Completely Smitten (7 page)

He didn’t know who her soul mate was. He just knew she had one.

And that changed everything.

She blinked and leaned away from him. He got the sense she would have stepped away if she could. “What?” she asked.

He had to cover, and fast. “Don’t you smell that? I think dinner is burning.”

She smiled and took her wineglass from him. “I’m sure it’s fine. Sauce usually only burns on the bottom.”

It sounded as if she were speaking from experience. He hurried toward the kitchen as if he really thought something were burning, even though leaving her side was the last thing he wanted to do.

He wanted to make certain what he had seen in her eyes was true.

She had a soul mate. And he was required to find that soul mate.

It was the last thing he wanted to do.

Ariel ate with gusto. She hadn’t realized how much she missed food made from fresh ingredients. Dehydrated meal packs took care of her hunger, but they weren’t satisfying like this meal was.

She had never had spaghetti sauce this good. The tomatoes tasted fresh. The sauce had a number of vegetables in it which she wasn’t used to, and it also had some kind of spice that she didn’t recognize.

Darius had served her food to her on a lap tray, complete with a rose in a bud vase on one corner. When he had set the tray before her, he had smiled.

“Such service,” she had said to cover her nervousness.

“I normally make my guests do everything,” he had said, “but since you can’t stand, I thought I’d change my policies just this once.”

She had laughed and then lit into the food. He probably thought her some kind of pig, the way she was eating. But it all tasted so fine. He’d even made fresh garlic bread. She couldn’t complain that the stove heated the building so much—not when it enabled the food to be this good.

He had a lap tray too. He sat across from her in an overstuffed chair that looked as if it had seen better days. The upholstery sagged, and one of the sides looked as if it had been scratched by a cat, even though there was no cat in evidence.

In fact, he had said he didn’t have one—although he had also said that he needed one, a comment she had found strange at the time.

He had his feet up on the coffee table and seemed completely relaxed. Not at all like a man who had rappelled up the side of a cliff with a limp body in his arms and then had proceeded to cook a delicious dinner on a wood-burning stove.

“How long have you been hiking?” he asked.

She swallowed, feeling self-conscious. Did he think she was eating a lot because she hadn’t eaten in weeks? “Five days.”

“Five days?” he asked. “All alone?”

She nodded.

“Most hikers who come through here have a companion.”

“You can’t think about things if you have a companion.”

“Ah,” he said, taking a sip of wine. “A vision quest?”

She shook her head. “Just a chance to be alone after a hard year.”

She didn’t want to tell him about the rotator cuff and the choices she was going to make. After what had happened today, that just might be too much. He probably felt sorry for her already.

“Boyfriend doesn’t mind?” he asked.

Normally, that wasn’t a question she liked to answer. Letting strange men know she was unattached often led to unpleasantness. But he wasn’t a strange man. She felt as if she had known him for a long time.

Still, she took another bite of that excellent garlic bread before she said, “There is no boyfriend.”

“No boyfriend?” He seemed both shocked and dismayed, as if it were important to him that she have someone in her life.

“No boyfriend, no husband, no pet iguana. My friends and family know I’m here.” That was a bit of a stretch. One friend knew she had left, but no one else did. She didn’t want to be talked out of this. “But there’s no significant other to keep the home fires burning while I’m away.”

In fact, there were no home fires either. She had given up her apartment for the summer and placed everything she owned in storage. She had planned that when she thought she’d be in Hawaii, training, and she saw no need to change it.

She needed a new place, and she hadn’t found it yet.

“I’d think, then, you’d want to take a trip with someone,” he said.

She shook her head. “There are just times in your life when you want to be alone, you know?”

“I do.” He swirled the wine in his glass. Her comment seemed to make him sad.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m intruding on your privacy.”

He raised his head. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.” She leaned over and grabbed the wine bottle off the coffee table, somehow avoiding spilling her tray in the process. Every one of her muscles screamed in agony at the movement, but she ignored them. Muscle pain was something she was used to. “A person doesn’t live this far away from civilization because he likes company.”

He watched her pour the wine into her glass and made no move to help. She appreciated that. It meant he wasn’t overprotective. She had been a little worried about that after he put the splint on her leg.

“I don’t live up here,” he said.

“Oh? This is awfully well appointed for a rental.” She finished pouring, then offered him the bottle.

He took it and poured some wine into his glass before putting the bottle back on the table. “I come up here a couple of times a year. I like the isolation on a short-term basis, but living here would drive me crazy.”

“Winters,” she said. “Snow, mountains, and no escape.”

He nodded. “No movies either.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You could get a satellite dish.”

“I could,” he said, “but I think a DVD player would be more useful.”

“You have a Blockbuster in this neighborhood?”

He laughed. “I could bring a year’s supply of DVDs with me, and leave only when I run out.”

“There’s a measure of a person’s time. He must emerge from his sojourn in the wilderness when he has seen
The Matrix
fifteen hundred times.”

He frowned at her.
“The Matrix
? I was thinking of
Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
”

“Yeah,” she said, “something light and happy to help you through your solitude.”

He set his tray on the floor but kept the wineglass. “All right, what do you think I should be stranded with?”

“All the films of Chaplin,” she said.

“Are they even on DVD?”

“They should be.”

“With director’s commentary.”

“No.” She shook her head. “They’re silent films. You don’t want to rain that with narrative. You’ll get written notes in a file you can open on the side.”

“Touché,” he said.

She smiled, then picked up her tray. She was going to lean over and set it on the floor, but he was too quick for her. He got up and took it from her.

He looked in her eyes again. That same deep look he had given her before, as if he saw into her very soul.

Whatever was there seemed to upset him.

“You sure,” he asked, his face just inches from hers, “that there’s no one special in your life?”

His voice was very soft. She could hear the threads of sorrow in it.

“I’m sure,” she said.

“No one you admire from afar? No great long-lost love?”

She laughed, feeling a bit uncomfortable. At the same time, it felt right that he should ask these questions. As if he needed to know.

As if she needed to tell him.

“No,” she said. “I’ve dated, but there’s never been anyone serious.”

His gaze went to her lips, and for a brief moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. Then he moved back to his chair.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m usually not this serious.”

“It’s all right.” She plucked her wineglass off the tray beside her. The glass had become a lifeline.

“No,” he said. “It’s inappropriate. I guess I keep thinking there’s someone out there who had a weird vibe this afternoon and is now worried about you. Silly, huh?”

She shrugged. “Probably a natural reaction to what we went through today.”

“Not my natural reaction,” he said. “My reaction to something like this is to joke about it inappropriately.”

“I don’t believe that.” She swirled her wine just as she had seen him do. The wine had a marvelous red color and a smoothness she wasn’t used to. She had a hunch it was very expensive.

“Oh, it’s true,” he said. “If there’s an offensive comment to be made, I usually find it.”

“You haven’t been offensive to me.”

“I guess you caught me at a bad moment.”

She sipped the wine. “Or maybe a good moment.”

“If that were possible.” He leaned back in his chair. “Lenny Bruce fired me. He said my jokes were too tame.”

“You’re not old enough to write for Lenny Bruce,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows at her. “You know about Lenny Bruce?”

“I’ve seen his routines.”

“Not live,” he said. “You’re not old enough.”

“Or lucky enough,” she said. “He was good.”

“And funny.”

“And raunchy.” She grinned. “
And
he wrote his own material.”

He grinned in return. “Caught me.”

“If you’re going to impress me with your raw wit, you have to do better than that.”

His grin faded. He looked down at his glass. Something she said had changed his mood.

“Mostly,” he said, “I just offend people. I figure if I can piss them off, they’re not worth my time.”

“Really?” she asked. “I always thought that if a person was smart enough, he could piss anyone off.”

He raised his head and gave her a measuring look. “Why? Is that a hobby of yours too?”

She shook her head. “I’m one of those Milquetoast people who works hard at keeping everyone calm.”

“I don’t think a Milquetoast person would have been hiking alone, let alone have enough presence of mind to roll over and catch herself with a knife blade.”

He had seen that. They hadn’t talked much about her fall. She was still unclear about what exactly had happened.

“Not that the knife blade worked,” she said.

“It worked long enough for me to be able to help,” he said and bit his lip.

She leaned back on the pillows. Something about this entire topic made him nervous and she wasn’t sure what it was. “Was that when you saw me?”

He nodded. “I heard something odd, then saw you digging that knife in. I’m not even sure I would have known you were there if you hadn’t done that.”

She ran her thumb along the glass’s warm side. If he hadn’t known she was there, she would have died on that ledge. Even if she had regained consciousness, she had no idea how she would have climbed back up. She didn’t have mountain climbing tools, and then there was the small matter of the broken ankle.

“I owe you everything,” she said softly.

“No,” he said, “you don’t.”

He sounded almost panicked by her words, as if he didn’t want anyone to be in his debt. Still, she had to ask. “What can I do to repay you?”

He stood, went to the window, and pulled it open. The cool evening air poured in, making her realize just how stuffy the house had been. Then he came back to his chair and sat on the arm.

She got that strange sense of duality again, as if he were going to tell the absolute truth and lie to her at the same time.

“I’m not used to visitors,” he said. “The last person who slept in that guest room was Hemingway.”

At first she thought he was joking, but he seemed too serious for that.

“Really?” she asked. “Which one? Mariel?”

He smiled. The look on his face was fond. “No. Ernest.”

“You’re kidding, right? You weren’t even born when he died.”

Darius started, as if he were coming out of a dream. For a moment, his expression was sheer surprise; then he picked up his wineglass. He didn’t drink, though.

“I didn’t say it was recent,” he said. “He was here in the Twenties. He used this as a hunting shack.”

“So you bought it from his family?”

Darius shook his head. “This has been in my family for more than a hundred years.”

She had no idea the place was that old. There’d clearly been a lot of renovation. “Wow. How did your people find this place?”

“Accident,” he said. “It was a mining shack. I—um, I think this was squatter country. I don’t think anyone paid for the land.”

“Well, someone paid for the house.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I did a lot of the renovations.”

“But no electricity, huh?” She couldn’t comprehend living in a house with no electricity. Camping without it was one thing—she didn’t expect to flick a switch and have lights. But living here without the benefit of power seemed strange to her.

He slid into the chair. He was now sitting with his back against one arm and his legs draped over the other. It looked like a teenager’s posture—or an athlete’s.

“No lines come up this far. There weren’t phones either, until some idiot invented cellular technology. Now you can’t get away from anything.”

“Sure you can,” she said. “You just have to choose not to bring a phone with you. Besides, they told me cell phones don’t work up here.”

“They don’t,” he said. “You need a satellite phone. And no, I don’t have one. I’m a bit of a Luddite.”

“So I’ve noticed,” she said. “I haven’t seen a stove like that outside of a museum.”

“I have two generators, but I prefer not to use power for things that I can do myself.”

She nodded. “I guess that’s why I like camping. I feel as if I’m getting back to nature, even though I know I’m not.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Back in those natural days, no one had aluminum pans.”

“Or lightweight tents.”

“Or water filters.”

“Or dehydrated food.”

“Well, I’m sure they were all sad about that.”

She smiled. “Is that one of those biting comments I’ve heard so much about?”

“That wasn’t biting. That didn’t even qualify as sarcastic. If anything, it was mildly amusing.”

She stretched and leaned back on her pillows. “This is a great place. If I had a haven like this, I’d never leave it.”

“Don’t you like civilization?”

“Most of the time it’s all right. But I think it takes away our opportunities to test our limits.”