Light of Day (11 page)

The afternoon passed as lazily as any Lila had ever experienced. In unspoken agreement, neither referred to the change in their circumstances. Instead, they walked on the deserted, pebbled beach, collecting shells and bits of twisted driftwood. When they were hungry, they found a protected spot atop a low bluff and ate canned peaches and cheese.

“I should have thought to get some candy or something. I’d like something sweet now,” Lila said. “I have a little pie-maker at the cabin. Maybe I’ll make some cherry tarts later on.”

“You love to bake, don’t you?”

“It’s wonderful,” she said simply. “It’s funny, though, because I hated it when my mother made me cook. I still hate cooking meals, truthfully.” Nibbling thoughtfully on a peach, she smiled to herself. “One spring we had a huge crop of strawberries, and I had to help her can them. As a reward she let me use the leftovers to make whatever I wanted.”

“And,” Samuel guessed, his eyes glittering, “you created something dramatic.”

Lila laughed. “I did. A triple-layer strawberry cake, with sugar drippings and all the strawberries spaced at exactly one-and-a-half-inch intervals. My mother was completely stunned. My brothers demolished it in one sitting, and I was launched.” Proudly she lifted her chin. “I made all my neighbors’ wedding cakes until I left for college.”

“Why did you choose history in college?”

“It never occurred to me to study baking, for one thing.” She tossed a lock of hair from her eyes. “I also fell in love with the drama of history when I broke my back. I was in a body cast for nine months. Seemed like all I did was read.”

“And now you have both your history and your baking.”

She flashed him a broad smile. “Funny how things work out for the best.”

“Do they, Lila?”

With utter conviction she answered, “Yes.”

“I wish I could believe with such passion.”

“You sensible types always have that trouble—you’re always worrying about the world ending.” Lacking a napkin, she dried her fingers on her jeans and fixed her eyes on a pair of quarreling, squawking gulls. In a quieter tone she added, “The only way any of us have survived the ages is by living the minute at hand and hoping for the best.”

“It isn’t always so simple,” he said, and looked at her, smiling ruefully. “Perhaps I simply need some of your magical marzipan.”

Lila laughed. “Maybe so.”

He shifted, resting his back against a flat boulder. “You would like France, Lila. A Frenchman takes his food very seriously.”

“Like American Southerners.”

“Yes, although I’d not thought of it before.” He inclined his head. “The attention to detail and no thought for calories or health. Those are the things.” He pursed his lips. “My grandfather used to say that it was the little things that made good wine.”

She smiled.

“You know,” he said, tossing a pebble toward the waves. “I find myself thinking of him when I’m with you. With his wines and grapes, he was very passionate, as you are with your bakery goods. He loved to talk about the ways the grapes grew, how the sun and land in one place changed a good grape to a bad one, like Gamay. Do you know this?”

“No,” she said.

“Gamay is a red grape, and when it is grown in the Beaujolais area of France, a wine of the same name is made that is very good. Move the grape to another spot, in California or Italy, it gives only the most ordinary wine.” He gestured with one hand. “Take the Sylvaner anywhere, and it will produce a good wine.”

“I wonder why?”

He shrugged, giving her the slight smile she’d grown to love. “Scientists have yet to puzzle it out.”

At this, Lila grinned in delight. “one of the Creator’s great mysteries.”

“Yes.” His smile was genuine.

Clouds had begun to darken the western horizon, and the sea grew choppy with gusts of wind. Lila sighed. “We ought to get back, I guess.” She stood up, brushing the seat of her jeans. “I thought we might be able to alternate with bathing this afternoon.”

He raised a rakish eyebrow. “We could save water and bathe together.”

Lila shrugged with a little smile, knowing his words to be jest. All the same, she turned away to hide her expression, for his words had offered her an unbearably acute vision of the two of them tangled in the galvanized tub, the fire crackling in the stove.
Damn,
she thought, swallowing.
What is it about this man?

When she glanced back, she found him staring at her, his black eyes molten and unfathomable. For a single instant he met her gaze, then his expression turned wistful. “Ah, Lila,” he said. “I cannot believe…” He shook his head, glanced to the graying sea. “Never mind.” He hauled himself to his feet. “We must go if we are to beat the storm.”

Although she’d begun to adjust to his abrupt changes of conversation, this one left her breathless. For the first time, she considered the idea that it might be best if they remained friends, after all. There was such a yearning in him at times that Lila wondered if she could possibly survive the force of it.

T
hey didn’t quite beat the rain to Lila’s cabin, and by the time they arrived, both were soaked. Lila had taken off her jacket to protect the backpack filled with their supplies. With typical chivalry, Samuel had then removed his jacket to throw over Lila’s shoulders, and none of her protests would make him take it back.

As a result he was dripping wet when they hurried into the snug little cabin. Lila was only slightly drier. Dumping her backpack on the table, she glared at him. “Look at you! You’re soaked.”

“So are you.”

“I’m not the one with an injury that’s in danger of infection,” she said. “Sit down and let me look at that wound.”

For a moment he acted as if he might protest. Something in Lila’s expression must have dissuaded him, because he dropped into the chair, unbuttoning his shirt.

The bandages were soaked, as she had expected. Gently but firmly she tugged the white tape away from the edges of the gauze square, then eased the wet bandage from the wound, taking her time to make certain no stitches stuck.

Gunshot wounds were not something she had ever seen, but she’d imagined his wound would be a neat circle. The reality made her stomach hurt, for it was a long, jagged tear angling along his collarbone, then over the soft flesh above. “Oh, Samuel,” she breathed. “You must have sixty stitches here.”

“Fifty-eight,” he said with a grim smile. “I prefer them to the alternatives.”

“I suppose you would.” With gentle fingers she palpated the edges of the wound, looking for signs of infection. “My old granny would say you had some big purpose, surviving something that was meant to kill you.”

“Or one can thank small-caliber guns.”

“Cynic. Did they give you some antibiotics?”

With exaggerated patience he looked at her. “Yes, Mother,” he said, but his smile was closer to amused than cynical.

“It looks good,” she said. “You probably don’t need to keep it covered any longer. The air will be good for it.” She rolled the trash into a ball. “I’m amazed that you drove from the hospital to my house.”

He stood. “I had good reason,” he said, and lifted his shirt from the back of the chair.

Since she couldn’t decide if he meant he had been fleeing danger or had needed to see her, she didn’t reply. “You can have the first bath,” she said. “I’ll get the water going.”

“No, please, you go first. I think I will rest, if there is nothing you would have me do.”

With alarm Lila saw that his face was pale once again, and she felt guilty for marching him all over the countryside with his injuries. “Oh, no. Please feel free. I have some books under the eaves up there. Mostly history, though, I’m afraid.”

“I think I will sleep. Thank you.”

She watched him climb the stairs, a little concerned about his exhaustion. When he had disappeared, she sighed and stoked the embers in the stove into a snapping hot fire, feeding it twigs and small pieces of wood until it could sustain heavy blocks of pine.

That done, she carried in buckets of water that she put on the stove to heat, then dragged the galvanized tub from beneath the stairs and filled it a quarter-full with cold water.

By the time the water on the stove was boiling, she found she was tired herself. Dropping a packet of powdered scent into the water, she kicked off her shoes, peeled the socks from her feet and shucked her flannel shirt and jeans.

It was then that she thought of Samuel. Standing in the warmed room, clad only in a thin T-shirt and her panties, she felt utterly vulnerable. No one had ever been with her in this tiny place, and it was isolated enough that she’d enjoyed her solitude and the pleasure of bathing in front of the stove. She hesitated a moment, feeling an odd sense of decadence at being completely bare while a man slept upstairs.

Sleeping is the key word, Waters.
With a snort at her fanciful turn of thoughts, she discarded the rest of her clothes. There was nothing decadent about bathing, and Samuel, whatever else he might be, was not a wolf who’d peek down the stairs at her.

As she climbed into the lavender-scented water, though, she thought of his teasing words on the beach—that perhaps they ought to bathe together. It made her feel jointless to think of him in here with her, to think of his sleek chest against hers, the water lubricating their skin until it was slippery.

She sunk lower into the water, propping her feet on the end of the tub. Her toes framed the window, through which poured a pale gray light, and the fire snapped cheerfully, smelling richly of spicy needles. It was, she thought, a very romantic place and moment. Even the rain seemed cooperative for once, lending a musical backdrop to the scene. Lazily she closed her eyes, thinking of Samuel. Would his touch be gentle or fierce? How would his body feel next to hers?

Ah, Samuel, what will it take to tempt you? she thought.

A thump from above, perhaps a dropped shoe, shattered her sensual daze. She sat upright, splashing water.

The man was wounded, exhausted—and determined to avoid entanglements. Seduction had never been her style, and it was embarrassing to realize that was just what she’d been contemplating.

With sharp, brisk strokes she began to scrub her body with a rough sponge, attempting, she knew, to wash her fantasies away with the grime.

* * *

Samuel was not sleeping. He lay in the bed beneath the window, listening to Lila hum to herself. Beneath her voice he heard the light splashes of water as she bathed. He thought of her lovely body, bared and wet, and wondered how it would smell and taste and feel, wondered with such intensity that he thought he would go mad. Would freckles dot her shoulders and breasts? Was her waist as willowy as it appeared?

When he had kissed her at her house in Seattle, he had been completely swept away by the passion he had discovered, for he had not anticipated her earthiness or the boldness of her pale, sweetly innocent eyes, eyes that had taken on a languorous heat as she had caught his face and kissed him again. Then she had been shy at the airport, when he’d wanted to taste that passion again.

The contrasts of her intrigued and annoyed him. Was she passionate or shy?

He shifted, trying to darken the flickering imaginings in his brain. Her cabin, he thought, was at odds with her small house in Seattle. The only thing they had in common was a wood stove. The house in Seattle had been filled with lush fabrics and bright, jingling things. It had been the home of a gypsy, the perfect backdrop for the woman who wore long, full skirts and too much jewelry and rode a motorcycle to work.

In contrast, the cabin was utterly simple and serene. The patchwork quilts were hand pieced and old, and he’d seen jars of homemade jam on the shelves of the pantry. She had baked simple muffins for their breakfast, and he’d glimpsed a knitting bag to one side of the room. Her clothing here reflected a simple, homey woman—more in keeping with the daughter of Oklahoma ranchers than a bohemian student.

Which was the real Lila? How could both be contained within the same small woman? Thinking about it made his head hurt. He was too tired to be chasing around in circles, he thought with a congratulatory mental sensibility. It didn’t matter which Lila was which, anyway. He could not have her, whatever guise she adopted.

It was that simple and that tragic.

* * *

He did not awaken until long after dark. His mouth was dry, his shoulder stiffly painful, his thoughts as grim as a gravestone. For long moments he lay in the dark, listening to the interminable rain fall against the window. His thoughts, like his dreams, were of his brother.

Mustapha. Three years older, a half a head taller. A physical, spoiled and passionate boy who’d taken a wrong turn.

Both of them had faced pressures as the children of a mixed marriage in a land where emotions ran high about such things. But even as a young boy, Samuel had loved the romance of his parents’ match as it was told to him by his mother and then his grandfather, who approved any happy marriage, any happiness found anywhere.

Mustapha had not accepted it as readily. He had vacillated between the religions of his parents, resenting his lack of belonging with any group of children in school. In England, at school he’d fallen in with progressively troublesome students until he’d been expelled. Instead of providing a springboard to a sensible look at his attitudes, Mustapha had taken the expulsion to heart as further evidence of his outcast status.

Over the years Samuel had tried to talk to his brother, tried to lure him to the States, where everyone had a multitude of histories and cultures. Not that they handled it perfectly, either, but he thought it might help his brother to see the way Americans cited their long lists of conflicting ancestors, histories tangled by love.

But Mustapha had been unwilling. He drifted, at times accomplishing some little thing in his life or for the world he lived in, more often falling in with unstable rebels.

And now he was linked with the Freedom League, an extreme and hysterical group. Samuel couldn’t understand how Mustapha had allowed himself to become involved.