Earth Legend (15 page)

And as the kiss went on an on, I was blown to
smithereens again but this time I didn't check myself to make sure
I was still intact because I knew the disintegration wasn't
physical. But as I finally pulled away, I was disgusted that a
simple kiss could affect me so profoundly. Me, Elle Olmstead, woman
of intelligence and many degrees who knew ease and comfort and
exactly what the world was like and where in it I belonged.

Problem was, I wasn't on that world any
longer.

I leaned back and looked up into those night
eyes. I pecked him again on the cheek just to show that I was the
one in control. "We put on a good show, didn't we?"

His arms were steel and held me tight as one
dark eyebrow rose at my words and he fought to get his breathing
back under control. Good! At least he wasn't totally immune to
me.

But he hadn't splintered like I had. His lips
twitched complacently leaving me to hope I matched his
self-control. "Guess we should go now." He dumped me and started
away, long legs striding in double-time, leaving me to find my
balance as best I could. "Got to figure how to fit your things in
my house."

He wasn't heading for either the elevators or
his bike. He was heading for the houses where the important people
on the Destiny lived. Of course it would be where the head of
Security was housed. I yelled after him, uncaring who heard. "I
will not live in Center City."

"Yes you will." The nearby watchers turned
towards us in order to hear better. Yep, the gossip mill was in
high gear. "My job is in Center City so we live in my house."

"I hate cities." He snorted and kept walking.
The watchers held their breath over this fascinating lovers'
quarrel. I cringed thinking of the story about to make the rounds.
Then I ran after Cullen and whispered so none of them could hear.
"I'll lose my powers if I stay here." I do work best in the
country, that was true even if the rest was a bit of an
exaggeration.

"You're lying. You won't lose them." His own
voice was low enough to keep the conversation between the two of us
though a woman nearby held her breath in an attempt to hear
better.

"I will." I put my lips to his ear. Nuzzled
him, let my lips drift over the skin behind his ear, knowing what
any onlookers would make of my gesture, fighting my body's reaction
because I didn't want to come apart a third time in one day. "My
gift doesn't come easy. I can't just wave my arms and make
everything right. I have to concentrate and I can't do that when
I'm tired or tense and I'm both in a city. The noise drives me
crazy not to mention that there's a dearth of plants here."

"There's green, living stuff all over the
Destiny. Almost every square inch." He didn't move, didn't turn to
me, did nothing to stop my lips from grazing his neck. I breathed
deeply and licked his skin, gratified by his sudden intake of
breath. "There are plants in Center City." He inclined his head
enough to indicate a nearby park. "Look around."

"No matter how lovely, it's still a city. I'm
a country girl."

He turned and as simply as that our lips were
almost touching. "What do you consider country on the Destiny?" He
saw the Destiny as a ship, I saw it as a self-contained world,
complete with meadows, forests and towns. "Where, exactly, do you
need to be in order to do what you do?"

I brightened. I was about to get what I
needed. Wanted. "Home. The orchard. Or my apartment in New
Rochelle."

He rolled his eyes and shuddered. "A small
town. A tiny apartment."

"Surrounded by farms and orchards."

His wiggled his shoulders. Stared at me.
Scowled. Gave up because he couldn't prove I wasn't truthful.
"Okay." He pulled back a few inches. Our lovers' quarrel evidently
settled, people around us moved on about their business but I knew
their comunits were working overtime spreading the word that Cullen
Vail had a girlfriend. "I need some things, clothes, stuff like
that. It won't take long." He started off but turned when I didn't
follow. "Come on"

"I'll wait here."

"You can't do that. We're joined at the hip,
remember?" Then he did something unexpected. He smiled, a slight
flexing of facial muscles that looked to onlookers like a real
smile but that told me he was about to get back at me for our very
public kiss. "We're supposed to be lovers. What's more natural than
for the two of us to disappear into my place for a while?" My face
flamed but I trudged beside him to a building that was smaller than
the ones around it but still imposing and then he led the way on up
the porch steps.

His house was spare, with little furniture
and no pictures of family or friends so there were few things for
him to stuff into the backpacks he pulled from under his bed. He
filled one with clothes and tossed it aside, then filled the second
with still more clothes and a few personal care items. He started
to close it. Then he stopped.

I pretended to look out the window while
surreptitiously watching to see what he'd almost forgotten. Cullen
Vail never forgot anything. I almost lost my breath when he pulled
a set of lovely, handmade pan pipes from a drawer and placed them
quickly into the bag, wrapping them in several layers of clothes to
keep them safe, all the while looking my way to see if I'd noticed.
I stared hard out the window so he'd not know I was watching.

He was the musician in the orchard. Seeing
the pipes I had no doubt and the knowledge knocked me speechless.
He was the man whose music had moved me. The magical shadow who
took me back to Earth and all I held dear. Cullen Vail, man of no
emotion, had made the music that had brought me to tears and
laughter.

But he didn't want anyone to know. He'd
slipped into an orchard he'd thought deserted and only played his
pipes in the middle of the night. Because he was the head of
Security, a man of no emotion, an armed policeman capable of doing
whatever it took to keep order?

I continued to pretend to look out the window
at the city beyond as inside of me everything I'd known about
Cullen Vail changed. Morphed. I stared at buildings and people but
I was seeing the orchard at night and the outline of a mysterious
man playing love songs.

He, of course, thought I was watching a slice
of city life through his window. He closed his backpacks and joined
me warily, afraid for a moment that I'd jump on him, but I didn't
so together we looked at the scene beyond the window while I
managed to avoid staring at the backpack with great effort. And I
tried to think of something to say. Anything. "I hope you don't
mess up your job because of moving to New Rochelle."

He shrugged. "No problem. I can live
anywhere. I can keep in touch from every corner of the
Destiny."

"Unlike what you told the captain."

"I told the captain the truth. My job is
here, things would go better if I stayed in my own house."

"I hope you can manage."

"I can." His voice wasn't strident any
longer. It was quiet, soft almost. Human.

I was close enough to see the dark hairs on
the backs of his hands. I turned slightly to see the rest of him,
this man who was suddenly an unknown quantity. It was an odd
feeling. He was the same man as five minutes earlier and yet he was
entirely different and all because of the pan pipes. He stood stiff
as I made myself continue with more small talk, blurting out the
only thing I could think of. "I'm sorry you have to watch me
yourself. I'm sorry I'm such a bother."

His answering look sent a bolt of electricity
through me head to toe and back again. "I'm just doing my job." He
stared at me and licked his lips. Then, as if he couldn't stop
himself, he took a step until we were almost touching and I could
see that his eyes now, unlike other times, were all the colors of a
living, breathing night. "And right now you are my job, Elle
Olmstead. You. Just you."

If I touched him … just touched him … my
insides would skitter in every direction and I'd come totally apart
from the strain of trying to fit the two completely different
people he'd become into one body. So I stayed still and stared at
him from a distance of a few inches.

He cleared his throat again but his voice was
still scratchy as if he was catching a cold. "We should get
going."

We left his house and climbed onto his bike
and set off with me behind him and my arms around his waist. I was
glad for the layers of clothing separating our bodies.

It was soon apparent that he didn't like my
apartment. "It's not like when you were doing whatever it was that
you did to bring the crops back to health. Then I knew I wouldn't
be here long." He sighed, ran his fingers through that black hair
until it was actually tousled. Then he pointed at my couch with a
look of pure hate. "But I refuse to sleep on that thing any longer
than necessary."

I offered him my bed but he refused. Of
course. So, when I crawled into my comfortable bed several hours
later, I pictured him scrunched on my couch and I felt so guilty
that I couldn't sleep because he was forced to watch out for me and
that meant that he was sleeping on a couch a foot shorter than he
was.

I wiggled a few times and deliberately
thought about kittens and pink clouds, but I still couldn't sleep.
I tried one side and then the other but that didn't help either. I
checked the time on my comunit and groaned. The night was passing.
In the morning Cullen would take one look at me and think that
being in my own apartment wasn't helping and he'd insist we live in
Center City. I didn't want that.

So I picked up a pillow and threw it across
the room to vent a little frustration. It hit the wall with a thud
as Braveheart scrambled as far from me as possible and mewed
loudly. I silently apologized to Braveheart for scaring him but
throwing the pillow had felt good.

"You okay in there?"

"I'm fine."

"I heard something."

"My pillow fell on the floor."

"Pillows don't make that kind of noise unless
they are thrown."

I blew hair from my eyes. It was growing out,
had grown a lot since I'd cut it and the brown dye had faded during
my incarceration until I was now almost back to my original bright
orange, insanely curly, long hair. I'd felt Cullen's gaze on it
several times and once he'd said something about not needing a
light at night. It was hard to pull fingers through those curls but
I was so frustrated that I managed, yanking out a few hairs in the
process. "Okay, it didn't fall. I threw it."

Silence, then, "I'm sorry that you wish I was
elsewhere. But I'm staying."

Time for truth. Sort of. Not the whole truth
but I did appreciate the fact that he was nearby. "I'm not angry
with you."

He sighed so loudly that I heard it through
the wall. "Liar." His baritone penetrated the walls easily. "As far
as you are concerned, I'm the devil incarnate."

I padded across the bedroom and reassured
Bravehart that I didn't hate him, then I retrieved my pillow and
brought it back to my bed where I curled around it, telling myself
I shouldn't feel the need to apologize to someone who'd throw me
out of the airlock if the Captain so ordered. "You're not the
devil." It was easy to hate Cullen Vail, head of Security. It was
harder to hate someone who played pipes in the middle of the night
and made music that filled my heart to bursting.

Not just harder, it was impossible.

The first thought I had the next morning as I
uncoupled myself from that pillow and cuddled Braveheart until he
butted me with his head and left my bedroom was that Cullen would
make some lucky woman a wonderful housewife, a thought I'd had
every morning during the time when I'd done my thing with the
plants on the Destiny and come home exhausted each night. As on
those mornings, today the table was set for two and I saw muffins
and fruit on it. Breakfast smells wafted from the stove where
sausage and eggs were being kept warm. I could use someone like
Cullen around the house.

Cullen was eating his food with gusto, wide
awake. He was a morning person. "I went for a walk already." He
shoved a plate at me. "I ran into Wilkes Zander. We talked."

"About what?" I ignored the table, found a
muffin and slathered it with jam, wandering the room as I ate while
Cullen remained at the table with a full plate.

"He's getting us a different apartment. One
with two bedrooms."

I couldn't argue with that even though I'd
turned my apartment into a comfortable home. "Where is the new
place?"

"Close. An apartment down the hall happens to
be vacant."

I licked jam from my fingers. "When?"

"Today. The movers will do everything, we
just have to get out of their way."

We looked at his backpacks in a corner. One
was closed, the other open where he'd dug in it for clothes.
Braveheart was checking them out, weaving around them. "We can go
to the orchard while we wait. It's time to harvest apples." Kittens
like to crawl inside things. I started after Braveheart before he
slipped into Cullen's backpack.

Too late. He was in it and mewing happily.
Cullen panicked. "Get out of there!" He moved to drag Braveheart
out but the kitten was slippery. Instead of removing Braveheart,
Cullen knocked the backpack over and the contents spilled onto the
floor, including the pan pipes.

They skittered across the rug with Braveheart
in pursuit and Cullen not far behind. "Hey, cat! Leave them alone!"
He grabbed them and held them high while he stared suspiciously at
Braveheart. "Leave my pipes alone."

"They are beautiful." He froze as I said the
words because they meant that I saw the pipes, possibly the first
person ever. He was white with some emotion I couldn't understand
but I knew that I had to say something, had to get him moving
again, had to get him past whatever fear he had of people knowing
he was a talented musician so I blurted out the story of my aunt.
"She made her own pipes. Did you make yours?"