by Billie Green
"The Shadow?" she asked. "Charlie, I really hate spiders and bats. Couldn't we leave the basement for another time?"
He shook his head emphatically. "Do you honestly think a spider or bat would be stupid enough to attack you with Charlie Sanderson along?"
"What if it's from out of town and doesn't recognize you?"
"Impossible. My name is legendary."
"And all this time I thought it was Charlie." She took a last sip of coffee. "Okay. If we're going to do it, let's get it over with now."
"That's what I like—enthusiasm," he said as they left the kitchen.
The door to the basement wasn't locked, but it was wedged so tightly closed, Sara was sure no one had opened it in the last century. Even when the light switch at the top of the stairs proved ineffective, Charlie wouldn't let her back out. He produced a flashlight to guide them down the narrow wooden stairs.
"This was really a dumb idea, Charlie," she said, grasping his arm tightly.
"Oh, I don't know," he murmured, slipping his arm around her waist. "I think we should have done it much sooner. I kind of like your clinging to me."
"I'm not the clinging type."
"I know." His tone was regretful. "There are a couple of windows. Let me clear some of the dirt off one and maybe we can see."
He stepped away from her, and she could hear him rummaging through a box.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Looking for some cloth. I may fight bats and spiders with my bare hands, but a dirty window is a horse of a different color."
When he had cleared several panes of a high window, sunlight spotlighted the area directly below the window. Since the window faced west the light was weak, but it was better than nothing.
Boxes and trunks were stacked everywhere, along with pieces of furniture that made the Spanish atrocities upstairs almost look good. Charlie was in his element here, Sara quickly saw. Rooting through the boxes, he found a fantasy world of times past.
"What do you think of this?" he asked, holding a faded green tutu against his body. "I wonder whom this stuff belonged to."
"This is just a wild guess, you understand," she said dryly, "but I would say it wasn't a man."
He struck a pose. "I don't know. This would show off my legs real well."
She snorted. "I don't think Baryshnikov has a lot to worry about from you."
"So who cares about a man who stuffs gym socks in his tights?" His voice echoed hollowly as he leaned down inside a huge box. "This junk is great. People don't save things the way they used to. Everything's disposable. You don't even see handkerchiefs anymore. Everything ..."
The last part of his sentence was muffled by whatever he was digging around in. Dust flew around him, making her sneeze.
"Charlie," she protested loudly, "remember King Tut's tomb? The dust in there was lethal. This stuff has to be nearly as old."
"Oh, my gosh, look at this," he said, his voice filled with delight.
"It's not anything dead, is it?"
He chuckled. "Morbid little darling, aren't you? Look."
He had something smooth on his head. When he stepped into the sunlight she saw it was an ancient brown leather aviator cap.
"It's you," she said with overdone enthusiasm.
"I think so too," he said, smoothing it down over his ears. "It'll be perfect with my leather jacket."
She blinked in astonishment. "You're serious."
"Always. This will lend me a certain cachet."
"Oh, well, I always said, 'All Charlie needs is a little cachet.' "
"Smart-ass. Here's one for you."
She backed away. "I refuse to wear an aviator cap that has been the home for generations of mice."
"No, look." He walked over to her and settled a musty-smelling picture hat on her head. "Now we match."
"That's a frightening thought," she muttered.
He grabbed her hand. "Come on. Let's go up in the light and see how we look."
Before they gained the top of the stairs he paused. "The door is closed." He turned to look at her. "Sara, the door is closed."
"Yes, Charlie, the door is closed," she said slowly. "Is this some kind of quiz? The door is closed; the stairway is narrow; see the man with a moldy cap on his head."
"I should have known. You always turn out the lights and you always close the doors."
"I brush my teeth after every meal, too. Will you please tell me what you're muttering about?"
"You don't want to know."
"All right, Charlie, you're beginning to scare me."
"When you closed the door, didn't you notice that there was no knob on this side?"
"No, I just pushed . . . What do you mean, no knob?"
"I mean no handle, no opener. As in—we're stuck."
She was silent for a few seconds. Then she leaned against the wall. "A basement," she said. "I'm going to die in a basement. People will come to look for us and no one will think to look down here because who would believe we were stupid enough to come down here in the first place. They'll think we disappeared into thin air."
"You think so? I should have carved CROATOAN into one of the trees." He chuckled. "Lord, I would have given a nickel to see the face of the first person who found it."
"Years from now, when they bulldoze the place down to make room for a freeway, they'll find two skeletons wearing funny-looking hats. And it will be your fault." She hit him on the shoulder and said through clenched teeth, "Charlie, I will not spend the rest of my life in a basement. Do something."
"Don't panic," he said. She could hear the laughter in his voice as they made their way back down the stairs. "I'll get us out of this. Never let it be said that Charlie Sanderson failed to rescue a maiden in distress. I'm known for it far and wide. Why do you think they call me Dudley Do-Right?"
She snorted skeptically. "Dudley Do-Anything-That-Stands-Still is more like it."
He laughed. "You have some strange ideas regarding my sexual behavior."
"I don't want to talk about sex. I want out of here."
She hadn't realized she was still wearing the hat, until he suddenly removed it from her head. His arms came around her from behind. "I don't want to talk about it either," he said softly as his lips found the sensitive flesh of her neck.
"Charlie," she said with a gasp. "You promised you would forget what happened last night."
"Last night is forgotten, but this is a whole new day." He turned her in his arms, and she couldn't stop her body from arching into his.
"This is unfair," she said, groaning as her eyes helplessly drifted shut.
"Sue me," he said, his voice strangely hoarse as he raked his lips across hers in a rough caress.
She pulled out of his embrace. "I can't think when you do that," she whispered huskily.
"Don't think." He caught her in his arms again, smoothing her body against his with urgent hands. "For once in your life, don't think."
The sensual quality of his voice, the sureness of his exploring hands cast away what was left of her resistance, and she accepted his mouth eagerly, yearningly. She followed orders and stopped thinking. She could only feel. Life was condensed to a kiss.
His lips, his tongue, his neck beneath her hands, all became a part of her. She breathed him into her system and savored the masculine scent.
Lord, it felt so good, she thought, dazedly when he released her. Opening her eyes, she gazed up at him. The dim light from the window struck him full in the face, and his expression puzzled her. He looked as though he were in pain.
"Charlie?" she said tentatively.
A rough shudder shook him, and as she watched, the pain disappeared and he was Charlie again. He tweaked her nose, then stepped back from her and stared up at the window. "Our escape route, my lady Love."
It took him a while to break through the paint of decades to open the window, and for that Sara was grateful. It gave her time to pull herself together. Too many things had happened in too short a tim
e. Please let it be over, she begged silently. Let things go back to the way they were.
But minutes afterward, as she crawled through the basement window, she caught a look on Charlie's face that told her nothing would ever be the same again.
Later that afternoon while she sat in the lounge waiting for him to turn off the utilities so they could leave, she thought back over everything that had taken place during the weekend. So much had happened. It seemed incredible that they had only been there for two days.
Closing her eyes briefly, she let herself remember the most important thing that had occurred. Charlie knew now how she felt about him, how she had always felt about him. And as much as she would prefer to forget the whole thing and pretend it had never happened, she knew she would have to talk to him about it. They needed to arrive at some kind of understanding before this thing between them went too far. If they didn't stop it now, while they still could, their partnership would suffer. Sara couldn't allow that to happen.
"Do you want me to get you a pad and pencil?"
She glanced up to find Charlie standing beside her. "Why would I need a pad and pencil?" she asked.
"You looked as if you were calculating the distance to Alpha Centauri, or something. I just figured a pad and pencil would make it easier."
"Charlie, we need to talk."
To avoid raising dust, he lowered himself gingerly to a nearby ottoman, then met her gaze. "That sounds nice. We don't talk nearly enough. Who gets to choose the subject? If it's my choice, it will be a toss-up between the stockpiling of nuclear weapons and the mating habits of the Yuppie. I love to get into deep things like that."
"Charlie, will you please be serious?"
He stared at her for a moment. "I wish you really meant that," he said gently, almost wistfully. Then he shrugged. "Okay, so the choice of subjects is yours. What are we going to talk about?"
Avoiding his eyes, she picked at the seam of her rust-colored slacks. "We need to talk about. . . about what's been happening."
"You mean what's been happening in Billings? In Los Angeles? Maybe in France?"
She bit her lip uneasily. He wasn't going to make it easy for her. He wanted her to spell it out.
She glanced up, throwing him an antagonistic look. "I mean here, and you know it. I mean what's been happening between you and me. This . . . this ..."
"Slackening of defenses?" he offered.
"This horseplay," she said tightly. "It's got to stop. I know you promised you would forget last night, but something's different now. The atmosphere between us is not that of partners and friends. It's more like . . " She paused, searching for the right word.
"I think the term you're looking for is lovers, but you're dead wrong," he said. "If you had ever had a real lover you would know the difference." He stared intently at her. "You're already changing back into dynamite real-estate agent. For just a little while we related to each other simply as two human beings. I don't see that as a bad thing, but you let me see more of you than you wanted to, and I guess you feel that some of your barriers are shaky." He smiled. "I always thought it must be tough for people who live behind walls. They're constantly having to check them to see if they're intact. Always worrying that someone will scale them or knock a hole in them." He shook his head. "It seems to me like a lot of misplaced energy."
"Dammit, Charlie," she said, slamming her fist against the armrest. "I don't want to talk about my psychological habits. I want to get this thing straight so that we can go back to where we were."
He stood up and pulled her to her feet. "We can't go backward, kid. We can only handle what happens in the future as it comes."
And that's it? she thought incredulously as he walked out of the lodge. This was the extent of their straightening out the problem?
By mutual consent, Charlie drove on the way back to Billings, and Sara watched him cautiously. She couldn't simply let it drop. There was too much at stake. If he continued to touch her, to kiss her ... If he continued to look at her as though she were more than friend and partner, the tension between them could cause the partnership to break up.
When they stopped for lunch at a small cafe just off the highway, she decided she would have to try again. As soon as he had finished eating, she said tentatively, "Charlie, we really need—" She broke off abruptly and shook her head as she glanced up at him. "How can I talk to you when you're wearing that . . . that thing on your head? You're not supposed to wear a hat at the table."
"It's not a hat; it's a cap," he said matter-of-factly. "Haven't you ever seen any World War I movies? A pilot's aviator cap is a part of him. It shows how fearless and macho he is. Do you think Lillian Gish would swoon over a pilot with a bare head?"
Sara glanced around the small cafe. "She isn't here, so you can take it off."
"Sorry," he said. "We ace pilots have a code. You might as well ask me to take off my head."
"If I thought it would do any good I would. But you would probably just play with it."
He chuckled. "You're so cute. I'll bet you've never noticed how cute you are, but everyone in here has noticed. They keep looking at you."
"They're not looking at me, Charlie. They're looking at the cap." She sighed in resignation. "Oh, well, I suppose I'll get used to it eventually. It only took me a year or so to get used to the yellow suspenders."
"You're lucky to be associated with a trend setter," he said. "Any day now I expect the Sears catalog to feature the Charlie collection. I'll bet—"
"Enough! Charlie, I want to talk to you."
"Again?" He shook his head in disbelief. "It must be all this country air."
"Are you going to listen?" she asked through clenched teeth.
Leaning forward, he folded his arms on the table. "I'm listening."
She breathed out slowly. "I don't want to talk about this, but I have to. Last night. . . last night I made a confession to you—"
"You mean the one where you told me you're hot for my body?" he asked guilelessly.
"Shut up, Charlie. Just listen for a while. What happened last night never should have happened. I shouldn't have allowed it to happen. I'm afraid my confession is going to damage our working relationship. I don't want that to happen. It can't happen. We've both worked too hard to see it all go down the drain."
He picked up her hand from where it lay on the table. "You see my face?" She nodded. "I'm perfectly serious now ... or at least as serious as I can get about this huge dilemma you're building up in your own mind." Turning her hand over, he traced several of the lines, then looked up to meet her eyes. "We can never know what's going to happen in the future, and it's useless even to speculate. All we can do is take it as it comes. You can't anticipate trouble, Sara. I think you're dead wrong, about everything, but if it turns out that you're right, then we'll handle it when it happens." He smiled, and raised a hand to hail the waitress. "Stop worrying so much. It'll all work out, I promise you."
As they left the cafe a gust of cold wind bit through Sara's sweater and she hurried to the car. Looking around at the Montana countryside, she was filled with a mixture of nostalgia and anticipation.
The seasons were changing.
Chapter 5
Sara dropped the paper she was holding when she realized she was staring out the window again. What on earth was wrong with her? she wondered, frowning slightly. She never had attacks of spring fever even in the spring. To start having them in the fall was ridiculous.
But of course she wasn't thinking about the season. She was thinking about Charlie. It had been a week since the weekend at the lodge. A long, strange week. A week that had left her more than a little on edge.
They were still negotiating for the purchase of the lodge, but that wasn't what was bothering her. It wasn't even Charlie, really. It was herself. Something had changed between them, and as much as she would have liked to lay the blame for the change at Charlie's door, she couldn't. She knew the change was in her. There was an awareness between them that
hadn't been there before.
Yet that didn't quite describe it, she thought, pushing a hand through her hair. It was much more solid than that, and yet—as crazy as it seemed— more intangible.
If Charlie had pressed her to have an affair she could have dealt with it and gotten it over with. But he hadn't. He hadn't pressed her to do anything. He was playing some kind of waiting game that was driving her out of her mind. It was always there between them, always ready to surface when she least expected it, when she least wanted it.
"I think I'm wearing him down."
Sara turned in her chair as Charlie walked into the room. "What?"
"Findlay," he said by way of explanation as he sat a foot away from her on a corner of her desk. "I'm definitely making progress on the sale. He swears he has a buyer who will pay twenty thousand more for the lodge, but I'd say he's bluffing. If he had such a red-hot prospect, he wouldn't still be messing around with us."
Today, from the neck down, Charlie looked almost like an average man. His plaid flannel shirt and khaki slacks were outdoorish, but sane. However, that was only from the neck down. Covering his head was the leather aviator cap. The flaps were turned up in what she assumed was a concession to the central heat, but they didn't lie neatly against his head. They stuck out at forty-five degree angles, the straps dangling on either side of his face like disconsolate antennae.
"Are you listening?" he asked.
She blinked and met his questioning gaze. "No," she said flatly. "Charlie, don't our clients find that cap just a bit off-putting?"
He chuckled. "You bet they do. I should have thought of something like this sooner. They're so busy watching the cap, they forget to argue. Mr. Ogden was still staring at it when he signed the papers on the Revescue place. Smoothest deal I've ever made."
She leaned back in her chair. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, but don't you think it might tend to damage your credibility just a hair?"
"What credibility? Wait until you see it with my leather jacket. It makes a real statement."
"Have you ever considered telling it to shut up?" she asked dryly as she picked up a contract from her desk and began to read it.
