"You could be helping them with that," he said testily. "You don't have to cook for me. I can cook for myself. I've been doing it for years. I'd planned . . . something else for dinner." What, he hadn't the faintest idea, but now, suddenly, he wanted her out of his kitchen. He wanted her out from under his skin, before she took up permanent residence in either place.
With his full cooperation.
She flashed those dimples at him and he nearly fell down. Why did she have to be so beautiful, so dangerous to his peace of mind?
"Oh, this isn't for you," she said. "It's for the girls and me. We weren't expecting you. I'll be out of your way in a few minutes. It's nearly done now. I'm just waiting for the gravy to thicken."
Hunger assailed him again but he ignored it. He couldn't, however, ignore the hurt. Not for him?! She wasn't even going to offer him any now that he was here? Hadn't she ever heard that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach?
He went into his room down the opposite wing from the girls' and her rooms, and slammed the door. Even through it, he could smell her cooking. Even in his shower he could smell it. Damn, damn, damn! It wasn't until his shower ran cold that he remembered she wouldn't be interested in the way to his heart. She didn't even like him.
Lord, how that rankled.
3
When Cal came out of his bedroom, B.J. and the two kids were sitting at the table happily chatting and laughing, plates nearly empty, but a good half of the stew remained in the serving bowl on the table. He stood talking awkwardly to the girls for a few minutes, waiting for B.J. to invite him to share their meal. When she didn't, he slammed a frying pan onto the stove, chopped some onion into it, added a few strips of bacon, let that all cook for a while, then dumped a can of baked beans in on top.
To hell with her and her cooking. His was just fine. Maybe it didn't smell as great, but it smelled okay. Frying onion and bacon always did, but it didn't mask the spicy smell of that thick, rich stew the others were eating.
He had just sat down opposite B.J. with his plate of bacon and beans, when she finished her meal, asked the girls if they wanted more, was refused, and excused herself. She stood up and took the bowl of stew from the table. "There,'' she said, snapping plastic wrap over the top of it and setting it in the refrigerator. "That will do for lunch tomorrow, girls. Ready for your turnovers now?" Turnovers?
He didn't look. He wouldn't look. He refused to look at the pan she took from the oven, but how was he supposed to avoid it when she set it down not six Inches from his plate? He felt weak. Four turnovers. Four beautiful, golden, flaky-crusted turnovers smelling of apples and nutmeg and cinnamon. Quickly, he began to shovel in his beans.
"Here, Laura." B.J. said, setting one of the turnovers on a small plate. She covered it with a napkin and handed It to her niece. "Why don't you take that over to Fred while it's still warm? I'm sure he'll appreciate it, and he was so good about repairing that greenhouse."
Feeling betrayed. Cal watched as the extra apple turnover went swiftly out the door. Hell! Who paid Fred's wages? Who had paid for the glass? Who deserved that turnover more? Who owned the damned apples? Not Fred!
They didn't lick their plates, but they did rinse them off and set them in the dishwasher, and then B.J. said graciously, "Are you finished, Cal? I'll put your plate in if you are."
He shoved it toward her and sat glowering at the table. He knew he was sulking, just as he had accused the girls of sulking, knew he must look as ridiculous to the others as the kids did to him when they pouted. He glanced up under his dark brows. Others? Make that other. No kids. Just one woman. Just B.J. Just B.J. and her blue eyes and her pink sweater and her skintight black pants and her golden, shimmery hair—and him.
He got to his feet, not at all amused to find that his knees were shaking. She was deftly filling the coffee maker as if she had spent ten years in his kitchen, using his appliances, stepping around him come in with such an attitude toward her, it had got her Irish up and . . .
She swallowed hard and looked down at the counter, not wanting to go on meeting the distress in his eyes, and not wanting him to see what was in hers. "Please, forgive me for being so rude. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
"You . . . didn't," he lied, but he noticed that she didn't deny disliking him and that hurt his pride all over again. "I Just wondered . . . why?"
She shrugged helplessly and turned from him.
"Dammit." he said roughly, putting his hands on that soft, pink sweater, feeling the woman right through it as he urged her to face him. At once, she lifted troubled eyes to his. All the anger left him.
"Ah, B.J. ..." He wanted to tell her it was all right, that she didn't have to feel bad about not liking him, that he could live with it—but he couldn't. He couldn't tell her that, and he couldn't live with it.
"You told Kara it was none of her business." he said. "That may have been true. But when somebody takes a dislike to me, I think it really is my business."
"Yes," she agreed, "I suppose it is, but it's not something I can explain. I don't see why it matters; I know you don't like me either. And you never wanted me here."
She smiled again, but not very happily, and stepped neatly from his hands. "I promise I won't stay long." Her chin tilted up an inch or two and she added, "Nor did I faint to get your attention."
For some reason her honesty irked him. Why couldn't she pretend he'd never been sarcastic and suggested, however obliquely, that she might have purposefully fainted? Or at least pretend that she hadn't understood him? It had only been his anger and—all right—his fear talking, but now that she'd reminded him, he knew it had made him sound arrogant and conceited and . . . unlikable. But, dammit. If she could be truthful, then so could he.
"You didn't have to faint to get my attention. You already had it. And you're right. I didn't want you here. I mean. I don't. But if it's better for the kids, now that you're here, maybe you should stay."
Oh. Lord, had he really said that? Yes, he had, and the worst part was that he meant it. Far from wanting her to go so that he could get his cavorting libido back to normal, he wanted her there, stirring him up, because he liked the kind of stirring she did.
She looked startled, almost scared, and whirled away. "No," she said, scrubbing vigorously at the stove top. She shook her head, and little lights danced from her hair like golden sparkles. "The girls will adapt, and like I said earlier, I'm house-sitting for a friend who hates to leave his place unattended. Burglaries, you know. Besides, he has a cockatoo."
"Burglaries?" Cal said sharply. He couldn't have cared less about some other guy's cockatoo. "And just what the hell would you do if somebody did break in?" The picture that formed in his mind was unpleasant, to say the least.
"Call the police, of course," she replied calmly as she rinsed the cloth. She dried her hands, then reached up into a cupboard to get down two coffee mugs. Her sweater stretched taut over her breasts, and he felt sweat break out on the back of his neck. His chest was so tight he could barely speak.
"Call the police, sure, and in the meantime the guy comes busting through the door and murders you."
"Oh, come on. The house is in Vancouver, not Los Angeles."
"Nobody gets murdered in Vancouver?"
"I'm not saying that. But the chances of my being murdered by a burglar in Vancouver are considerably less, I think."
"The chances of your being murdered here at Kinikinik Lake are even less than that," he retorted, snatching one of the mugs from her and filling it with coffee. Stubborn woman! He was offering her safety, for Pete's sake. Security. And she continued to say no.
Fuming, he stalked out, only to return a few seconds later. He set his cup onto the table and stood right before her.
"You know what, B.J. Gray?" he asked belligerently.
"I might, after all, get murdered at Kinikinik Lake?" she asked, and suddenly he got the impression she was laughing at him.
He let out a long breath, watching it ruffle
her bangs. If she could laugh at him, then so could he. He had to laugh. He had been behaving like an arrogant jerk.
"No," he said, amazed at the softness of his tone. "I just want to tell you that you have the prettiest eyes I have ever seen in my entire life. And your hair . . . it shimmers."
"Oh." It was all she could manage, due to the breathless excitement engendered by the look in his dark, laughing eyes. Elated, she realized one important thing: he hadn't recognized her after all. The relief made her dizzy, and she would have swayed but for the support of the chair back she gripped with one hand.
"Yes," he said, as if she had questioned him. Then he lifted a hand and stroked her cheek. "And the most beautiful skin." His fingers trailed down over her jaw as heat curled and twisted inside her. When he touched her throat, she tried to move, and could not. "And I don't regret for one minute having kissed you."
"Cal—" she began, on the verge of telling him who she was, telling him things that would remind him of that time before, but he cut her off by placing two fingers over her mouth.
"And I plan to do it again very, very soon."
Involuntarily, she licked her lips, her tongue making brief contact with his fingers. She saw desire flare in his eyes, but he pivoted and headed out the door.
B.J. watched him stalk off toward his lair and stifled a sigh. The sooner she got out of there, the better, she decided, determined not to let the girls' pleadings change her mind. She'd stay until Monday morning, and then she'd be gone. Calvin Mixall was too potent a danger for her even to consider spending any more time here than was necessary.
She spent the rest of the evening ignoring the fact that he was just down the hall in his studio, working as, the girls said, he did every evening. Although he'd come out briefly to help tuck the girls in—when she went to bed he was still working. She lay there in the darkness wondering at the deep restlessness within her soul. It was like . . . hunger, and hunger was something she hadn't experienced for a long time, but it was a different kind of hunger.
She knew what it was. She wasn't a fool, and didn't try to kid herself. She was responding to Calvin Mixall as a woman responds to a man, but she couldn't give in to it, couldn't let it govern her actions. This time she would be in control.
She bit her lip, knowing her control might not hold if he touched her again. He appealed to her too strongly. He had appealed to her just as strongly once before, she reminded herself. She rolled onto her stomach as she heard his footsteps—or imagined them—in the other wing of the lodge.
She had seen pictures of him before she met him for the first time, and had thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. But when he arrived with his parents to spend the weekend for Curt and Melody's wedding, she had discovered that Cal in the flesh far outshone his photographs. She'd been captivated by his looks. His personality, though, had been something else again.
He had been remote, gloomy, and his funereal attitude had nearly driven her sister Phyllis wild. As the mother of the bride, Phyllis didn't have time to entertain the groom's sullen younger brother. "For heaven's sake," she had said to B.J. after three hours of watching Cal sit in morose silence, "do something with him. Show him around the city. Give him the grand tour."
Her? she had thought. Phyllis wanted her to do that? She had been terrified, certain he'd refuse, but he'd shrugged and gone along with her. From that moment on, she had seen nothing but his beautiful face, his long, lean, graceful body, and his smile. Oh, that smile! It had come rarely at first, but when it did, it had dazzled her. Then, as they became friends—or so she had thought—it had flashed into his eyes often, but thrilling her no less each time.
She had never thought herself capable of entertaining a man . . . until that weekend. But with him to bring her out of herself, to get her talking, she had felt if not scintillating, pretty, then, at least, almost. . . acceptable.
And then, a couple of days later, the wedding, the reception . . . and reality.
With a groan, B.J. turned onto her side, drawing her knees up close to her chesty She knew she would not tell him the truth about herself unless he asked her. Because if she did, and his reaction turned out to be exactly what she had thought it had been today, she wouldn't be able to bear it.
She sat up, frowning. So why had he been angry today? She shook her head, unable to come up with a satisfactory answer. Unless it was simply because GOLDEN SWAN • 43
he knew he was attracted to her, just as an ordinary woman, and didn't want to be. Maybe, strange as it might seem, he was just as afraid of the powerful magnetism between them as she was. And if that were the case . . .
Please, she prayed, don't ever let him remember me as I used to be!
Cal was gone when B.J. and the girls got up on Friday morning, and he spent the entire day away. When he returned late in the evening, though, after the girls had gone to bed, he didn't go to his studio. He joined her in the lounge where she was watching an old John Wayne movie.
"Mind if I watch with you?" he asked, hovering a few feet away.
"Of course not." What could she say? This was his house. Besides, some adult company would be nice, she told herself, not admitting that she had been waiting all day to see him—even if she was half-afraid.
"Would you like a glass of wine?" he asked. "Or something else? We have a well-stocked bar here, even though my sister-in-law calls the place Spartan."
"Wine would be nice," she said, and he smiled, causing something inside her to turn over. She watched as he walked to the far side of the room and lifted two glasses down from a cupboard behind a short bar. Moving to the end of the bar, he crouched and opened a small refrigerator, selecting a tall, green bottle. As he stood, his muscular thighs tautened the faded material of his jeans. He moved with a smooth, feline grace. Once, she had likened him to a sleek black panther, and nothing had changed, even though he was twelve years older. There was a leashed power about him that she found devastatingly seductive.
She should have said no and left as soon as he offered her a drink. She'd be safer locked in her room, yet she'd forgotten about the dangerous, insidious feelings his smile could evoke. Or if she hadn't exactly forgotten, she'd ignored the danger with an uncustomary boldness. It wasn't safe to stay there with him, but it was too late, she told herself, because he was back, passing her a tall stemmed glass filled with pale golden liquid. If she ran now, he'd know what a coward she was.
Sitting at the opposite end of the sofa, he put his feet up on an ottoman and leaned back, one arm stretched along the couch back. Raising his glass, he said, "Cheers. Did you and the girls find enough to keep you busy today?"
"Yes, thanks."
"What did you do?"
"Oh, this and that."
"You're not being very communicative."
"I'm sorry. The girls showed me around. We hiked a bit, but they said we couldn't go too far afield because the grizzlies are fattening up for winter. This is a beautiful place."
Leaning back, he drank some wine, and then said softly, "B.J., I think we got off to a bad start yesterday. I was rude to you, and I apologize. I certainly haven't acted very likable. But I'd like a chance to change your mind about me. Could we try to be friends?"
Her heart hammered painfully. "I ... don't see any reason why not," she said, so untruthfully, she wondered why her nose didn't grow. "I apologize, too, because I've been less than . . . well, friendly." Her laugh was soft and apologetic. "A friendly woman wouldn't have given away that extra turnover when there was someone looking at it the way you were."
He smiled, making her heart race. "I forgive you. You were—provoked. Now, tell me about B.J. Gray," he said. "To begin with, what does the J stand for? I decided it had to be something exotic."
Such a simple question, she thought, and one she should answer without hesitation. But her tongue seemed frozen to the roof of her mouth. If he knew, would he remember being introduced to Janie?
"Don't disappoint me, okay?"
She drew in a deep breath and tried to treat his question as she knew Melody would have. "I wouldn't dream of it! Who am I to spoil a man's fantasies? You go right on thinking I have an exotic middle name. When you come up with one I like, maybe I'll adopt it." She sipped her wine, and then asked, "What brought you to such an unlikely location? I mean, it's a bit off the beaten track for—" She broke off, looking down into her wine.
"For what?" He looked genuinely Interested.
"For an artist of your caliber, who clearly needs an active social life among the right people in order to promote his work."
"Well." He blinked. "You do think you have me pegged, don't you?"
B.J. knew she was flushing. "No, of course not. I don't know you, so how could I have you pegged? But Melody sometimes mentions you." Smiling faintly, she added, "So do the papers."
He looked grim for a moment. "Don't believe everything you read, B.J."
"I . . . no. I try not to. How did you come here then? What attracted you to a place like this?"
He smiled slowly. "Swans." His face changed, taking on an eager glow. "Trumpeter swans. I heard that they wintered here and made arrangements to spend a few weeks so I could study and paint them. Then, when the California church group who owned Kinikinik put the place on the market, I snapped it up."
"Because of the swans?" She didn't try to hide her surprise and curiosity.
His smile deepened and his eyes shone. "That's right."
She stayed quiet, letting him think whatever thoughts made him so happy. After a few moments he seemed to recall her presence and flicked his gaze over her. "I use the place as a tax shelter, too, of course. The operating expenses cut my taxable income considerably. It's more than just self-indulgence."
She wondered at his defensiveness and smiled. "That's okay. You don't have to justify yourself to me." Heavens no, she thought. What she had done, with part of her inheritance had been pure self-indulgence, but so necessary and so worthwhile in the end that she could never regret having spent the thousands she had. Nor did she regret the time and the effort, the months of dieting to reach her present weight of one hundred and ten.
Judy Gill Page 4
