Lover in the Rough

by Elizabeth Lowell

  She didn’t know when she began to cry. At first it was a gentle rain. Then it became a torrent that shook her mercilessly, bringing her to her knees. She tried to stop sobbing but could not. The nerve and discipline that had carried her through the month was dissolving away, leaving only icy loss and scalding grief. She sank to the sand and wept helplessly, holding onto herself like a child.

  Dimly she was aware of the stranger’s hands lifting her, strong arms folding around her, pulling her across his lap and rocking her slowly, his deep voice murmuring comfort against her hair. She tried to talk, to tell him about Jeremy, but all she could say through her tears was, “I I-loved him and now he’s d-dead.”

  “Pauvre petite,” he said gently, his voice a velvet warmth against her hair. Poor little one.

  The familiar French phrase stripped Reba of her last defenses. With a broken sound she put her arms around the stranger and gave herself over to grief. His fingers slid through her hair, easing out the carved ivory comb that held her hair coiled on top of her head. Her hair fell in heavy waves over her shoulders and his arms. Slowly he stroked her hair and her back, holding her against his hard strength, comforting her.

  After a long, long time her tears were spent and she could breathe without sobbing. He wrapped his jacket around her and gently bathed her face with water from the canteen. In the moonlight his eyes were molten silver, his expression dark and unreadable. Common sense whispered that she should be frightened; she was alone in the dunes with a rough stranger whose name she didn’t know. Yet as she looked up at him she felt only peace, his warmth seeping through her.

  With a small sigh Reba rested against his chest, too spent to hold herself erect. His arms tightened around her, silently supporting her. Strong fingers slowly rubbed up her back and neck, loosening muscles that had been knotted for weeks. She murmured and sighed, relaxing. Gradually, strength returned to her, as though she were drawing it from him.

  “Better?” he asked softly.

  She nodded, sending moonlight sliding through hair that looked more silver than gold.

  He stood, pulling her up with him, holding her until he was sure she could stand. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “I can manage now.” But her voice was hoarse with crying and her face was as pale as moonlight. “Really, I can.”

  “I’m sure you could,” he said, “but you don’t have to.”

  He took her hand and led her toward the rising moon. As they walked through the black and silver land there was no sound but the whisper of sand sliding down the steep face of a dune. Neither of them spoke, not wanting to disturb the sable silence.

  When they reached her car he turned toward her. His fingers eased through her hair, seeking the warmth beneath the cool silk. He tilted her head back, letting moonlight pour over her oval face. Slowly he bent to take her lips, giving her long seconds to evade his kiss.

  She felt the gentle cage of his fingers, saw his wide shoulders eclipse the moon, heard his breath sigh out when her eyes closed, accepting his caress. His kiss was a gentle warmth moving over her mouth, a sweet pressure that she couldn’t deny. Instinctively her lips softened, surrender and invitation at once. He kissed her with a gentle restraint and thoroughness that made her moan.

  And then he changed, his arms closing around her while he kissed her with a hunger as deep as the night, his hard edges melting and flowing over her until she fitted against him perfectly. With a small sound she clung to him, shaken by his heat and the velvet demands of his tongue, responding to him as she had never responded to any man.

  When he finally lifted his mouth she was barely able to stand. He looked at her for a long time, breathing deeply, his body hard and very male. His voice was husky, almost harsh.

  “If you loved him, he died a lucky man.”

  He turned and walked into the night, vanishing into the moon shadow of a dune, leaving his jacket wrapped around her and his hunger burning in her blood.

  Two

  The Objet D’Art was a small shop, one of many along Rodeo Drive. The shop was heavily but discreetly guarded with the latest in electronic alarms. Not for Reba the ugly black wires and bars of a pawnshop. Her business was guarded by nearly invisible optic fibers and hairfine wires that were embedded in the heavy glass door and exterior eye-level windows. The windows themselves were beveled, as gleaming as the materials they enclosed.

  Today she had set out a few pieces from the Green Suite, mineral specimens and magnificent cut gems placed on clear pedestals or nestled in artful folds of silk. The lighting was high intensity, from unexpected angles, sending coruscations of color across the black matte silk that was Reba’s trademark.

  She wore the same silk herself, a simple long-sleeved blouse and matching slacks. High-heeled black sandals added inches to her height, as did the shining, dark honey mass of hair piled above her pale oval face. Two perfectly matched black opals burned darkly against her earlobes. The only other jewelry she wore was the ring Jeremy had given to her. The ring hadn’t left her hand since her birthday almost twelve months ago.

  But as she looked at the diamond’s cinnamon brilliance it was the stranger, not Jeremy, who filled her thoughts. Even after ten days, the memory of being held like a child and then kissed like the last woman on earth sent unfamiliar sensations shimmering through her.

  “Every shade of green there is,” said Tim.

  “Not quite,” she said absently to her assistant. “There’s a silver-green that—”

  Reba made an impatient sound and pulled her mind back to the present. She didn’t even know the man’s name, nor was she likely to. He had vanished as completely as yesterday’s sunlight. If only he would vanish from her memory, too. But he wouldn’t. He had helped her begin filling one kind of emptiness, only to leave another kind in its place, a yearning as intense as it was irrational. How could she miss something she’d never had?

  “When is the first appointment?” asked Reba in a clipped voice.

  Tim flipped through a notebook. “Eleven.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Todd Sinclair.”

  Reba grimaced. “What does he want?”

  “The Green Suite.”

  “He’ll get it the same day hell freezes over.”

  Tim looked up, his brown eyes shrewd and appraising. “You mean you’ve decided?”

  With an effort, Reba curbed her impatient response. It seemed like half the world was after her to decide which two parts of Jeremy’s collection she would choose as her own. Individual collectors, museums, newspapers, magazines, lawyers, and Todd Sinclair had badgered her since the moment the will became public knowledge. People who had never known her—and who never would, if she had any say in the matter—speculated privately and in print as to the exact nature of her relationship with the deceased Jeremy Bouvier Sinclair. Protégée, certainly, but something else, perhaps? Something more intimate? And which part of her, er, mentor’s collection would she keep? Would she go for money or sentiment?

  Tim held up his hands as though warding off blows. “Don’t hit me, boss. I’m just like the rest of the world, eaten up with curiosity.”

  Reba gave the compact young man an exasperated look. Tim was invaluable to her, an accomplished gemologist with an instinctive feel for fraudulent stones. His easygoing manner concealed a shrewd grasp of the gem trade and human nature. Best of all, he was utterly in love with his wife. He treated Reba the same way he did the gems that passed through his fingers—appreciation, respect, and a total absence of desire to possess. In the two years he had worked for her, a brother-sister camaraderie had grown between them that was as great an asset to her as his unquenchable humor.

  “I’m keeping the Green Suite,” she said.

  Tim shouted exultantly, then looked vaguely sheepish. “I just made a thousand bucks,” he explained.

  “Who lost?”

  Tim smiled maliciously. “A bastard called Sinclair.”

 
; Reba’s lips curved into an unwilling smile. “Don’t count it until Todd pays you.”

  “Oh, he’ll pay,” said Tim, “if I have to hammer it out of him a dollar at a time. He was so damn sure you were going to take the Ace of Diamonds. Or is that your second choice?”

  She shook her head. “It’s beautiful, but it’s just a big diamond.”

  “Just a—boss, that just-a-diamond is worth 1.85 million dollars at last appraisal, and that was two years ago! You could sell it, invest the money and spend a lot of time clipping coupons.”

  “I’d rather earn my money. Old-fashioned, I guess.”

  Tim looked at her closely. “You don’t want them saying that you cozied up to Jeremy for his money, right?”

  “Leave it alone, Tim,” she said in a flat voice. “When people ask, just tell them that the Ace was a bit garish for my taste.”

  He touched her hand quickly. “Sorry, Reba. I know what Jeremy meant to you. It’s just that he was such a sonofa—” Tim coughed. “He was hell on wheels with everyone but you.”

  “I spoke French,” she said, her voice softening as she remembered Jeremy’s delight in his native tongue.

  “So did I,” grumbled Tim.

  “With an atrocious accent,” she pointed out.

  “Details, details.” He flipped his notebook shut and put it in the pocket of his fawn wool suitcoat. “What’s your second choice?”

  “That’s what I like about you,” Reba said tartly. “You take a hint.”

  “Uh-huh. Give.”

  “More bets?”

  Tim smiled.

  “The Tiger God,” she said, giving up.

  “The what?”

  “The tiger’s-eye carving.”

  “Oh . . .” He swore softly. “How did she know?”

  “Who?”

  “Gina. She bet that you’d take that statue.”

  “How much did you lose?” asked Reba indulgently. Gina was the receptionist/bookkeeper/secretary for the Objet d’Art. She was also Tim’s wife.

  “Oh, it wasn’t exactly the kind of bet that anyone loses,” he said, smiling wolfishly.

  Reba smiled in return, hoping that Tim didn’t see the icy emptiness in her. What would it feel like to be so close to someone that there were no losers, only winners? What would it feel like to hold someone, to die “the small death” in a lover’s arms and awake reborn each morning? What would it feel like to know that someone gave the last ultimate damn about you? Next to that, the rarest gems were less than a handful of sand hissing down the slipface of a dune.

  “Reba, are you all right?”

  “Fine,” she said dully. “Just a headache.” And memories that haunted her relentlessly, sand dunes and moonlight and the heat of a man whose name she didn’t know. “I’m going to sort through the photos of Jeremy’s collection. When loverboy comes, bring him to my office.”

  “Loverboy?”

  “Sinclair,” said Reba, frowning at the slip. Only one person had called Todd Sinclair “loverboy.”

  Tim gave her a speculative look. “Did Sinclair give you a bad time in Death Valley?”

  “Not as bad as he got,” she said succinctly.

  Tim smiled. “I wish I’d been there. He’s overdue for a session in the woodshed.”

  “Nothing that violent happened to him, I’m afraid,” said Reba.

  But it could have if Todd had taken one more step. The memory of the predatory change rippling through the stranger’s body both frightened and reassured Reba. It had been a relief to know that a man would help her rather than take advantage of her relative weakness, as Todd had wanted to do. Even when she was utterly helpless with grief, the stranger had done no more than hold her while she came apart in his arms.

  “I think I’ll take a late lunch today,” said Tim casually.

  Tim’s usual lunch was eleven to twelve. Todd was coming at eleven.

  “That’s not necessary,” said Reba.

  “I had a late breakfast.” Before she could object further, he asked quickly, “Want Gina to do a press release about your choices?”

  “Poor Gina. She gets stuck with everything.”

  “She loves it. Really. In fact, if you need someone to do words for your book about Jeremy’s collection, you might think about her.” Tim watched Reba with intense brown eyes that did little to conceal his interest in her answer.

  Reba tilted her head to the side and absently tucked a stray lock of hair back into the coil on top of her head. “I like it,” she said finally, decisively. “Yes. We’ll have to hire another bookkeeper, though. Gina shouldn’t work too hard in her condition.”

  Tim looked startled. “She told you she was pregnant? She only told me last week.”

  “My eyes told me, Tim.” Her eyes and the possessive way Tim stroked Gina’s slightly thickened waist when he thought no one was looking. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone, though why you’d want to keep it a secret is beyond me. If I were Gina, I’d be taking out full-page ads in the L.A. Times.”

  “You ought to get married,” said Tim, smiling and serious in the same moment.

  “I was.”

  He looked startled.

  “It was a long time ago,” she said indifferently.

  “What happened?”

  “I grew up. He didn’t want me to.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tim uncomfortably.

  “I’m not. He was a lousy husband but a fantastic French teacher. Without him, I’d never have known Jeremy.”

  The phone rang. Tim picked it up, listened, then covered the mouthpiece. “Sinclair,” he said curtly. “He wants to see you now.”

  Reba shrugged. “All right. At least you’ll be able to have lunch at the usual time.”

  Tim put the receiver to his ear. “We can squeeze you in if you can be here in ten minutes.” He hung up before Todd could say anything.

  “That was remarkably rude,” observed Reba, trying not to smile.

  “Thank you. I hope he gets a ticket on the way over.”

  “No such luck. God watches over fools and drunks.”

  “Which category is Sinclair in?”

  “Both.”

  Reba went into her office. The first thing she saw when she opened her office door was the eighteen-inch piece of crocidolite that had been mined in Cape Province, South Africa. A German carver had taken the exquisite specimen of tiger’s-eye and transformed it into the likeness of a man.

  The Tiger God stood in an attitude of lithe relaxation, naked but for the solid gold longbow slung over his shoulder. He held a golden arrow loosely in his hand; the triangular arrowhead contrasted with the muscular curve of the thigh it rested on. His eyes were narrowed, slightly slanted, pure gold. The statue had been carved so that the mineral’s subtle bands of color ran diagonally, giving the man an arresting appearance of being poised between stillness and rippling strength. Light shimmered across the surface of the Tiger God’s masculine body, a seamless blending of every tone between rich gold and luminous brown.

  But she had not chosen the statue merely for its power and extraordinary beauty. She had chosen it because the Tiger God’s magnificent physical self-confidence reminded her of a stranger and a sable night and a kiss that had told her how much of a woman she might be in the right man’s arms.

  Reba heard the distinctive buzzer that sounded in her office every time the front door of Objet d’Art opened. Her office door had a one-way mirror in it that allowed her to see out into the shop while retaining complete privacy. She looked out and saw Todd’s broad figure coming toward her. With a muttered curse she put the Tiger God on her desk, sat down, and released the electronic lock on her office door. Automatically, the door swung open a few inches. She would see that it stayed that way the whole time loverboy was in her office.

  “I’m sick of this jerkaround, Farrall,” said Todd, throwing himself into the chair opposite her desk. “Start selling the damned collection. The rest of the old goat’s estate isn’t worth the la
wyer’s fees to straighten it out. I need the money and I need it now.”

  Reba folded her hands and leaned back in her chair, giving Todd a cool look from beneath long lashes. She studied him in silence until he shifted and swore harshly. The smell of alcohol and long nights washed over her.

  “Slow horses and bad cards?” she asked indifferently.

  Todd flushed, telling how accurate her observation was. “Shut up!” he said thickly.

  Reba watched Todd with eyes as hard as the diamond in her ring. Experience had taught her that Todd handled liquor as badly as he did cards. It had been Jeremy’s standing order that his bodyguards refuse to admit his grandson if Todd had been drinking. A year ago Todd had attacked his grandfather in a drunken rage. The thought did nothing to calm the anger that had turned Reba’s usually feminine mouth into a hard line of distaste.

  “Don’t sit there looking so proud and perfect,” Todd snarled. “You’re nothing but a cheap trick the old bastard picked up off the street.”

  The buzzer sounded again, telling Reba that someone had come in the front door. She couldn’t see who it was. Todd’s bulky shoulders cut off her view into the store. Probably Gina, back from her appointment.

  “Say something, damn you!”

  “Make up your mind,” Reba said in a flat voice. “ ‘Shut up. Say something.’ Take your pick. I can’t do both.”

  “Why, you snotty little bitch!” he shouted, lunging to his feet and reaching across her desk, trying to grab her.

  Reba slipped through his fingers with a grace that only enraged him further. He shoved the desk hard, trapping her against the wall. The Tiger God swayed. She grabbed it. Even as she realized that the statue could be a weapon, she regretted having to use its polished beauty on something as sleazy as Todd Sinclair.

  Tim burst into the room, a blackjack in his right hand. “If you touch her I’ll break your neck!”