both; he’s his own man. If he is limited by your boundaries, it’ll be because he wants to be— and for no other reason.”
Pepper drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I suppose I’m selfish, but I want him inside my boundaries.”
“You’re not selfish. You’re in love.”
“And I’m afraid of losing.” Pepper smiled shakily “Funny, that’s something I haven’t been afraid of in years. But I’ve never gambled like this before; there’s never been so much at stake.”
Marsha smiled a little. “Follow your instincts, friend. I haven’t seen much of him, but I have a feeling that you and your Thor would be deliriously happy together. Go for it.”
There was no more teasing that day about Pepper’s matchmaking, and no real opportunity for Thor to learn more about her than he already had. But his sudden attack of jealousy had had more of an impact on him than anything Cal had told him about Pepper.
In that moment Thor had realized that it no longer mattered what and who Pepper was or had been. It wasn’t important. What mattered was that, like a thorn or a splinter or a virus, she’d somehow managed to burrow beneath his skin. He was no longer just fascinated by her.
The other couple left after dinner, steadfastly refusing to stay overnight. They had apparently promised Marsha’s mother in Bangor that they’d spend the night with her, and Cal professed himself in dread terror of offending his mother-in-law.
After they’d gone, Pepper sat on the couch absently dealing crooked poker hands on the coffee table and watching from the corner of her eye as Thor paced restlessly. She could feel the tension increasing moment by moment, growing within the room like a living thing. It made her so nervous that she mistakenly dealt a ten into a low straight flush. Swearing softly, she gathered up the cards.
“It isn’t a game, is it?” Thor asked suddenly, quietly. He was standing by the front window, staring out. “It was never a game.”
Pepper stacked the cards neatly facedown on the coffee table and then sat back, gazing across the room at his broad back. She wasn’t surprised by his comment; her little voice inside had been telling her all day that the buffer of her friends had only postponed the inevitable.
Equally quiet, she said, “For me, no; it was never a game. The… methods … maybe. But I was serious from the start.”
“Why me?” he asked, still without turning around.
“Ask me how many angels
can dance on the head of a pin,” Pepper said wryly. “I’d have a better answer for that.”
He turned around, leaning back against the windowframe and looking across at her. She was somehow surprised to see that his expression was calm, his eyes thoughtful. As if his mind were somewhere else, he asked, “How did you get that scar?”
Pepper didn’t even consider evasion. Or games. “I was carrying a briefcase full of gems and a man tried to steal them from me,” she said calmly.
eight
PEPPER’S STATEMENT CERTAINLY CAUGHT Thor’s attention. He smiled slowly. “I see. Did you rob a museum?”
She smiled a little. “Not quite. From time to time, I take jobs as a bonded courier. I don’t need the money, but I enjoy the … the challenge of it. What I’ve carried most times was something small but valuable that the owner didn’t want to entrust to any other method of transport. Stamp collections, old coins, heirlooms.”
Making an innocent, empty-handed gesture, she said, “Now I ask you—do I look as if someone would entrust something valuable to me?”
“No,” Thor replied dryly.
“The ace up my sleeve.” Her smile turned rueful. “I haven’t lost anything yet.”
Thor nodded toward the scar on her hand. “But someone came close?”
Pepper rubbed a thumb across the mark. “Close only counts in horseshoes.”
“What happened?”
“From the beginning?”
“Please.”
“A wealthy American collector sold several of his finest pieces to an equally wealthy British collector. About that time there had been more than one jewelry theft on both sides of the Atlantic, and these pieces were very, very valuable. Couriers had been robbed en route; so the collectors decided on a shell game. They sent out several couriers along different routes, all but one empty-handed. I had the gems.”
Thor crossed the room slowly to sit down on the couch beside her. “And?” he asked, obviously intrigued.
“There was a leak.” Pepper sighed. “Only the two collectors were supposed to know which of us had the jewelry; we found out later that the buyer’s valet had decided to go into business for himself. I’ll pass up the remark about how hard it is to get good servants these days. Anyway, I made it across the Atlantic and into London in one piece. Unfortunately it was a foggy day in old London Town, which gave the would-be thief excellent cover and loused up my sense of direction.
“I must have run through most of the mews in the city— with him right behind me—before I finally located the buyer’s house. And after a conspicuous lack of bobbies for more than two hours, there was one practically on the buyer’s doorstep. And… well, that’s all.”
Thor reached over to cover the small, restless hand with its faint scar. “Other than this, did he hurt you?”
“He didn’t get the chance!” Pepper grinned. “I’m small, but I’m fast.”
Not returning the grin, Thor said slowly, “Dangerous work.”
“Not really. Not usually.” She shrugged. “I’ve been a courier for about six years; that jewel thing happened last year, and it was only the second time someone tried to hold me up.”
Thor’s hand tightened on hers. “What happened the first time?”
Pepper laughed suddenly as the memory flooded her mind. “It was hysterical really. You would have gotten a kick out of it. The poor guy wasn’t after the old stamp collection in my case. He was just your average, run-of-the-mill mugger. I was carrying the collection from L.A. to New York, and had a one-night layover in Kansas City.
“I decided to visit some friends there, and I was walking to their apartment when this man yanked me into an alley. There he stood with this rusty pipe, getting ready to brain me. I don’t know what made him hesitate, although he said later that it was because he hadn’t realized until then that I was so small. Anyway, I had a few seconds to get good and mad, and so I pulled my gun out of my shoulder bag and—”
“Your gun?” Thor seemed equally fascinated and horror-struck.
“Uh-huh. I’m licensed to carry a gun, although I don’t do so outside the States of course. It’s a forty-five automatic. I’ve found that nothing makes a potential burglar or mugger more nervous than a very small woman inexpertly waving about a very big gun.”
“Are you inexpert?”
“Of course not, but he didn’t know that.”
“Oh,” was all Thor could manage to say.
“Anyway, as soon as he saw the gun he dropped the pipe and started stuttering and shaking. I was cussing him up one side and down the other, and the madder I got, the more he shook—it was really very funny.”
“What happened?” Thor asked in the tone of a man who wasn’t quite sure he wanted to know.
“I treated him to a hamburger,” Pepper said gravely.
“You what?” Thor asked faintly.
“Well, he was hungry. We talked for a while, and then had a hamburger and talked some more. And then I took him with me to my friends’ house and he slept on the couch. By the time my plane left the next day, he had a job training horses at a local stable. His name is Henry, and I drop in to see him about once a year. He tells everyone within earshot the story of how we met, and says he has a little Nemesis that makes him keep to the straight and narrow.”
“I don’t believe it,” Thor murmured, staring at her.
“I don’t see why not. Henry wasn’t a very good mugger, but he turned into a first-rate trainer.”
“Matchmaker… and mender of lonely hearts.” Thor shook his head slightly. “Cal was right. You’re an enigma wrapped up in a puzzle surrounded by a mystery—followed by a question mark.”
“Cal said that?”
“Yes. After knowing you for ten years, he said that.”
Pepper attempted a laugh that didn’t quite come off. “I didn’t realize I was so complicated.”
“But you are.” The arm lying along the back of the couch moved, and his free hand brushed a strand of silver-blond hair away from her face. “You are.”
A subdued violence in her tone, she said suddenly, “But I don’t want to be! Not to you! Thor, I’m not complicated! I’m ordinary!”
“I knew you were prone to understatement the first time I saw that ‘van’ of yours,” he murmured with a tiny smile.
Pepper didn’t return the smile. Having finally abandoned the “game,” she never looked back. “I’m just a woman, Thor— no more and no less. Oh, sure, I’ve seen a lot of the world. I’ve seen things I hope to God I never see again, and I don’t suppose ladies carry guns or turn muggers into horse trainers, but that doesn’t mean I’m complicated. I laugh and cry and get mad like other women, and—dammit!—what’s so complicated about that?”
Thor realized that she really wanted to know and he supposed that, from her point of view, she wasn’t complicated, but he didn’t quite know how to explain her uniqueness. Instead, he smiled suddenly and said, “Tell me your name.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “Didn’t you ask Cal?”
“I didn’t want to admit to ignorance.”
Pepper could feel Thor’s fingers moving gently at the nape of her neck, and while the little caress sent her nerves jangling, it was also oddly soothing. She smiled at him and took a deep breath before announcing, “Perdita Elizabeth Patricia Elaine Reynolds.”
Thor looked more than a little taken aback. “How much?”
A giggle escaped her. “There was a squabble over what to name the baby roughly twenty-eight years ago. My mother’s sister, Perdita Elizabeth, and my father’s sister, Patricia Elaine, both wanted the honor. They were both spinsters, and were mortal enemies from what I’ve heard; they both died while I was in my teens. The argument became so violent that my parents combined the names, literally flipping a coin to decide what came first. Then there was a threatened bloodbath over what to call me. One of my aunts—I don’t know which, since both later claimed the inspiration—realized that the first letter of each name, with
an extra P arbitrarily added, spelled Pepper. I’ve been called that ever since.”
“Perdita,” Thor mused. “That’s not English.”
“No. Latin or Greek. It means ‘the lost one.’”
Thor stared laughing. “And you claim to be ordinary! Lord, Pepper, you’ve been unique from the moment of birth!”
Gazing into his smiling gray eyes, Pepper thought suddenly, I’ve come home. And there it was—the answer to the big question. Why him? Because she’d looked into those eyes, and the gooseflesh and thudding heart had whispered home. She had known that she loved him; until then she hadn’t known why.
The restlessness that had tormented her for years seeped away in that moment. Before meeting him, she had tentatively planned to visit the Australian Outback during the winter and then see Venice in the spring. There was no hankering in her now to see either place.
Thor, his amusement fading away, saw something different in her violet eyes. A glow that was soft and deep and strangely mysterious. And it wasn’t until he heard his own voice speaking that he realized something inside himself recognized that look.
“I can’t ask you to break your rules,” he said huskily.
“You don’t have to.” Pepper felt herself smiling, and knew that there was nothing of defeat in it. “I want permanence, Thor. But I know how to live for today. It’ll be enough.”
“Will it?”
“It’ll have to be. Besides, I learned a long time ago that sometimes rules have to be broken. There’s just no other way of dealing with them.”
“Pepper—”
“Have you ever been seduced?” she asked seriously.
He blinked. “That’s … that’s a loaded question.”
“No, I mean, really. Have you ever been seduced?”
“No. No, I haven’t.”
Slipping her hand from his, she reached out with both to begin slowly and steadily unbuttoning his flannel shirt. “Well… there’s a first time for everything, or so they say.”
Thor was silent and still through three buttons, his eyes locked with hers. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he breathed finally his hands catching her wrists in a gentle grip.