Something Different/Pepper's Way (26 page)

When he reached the kitchen door, he felt tremors in the very foundation of his world. Mrs. Small was smiling.
Smiling.
And even as he watched and listened in incredulous fascination, he heard her laugh for the first time in five years. It was an odd, deep laugh, seemingly rusty from disuse, but it was definitely a laugh.

She was leaning against the refrigerator and stirring something in a large mixing bowl, unperturbed by the Doberman trying to hide behind her as she listened to Pepper’s cheerful little-girl voice. And Pepper was sitting on the end of the counter wearing jeans, ridiculously small boots, and a red and black plaid shirt over a black sweater.

Thor watched her gesture to illustrate some point he wasn’t taking in, wondering dimly how she had managed to pile all her hair on the top of her head to achieve that tousled, impossibly sexy look. Then she glanced toward the door and saw him, breaking the trance he seemed to be swimming in.

“Hi, Thor,” she said casually.

“Hi,” he managed.

She tilted her head to one side like an inquisitive robin. “Are you all right? You look strange.”

“I’m fine,” he murmured, deciding not to explain that he’d expected a mushroom cloud and gotten Alice’s mirror instead.

He wasn’t sure he understood it himself.

four

BEFORE ANOTHER WORD COULD BE SPOKEN
, a head popped out of the doorway to the hall leading to the mud and laundry rooms. It was a masculine head roughly seventeen years old, with an attempt at a mustache, fairly long brown hair, and the mild brown eyes of a hopeful spaniel. “Jo Jo’s done, Pep. Want me to start on Dickens next?” While Thor was pondering the meaning of these mysterious words, Pepper answered cheerfully, “Give him a few more minutes to settle down; Mrs. Shannon just brought him a little while ago. I’ll take care of Jo Jo while you work on Ladama’s nails.” “Right.” He vanished.

Pepper slid down off the counter, using every ounce of her control to keep from laughing at Thor’s bewildered expression. Studiously refusing to look at him, she smiled at Mrs. Small instead. “After I’ve finished, I’ll go and dig out that recipe, Jean. You may not be able to find all the ingredients around here, but I have most of the raw spices.”

Mrs. Small nodded. “I’d love to try my hand at it.” “Great. See you later.” With a wave to Thor Pepper disappeared through the doorway.

He stared after her. Jo Jo? Dickens? Ladama? He looked at Mrs. Small.
Jean?

Cryptically Mrs. Small said, “Sukiyaki. Authentic. I’ll need to borrow her wok though.” She turned back to her mixing bowl with an absent “Move, Fifi.” As the Doberman shifted slightly sideways and continued to regard Thor with uneasy eyes, the housekeeper added even more cryptically, “A little Japanese village.”

Shaking off the growing conviction that this was a continuation of his wild dream, Thor headed purposefully for the mudroom. He didn’t know what was going on in his house, but he meant to find out.

The mudroom had been transformed. Along the garage side of the wall were several wire kennels of various sizes, four of them occupied by three poodles and a cocker spaniel. On a makeshift table sat a disdainful collie whose paw was being bent over by the strange young man with the attempt at a mustache. A collection of bottles sat on the wide counter beside the sink, along with several crumpled towels and a stack of neatly folded ones.

Another table, this one entirely professional, had been set up on the other side of the sink. On shelves beneath it were three hair dryers; a variety of electric clippers, brushes, and combs; and a tasteful selection of narrow, colorful ribbons. On the top of the table stood a silver-gray miniature poodle, eyes half closed in blissful enjoyment as two brushes were worked steadily through his thick coat.

Wielding the brushes with the casual, easy precision of an expert was Pepper. She didn’t look around as the door opened, but simply said firmly, “Out, Brutus.”

Thor looked down to see the tiny Chihuahua turn stiffly and stalk from the room. He shut the door and leaned back
against it, staring again around the room. “What the hell?” he muttered.

“Thor, this is Tim.” She gestured toward the young man with the nail clippers, still without looking around. “Tim, our host.”

Tim looked up briefly. “Hi.” Then bent again, his full attention back on the collie’s nails.

“Hi. So this is what you wanted the room for?”

“Obviously. You don’t mind, do you? It’s Kristen’s business, you know. She had a little place in town, but since the lease was up, I decided to work out here instead.”

“Does Kristen know?” Thor asked dryly.

“No. But then, she thinks she’s coming back to the States.”

“And she isn’t?” Thor pulled fragments of conversation into his mind. “I thought you said you planned to move on in a few weeks.”

Pepper glanced at him, wondering in amusement if he was beginning to feel trapped. “That’s what I plan. I think Kristen will come back only to pack up her things. That English breeder had something permanent in mind when he swept her off, I just know it. They’ll be happy together.”

Thor pondered the information. “I see. Did you—uh—introduce them, by any chance?”

“Sort of. You don’t mind about this, do you?”

A neat change of subject, he decided. “No. No, if Mrs. Small doesn’t mind, then I don’t.”

“Jean loves dogs.”

“I didn’t know that,” he mumbled.

“Mmm. Anyway, we’ll be out of your hair within a few weeks.” Pepper sent an amused glance his way. “So you don’t have to panic.”

“I wasn’t,” he told her, sending a glance toward the
younger man and hoping that the conversation was too cryptic for him to follow.

“Of course not. The thought of my moving in bag and baggage doesn’t daunt you a bit, does it?”

Thor decided to use one of her tricks and change the subject. “What’s this about a little village in Japan and sukiyaki?”

She was blandly casual. “Just a recipe I picked up a few years ago. I’m about to turn on the clippers here, which will make conversation totally impossible. And I think Jean has your lunch ready.”

Thor smiled wryly at the far from subtle hint. “Okay, okay. No help from you in the god of thunder’s quest, I take it.”

Pepper chose a set of clippers and plugged them into the outlet beside the table, giving Thor a limpid smile. “Fair is fair. When the quarry turns to confront his huntress … well, who knows?”

His smile went a little crooked. Respect for her grew as he realized that the lady was far from dumb. She saw that, however willing he was to be chased, he wasn’t yet ready to explain his reasons for running. With a slight inclination of his head that was half acceptance and half salute, he murmured, “Just call you Diana.”

“Goddess of the hunt?” she queried lightly demonstrating a knowledge of Greek as well as Norse mythology.

“Goddess of the hunt. Join me for lunch?”

She shook her head slightly. “I have to finish up my friends here before five.”

“You have to eat,” he reminded.

“I usually skip lunch.”

“Bad habit.”

“I never claimed to be perfect. See you, Thor.”

Giving in to the nudge, Thor sighed softly and left the
makeshift grooming parlor, hearing the clippers begin to buzz loudly.

Mrs. Small—Thor couldn’t bring himself to think of her as Jean—served him cheese enchiladas, and since it wasn’t her habit to experiment with “foreign” fare, he looked at her ques-tioningly.

“Mexico,” she responded in answer to the look. “Pepper’s recipe. Authentic.”

Thor sampled Pepper’s recipe. “Delicious,” he said honestly. Before Mrs. Small could return to the kitchen, he decided to do a bit of unscrupulous digging. “When was she in Mexico?” he asked casually.

“Last year.” The housekeeper picked up a china vase from the sideboard and apparently decided to take it back to the kitchen for a wash rather than a dusting. “The same time as you were there.”

Thor looked up quickly. “Does she know I was there?”

“Didn’t mention it.” She left the room.

Staring after her, Thor wondered which of them hadn’t mentioned it—Pepper or Mrs. Small. His housekeeper had never struck him as the type to talk about her employer, but he wasn’t sure, after today, that she wouldn’t answer a direct question if Pepper asked. And he couldn’t help but wonder if Pepper had decided to do a bit of unscrupulous digging as well.

He also wondered about her presence in Mexico. Clearly the lady had done a bit of traveling; the recipes from Japan and Mexico, and she’d mentioned spending six months in a desert with camels. Not that she’d put it that way, of course, but
desert
and
camels
suggested Arabia or northern Africa, both of which he, too, had spent time in.

She hadn’t traveled the world grooming dogs, he knew. So what
did
she do? Was she wealthy? Heaven knew she neither
looked nor acted it, but he’d quickly learned not to stick any kind of label on Pepper, and that RV hadn’t come cheap.

It was another piece to the puzzle and he didn’t know where to fit it.

Five o’clock had just passed when the last of the dogs had been picked up by admiring owners and Tim had left with the girlfriend who’d come to get him. Pepper finished cleaning up the mudroom, leaving it neat before wandering out into the kitchen. An appetizing scent led her to the oven, where she discovered lasagna bubbling away.

Pepper grinned faintly, noting that the lasagna recipe and the ones for cheese enchiladas and sukiyaki were tacked to a small cork board above a counter work area. She hoped that Thor didn’t mind this culinary experimentation, since Jean seemed determined to try every recipe in Pepper’s rather crowded recipe box.

Still smiling, she left the kitchen. Both Thor and Jean had told her to treat the house as home, and she felt no uneasiness about doing just that. Besides, she had to find the pets; they seemed to have disappeared in the last few hours.

The muffled roar of the vacuum cleaner told her that Jean was finishing up the bedrooms upstairs, but no other sound led her to the pets or Thor. Puzzled, she went from room to room, ending up in the empty study. Nothing. She crossed to the window with a view of the pasture, pulled the heavy drapes aside and looked through.

And she couldn’t help but grin.

Fifi sat off to one side, wary and keeping her distance as she watched Thor throwing a small stick for Brutus to fetch. The difference in size of Thor’s six-feet-three two-hundred-pound frame and Brutus’s seven inches and less than two pounds was
utterly ridiculous. But both seemed oblivious to the comical aspects of their game.

Pepper watched for a few moments, then rose on her tiptoes to look down toward the hollow and Lucifer’s stable. The bottom half of the Dutch door was closed, she saw, and the stallion shut inside. So … Thor really was worried about his horse hurting the dogs. She’d have to do something about that. Tomorrow. Maybe before Thor woke up in the morning.

Pleased that Thor was making an effort to get friendly with her pets, but wondering if it was only because he wanted to save wear and tear on his nerves, she turned away from the window. The baby grand in the room drew her like a magnet, and she went over to sit on the padded bench.

Her fingers moved over the keys lightly, fluidly She played a bit of Mozart from memory, then began a soft pop song that was a favorite of hers. The piano was beautifully tuned, and Pepper lost herself in the enjoyment of having the chance to play. Leaving her piano behind was the one sacrifice she’d had to make in launching her gypsy life-style.

The words to the song formed in her mind, her throat, and she allowed them to escape softly. Only then did she realize that it was a love song about a woman who loved beyond all reason and feared to lose that love. It wasn’t a sad song, oddly enough, but one filled with determination. And, even as she was singing, Pepper wondered in amusement at the proddings of her subconscious.

The last notes trailed away into silence, and the sudden sound of a husky masculine voice threw her into confusion for one of the few times in her life.

“Was that meant for me?”

Startled, she swung around on the bench. Thor was standing in the doorway, leaning back against the jamb with his
arms crossed over his broad chest, and something in his eyes made her almost too breathless to answer.

“I thought you were outside,” she managed to say after a few moments of silence.

“Ah. Then it wasn’t meant for me?”

He wasn’t going to let her avoid answering, dammit. “I thought you were outside, I told you. The song was for me. I don’t like advertising my lack of voice.”

“Fishing?” he inquired with a lifted brow.

Pepper was honestly surprised. “Of course not.”

“Then,” he told her calmly, “you don’t know ability when you hear it. You could sing professionally.”

She blinked at him. “I could? Uh… I question your taste, but thank you for the compliment.”

“You play beautifully too.”

“Thank you,” she said gravely, staring at him.

“And you look sexy as hell with your hair piled on top of your head like that. I meant to tell you earlier.”