Florida Knight (10 page)

“I have a small tent on purpose,” Kate declared, as she whacked a peg into the ground. “Discourages visitors.” She hit the peg so hard it was nearly lost in the
thick carpet of
pine needles.

She might have warned him, Michael grumbled. Not that he could have done anything about it. Well . . . bought a bigger tent maybe. That was it! He’d buy a bigger tent . . . get his own tent.

And blow his cover to hell and gone.

Michael looked away from Kate’s efforts long enough to discover Bubba—
Maximus
, he had to remember Maximus—was driving the last peg home, looking like Mr. Back Woods personified. Mallet in hand, jeans and T-shirt tight over bulging muscles, a broad grin of satisfaction on his face.

“Don’t worry,” he called to Michael, “you’ll get the hang of it. Next time you can do it.”

“Yeah, sure, uh–Max. It’s been a long time since Boy Scout camp.”

“Let’s get the rest of the stuff out now,” Kate said. “Then we can get rid of the van.” Dutifully, the four of them carted coolers, sleeping bags and costumes into the two tents. Michael was astonished that everything seemed to fit. He’d caught Kate’s dilemma as she arranged the tent. She’d started to put the coolers and personal gear down the middle between the two sleeping bags. She’d eyed the screened front and sides of the tent, realized someone might notice the hostile configuration. Not bothering to disguise her annoyance, she’d shifted everything around, placing the equipment at the back, hanging
his—
Raven’s
—
costumes beside her own things from a nylon loop at the rear of the tent. “That’ll have to do,” she mumbled.

He
eyed the twelve inches between the two sleeping bags, swallowed hard. He’d seen a lot of nubile young things since they’d checked in at the gate an hour ago, then stood in line for registration. They’d looked him over, though he couldn’t tell what they were thinking. Probably that he was over the hill. At the moment he wished it was true. And the men . . . almost without exception their eyes had bulged. Nudges, pokes, outright stares, even a pointed finger or two. Obviously Kate’s aversion to men was well known. Was he supposed to brazen it out as if sharing a tent with Catriona MacDuff was a mere nothing? Or play a smug King of the Hill, victor in the long battle for Cat’s favor? Or play the stupid innocent who didn’t know he’d won the heart of an Ice Woman?

“Out,” Cat ordered. “I’m going to change.”

“
Now?
”
He
was beginning to hate surprises.

“Yes, now. You can take the van back to the parking lot, then you can change.”  Her tone was about as clipped and impersonal as it could get. Michael
, who was about to become Raven,
seized the opportunity to flee.

When he got back from checking out the lake, an outdoor amphitheater, a variety of wooden buildings, and a never-ending array of wooded campsites, the site selected by Kate’s local LALOC group had been transformed.
He
stared. The area tucked beneath a canopy of live oaks and pines had come alive, a chaos of cars, SUVs, tents, camp chairs, coolers, milling men, women, and children. There were seven tents in various stages of construction. One man was hanging a banner from the branch of a live oak. The design was a startlingly realistic black snake writhing in the claws of a dragon. Two other men were setting a ring of tall torches into the sandy soil beneath the brown covering of pine needles and oak leaves.

“We used to have a campfire in the center of each site,” a voice beside him said.

“Hi, Mona.”

“Alys,” she corrected automatically. “The fire danger is so high we’re only allowed fires in containers or the torches. Hope it rains soon.” Mona
heaved a
sigh. “It just isn’t camping without a fire.”

Oh, great
, Michael groaned.
Here we are surrounded by woods, and now someone mentions fire. What else could go wrong?

So where was Kate? “Uh
–
Alys, you know where Cat is?” There! He thought he’d done that quite well.
Stupid game!

“Right there.” Alys nodded toward the center of the campsite.

He
hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what Cat might wear. Now he knew his imagination couldn’t have conjured this vision even if he’d worked on it all week. What was she trying to do, drive him crazy?

Cat knew the moment
the man from FHP
returned. She felt his eyes trailing down her long blond hair, moving over the loosely fitted Medieval gown. She could feel him x-raying what was beneath, gulping his fill, registering,
oh yes, Catriona MacDuff was all female
. Why she’d put on a dress when, on Friday nights, she usually wore male garb, Cat didn’t want to examine too closely. She’d planned
to wear her usual Friday night
work outfit of brown wrap pants and straw-colored
peasant
tunic,
but her hand had paused, guided by some perverse genie, and picked up the dress instead. And, of course, her French braid didn’t suit the long semi-fitted green gown . . . Or at least
that’s what she’d told herself.

Her only excuse for this idiocy was that she had agreed to play a role. Being one of the boys when she had brought a supposed lover to the weekend event was a violation of her agreement, however reluctant that agreement might have been. As an excuse, it was pretty weak—and had come after the fact—but it was all she had. The resulting shock to LALOC regulars, particularly the jocks, was in itself worth the effort. The deluge of questions the moment she emerged from the tent in her softly shaped forest green gown
, her silver blonde hair tumbling loose over her shoulders,
was like nothing she’d ever encountered before.
Who? What? How long? Come on, Cat, tell all!

It was significant, Cat
realized
, that no one asked
Why
.
Michael Turco might be all planes and angles, a glowering sculpture carved by lightning, but no one could doubt his power to attract.

She turned, held out a hand to
him,
and together they faced the members of the Golden Beach Shire. “Everyone . . . this is Raven.” Instantly, she regretted taking his hand. It turned out to be a lethal maneuver she felt all the way down to toes encased in soft twelfth century-style leather slippers.

He was getting far more than a once-over, Michael realized. Eyes of every color gleamed, white teeth flashed; strong grips challenged. LALOC
members
were checking him out with a vengeance. How many of the men had failed with Cat? How many were wondering what he had that they didn’t? How many were chagrined to discover they couldn’t blame their failure on Catriona MacDuff having a preference for females? How many considered the possibility she was throwing up a smokescreen?

“You’d better change,” Cat said with a breathtaking smile, the loving girlfriend to her significant other. “We’ll check out the Feast Hall, find out about supper, what classes are on for tomorrow. I want to be sure you’re registered for the Newcomer Class.” She squeezed his arm, waved him toward their tent.

Their
tent. Michael nodded to the group, made his escape. An odder bunch of people he’d never seen. Men from twenty to seventy, wearing everything from jeans to tights to some kind of sheik’s robe. Women in peasant blouses that plunged to where the sun usually didn’t shine, women in outfits that might have stepped out of a Robin Hood epic, women in every kind of headdress from fancy hair nets to long flowing veils. Cat was right. Once all the vehicles were moved back to the parking lot, the place was going to resemble a Medieval camp site. If you discounted the telltale tents of colorful ripstop nylon.

Definitely weird.

But not as weird as sharing a tent with Kate. As being Raven, lover of Catriona MacDuff.

Chapter 7

As the four travelers from
Golden
Beach
approached the Feast Hall, they had to thread their way through a jumble of bustling people, packing cases, folding tables, guy ropes, and pavilions in various stages of assembly.
“
I’ve heard of running the gauntlet,” Raven quipped as he and Cat approached the campground’s largest building, “but how come these people rate a campsite right outside the mess hall?”

“They’re vendors,” Max said. “This is where they sell things.”

“Every Event sets aside an area for vendors,” Cat explained. “Here, it’s right in front of the Feast Hall.”

“Great spot,” Raven noted as they paused on the porch, looking back at the disarray scattered across the broad expanse of green lawn. Once the vendors were set up, there would be a strip of lawn between the rows of booths, a path most LALOC members would travel several times a day. Because knowing the lay of the land, and the people on it, was as natural to Raven as breathing, he looked past the chaos, past the almost completed pavilions. Evidently, the vendors slept where they sold their merchandise, as tents were perched behind each open-fronted booth. The tents looked like they came from a discount store, but the pavilions sheltering the vendors’ wares were in an entirely different category. They featured everything from bright-colored umbrellas—definitely not what Cat called “period”—to elaborate edgings and peaked canvas tops that truly mimicked a fair from the days of the Middle Ages. Colorful and effective, he had to admit.

Everywhere he looked, craftspeople were scrambling to set up their wares on long tables or clothing racks in time to be viewed by LALOC travelers straggling in to a late supper. All kinds of jewelry, Raven noted. Medallions, ceramics, beads, wire sculpture, odd games he’d never seen before. Leather work from sturdy belts to intricately embossed containers. Tall laced boots, soft suede slippers.
Armor.
Raven’s eyes gleamed. A vendor was laying out everything from chainmail to conquistadore-style metal breast-plates. As if drawn by a magnet, Raven detoured toward the armorer’s booth.

“Later.” Cat grabbed his arm, urging him toward the entrance to the Feast Hall. “Give them a chance to set up. I’m hungry.” Secretly, she was amused that Raven the inscrutable, the intractable, had betrayed an interest in armor. Perhaps she should have suggested he purchase an armored codpiece. Sternly, Cat repressed a smirk. Keeping her back to her nemesis, she chose a table
inside the feast hall
and started to lay out their gear. But her mind refused to concentrate on the simple task. It had taken a table full of medieval-style metal to pierce the personal armorplate Lieutenant Michael Turco had drawn around himself. An armor that had grown thicker and more impenetrable all afternoon as he found himself surrounded by a foreign, nearly incomprehensible world. For a moment Cat almost felt sorry for him.

While Cat and Alys swiftly set the table, Raven examined the room. Tables, chairs, a couple of plastic lined trash barrels—definitely not Medieval. Ice machine, coffee dispenser, supersize jug of iced tea. Huge open windows above the serving counter revealed a stainless steel kitchen with people—all in
Medieval servant-style costume—
bustling about. Two were ladling soup from huge tureens; the others, presumably, were preparing food for the next day.

“There’s a cookbook,” Cat said as she handed him a wooden soup bowl, called
Take a Thousand Eggs
. Another is titled
Cooking for a Castle
. Preparing food for a crowd like this is quite a feat.”

Take a thousand eggs.
And they called it fun. Raven granted Cat’s words a
curt
nod and fell in behind her as they approached the serving counter. They were all crazy, these people. Stark raving. What the
hell
was he doing here, in harem pants and tunic, holding out his wooden begging bowl for soup or whatever was in that huge stainless steel pot.

“Some people come a long ways,” Max told him. “So they keep serving real late on Friday nights. Maybe midnight.”

“That’s why it’s cafeteria style.” Alys offered Raven her effervescent smile. “But tomorrow night will be really different. Just wait, you’ll like it!”

“Everything’s made from scratch,” Cat said as they returned to their table, balancing soup in one hand, homemade biscuits in the other.

“Food’s always great,” Max agreed as he dug in.

Cautiously, Raven sampled a mouthful of beef stew. His eyes widened. Even his mother’s culinary creativity paled in comparison. He reached for a fat fluffy biscuit. It melted in his mouth. Immersed in a world of fast food, frozen food, any kind of convenience food, he’d forgotten it was possib
le for food to taste this good.

He was so absorbed in the pure pleasure of eating he almost missed the atmosphere. But not quite. Raven might be plunged into sensory delight, but Lieutenant Michael Turco was becoming uneasy. It might be impolite for Lords and Ladies of Chivalry to stare, but he could swear he felt the eyes of the other diners piercing his back. Once again, he was being scanned, weighed, and labeled “Cat’s man.” It was demeaning.

Glumly, he stared at the brown bottom of his wooden soup bowl, sneaked a peak at Max. The gentle giant seemed to be starting on a second helping, or was it a third? Raven shoved back his chair, headed toward the serving counter. He felt like Oliver Twist in his famous walk toward the dais at the orphanage.
Please, sir, may I have some more?
Every eye was on him.
Oh hell!
This was exactly what he didn’t want, what Kate Knight was supposed to spare him. If he’d known her celibacy was so well-known, that his mere presence at her side was going to create a sensation . . .