Duplicity (21 page)

"What in the world brings you to Beech Mountain this time of year?" she asked.

Aunt Lollie winked at Uncle Vester and took charge of the situation. "There's a little nip in the mountain air, dear. Why don't we go inside while Vester unloads the bags?" Putting her arm around Ellen's waist, she led her inside. "My, my. What a trip. I thought that old pickup truck would never make it up this mountain. I don't know how Vester plans to get plumb out to Las Vegas in that old rattletrap when it will barely go from Tennessee to North Carolina."

She swung her head from side to side as she talked, her lively eyes taking in everything. "This is a right nice little place, dear. Put up a few gingham curtains and stick some gingerbread in the oven and it would be right homey." She nodded her head in satisfaction. "A nice little place to raise a family."

Ellen's heart sank down to her toes. She had to tell them, she thought. Now there was no waiting until next year's reunion. They were on the mountain, assessing the compound, still believing she was going to marry Dirk. She couldn't continue the deception any longer.

"Sit down. Aunt Lollie," she said, indicating a chair beside the kitchen table. "I'll start a pot of coffee and then we'll talk."

Aunt Lollie smiled and patted Ellen's cheek. "I've been sittin' for two hundred miles. I'll put on the coffee while you go and spiffy up. "

Ellen laughed. "I'll have to disappoint you, Aunt Lollie. My work clothes aren't what you'd call spiffy, but then nobody's around to see except Ruth Ann and Gigi."

"You never know." Aunt Lollie's serene face was wreathed in smiles. "Here's Vester. Now scoot along, dear, while I unwrap that gingerbread I brought."

Ellen obeyed without further argument. Obeying Aunt Lollie was a habit not easily broken. It also gave her a brief reprieve. As she hurried down the hall to her bedroom, she decided that she would tell them as soon as she returned to the kitchen.

 o0o

Ruth Ann stuck her head around her door as Ellen whizzed by. "Company?"

"My Aunt Lollie and Uncle Vester," Ellen said. "Aunt Lollie sent me to dress."

"Two of my favorite people. I'll go to the kitchen and visit with them while you dress."

As Ellen walked on toward her room she reflected that Ruth Ann hadn't looked very surprised. What in the world was going on? In spite of having told Aunt Lollie that she didn't wear spiffy clothes to work in, Ellen dressed with unusual care. The bright yellow aviator-style jump suit with front zipper emphasized her figure and enhanced her red hair.

She reached to the dresser for her wristwatch and, on impulse, opened the top drawer and took out the stack of letters. Closing her eyes, she recalled all the words Dirk had written. Although the words were few, each one had a special significance. They cataloged the affair, capturing it forever on folded pieces of paper.

She touched the letters to her lips before returning them to the drawer. "Good-bye, Dirk," she whispered. "It's too bad that I have to take you out of my life forever."

Squaring her shoulders with determination, she started back to the kitchen to set the record straight about her fake fiancé.

 o0o

Aunt Lollie looked up from the pan of steaming hot gingerbread that she was removing from the oven. "My, my. You look like a daffodil."

Ellen had to grip the back of a chair. Aunt Lollie couldn't have known that Dirk had once told her the same thing. "That—" The word came out a croak, and she had to start again. "That gingerbread smells delicious."

"Nobody makes it like Lollie." Uncle Vester put his arm around Ellen's shoulder. "Come sit by me, young'un. You're prettier than a speckled pup in the sunshine. I bet when that bridegroom sees you, hell sit up and beg." He slapped his leg and laughed delightedly at his own humor.

The color drained from Ellen's face. She couldn't let this deception go on another minute. "There's something I have to tell both of you."

"I think it had better wait awhile, dear," Aunt Lollie said. "There's a man on a white horse in your front yard."

Ellen flew to the window. "Dirk!" she shouted. He was sitting atop White Fire, bronzed and smiling. She swung her gaze back to the kitchen. "You knew." She was laughing and crying at the same time. "All this time you knew."

"Are you going to keep that young feller waitin'?" Uncle Vester asked.

"Do you know how much I love you?" she said to her relatives before she bolted from the kitchen.

Her feet took wings as she ran across the yard toward Dirk. He bent down and scooped her into his arms.

 o0o

Three interested pairs of eyes watched from the kitchen window as the reunited lovers joined in a passionate kiss.

"Just like in the movies," Aunt Lollie said.

"Mark my words. This mountain will soon be crawlin' with kids," Uncle Vester said.

"I feel the winds of change," Ruth Ann said.

 o0o

Ellen hooked her leg over the saddlehorn and settled herself more comfortably against Dirk's shoulder. "It's a wonder you didn't kill yourself trying to ride this stallion," she said.

"You're worth the risk." His face wore the old devil-may-care smile, the same one he had worn when she first saw him. "Besides, have you ever known a prince who rode a nag like Annie?"

She gazed deep into his eyes. "Are you my prince?"

His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. "Why don't you ask Pooh Bear?" He pulled the ragged bear from the saddlebag.

"Oh, Dirk." She touched the bear's button eye. "You kept him."

"I kept him, love. Believe it or not, this feisty little bear is now a world traveler. I carried him all over Germany. He told me all your secrets."

"Including the one about me waiting for a prince?"

"Yes, love. Including that one." He brushed his lips against her hair. "I want to be your prince. I've come back to ride off into the sunset with you if you'll have me."

"It's the wrong time of day," she teased. She could hardly believe everything that was happening. In spite of the letters, in spite of her friends' odd behavior, in spite of Aunt Lollie and Uncle Vester and White Fire, she had to have more evidence that Dirk was back in her life to stay.

"When was there ever a wrong time of day for us?" he asked, then nudged White Fire with his heels. The stallion cantered up the mountain.

Ellen exulted in the feel of wind on her cheeks and Dirk holding her tight. So many questions to ask, she thought, so many things to say. But they would wait. She was with the man she loved, and right now nothing else mattered.

She felt the thunder of hooves under her and the thunder of Dirk's heart behind her as they plunged up the mountain. She scarcely noticed the wild flowers that beribboned the mountains in splashes of color as they hastened toward Tony's cabin.

Dirk reined in under the pine trees. "We're home."

Ellen half turned in the saddle. "What will Tony think if we barge in like this?"

"Tony is in a condominium in Banner Elk. I bought this place when he came to Washington." He slid from the horse and helped her down. "I think you'll like that stable I had built out back for White Fire."

She stood on top of Beech Mountain with the early-morning sun warming her back and looked up at Dirk. A long time ago her heart had said
yes
to this man, perhaps even that first day on her front porch at the compound. In time she would learn all the hows and whys of his return, but for now she would rejoice in his presence.

Her arms slipped around his neck. "You did all this," she asked softly, "without telling me?" She touched the pulse point of his throat with her lips.

"Well, ma'am, I saw this wonderful opportunity, and I grabbed it." He smiled down at her as he affected a Southern drawl and repeated the words he had used that day at the beginning of summer, the day he had become her fiancé.

She cupped his face in her hands. "My prince on a white charger, would you mind carrying Opportunity inside? I think I hear a bunch of grapes calling our names."

Without another word he picked her up and carried her across the threshold of their new home in the mountains. By the time they had reached the brass bed, their clothes were strewn in an erratic path on the floor.

The mattress creaked a welcome, and the songbirds outside the window celebrated the occasion with joyous carols.

"I've waited all my life for this," Dirk whispered against the satin skin of her neck. "I've waited all my life to say these words." He lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

"I'm listening, Dirk." She tenderly brushed a lock of tousled dark hair off his forehead.

"I love you, Dr. Ellen Stanford. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want you to be my lover and my wife. I want you to be my home and my hearth. I want you to be my present and my future."

"I promise to be those things and more." Their eyes locked as she pledged her vows. "I promise to fill all the lonesome places of your heart."

And then, before the wedding and the ring and the minister, their vows were sealed there on the brass bed with the sun streaming through the skylight as witness.

Afterward they lay in a tangled heap of contentment. Dirk lifted a strand of flaming hair and let it drift through his fingers. "Can you live with my career, love?"

Ellen thought for a moment. She had a vague idea what that meant—danger, uncertainty, separation, but she had to know more. "Tell me about your career, Dirk. Just how dangerous is it?"

"Movies and spy novels have overplayed the danger, but it does exist. When I do fieldwork, I'm always armed and there's always a possibility that I won't return." His arms tightened around her. "There's also a slight chance of retaliatory action against my family."

She lay very still, trying not to let his words strike cold terror in her heart.
Loving this man meant accepting all of him
, Ellen told herself. "Tell me about the fieldwork," she said softly.

"Sometimes my assignments are as simple as diplomatic relations. I’ll be just a phone call away, as those crazy ads say. Other times you will know neither the nature of the assignment nor the place. I could be gone days or even weeks without your hearing from me. I take only three or four field assignments a year. Between assignments I have extended leaves—six to eight weeks. The rest of the time I would work out of Washington and commute on weekends."

He raised himself on an elbow so he could look down into her face. "I know it's a heavy burden to ask any woman to share, but I have enough confidence in my own abilities to believe that I can minimize the danger and the uncertainty. Can you accept that, Ellen?"

She looked into his eyes. "It's not an easy thing to accept, but one hour as your wife is worth the risk." She reached up to smooth the laugh lines that fanned out from his eyes. "I trust you, Dirk, and I accept you—all of you." Turning her face into his neck, she nuzzled close. "Home will be a haven, and each day we spend together will be magic." She nipped his skin. It was time to move to a less somber topic. "Can you live with my career?"

He laughed. "Does that mean I have to live on bananas and cauliflower and give Gigi regular driving lessons?"

"Only the driving lessons," she teased.

"I'd rather face a firing squad."

She lazily walked her fingertips through the dark hair on his chest. "Dirk?"

"Mmm?"

"How long have you known that you would come back and when did you do all this?"

He ran his tongue around the rim of her ear. "This?"

"No." She laughed, swinging her arm to encompass the cabin. "This. White Fire. Aunt Lollie and Uncle Vester."

He rolled on top of her, bracing most of his weight on his arms. "That's what I get for being in love with a scientist. Always probing for answers." His black eyes were sparkling with all the joy he was feeling. "Tony came to see me after he returned from his fishing trip. I knew before he left that I would come back. I was leaving on field assignment, so he had the stables built and brought White Fire here. Rachelle helped with the arrangements."

 "I knew those two were up to something."

 "As soon as I returned from Germany, I went to see Uncle Vester and Aunt Lollie. "

 "You told them the whole story?"

 He laughed. "No, but I told them the truth—that I loved you, had loved you from the first moment I saw you, and that we were going to be married on this mountain."

 She rolled her eyes in mock horror. "Such a deceitful pair we are!"

 "I would say that we were made for each other." He bent down and traced her eyes with the tip of his tongue. "Wouldn't you?"

 "I don't know." She captured his face between her hands. "You'll have to convince me."

 And he did.

 o0o

 Ellen looked out the window at the glorious day, her wedding day. Her hands caressed the slipper satin of her wedding dress.
Nature was the best decorator in the world
, she thought. The enclosed bower beside the lake would be flooded with sunshine and filled with the fragrance of wild roses.