Something Different/Pepper's Way

  Where had he gone?

  Not one to sit and wonder, Pepper slipped from the bed, not bothering with the lamp to find her flannel shirt still lying on the floor. She pulled it on and began to button it, opening the door to the hall and pausing for a moment to listen intently. Dimly she could make out a low voice coming from the den.

  She went down the hall to the stairs, walking lightly on bare feet, then down the stairs and to the doorway of the den. Thor was sitting half turned away from her, talking on the phone. He was completely dressed, and a jacket lay on the couch beside him. His face, revealed to her in profile, was expressionless except for a certain remoteness, and his voice was calm and level.

  “Venezuela. Yes. No, they didn’t know. Get the jet ready. I’ll be there within an hour. Right.” He hung up the receiver.

  Staring across at him, Pepper’s thoughts screamed inside her head. Not tonight! Oh, please, not tonight! Not when it’s so new and we’re afraid to touch it….

  nine

  THOR LOOKED UP AND TOWARD THE DOORWAY, and saw her standing there. She was wearing only a flannel shirt that barely covered the tops of her thighs, looking more sexy, he thought, than nine out of ten women could look in sequins and feathers. Her hair was a little mussed from sleep, but the wide, curiously bottomless violet eyes held no drowsiness; they looked at him with a gentle inquiry that held only as much curiosity as he would be willing to satisfy.

  He wanted to move, wanted desperately to cross the room to her and hold her. Wanted to explain what he didn’t have words for. Wanted to find words for the feelings tormenting him. Wanted to smile at her and tell her that everything would be all right.

  He looked away.

  “I have to leave.” Beloved.

  She came slowly into the room, halting at the end of the couch and continuing to watch him steadily. “Do you know when you’ll be back?” she asked softly.

  “No. Not really.” Beloved.

  Still steady, she asked, “Do you want me to be here when you get back?”

  His gaze moved swiftly back to hers. “Yes.” Beloved!

  An odd little sigh, almost soundless, came from her lips. “I’ll feed Lucifer for you while you’re gone.”

  “Thank you.” So stiff, so brusque. Oh, beloved….

  He got to his feet and shrugged into the jacket as though the task demanded his utmost attention. He didn’t look at her.

  “Anything else you’d like for me to do?”

  Tell me you’ll miss me! “No.”

  She nodded slightly, and only the sudden clenching of one small fist at her side showed him that she wasn’t as calm as she looked. He stared at the fist for a moment, then his gaze moved upward to her grave face. For an eternal second there was utter silence in the room. Even the two dogs, lying side by side in front of the cold hearth, neither moved, nor made a sound.

  Thor started to step past her and head for the front door, but then something snapped inside of him. He turned suddenly and caught her in his arms, holding her with all the desperation he felt inside.

  The relief of his sudden embrace was staggering to Pepper, and her arms slid beneath his jacket and around his waist eagerly. She could sense the emotions tearing at him, feel them in the tautness of his body and the strength of his arms, but understanding eluded her. She knew only that he was leaving her, and the fear that he would go without even touching her had brought agony.

  He turned her face up with hands that weren’t quite steady, his lips claiming hers with a ferocity that branded her as his—a strange, despairing possessiveness that seemed to deny its own existence.

  And then he was gone.

  Her lips throbbing, senses and thoughts in a whirl, she listened to the roar of the Corvette die away in the distance. Then a light—a candle—flickered to life somewhere in the back of her mind. It lit the area of darkness she had yet to find her way through, showing her a possible answer to the riddle of Thor’s rules.

  Pepper stood there for a long moment, and gradually everything began to make sense. Thor’s reluctance to make a commitment, his constraint in the matter of his job, the impersonal house.

  The house. She turned and left the den, spending the next half hour going through the house, room by room. She looked this time with eyes not searching for clues, but for confirmation. And she found it. Returning to the den, she sank down in a chair and stared into the cold, blackened remains of last night’s fire in the hearth.

  Granted, it was a guess. She could very well be wrong. But Pepper didn’t think so. It explained the dichotomy. The man possessing the innate ability to care and to care deeply, to be sensitive. The man who avoided commitments, refused ties, and hated good-byes. It explained him.

  Her puzzle was assembling itself with dizzying haste, the pieces falling neatly into place, and she was almost certain that the emerging picture was the right one.

  What was his job? It occasionally took him out of the country—he’d mentioned Venezuela on the telephone. He’d told the person on the other end of the line to “get the jet ready.” To Pepper’s sharp mind that didn’t necessarily mean what it would have meant to eight out of ten women—wealth; to her it meant haste, speed. Thor had been called to Venezuela, and he’d had to get there fast.

  The job was dangerous. That much she was intuitively and instinctively certain of. And specialized. A man wouldn’t be asked to leave his own country with all speed in order to handle a run-of-the-mill problem. Jean had offhandedly mentioned that Thor had been in Mexico at the same time she herself had been last year. Mexico? She’d read the papers; what had been happening in Mexico during that time? And then she remembered.

  An oil well fire.

  It had been a big one, she remembered. Three wells within spitting distance of one another, and all burning. And the situation had been complicated by the presence of terrorists who’d been determined to let the wells burn. The military called in… The terrorists fading into the hills and taking potshots at anything that moved… Valuable crude oil burning away… And they’d called in—

  A highly specialized team of firefighters! An American team! Men—she couldn’t recall mention of women—trained to extinguish oil fires, chemical fires, any kind of more than usually dangerous fire where specialized knowledge was called for, technical skill demanded, and sheer raw courage—or stupidity—was required.

  There was only a handful of such teams, Pepper was sure. A high-risk profession, often taking its members into remote areas and demanding of them the limit of endurance. And with present-day fears of terrorist takeovers, revolutionary coups, and “small” wars, any one of which could easily involve a very valuable oil field, it was a very dangerous profession.

  She could be wrong about it, of course. But it seemed right.

  And there was more to it all—she felt it! More to Thor, more behind his avoidance of commitment than dangerous work. She fiercely put from her mind the knowledge that he was, even now, on his way to carry on that dangerous work. Could it be… ? No. No, just because she was sensitive to that, just because she’d been…

  But it fell into place so neatly, so logically. His father had… and his mother? And perhaps because of that, he’d…

  It angered her. In fact, it made her damn furious! Because she could have been fighting it all this time instead of shadow-boxing in the dark. And the worst part was that she understood.

  If she was right about it all, it was uncanny, really, her upbringing and his so similar at the roots: Both had watched a father going into danger and a mother’s terror. And from that common experience, each had evolved their separate and curiously dissimilar rules.

  She was a gambler who knew better than to believe in certainty but wanted permanence. Brave, with an intelligent courage that saw the risk before taking the chance, Pepper had seen life in all its realities, all its painful, tawdry, reckless uncertainty. And she had felt the curious lure of danger, the excitement of challenge. She understood it because she’d inherited her
father’s courageous spirit, had absorbed the tragic regrets of the mother who had learned too late of years shadowed by crippling fear.

  And so Pepper had promised herself never to look back with regret. She didn’t shrink from danger or avoid risk. She reached out to people, gathering them around her happily and naming them friends. She satisfied her nearly insatiable curiosity, whether the result was a visit to an X-rated night spot in Europe or a period of study under the amused eye of a disreputable cardsharp.

  She put down roots, however temporarily, wherever she went. She forged ties to people and places and things. Her friends were her friends, hostages to fortune with her knowledge and acceptance. And if fortune demanded a price to be paid, she would pay it then. She would not—would not—love one whit less just because that love could well be held, like the sword of Damocles, over her head one day.

  And Thor? The root they had in common, she thought, had branched off in a different direction for him. He’d probably inherited a love of danger, of risk, from his father, and that recklessness was at odds with the sensitive man who’d watched his mother’s fear. And being the man he was, Thor had chosen not to inflict that fear on another. He’d decided to go his own way alone.

  It explained the house. Beautiful, a comfortable place to return to, but containing no memories. If he were to be suddenly wiped out of existence, there would be nothing in this house to cause anyone pain. It was impersonal with studied, deliberate care.

  It explained Cody, the friend who was closer than Thor realized. Cody, who saw and respected the shield Thor carried to protect others from caring about him, and who came around anyway. The man who understood Thor and took care never to let him see that he was a hostage to fortune, took care never to let him know that a friend worried over him.

  Because he’d have no hostages to fortune, and be no hostage himself—not Thor, the god of thunder—the reckless man could not be less than he was. And the sensitive man, held captive by his own choice, wouldn’t let himself care.

  Pepper wondered painfully what it had cost him. He was, she thought, a remarkable man not to have become embittered, not to have fallen back on sarcasm and coldness to shore up his shield. But he hadn’t. He was quick and witty and humorous—at least with her.

  And that, she realized, was the final piece of the puzzle falling neatly into place.

  With her…

  If she and Thor had met in some more conventional way, she would have seen him that first time with his shield up, his defenses strong. Instead, she had caught him off guard. The newspaper ad and then the story behind it had intrigued him, and he had gone to meet her against his better judgment. Their meeting… Brutus’s attack… Impossible to be on guard with absurdity erupting all around you! And, the shield having dropped in surprise, it could never be raised quite so high again. Not with her.

  And Pepper—blindly feeling her way—out of instinct or intuition or sheer damn dumb luck had stumbled on exactly the right methods to keep that shield partly lowered. She had challenged him, and with a streak of recklessness as wide as her own, he had accepted the challenge. It had amused him at first, she thought, intrigued him. The chase. But the chase had rapidly grown larger than both of them, and they had become caught up in it.

  He had been a man alone. His housekeeper of five years had been a relative stranger to him, his home impersonal, his life ordered and limited. His only tie had been to a stallion named Lucifer who’d loved him and only him, and in spite of himself Thor had let himself care.

  Lucifer was, perhaps, a beginning. A chink in the shield. And then she had barged into his life, bringing with her a neurotic Doberman, an attack-trained Chihuahua with inquisitive habits… and a puzzle. She had chipped away at his shield cheerfully, never realizing that he wasn’t running from her at all, but from images burned in his mind.

  Brutally abrupt good-byes. Fear-tainted absences. Desperate worry. And finally, the image that would haunt the kind of man he was: a woman in widow’s black weeping in a darkened room.

  Hostages to fortune. Himself a hostage to someone else’s fortune, and he wouldn’t be that, never be that, never that.

  “Dammit,” Pepper said, startling herself. She looked around, blinking, and realized that day had arrived while she’d been lost in thought. The dogs were quiet, heads lifted and eyes fixed expectantly on her. They’re hungry, she thought vaguely. Breakfast time.

  Then she heard the sound of Jean’s VW, and the dogs raced to the front door to greet her. Pepper sat where she was, saying a quiet string of swear words she’d learned in various languages. Damn the man, anyway. How to convince him that he was already her hostage to fortune and always would be? And judging by that embrace just before he’d gone, that she was his hostage to fortune whether he knew it… or wanted it?

  “He’s gone?”

  Pepper looked across to the doorway, meeting Jean’s eyes. “He’s gone. Venezuela. I think.”

  Jean nodded slightly, watching the younger woman with sympathy. “It’s usually only a few days,” she volunteered quietly.

  “Yes.” Pepper asked no questions, knowing that the housekeeper would understand. She’d hear the story from Thor or from no one. Period.

  “I’ll fix breakfast,” Jean murmured. “And feed the dogs.”

  Pepper shook her head slightly. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You have to eat.”

  Looking across the room to meet concerned, motherly eyes, Pepper couldn’t help but smile. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll go upstairs and get dressed.”

  That day passed, then a second and a third. Pepper groomed her clients during the day, helped Jean experiment with “foreign” culinary fare, and took care of Thor’s horse and her own pets.

  It was the nights that were bad. Jean had offered that first night to stay later than usual, but Pepper knew that she had a husband waiting for her at home, and refused to allow it. Any one—or two—of her friends would have been delighted to come and stay, but Pepper didn’t even consider that.

  She waited alone.

  Watching television, knitting, reading, all were means to fill the time. A third night of automatically knitting while staring at the television produced a colorful afghan, which she defiantly tossed over the back of the couch.

  It wasn’t fear that tortured her during those endless nights. It was uncertainty. She couldn’t know, after all, that Thor was even then in danger. She couldn’t know. Except that she did. Her uncertainty, though, was all wrapped up in his work and his rules.

  What right did she have to tell Thor that he was wrong about avoiding commitments? She had seen how fear could batter the mind and twist the spirit; she understood his reasoning. But she still thought he was wrong. And no special wisdom told her that.

  It was just that she loved him.

  His absence gave Pepper the time she needed to gather her thoughts and emotions and examine them as objectively as she could. And as the days passed she realized it wasn’t only because she loved him and wanted to share his life that she believed his rules wrong. He was cheating himself, she knew, and cheating others as well. And no matter what happened between them, she meant to make him see that.

  Pepper was curled up on the couch in the den watching a movie on television when she heard the Corvette. It would have been her fifth night alone.

  As the dogs rushed to the front door she sat up slowly and used the remote control to turn off the television. Nervously smoothing the fine silk of her blue gown and negligee, Pepper steeled herself to stay put and not rush to greet him. She wanted to, God knew, but she was afraid. Because, while she’d had time to think during these last days, he probably had too. And she didn’t know what conclusions he’d reached.

  So she stayed put and listened to her heart thundering in her ears and the sound of his voice as he greeted the eagerly welcoming dogs. It wasn’t until he spoke directly to her from the doorway that Pepper rose slowly to her feet.

  “Well, two out of three’s not bad, I g
uess.”

  She stared across the room at him, feeding the hunger inside of her with the sight of him. Dressed almost exactly the same as when he’d left, he shrugged his jacket off and tossed it on a chair, revealing a casual flannel shirt and jeans. He looked tired, she thought, but was blessedly whole and unhurt, and she took an instinctive step toward him.

  But as he stepped into the room and into the light, she saw the look in his eyes and halted. She swallowed hard and forced herself to respond easily to his comment and not to the look that told her the ending was, perhaps, in sight.

  “I didn’t think you’d want a clinging sort of woman.”

  “What sort of woman are you, Pepper? No curiosity? No questions?”

  “Both,” she responded quietly. “I’ll ask the questions if you’re ready to answer. Are you, Thor?”

  “Yes.” He walked abruptly over to the window, showing her only a sharply etched profile against the blackened glass.

  Pepper sat down on the edge of the couch, watching him. She took a deep breath, wondering if she hoped or dreaded her guesses to be confirmed. “Then tell me about your job.”

  He smiled a little, wryly. “Right to the heart of the matter. That’s my Pepper.”

  “Tell me, Thor.”

  “I’m a partner in a small company,” he told her quietly. “We specialize in dealing with fires. Oil and chemical fires; the kind that ordinary firemen just aren’t trained or equipped to deal with. We fly all over the world, to remote areas and into cities and put out the fires. Sometimes we deal with deliberate sabotage, or duck bullets in some idiotic brush war, or fight diplomatic or bureaucratic red tape.”

  “And that’s why you… you wrote your rules?” she questioned, sure now of the answer.

  “My father and his partner started the company.” Thor’s voice was flat, tight. “My mother loved my father very much. When I got old enough to understand that—really understand it—I saw what it did to her. Having to say good-bye to him, time after time, knowing that each time could be for good. It made her old before the years caught up with her.”