Until, finally, she turned away from the road, and the memories. But not fully. A part of him lived within her.
She called on strength earned in the battle to survive, and began to repair her war-ravaged land. Her home. There were no tears left.
Alex woke to find tears on her cheeks. She wiped them away, careful not to disturb Noah. His warmth helped ease the coldness inside of her, and she moved yet nearer to his body. His arms tightened around her even in sleep, and Alex relaxed in his embrace.
But she stared into the darkness a very long time before sleep would return, one hand resting on her flat stomach.
EIGHT
“SHALL WE FLING?”
“Not without music,” she answered.
“Darling sprite, we’ll make our own music.”
“You’re still trying to rattle my teeth, aren’t you?”
“It’s a question of masculine pride.”
“I’ll dance at the wake.”
“What’re we burying?”
“Your masculine pride.”
Noah sighed. “A guy could get hurt in the crossfire,” he observed in a cowed tone.
“You started the shooting.”
“I just asked a simple question.”
“And I answered it. I never fling in the woods.” Alex removed Buddy from Cal’s mouth and set him down on the blanket they had spread in a clearing by the stream. “You were going to fish,” she reminded Noah, “and I was going to read. Those plans still sound good to me.” She picked up her book and leaned back against Cal, using his willing side for a pillow.
Noah sighed again and bent down to gather his fishing rod and tackle box. “You should have told me you didn’t enjoy fishing,” he told her.
“You didn’t ask. Is it going to be a bar to our future relationship?”
“I shouldn’t think so. As long as you don’t object to my fishing.” Noah kept his voice light, his heart leaping as always whenever she casually mentioned a future for them.
“I don’t object a bit,” she said firmly.
He straightened and gazed down at her in silence for a moment, wondering for a countless time if he dared ask her to commit herself to him. And, for a countless time, he shied away from that.
They had spent days alone but for the pets, days of peace and laughter and passion. In some ways Noah felt secure in her love, and yet there was still something elusive about her. “I love you” was still not an easy thing for her to say, yet she said it often. She was clearly more comfortable now with touching and being touched, quick to reach out to him or respond to him.
Yet he had awakened several nights to find her awake, still and silent beside him in their bed. To his concerned questions she inevitably replied that it had been “just a nightmare” and seemed so unwilling to talk about it that he hadn’t pressed her for details.
“You’re not fishing,” Alex murmured, looking up at him over the top of her book.
Noah pushed the troubling thoughts aside. “Actually, I am,” he told her. “I’m using my sexy body for bait and hoping to catch you.”
“You’re insatiable.”
“Oh, you noticed that?”
“Noticed?” Alex rested the book against her raised knees and stared at him. “Noticed?” she repeated in rising incredulity.
“You should be flattered.”
She cleared her throat in a rather pointed way and lifted the book again.
“Can I help it,” Noah demanded aggrievedly, “if I’m at the mercy of this violent passion you’ve roused in me? Can I help it if I have to grab you every time you walk by?”
“Go fish,” she told him.
“I’d rather catch you,” he said wistfully.
Alex didn’t take the bait.
After a moment, sighing mournfully, Noah made his way to the edge of the stream. He eyed the water, then walked a few yards farther upstream before choosing a spot. But before he could even bait his hook, arms slid around him from behind.
“You caught me,” Alex said breathlessly. “I just can’t resist your sexy body!”
Noah dropped everything.
He could feel her gaze on him as he saddled the horse, and knew without looking what expressions those green depths would hold. No condemnation, no censure, no recriminations. Only quiet strength and a softness that was wistful because a war had robbed her world of softness.
She was a lady.
She wouldn’t ask him to stay, he knew. It was not in her, this gentle and gracious woman, to put herself between him and his duty. She had hidden him, tended and healed his wounds. She had fed more than his body, her beauty and gentle touch a salve to his weary spirit.
She had shared with him her own weary soul … and her bed. Held him in the night as he had held her, with a passion as violent and overpowering as a summer storm.
And now he was leaving her.
Alone, but for a handful of loyal servants. Alone in a war-torn land. Alone amid the shattered remains of what had been her life.
He led the horse from the barn, aware of her soft footsteps behind him. He swung into the saddle, arranged the reins methodically. If he looked at her, he knew, if he gazed into those quiet eyes, he was lost. He was, he realized dimly, lost anyway, because he was about to leave the only anchor he had found in this hated war. The only reality.
And the only person he had ever loved.
“Thank you.” Abrupt. Brutal.
“Take care.” Her quiet, gentle response.
Shoulders stiff, he rode blindly down the dusty road.
Noah woke, cold and shivering, desolate. He had released Alex sometime during the night, and now gently gathered her sleeping body close again.
It was a long time before he felt warm.
He wasn’t a man who had ever thought seriously about impossible things. Analytical for the most part, he considered to be real only what he could see or touch. Yet Noah had more than once photographed things he had not consciously seen, capturing a moment or a fleeting expression he could not have reasonably anticipated.
Luck, he called it.
But as the days passed, Noah began to wonder more and more often if there were realities that couldn’t be touched, but only felt and believed. He wondered because his analytical mind had begun to add things up. Just flashes. Dreams. Curious, out-of-sync moments. Feelings.
Feelings from other times.
He dreamed almost every night now, usually two separate dreams. One always involved a Union soldier and a woman with blond hair and green eyes who had hidden him, healed his wound, and loved him. The other always concerned a raven-haired Gypsy girl with wild green eyes and a man who adored her.
Noah had dismissed the dreams as the erratic ramblings of his subconscious at first. But a pattern had formed, and there was nothing erratic or rambling about that. The dreams were serial. They had progressed, from instance to instance, each dream continuing to tell a clear and coherent story.
A lord’s son had watched a Gypsy girl dance before a bonfire, her green eyes beckoning, her smile teasing. Meetings followed, secret and secluded, because her family thought little of nobility and his thought even less of Gypsies. Words of love were the sounds of two hearts beating together, desire a pagan song celebrated beneath the trees. They loved and planned. And when he had to leave the countryside on business for his father, he promised to return. And he had returned … to find her gone.
And a wounded Union soldier had found help and solace from a gentle Southern lady who hid him within her home. She had nursed him, fed him. Asking nothing in return, she provided a haven where his weary body and spirit could rest. She was the one spot of gracious beauty in his life, and he loved her. Loved her in a bed where generations of her family had come into the world. Loved her before a crackling fire in an old stone fireplace. Loved her with the desperation of a man about to return to war. And then he left her.
Dreams. Or … dreams of memories.
Memories of dreams?
He d
idn’t know.
Often Noah caught himself looking in Alex’s eyes for something. The wild spirit of a Gypsy girl. The quiet strength and gentleness of a woman risking her own safety for his. And shaken, he often found one or both of the qualities he sought in the depths of her green eyes.
Enchanted green sirens, wild and fey, sometimes beckoned to him when he teased or she teased, prompting a flashing image in his mind of black hair and a cool forest glade. Lovemaking by a rushing stream. And in quiet moments her green eyes were soft and wistful, and he could almost smell the musty disuse of an old barn and see dust hanging heavy in the summer air. See a once-gracious house pitted and scarred by a vicious war. Feel the satiny softness of smooth skin reflecting a fire’s golden glow.
He could remember waking from a vague dream to hear a voice, familiar yet strange, speaking words that had made no sense. Then,
Oh, see! Our lifelines match! We are bonded, my love. Fated to share all our lives together!
Noah didn’t believe in impossible things. But his perception of what was, in fact, possible was beginning to change.
There was so much about Alex that was familiar to him! Tiny things such as gestures or tricks of expression, and larger things—the way her slender body felt in his arms. Familiar. And so right.
How long had he loved her?
Insane, he thought. I’m insane. I love her so much I’m looking for ties stretching beyond the both of us, for anything that will bind us together.
He didn’t dare confide the wild suppositions to Alex. She’d think he was stark raving mad!
“We haven’t come up with a way to save Cal from Teddy’s clutches,” Alex reminded him one night as they cuddled together on the couch in front of the fireplace.
“That worries you a lot, doesn’t it?” he asked quietly.
Alex, her determination to hold on to this man strengthened during the past days, silently fought off panic at the thought of having to choose between the two lions in her life. “It worries me,” she admitted. “Before, I would have just—taken Cal away. Moved on.”
“Before me?”
She nodded, gazing into the fire. “It never bothered me much. Pulling up stakes, I mean. I never regretted that.”
“But you would this time?”
“Of course I would.”
“Why?” he asked softly, his voice husky.
Alex felt a gathering tension, uneasily aware of a matching tension filling Noah’s lean body. It was suddenly difficult to breathe, and she had the strong impression that they were at a fork in the road. Something had to be resolved between them, and she was afraid, desperately afraid, that she would somehow lose him again.
She couldn’t lose him again.
“Why, Alex?”
“Because … I love you.”
He was silent and still for such a long time that Alex’s control broke. She jumped to her feet, pacing over to the open door and staring out into the night. In a voice that was strange to her ears, she said, “I used to believe that life was very simple. I got that from the animals, I suppose. They—animals—aren’t much concerned with tomorrow. They live day to day. I’ve always been that way. When I didn’t like my life anymore, I changed it in some way. I don’t think I ever learned to stand and fight.”
“Alex—”
She barely heard him. “There was never anything I wanted to fight for. To join the circus, I ran away. To protect Cal, I ran away. It’s very easy to get into the habit of running. And the worst thing about running isn’t just that it’s cowardly. The worst thing is that it doesn’t solve the problem. It’s like being on a merry-go-round; eventually you come back to where you started.”
“Alex—”
His voice was nearer, just behind her, but Alex kept talking in that strange voice. “I’ve reached that point now. I want to change my life again. I could change it by running. Again. I could change it by staying. If I run, I know what I’ll lose. If I stay, I don’t know if I can win.”
“You want to win safety for Cal?” he asked quietly.
“That’s part of it. A large part.” She stared out into the darkness. “Part of it is something I—I need to win for myself.”
“What do you need for yourself?”
Alex gestured almost helplessly, trying to find words. “Maybe a place. Or a kind of certainty. No more running, I guess.” She turned suddenly, leaning back against the doorjamb and staring up at him. “I used to watch old Western movies when I was a kid. D’you know what I always looked for, waited for in those movies?”
“What?”
“The part where the good guys made a stand. It always happened. They’d build barricades around a town or a ranch, and they’d fight it out. They were protecting something. Something worth standing and fighting for. And whenever the movie reached that point, I always knew the good guys were going to win.”
“Because they had a place to fight?”
“I suppose.”
“And that’s what you want now?” Noah asked. “A place to fight?”
Alex gazed up at him. “A place to fight. A reason to stand and fight. It’d be easier to run, Noah.”
His hands rose to rest on her shoulders. “Honey, I can’t promise that by staying you’ll keep Cal safe forever. I can’t even promise he’ll be safe for a week or a month. I can promise that I’ll do everything in my power to help you keep him safe. And I can promise you a place to fight. As for a reason to stand …” He took a deep breath. “I love you. I hope that’s reason enough.”
A fork in the road. Alex had chosen, she knew, long before.
She smiled slowly. “I think it’s time I stopped fading into the misty night.”
Noah sighed an eternity’s pent-up breath. It was a commitment of sorts, and more than he’d dared hope for. Unwilling to touch what was fragile in its newness, he reached for lightness. “It’s about time!” he reproved her sternly. “I was beginning to think I’d perjured myself for nothing.”
“Perjured yourself?”
“The scarred trees at home. I invented kids with hatchets, remember?”
“So you did.” Alex let her arms circle his waist. “But you said Teddy didn’t believe you.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I lied.”
“My hero.”
Gravely Noah said, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
Alex giggled. “All you need are six-guns and a ten-gallon hat!”
“Would you please,” Noah requested politely, “allow me to enjoy my heroism for just a few moments?”
“All right, stranger. But tell me something, will you?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“When the bad guys bite the dust, are you going to kiss me or your horse?”
“In the great tradition of Western epics …” he began grandly.
“Yes?”
“I’ll kiss you, of course.”
“Gee, you mean I beat out Trigger?”
“By a nose.”
She choked. “That’s terrible!”
“But honest.”
Releasing him, Alex ducked under his arm and went back to sit on the couch. “If you’ll please stop playing with words,” she said briskly, “we can discuss strategy.”
Noah joined her, grinning. “If you insist. But I was having fun playing with words.”
Alex eyed him thoughtfully. “How did you ever manage to get so big without growing up?”
“Eating spinach,” Noah replied promptly.
She put her head in her hands briefly, then cleared her throat as she glared at him. “Strategy.”
“Yes, ma’am. Well, as I see it, we have two basic alternatives. One, we go on hiding a four-hundred-pound lion to the best of our combined abilities. Two, we somehow manage to make an illegality legal and let Cal go public.”
Alex winced. “Lousy options,” she commented darkly.
“There are drawbacks to both,” he agreed. “You’ve been lucky for six years, but lady luck??
?s a fickle creature. I don’t think we’d better count on luck to keep him safe. That means we’ll have to be very, very careful. As for the second alternative, we’ll have to be very sure we can make Cal legal before we—so to speak—let the cat out of the bag.”
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist saying that.”
“No applause for my wit?”
“We’re going to bury your wit along with your masculine pride.”
“There’s no need for that,” he said on a sigh. “Both are already gone where you’re concerned. I have the wit of a ten-year-old—”
“He admits it.”
“—and my pride is in my shoes.”
“I thought we were talking about Cal.”
“No, we’re talking about the other lion in your life.”
“Let’s save one before we discuss the other, shall we?”
“If you insist.”
Alex stared at him. “Well, you’ve outlined our options rather neatly. Any ideas?”
“We could start a zoo,” he offered.
“A zoo.”
A bit hastily Noah said, “I was just kidding.”
“Noah?”
“Yes?”
After a long moment of staring at him with unblinking eyes, Alex smiled slowly and leaned over to slide her arms around his neck. “You know,” she said, “I never thought much of those ditsy ladies in the old movies who’d climb up in some man’s lap and start kissing and hugging to get what they wanted. It always struck me as being rather underhanded and devious, because those guys were, of course, just putty waiting for a molding hand.”
Noah cleared his throat strongly. “And so?”
“And so, I’d never try that on you. Never. It would be just terrible of me to take advantage of this violent passion you’re laboring under. Just terrible. I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up for the shame I’d feel. I mean, to resort to such underhanded feminine tricks would be to admit that I couldn’t win a debate with you. That I couldn’t converse like any sensible adult. I’d be resorting to some horrible sexist tradeoff, offering my willing body in return for what I really wanted from you.”