Rainbow Fire

by Emilie Richards

  "Oh, he's kind of quiet. Not shy, exactly, just quiet. He scowls a lot, like he's always got something on his mind. He doesn't make friends—except Dillon, of course—and he doesn't make enemies. Sometimes when he's had too much to drink he gets all loosened up, and he entertains us with Irish ditties. He's an honest-to-God barroom tenor."

  Irish ditties. Kelsey swallowed more than her coffee. "And Dillon's his only friend?"

  "Don't get me wrong, everybody likes Jake, it's just that he doesn't encourage friendships. You know?"

  He hadn't encouraged family, either. As always, Kelsey was filled with a mixture of emotions. Love for the father she didn't know and sadness that he was who he was. "Tell me about Dillon."

  "Oh, now there's a different story. Dillon encourages everybody to be his friend. He's every man's mate and every woman's fantasy."

  "Not every woman's."

  "Well, I did notice you two weren't exactly hitting it off."

  Melanie didn't have to be too astute to figure that out. Kelsey continued probing. "You said he and my father were friends."

  "Better than friends. Mates. I'll never believe Dillon had anything to do with Jake's fall."

  Kelsey filed away the fact that Sergeant Newberry's suspicions were now common knowledge. "Why not?"

  "Jake was like a father to Dillon, if you can imagine Jake being a father to anyone...." Melanie's voice trailed off. "I'm sorry," she said, obviously embarrassed. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

  Kelsey waved aside her apology. "So they were close, but doesn't greed have strange effects on people? What if my father found opal in his share of the mine and Dillon wanted it?"

  Melanie shrugged. "I guess stranger things have happened. I know Dillon and Jake have been fighting lately."

  Kelsey suppressed a chill, but before she could follow up on Melanie's words, Melanie went on.

  "But I like Dillon. No one with eyes that green could be a murderer. Not even for opal." Melanie pushed herself off the bed. "I'd better scat. I'm supposed to help Gary at the Showcase today, and I've still got some chores to do around here. The maid went walkabout."

  " 'Walkabout'?" Kelsey asked, only half following the conversation.

  "Nell's an Aborigine. She works hard when she's here, but every once in a while she just takes off with her family. They go up into the Territory to be with their tribe. Drives Gary crazy, but me, well, I guess I understand. Someday Gary may wake up and find a note on my pillow, 'Gone walkabout.'"

  Kelsey heard a note of seriousness behind Melanie's flip humor. "I'm sure he'd be sorry."

  "For a second or to." Melanie grinned and the moment vanished. "I'll take the plate and cup back now and save myself a trip."

  "Thanks for the breakfast." Kelsey smiled at the woman who had so easily become a friend. "Let's do lunch sometime."

  Melanie laughed. "The Ritz or the Carlton, my dear?"

  "One for soup and one for salad."

  Melanie opened the door. "I'd settle for a hot dog stand. American hot dogs are one thing good old Mom can't ship." With another goodbye, she was gone.

  Kelsey was still smiling when she stripped off her gi and stepped into the shower. Halfway through soaping her body clean, Melanie's words came back to her. Jake and Dillon had been fighting. The smile was immediately stored away with her initial trust in the man she was going to spend the day with.

  Dillon knocked once, then twice. On the second knock Kelsey’s door swung open. He frowned and stepped over the threshold. The light was off, and the shade on the small window was drawn shut. Kelsey's suitcase was nowhere to be seen.

  Dillon snapped on the light and walked toward the center of the room. She was gone; there was no doubt about it. Even the bed was neatly made, as if the room had already been cleaned for another guest.

  He was about to find someone to ask what was going on when the door to the bathroom creaked open. As Dillon watched a pair of well-filled blue jeans led the way, followed by a torso, naked except for the towel strung over a pair of delicate female shoulders. Topping the ensemble was a face with wide brown eyes and a head of glorious gold-red hair escaping another towel.

  "How did you get in?" In little more than a second, Kelsey had wrapped the towel around her breasts like a Tahitian pa-reau. She tucked it tightly under her arms.

  "I knocked, and the door opened. It wasn't locked." Dillon tried to remind himself that the offense had been serious, but all he could think about was the momentary glimpse of her lovely young breasts. He forced himself to speak without clearing his throat. "You were supposed to keep it locked."

  "You can be sure I'll double-check next time." Kelsey knew her skin was tinged the hue of ripe apricots. "You don't mind if I get dressed, do you?" she asked.

  The irony in her voice didn't escape Dillon. He called on his sense of humor to get him through the next charged moment. "I'd probably mind more if you didn't. We have a hard day ahead of us. I don't need a distraction."

  "Far be it for me to distract you." She walked to the bed, careful not to get too close to him. She bent to pull her suitcase from under it, holding the towel firmly in place as she did. "I'll be out in a moment."

  "Take your time." Dillon tried to divert his thoughts by surveying the room again once she was safely out of sight. There was absolutely no sign that anyone had spent the night here. No wrinkle on the bedspread, no visible item of clothing or toiletries. Even the ashtray was set exactly in the middle of the nightstand, as if the distance had been measured on all sides. He stooped to examine the suitcase. Lifting the top he let his gaze roam over Kelsey's possessions. Every item of clothing was folded neatly and separated by immaculate layers of tissue paper. Smaller items were out of sight in labeled fabric pouches. He replaced the top and stood, wondering what such extreme neatness said about Kelsey's personality. He wondered if she ever felt at home enough anywhere to make a mess. What had happened to her? Where had she lived after Jake's desertion?

  The door creaked again, and Kelsey came back into the room. "I'm almost ready."

  She had plaited her hair into a long braid, but the shorter top and sides were a riot of curls around her face. As he watched she sat on the bed to pull on tennis shoes.

  Although she was now dressed, Dillon couldn't get the image of Kelsey's half-naked body and startled brown eyes out of his mind. He had never seen skin so lovely, a shape so perfectly suited for things he shouldn’t be thinking about. He'd had his share of lovers, but he was an action awaiting a conclusion, and the strength of the feeling disturbed him.

  Kelsey felt Dillon's eyes on her. She wasn't oblivious to the tension in the room. She felt it, too. In fact she had felt it ever since some childish, willful part of her had been pleased by Dillon's expression when he'd seen her half-undressed. "You're staring."

  Dillon realized she was right. "You'll need sturdier shoes."

  "This is all I have with me."

  His eyes flickered up to the peach blouse she had worn the night before. He forced himself to ignore what it covered. "And that shirt won't last a day."

  "Then I'll have to buy another, won't I?" Kelsey knew better than to argue with Dillon's prediction. The blouse was lightweight cotton, perfect for a North Carolina summer of lemonade drinking and fly swatting. The shoes were thin and cheap, pulled from a discount store sale bin. Nothing she owned had been made for the punishment of opal mining.

  "You'll find our stores expensive. Merchandise is brought in from the south. It's hauled a fair distance."

  She had tried to put her financial worries out of her mind, but Dillon's words brought them back. "I guess I don't have much choice."

  "Not if you're really going to spend some time in the Rainbow Fire. Of course, if this is just a whim, you could save yourself a good bit of cash."

  She stood. "I don't have whims."

  He tried not to smile. "I believe you."

  "I'm ready."

  "I'm not," he said, giving up the battle and liberating a grin. "But
I guess my choices are between zero and nothing."

  "That about sums it up," she said, trying to ignore the grin and the man.

  Outside the sun was already baking the earth. If there had been a dewfall, it was only a memory. Every breath Kelsey took seemed to crackle in her lungs. She would have given some of her tightly guarded cash for ten percent humidity.

  Silently she followed Dillon to his truck. Green and silver, it was a dusty, battered vehicle with a long metal grid across the front. Dillon turned the key and it roared to life like Frankenstein's monster. He pulled out to the road with a screech and squeal of tires, caused more by loose gravel in the lot than adolescent theatrics.

  "I forgot to tell you to bring something to eat. Not a single tea room or deli out in the field."

  Kelsey didn't tell him that she was going to be skipping lunch until she was safely back in Raleigh. She just nodded. "I'll be fine."

  "You won't be fine. You'll be hungry. The work's hard, and there's nothing much to think about except the next meal. I'll share with you today. Tomorrow you bring your own."

  "I'll be fine."

  He shot her another grin. "You're a hard case."

  The town was already behind them. Kelsey looked out over the monotonous landscape and tried to forget the man beside her. After only twenty-four hours in the outback she was starved for the sight of a tree. Grass would have been nice, and the blue shimmer of a lake even better.

  "Doesn't the harshness of this country get to you?" she asked, glancing at Dillon. "It's so desolate."

  "There's a certain beauty if you let yourself see it."

  "Children born here wouldn't know about woods and meadows."

  "Children born in cities don't always know about woods and meadows, either. And children born in woods and meadows don't know about deserts or skyscrapers."

  "Why were you and my father fighting?"

  Dillon swerved off the blacktop onto a dirt road. The truck rattled and jarred them with each bump. "You'll have to get used to these roads."

  Kelsey hung tightly to the seat's edge, trying not to crack her head on the windshield. "You could slow down."

  "The bumps get worse that way. This way we fly over the top."

  If there was a spark of sense in his answer, Kelsey couldn't see it.

  "Do you always bash people with nasty questions in the middle of a pleasant conversation?" Dillon continued once they had reached a slightly smoother stretch of road.

  "If I need to."

  "Where did you hear that Jake and I had been fighting?"

  "Not your concern."

  "I could say the same."

  She laughed humorlessly. "Your fights with my father are my concern. They might be Sergeant Newberry's, too."

  "There weren't any fights."

  Kelsey hung on tighter as Dillon swerved to miss a huge hole in the middle of the road. If rain ever fell and filled the hole with water, Kelsey knew she would have the lake she yearned for.

  When the ride was only normally jolting again, she continued. "I've heard there were fights. Did my father want to keep all the money from the sale of his opals?"

  "Keeping all the money never entered his mind."

  "That's hard to believe."

  "Not if you know Jake. Money's not important to your father. The fun stopped the minute the opals were out of the dirt." Dillon volleyed friendly honks with an approaching truck. Kelsey lifted a hand to wave back at the smiling driver and ended up in a heap against Dillon's thigh.

  “Comfortable?" he asked.

  "As comfortable as being staked out on an ant hill." Kelsey slid back to the other side of the truck. "About the fights. . ."

  He risked a quick glance. She was staring straight ahead and nothing could have pried her fingers off the dashboard. "You know, Kelsey, I don't want you here. But if you're going to stay, we can make the best or the worst of it. Yammering at each other is the worst of it."

  "I want to know why you were fighting with my father."

  Dillon knew that a piece of the truth was the only thing that would silence her questions. "We weren't fighting, but I've been trying to get him to cut down on boozing. After he found the stones Jake was a different man—for a while. Then when he kept looking and found nothing else, he started hitting the bottle so hard I was having to drag him out of bed every morning and the pub every night."

  Dillon's story made a certain kind of sense, considering what Kelsey knew about Jake. "And that was all?"

  Dillon regretted having to lie, but he didn't want Kelsey to know everything about her father. She should have some illusions. He didn't want to be the one to tell her that Jake might have brought his misfortune on himself. "That was all."

  Kelsey stared straight ahead at the unchanging scenery. She fought an inclination to believe him. Although she was trying hard to be wary of Dillon and to take Sergeant Newberry's accusations seriously, she wasn't succeeding. Dillon was a charmer, one minute the rugged outback miner, the next an engaging rogue with a heart-stopping grin. But even more important, honesty and warmth flowed from him. Even with all her reasons to be suspicious, it was becoming increasingly difficult to confront him.

  Dillon read her silence correctly. "You know, Kelsey, when we're fifty feet under the earth, you're going to have to trust me. There's no room for karate down there. I outweigh you by a good five stone, and I can sit on you if I'm forced to. Once we're down that shaft, we're mates. No room for suspicions, no room for fears."

  "But enough room for murder." Kelsey let herself scrutinize his profile. There was nothing there to frighten any woman—at least, nothing to make her fear for her life. There was only strength and hard masculinity. Sensitivity and humor. And honor. She hadn't found honor in Sergeant Newberry's face. And she was trained—well-trained—to look for it. She could trust her training and her intuition, or she could trust a policeman with an ax to grind.

  Or, more typically, she could avoid trusting anyone. At least for now.

  "If you're really afraid I'll murder you," Dillon said, "I'd advise you to stay above ground and boil the billy when I go below."

  "That doesn't sound very savory."

  Dillon detected her lighter tone. He guessed a decision had been made. "We won't stay down long today. Just long enough to show you the ropes."

  "And who's going to boil poor Billy?"

  Dillon glanced at Kelsey. There was almost a smile on her face. He realized how much he wanted to see one. "I'll boil the billy and show you how. We'll make an Aussie of you."

  "Like you made one of Jake?"

  "Jake made one of himself."

  "I suppose that makes me half-Aussie, doesn't it?"

  "Which half?"

  She couldn't help smiling. "Does it matter?"

  He heard the smile in her voice, but it was gone by the time he turned his head again. "It might if I ever take a notion to trespass on foreign territory."

  "Take no notions, Dillon. One hundred percent of me is foreign territory and strictly off-limits."

  "There's a man, then?"

  "No man."

  He wondered why. Kelsey was one of the most striking women he had ever seen. Her strong features, butterscotch hair and peaches-and-cream complexion radiated vitality, while her soft brown eyes exposed a certain unconscious vulnerability that stirred him deeply. And he knew other men had been stirred, too. They must have been.

  "There was someone, you fought, and now you're put off by men," he guessed out loud.

  "Wrong, wrong and right. Are we almost there?"

  "Another mile." Dillon pulled over to let the vehicle coming toward him have a wider berth.

  "What on earth is that?" Kelsey stared at the huge machine flagged with fluorescent banners and a Wide Load sign. It resembled a semi with a giant's trash can hanging upside down from a diagonal scaffold.

  "A blower. A sort of vacuum cleaner for miners. The fan draws mullock out of the shaft, and it collects in that bin at the top until it's emptied."
>
  "Do you have one?"

  "Jake and I are part of a cooperative. We share equipment. A bit slower that way, but less dear." Dillon stretched his arm across the back of Kelsey's seat, but he was careful not to touch her. "So there's no man, hasn't been a man, but you're off men anyway?"

  Kelsey eased herself forward, turning as she did. "Why does it matter?"

  "I suppose it doesn't. Yet."

  "Sometimes three letter words can be as obscene as four."

  His smile was slow and easy. "You've been asking all the questions, Kelsey. I thought it was my turn."

  "I've been asking about my father, not about you."

  "What would you like to know?"

  "Not a thing."

  "I'd like to know about you."

  "There's nothing to tell."

  Without conscious permission his fingers slipped forward to weave into the strands of her braid and give it a slight tug. "Where did the red hair come from?"

  "My father." She shook her head, and his hand slide back to the seat. "Has Jake's hair been white since you've known him?"

  "Always. And there's no red in his beard."

  "The blower is gone," she observed.

  Dillon forced both hands to the steering wheel and pulled back onto the road. "Tell me about your mother."

  "There's not much to tell."

  "I'll wager there's something."

  Kelsey remembered little about Mary Donovan, but, surprisingly, she found herself sharing it with Dillon. "She laughed a lot, and she was always sure Jake was coming back. When I was five she was killed trying to stop a neighbor's child from chasing a cat into the street. I had relatives who were sure she'd done it just to spite them.''

  He hated to think what that said about the rest of Kelsey's childhood. "And you never saw Jake again?"

  “After my mother died he stopped writing. Before that I remember we'd get letters from places I'd never heard of, but my mother would pull out my little globe and show me where he was. She took in children to make enough money to feed us, and she waited for Jake. She never gave up hope." Kelsey didn't add that it was only years later that she had lost hope, too. Jake's return was a dream that had died hard.