“More hot chocolate?” she muttered.
“No thanks. I’ve got an air mattress to inflate.” He started to leave, then stopped so close that his thighs were almost, but not quite, brushing her hips. His scent, a combination of leather, wool, and fresh autumn air, was distinctly masculine and provocative.
Betty stared at the mugs and didn’t move. “I’ll bring you a few blankets. Oh, there’s plenty of wood if you want to start a fire and sleep in front of the fireplace.”
“Thanks.” His warm breath caressed her cheek. “You’re being very nice to a man who makes you feel uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” she said between gritted teeth as he left the kitchen. Alone, she bent over and, shaking her head in exasperation, covered her face with both hands. She felt as if she were on fire.
Several hours later Betty awoke with his voice in her ear and his hand on her shoulder. She knew something was wrong with the scenario, and after a second she realized what—he was in her bedroom, and she was in bed. She sputtered and tried to move away.
“Sssh, babe,” he whispered, gently holding her still. “There’s someone or something in your cellar. I want you to get dressed and stay by the phone. I’m going to check the cellar out.”
“But there were three of those guys. What if—”
He laughed grimly. “They’d better be bad if there are only three.”
She brushed a hand over her eyes and double-checked. Yes, he was for real. “Look, John Wayne, I don’t want you to get hurt. I mean, if you get beat up or shot in my cellar, I’ll feel obligated to be nice to you.”
“Exactly. How about a smooch for the departing warrior?” He bent over her and took her mouth with a hard, caressing kiss, then trailed a finger over her lips. “I can die semi-happy now.” Then he was gone, padding out of her bedroom and down the hall, walking so softly that his hiking boots were nearly soundless on the creaking wood floor.
She scooted out of bed and fumbled in a tall wicker basket where she had stored some of her clothes. Pulling a pink jogging suit over her pajamas, she shoved her feet into loafers and tiptoed downstairs.
Faux Paw sat on a low step, attentive and curious. Betty stroked the cat’s brindle head distractedly and hurried past. She was an orderly person, not given to cravings for adventure—except, she thought with disgust, where men were concerned. But she wouldn’t spend any more years of her life on that craving. Even if Max Templeton had invaded her life and house and, apparently, had appointed himself her protector.
As she ran to the phone and stood listening intensely for any sound from the cellar, it occurred to her that her musician had never offered to protect her from anything more dangerous than bad vibes at a Grateful Dead concert.
The silence was a rough cloak that rubbed her nerves raw. She stood it as long as she could and then, her mouth acid with fear, she tiptoed through the kitchen and out the back door. Betty opened the screened door on the back porch and looked to the left, where one half of the cellar door stood open.
She returned to the kitchen, searched through one of her cardboard boxes, and pulled a carving knife from its wooden safety sheath. Like any serious cook, she kept her knives honed to a razor edge. With the carving knife clasped in her hand like a small sword, she headed back outdoors and went to the cellar. The pumping of her blood roared in her ears as she waited at the top of the steps.
“Max?” she called down softly. She called again and listened for a full minute, but there was no answer. What was he doing? Why hadn’t he turned the lights on?
Call the sheriff, her typical, reasonable inner voice told her.
That won’t do Max much good if he’s already in trouble, a new, fiercer voice countered.
She descended into the dark cellar one heart-stopping step at a time. Its cold, clammy blackness made her shiver. At the base of the narrow stairs she braced her feet apart and held the knife in front of herself with both hands as she tried to interpret shapes in the dark.
Samurai Betty, she thought, poking the air experimentally.
Her blood froze when a tiny trickle of dirt cascaded from the red-clay wall behind her. She started to pivot, but a heavy forearm circled her neck, and a hand grabbed both of her hands in a twisting grip that made her drop the knife.
“Oh, Max, you cretin,” she said with relief and annoyance. “Stop it.”
“Shut up.”
It wasn’t Max’s voice.
Instant terror pumped adrenaline into her muscles. She brought her elbows back and jabbed her captor’s ribs. Her heels beat a drumroll on his legs. The overhead light came on. Max loomed over both her and the stranger, his face composed in the deadly grimace of a wolf focusing on its prey.
He jammed the barrel of his gun into the face behind Betty. “One. Two—”
“All right, man, all right!”
Suddenly she was free. Max latched a hand onto her shoulder and jerked her out of the way, and after she bounced off the opposite clay wall, she swung around and looked at the scene numbly.
Max had pinned a brawny young man against the other wall. The man’s jeans and denim jacket were covered in dirt and bits of leaves, and his sneakers were filthy. Either he’d been running through the woods, or he’d just come out of hibernation, Betty observed wryly.
He looked cross-eyed at the automatic pistol that was under his nose. He kept his hands plastered against the cellar wall behind him.
“Where are your two friends?” Max asked softly.
“I don’t know. I swear. We got separated. Don’t shoot me.”
“Then don’t even breathe wrong.”
“I’m not breathing at all.”
Betty found her voice. “I have some rope.”
“Good.” Max smiled coldly, his eyes never leaving the other man’s. “Let’s hang him.”
She didn’t believe what she said next. But Max provoked her to a giddy desire for mischief. “No, don’t do that. I’ll just go get the Dobermans.”
The captive gasped. “No, lady. Please. I wasn’t gonna hurt you! I was just trying to get past you and up the steps.”
Max snuggled the gun barrel a little tighter against the man’s upper lip. “Aw, he’s kind of pitiful looking, babe. Why don’t I just tie him up?”
“Oh, I suppose.” She bent and retrieved the carving knife she’d dropped. “Darn. I didn’t even get to nick him.” She looked at the knife sadly. “Could I have a second chance?”
The captive moaned. “Please, lady.”
“Oh, relax. I wouldn’t cut off anything important.”
“I’ll talk her out of it. You better sit down,” Max told him. “Slowly.”
The man’s knees buckled and he slid to the cellar floor, his face ashen. Betty took the gun that Max offered to her and aimed it at the man’s head, smiling sweetly at him while Max got a coil of nylon rope from a nail on one of the cellar’s support beams. Max quickly bound the man hands-to-feet.
“You scored fast on that calf tie, Tex,” Betty noted in a twangy drawl.
Max tipped an imaginary Stetson to her. “Yup. Let’s get the brandin’ iron.”
They left their nervous prisoner in the basement and went to the house, where she called the sheriff while Max padded through the downstairs rooms, making sure everything was secure. Within fifteen minutes her front yard filled with cars containing sheriffs deputies as well as police officers from the neighboring county.
The other two robbery suspects had already been caught. The third, spouting obscenities now that he felt safe, was hauled from Betty’s cellar and taken away. After much interviewing, congratulations, and guffawing, everyone departed except, of course, Betty and Max.
They sat on the front-porch steps, wrapped in quilts. Dawn slipped through the meadow and forest around the house. The peacefulness of the autumn morning and the lingering undercurrent of shock made for a confusing mood. Betty huddled inside her quilt and began to shiver with fatigue and nerves.
“I’ve
never shared anything like this with anyone else,” she murmured. “I mean … the past night.”
She turned to look at Max, emotions jumbled. There was a bond between them now, whether she wanted it or not. She fought it. He was the most distressing, most exciting man she’d ever met. And completely wrong for the path she’d planned for her life.
Beside her, his hips and thigh pressed companion-ably to hers, Max watched her with a quiet pleasure that made her feel even more unsettled. “We’re great together,” he said, his voice a deep purl. “I’ve never known a woman like you.”
She wanted so badly to kiss him that the desire was an ache inside her throat. “Can a tiger ever change his stripes?” she asked in a small, tired voice.
He gave her a quizzical look, and then, as her meaning registered, his eyes clouded. “In other words, are my intentions honorable?”
“I know how prim the question sounds. I don’t expect every man I meet to hand over a signed affidavit guaranteeing his interest in marriage.” She searched his face desperately. “But with you I have a feeling that there wouldn’t be any holding back. I’d be in over my head so fast that I wouldn’t see the light until it blinded me. I want an affidavit.”
He lifted a hand and cupped her chin. “I could lie to you, but I won’t. I can’t see myself ever getting married. After watching my father live happily by himself, and after seeing so many of my Marine Corps cronies suffer through one divorce after another, I think the institution of marriage is highly overrated.” He paused, looking at her somberly. “I may not believe in marriage, but I have nothing against love.”
“What if you want children?”
“My career didn’t give me much chance to put down roots, so I suppose that over the years I just lost interest in the possibility of having a family. I don’t expect to have any children.”
A cold, hard knot of disappointment settled inside her. “Thank you for being honest.”
“Accept my honesty. Accept me.” He bent his head close to hers and added gruffly, “Let’s go Inside the house. I’ll make us both another cup of hot chocolate—with bourbon this time. When you’re feeling warm and relaxed, I’ll carry you up to your bedroom. I’ll undress us both, and well curl up together under your electric blanket. And I promise you, you won’t have any regrets about the way I make you feel.”
For a moment her willpower shattered. She sagged against him and lifted her mouth to his, savoring the storm of sensation that kissing him produced even as a cry of resistance grew inside her chest. Betty brushed her lips over the tip of his nose, then his chin, his cheeks, his eyes. He bowed his head closer and shut his eyes, then sighed in a low, hoarse way that ignited her even more.
Shaking hard, she pulled back. “I can’t, Max. I can’t. Because I know what I want from life, just like you do, and neither of us is interested in compromise.” She fought the knot in her throat and said miserably, “I moved here to forget one mistake. I won’t start over with another one.”
His troubled gaze held hers. A tinge of grim humor came into his eyes. “You’re supposed to believe that you’re the one woman who can change my mind about marriage.”
She managed a small smile. “I believed that once before about myself and a man. I was wrong. I’m not that irresistible.”
Max frowned at her. He seemed emotionally intense, raw. Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her until she was breathless and her mouth felt swollen. Holding her arms, he continued kissing her as he stood and brought her up with him.
Wobbling on the porch steps, her quilt falling to the ground unheeded, she kissed him back in a daze of greedy passion. But she began shaking her head. Half-crying, she backed away from him and held tight to the wooden balustrade beside the steps.
“You’re irresistible in ways you never even considered,” he told her hoarsely.
He tossed his quilt on the porch rail and walked into the house. Betty took deep breaths of crisp dawn air and touched her lips with a shaky hand. When he returned a minute later, he wore his wool poncho and carried his sleeping bag.
He passed her in silence but stopped at the base of the fieldstone steps. He looked up at her without anger in his eyes, although unhappiness made his expression hard. “Later,” he said softly.
Betty watched him get into his Jeep. He tipped a hand to his forehead and gave her a small salute. She raised her hand in return, palm outward, but couldn’t bring herself to wave good-bye.
Four
Values. In his dark, self-absorbed mood Max needed values that didn’t need to be questioned. He shoveled the last bit of concrete mix around the base of the flagpole, then got down on his hands and knees and used a trowel to smooth the mix into a flat, circular pad.
Beyond the slope of his front yard the sun was setting over the forest and distant mountains, merging their reds and golds into the sky’s soft purple. The air was pleasantly cool and smelled of wood smoke from Norma’s chimney, hidden beyond the trees at the bottom of his driveway.
Ordinarily Max loved his privacy. One of the things he enjoyed most about Webster Springs was that here, only two miles from town, it was as if no town existed.
But this evening his thoughts were filled with Betty Quint, and loneliness lay in his stomach like a stone. He’d never felt this kind of craving for someone’s company before, and he’d never wanted any other woman so badly.
“Straighten up. Stop moping,” he ordered under his breath. “You were honest with yourself and with her. She was honest with you.” He washed his hands in the spray from the hose that lay nearby, then dried them on the tail of his sweatshirt and went to the Jeep, parked under an apple tree beside the house.
When he returned to the flagpole, he carried the carefully folded flag that his men had presented to him when he left the corps. He threaded it on the rope and ran it up the pole, then walked back a few paces and stood quietly, watching the evening wind lift the flag against the magenta sky.
He didn’t regret his decision to leave the marines, because he’d begun to look at himself in the mirror and see a crusty leatherneck who had nothing permanent or meaningful in his life except the corps. But he was proud of his career. He had believed in the good of his work, the good of his country. He still did.
Max snapped to attention and saluted the flag. Then, because the sun had nearly disappeared and a bright-orange harvest moon would soon be rising, he quickly lowered the flag.
Frowning a little, he carried it across the lawn to a wooden bench under a grape arbor. As he sat down and began folding it he wondered if Betty would think he was corny and maudlin.
No, the lady believed in traditional values, he reminded himself. Home and hearth. God, country, and marriage. Marriage. He leaned back and shut his eyes, smiling grimly. He wasn’t afraid of many things, but marriage was near the top of the list. He’d seen it break too many strong men. In a way, it had broken his father, because no woman had ever been able to replace Max’s mother. His father had told him so, more than once.
But what if he never stopped wanting Betty Quint? How could he see her around town and resist an urge to seduce her by any means, fair or foul? Max groaned in bitter amusement and rubbed his forehead. He’d met her only four days ago, and yet here he sat, wrestling with his conscience, his libido, and a deep, growing sense that he’d never forgive himself if he let her get away.
This was worse than marriage.
Betty checked her bank balance. Dismayed, she checked it again. The bank machine patiently ground out another receipt while she gripped the steering wheel of her economy-model van. She grabbed the new receipt and inhaled sharply as it confirmed what the first one had said.
After a moment she slowly tucked the receipt into her leather purse, muttering under her breath, “That’s what you get for being a fool, Betty Belle.” The man in the cattle truck behind her honked his horn impatiently. She waved and quickly guided the van out of the drive-through and onto Main Street.
As she drove past ha
ndsome old one-story buildings that housed clothing boutiques, craft shops, and cafés, she propped an elbow on the window casing and leaned her head on one fist, tired and lost in plans. A block further she entered the town square, circled the stately courthouse that was now an arts center and museum for mountain crafts, then pulled down a side street to a restored Victorian-era cottage painted blue with white trim.
Betty parked at the curb for a moment and watched workmen set the restaurant sign into postholes they’d dug among the azaleas by the front walk. It was a handsome wooden sign painted blue to match the house, with the restaurant’s name set in large, scrolling white letters. Betty’s Restaurant.
She laughed despite the lump in her throat. You couldn’t get more simple than that, and she liked it. It sounded friendly and unpretentious, while the house looked more formal. That was the combination she’d wanted, not as casual as most barbecue restaurants, but a home-style place at heart.
She drove around back and entered a graveled lot shaded by hickory trees. The trees had been a good-luck sign, she’d thought when she’d bought the house. Her barbecue was hickory smoked. But good luck seemed to be fleeing as fast as the bank’s computer could register her debits.
Her stomach in knots, she parked near the newly installed trash dumpster and sat with a pad and pen, working out her finances.
Max Templeton entered her mind, as he had so many times over the past few days. She could imagine his amazement if he knew just how little money she had. Would he be sympathetic or grimly amused at the idea?
Poor little rich girl. She’d spent years throwing away her time and money on a struggling musician, and now she was struggling along on a business loan and a dwindling savings account.
No, Max would be sympathetic, she thought dully. He’d probably offer her a strong shoulder, an attentive ear—and a lot of other body parts that she’d have trouble resisting.
She set her jaw and made some calculations. She’d drive down to the storage warehouse in Atlanta and gather a few of the furnishings that she’d moved from her condo and sell them.