Blaze (26 page)

"See you at noon, then."

"Right." He opened the door.

"My Lord, you're going to get wet today." It was said with the same boundless buoyancy.

He glared at her and left.

tried, she really did, but for the life of her she couldn't remember if it was two spoons of baking powder or two of salt or one of salt and three of sugar. And the eggs… she had absolutely no idea how many eggs Jimmy had put in. Or were there eggs at all in the recipe? Helping someone cook was not precisely like doing it yourself. Hell and damnation, she softly swore. If only she had a cookbook.

It struck her so suddenly, she had to sit down. Seated at the rough table, the unplaned floor boards cool beneath her bare feet, her hands clasped very still on the smooth sanded top, she realized with a fluttering exhilaration that she actually wanted to learn to cook for him.

She wanted to please him, wanted to give to him, wanted his approval. All novel concerns in a life previously revolving around taking. She had over the past days neatly compartmentalized her feelings toward Hazard. They were sensual, she'd told herself, carnal, lustful. The normal reaction of a female to Jon Hazard Black. Nothing unusual. Really quite expected. He had, after all, a well-deserved reputation for pleasing women.

But then, she'd also been exposed to the complex qualities of Hazard apart from his legendary prowess. He was a mercurial man, wholly unpredictable, but warm and spaciously kind, impudent in his humor, infinitely clever, and imbued with a fidelity and courage she hadn't imagined possible in a single man.

And the need for a cookbook was the staggering instrument of her revelation—awesome in its unorna-mented simplicity. She cared about him, cared what he thought of her, cared that she couldn't cook or clean or do whatever women did for the men they loved. It took her some length of time, sitting there in the silent, small cabin, to fully realize how her life had changed. Without plan or arrangement and so removed from artifice and stratagem, any self-respecting novice debutante would deplore the ineptitude. But it had happened.

She didn't just want him in the physical sense, she wanted him. She loved him. An Indian chief from a strangely named mountain tribe. Was it possible? She hardly knew him. And with his curious reticence, would she ever know him? But the emotion sang through her senses—/ love him! She said it aloud. "I love him." And then it occurred to her, the dark and ominous reverse side of that marvelous, wonderful declaration. Suppose —and with the events of the last few days vividly fresh in her mind, it was a distinct possibility—suppose he didn't want her.

As if by instinct, her back straightened, seated on the hard wooden chair in the isolated mountain cabin two thousand miles from Boston. Every nerve, every brain cell, every pulsing vein was put on alert. She hadn't acquired her undaunted spirit by accepting failure. She was her father's daughter, after all. "When it happens, Blaze honey, you'll know," her daddy'd said. And now that it had, miraculously, incredibly, with the same tenacity and determination with which she approached everything else, she intended to see her love returned.

Suddenly all the female gossip over the years, the secrets shared and confidences whispered, the undercurrent of feminine mystique—divulged over tea, murmured behind fluttering fans, archly pronounced by married friends, happy even after the honeymoon—was conscientiously recalled. And while the muffin dough lapsed into an irremediable amalgam, Blaze sifted and examined all the lessons learned about feminine wiles, scrutinizing all —however bizarre—with an empiricism that would have gratified the most pedagogical scholar. Then, discarding those she considered unsuitable, she began to set an inventive plan in motion, neatly artistic, subtly imaginative, sure, she felt, with her unerring confidence and Hazard's proven appetites, to produce results.

She was smiling when she took up the spoon to finish stirring the muffin batter. "Oh, dear," she breathed, her smile momentarily suspended. The dough was as solid as the wet earth outdoors. "Well, never mind," she murmured into the morning stillness, her smile reappearing. Muffins weren't his favorite anyway, she decided, placing the bowl in an out-of-the-way corner behind the wood box. He really liked those buttermilk biscuits. Now, was it one tablespoon vinegar to a cup of milk or one tablespoon milk to a cup of vinegar? From now on, true love dictated. She would certainly write the recipe down the next time Jimmy appeared, assuming Molly Pernell's moral ethics and jealousy allowed.

Anyway, she thought, settling on fried potatoes in lieu of recipeless buttermilk biscuits, one had to be magnanimous with one's rivals. Understanding and compassion were Christian virtues, after all, and if Molly Pernell found them elusive, she, the scent of victory already rich and strong, could be forgiving. With or without Jimmy, she'd learn to cook. Ah… and after tonight… Her mind drifted pleasurably astray.

HAZARD came back at noon, wet to the skin, greeted Blaze politely as he might a sister or an aunt, and sat down to his meal. Luckily, he thought, looking at his plate, he could eat raw meat—well, partially raw meat, the outside being meticulously charred. The fried potatoes were a venturesome attempt, and he complimented her on her effort. Unfortunately, they too were the same uniform black, without the saving grace raw meat possessed in flavor. He could not eat raw potatoes.

"The stove cooks everything so rapidly," Blaze explained, as if it had a life and spirit of its own.

"An unfortunate circumstance," Hazard agreed, unwilling to point out that the stove wasn't the cook.

"I'm truly sorry." She looked winsomely sincere.

"It's fine," he said, attacking his barely cooked meat. "Really."

"Are you sure?" she asked, all humility and innocence.

"I'm sure."

"You look so uncomfortably wet."

"The fire feels good." What the stove's roaring fire lacked in cooking qualities, it compensated for in heating potential. The heated cabin was a pleasant refuge from the steady, driving rain outside. Hazard's thoroughly soaked clothes were beginning to dry slightly against his skin.

"Do you think you should change?"

"Won't do any good. I'll be wet again in five minutes."

"Do you have to work when it's raining so hard?"

He looked at her for a moment, debating. He was driven—not by elusive Lady Fortune, like most of the miners, but by circumstances that didn't allow time off for adverse weather. How to explain all those ramifications to a society miss from the East. "Once you're wet, it doesn't matter," he answered, avoiding the more byzan-tine reasons for working seven days a week.

"If you wouldn't mind then—I mean—as long as you're wet already—could you bring in some water for the tub when you come in for supper?" It was a simple request, guileless as her innocent expression.

"Of course," he agreed, unaware of the ulterior motives behind the prosaic request.

HAZARD worked late that evening, striding in soaked and unusually reserved, carrying the first two pails of water. He filled the boiler, placed the extra pails by the tub, then quietly helped with supper, impelled by a gnawing hunger that required some edible food at least once every twenty-four hours. Although plain, the food was nourishing, and after supper he lay comfortably full and relaxed on his soft bed near the door.

Blaze refused his help with the dishes, and after the extra hours of work that day, he didn't raise any argument. She sang softly to herself while she worked, illuminated by the warm golden glow from the fireplace, and if Hazard hadn't been so dissociated from the concept by disuse, he would have recognized contentment.

After the dishes were washed, dried, and put away, Blaze pulled the copper tub in front of the fireplace and carefully began emptying the boiler on the stove, a pitcher at a time, into it. "You must have done some blasting today," she remarked, her tone chastely conversational. "Your clothes were dirtier than usual." Turning away from the stove, she smiled before carrying the large pitcher over to the tub.

Hazard made no move to help her. But as she walked by him, her slender bare legs close enough to touch, he drew in a long, deep breath and exhaled before replying, "Opened up a third drift." With his eyes following her long-legged stride, his tone was more casual than his thoughts.

Lamplight contoured her exquisite face, flushed from her exertions. "Will Rising Wolf be back soon? Or is it too early?"

"I'm not sure." Hazard's voice was suddenly gruff. She'd half turned to speak to him and firelight silhouetted the voluptuous roundness of her breasts through the coarse weave of his work shirt.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry," Blaze apologized, misreading the reason for his gruffness.

"It's all right." The words came out more curt than he intended, but he'd just seen her full breasts quiver gently when she twisted to face him.

"Have I offended you? I know it's none of my business about your gold and…" Her voice drifted away delicately, her apology offered with a fresh naivete that reminded him suddenly that she'd been a virgin until four days ago. He could feel the rush of pleasure at the bewitching memory, could feel his arousal begin. Damn, he should get out of here, go outside while she bathed. Sleep outside. But the rain still drumming steadily on the roof was a deterrent. Damned if he was going to be wet all night as well as all day, he told himself.

"No need to apologize. Rising Wolfs schedule is unscheduled for the most part. I never know for certain when he's coming." Hazard was answering automatically, but the conversation wasn't holding his attention. He was staring at the shirt hem drifting about her thighs, only inches from a sweetness he recalled so graphically he felt his pulse rate accelerate.

"Oh," Blaze quietly responded, still facing him across a dozen feet of softly illuminated cabin, "I see."

And she tossed her head to displace an errant wave of hair that had fallen across her forehead.

It struck him then, the artful toss. And instantly, he was reminded of scores of willful females in his past. An inherent suspicion was born on that slow, sensuous sweep of auburn hair moving like silk in a breeze. Was he being manipulated by this young woman only recently introduced to lovemaking? Was the fresh innocence, the green-grass naivete, as ingenuous as it appeared? Could she, with either a boundless arrogance or guileless ignorance, be seducing him?

Headstrong in his own way, as nervy as the impudent Miss Braddock, he waited, his mind quickening in anticipation, to see if she was brazen tonight or only innocuously determined to bathe.

She took her time filling the embossed tub, walking luxuriously back and forth across the golden light, apparently immune to the dark, mercurial eyes watching her with interest.

Her soft breasts moved under the light shirt when she walked, like ripe fruit in a summer breeze. The pale sheen of her legs, exposed to the shirttails falling to midthigh, were bronzed by the firelight, emphasizing the heated memory they evoked in Hazard's mind. Smooth, he remembered, and strong.

Blaze could feel his eyes on her, cool and assessing. But he hadn't gotten up and left. It could be the rain outside keeping him in. Or could it be need and passion? The longer he stayed, the longer he watched her, however controlled those penetrating black eyes, the surer she became.

And the surer he became, that no artlessness was displayed here. Rather the opposite. How far would she go? he wondered.

How far would she have to go, she wondered in turn, to move the apparently immovable man on his solitary bed? What would it take to readjust the principles he lived by—the arbitrary restrictions he'd placed on their relationship? "Forgive me for keeping you up," Blaze said, pouring in the last pitcher of cool water. Her azure eyes, when she lifted them slowly from her task, were not sorry at all.

"You're not keeping me up," Hazard said, his dissemblance as ready as hers.

She smiled then, invitation in the gentle curve of her mouth. "In that case, I shouldn't feel obliged to rush?"

"Don't on my account," he replied coolly, only the incandescent spark in his eyes belying the tranquil words.