Sara's Surprise (8 page)

"Abracadabra. It will be provided." Feeling awkward and emotional, Sara covered by making a comical curtsy. "The sorceress of Moonspell Keep, at your service. Spells cast, potions mixed, wicked enchantments broken."

"Can you turn a frog into a prince?" he asked with grim humor that bore no trace of self-pity.

Sara studied him for a moment, wanting so much to help that she momentarily forgot all her worries. "It should be easy. I like frogs and princes. I'll see what I can do."

He nodded. "Deal."

Sara gazed at him solemnly. "Deal."

Sara smoothed the soft collar of Noelle's pink snowsuit. "Stay quiet, little bunny," she whispered to the baby. "Just until I get you to the truck." Noelle's black lashes fluttered but her eyes remained closed. The pacifier in her mouth wiggled up and down with each movement of her mouth. She was utterly trusting and innocent. She was also, thank goodness, sound asleep. Looking at her restored Sara's confidence. She closed the top of the wicker picnic basket in which the baby slept.

All she had to do was keep Noelle out of sight until she dropped Kyle off at the end of the driveway, where he'd left his car. It would be a ten-minute ordeal, no more. Sara couldn't think of a reasonable excuse for refusing him a ride. Besides, his quiet scrutiny unnerved her, and she didn't want to provoke any more questions than she could help.

Her plan was simple. The pickup truck had a camper hood. Curtains covered all the windows. During the past hour Sara had carefully secured the curtains with masking tape, so there'd be no chance of Kyle catching a glimpse between them. With a length of heavy rope she had fastened Noelle's car seat in one corner of the truck bed. After they were safety away from Kyle, Sara would move the baby to the front seat. The day was sunny; the camper's interior was pleasantly warm. Noelle would be comfortable and Daisy would keep her company. Ten minutes. That was all Sara needed.

The picnic basket was larger than average and Noelle was smaller. The basket had survived years of Scarborough family outings. Sara smiled wistfully, remembering. With two biologists for parents and two aspiring biologists for children, the picnics had often turned into field trips. This basket had held potato salad and birds' nests, fried chicken and snakeskins.

And now it held a precious secret.

Her hands trembling with nervousness, she hooked the strap of a floppy leather purse over one shoulder, then lifted the basket slowly, her palms sweating on the wide wooden handles. If she could get through this month's shopping trip safety, the rest of Kyle's visit shouldn't pose too many problems.

"Come on, Daisy. Let's just keep our cool and act like nothing's odd."

Daisy trotted out of the bedroom in front of Sara. Sara eased the basket to the hallway floor, then shut and locked the bedroom door. Her pulse thready, she carried the basket down the hall and stopped outside a door to one of the guest rooms.

Kyle's odd surname was derived from the more elegant-sounding St. Surpris. She remembered someone telling her that Kyle's great-great-grandfather was a French pirate who settled in Florida. Considering the way Kyle had come down the chimney, his last name ought to be St. Nick.

"Kyle?" she called, her voice high-pitched. "I'll be waiting in the truck."

She heard him cross the room hurriedly. Suddenly he pulled the heavy mahogany door openmaking the task look easier than it was for most peopleand grinned at her. "I'm ready. I was just washing soot off my arms. I know you'll be thrilled when I finally get a change of clothes."

He shoved his arms into his grimy shirt. His chest and shoulder muscles flexed under a snug white thermal top that was smudged with sooty fingerprints across the flat plane of his stomach. The prints disappeared under the waistband of his jeans. They would have made an interesting roadmap for a trip through Surprise territory.

"Clean clothes. Yes," Sara said, distracted.

"What's in the basket?"

"A rabbit." Her palms were damper than the Amazon rain forest. Sara took a steadying breath. "I keep it in the lab."

He frowned quizzically as he buttoned his shirt with large, extraordinarily nimble fingers that must have had lots of experience in delicate maneuvers. Sara suspected that those fingers were adept at dismantling everything from locks and bombs to a woman's resistance.

"You don't perform some kind of animal experiments, ' do you?" he asked. "You're not injecting Bugs Bunny with carrot hormones, I hope."

Sara managed a laugh. "I'm not Dr. Frankenstein. No. The, uhmmm, rabbit is just a pet. Unfortunately, it keeps getting out of its cage. It likes rare tropical plants for lunch. So I'm giving it back to the original owner."

"I love rabbits." Kyle smiled fiendishly. "Broiled, with a side dressing of rice." Sara swept him with a look of mock dismay and took a step back. He chuckled. "Jep and I hunted rabbits when we were growing up." He paused for effect. "Beach bunnies."

Sara only smiled, afraid to laugh again because it might wake Noelle. "I can picture the Surprise brothers on the prowl together. The Great Blond Hunters, cruising the dangerous coast of Florida, armed with suntan lotion and a cooler full of beer."

"Not Jeopard. He was the only guy on the beach with a cooler of Dom Perignon. And the only guy who needed absolutely nothing more than a smile to draw every female within sight."

Sara nodded, though she tried to picture Kyle's elegant, stern older brother lazing on the beach, carefree. She couldn't. Jeopard Surprise might have been fun-loving once, but the years had turned him into a tough, brooding enigma, frighteningly so. During the rescue attempt, before she'd realized that he was on her side, she'd lashed a well-aimed foot into his groin. He hadn't made a sound. He hadn't even looked upset. He had simply pushed her into the grip of a giant named Drake Lancaster, then leaned against a wall for a few seconds, his eyes nearly shut. The Iceman, she had heard Drake and Rucker call him.

"You love your brother very much, and you admire him," she said to Kyle. "I can hear that in your voice."

He nodded. "And I'm just as close to my sister Millie. The three of us pretty much raised each other. Our mother died when we were kids, and our old man put the navy first, the family second. But he was a hell of a guy." Kyle shrugged, any regrets resolved long ago.

"I think that you're the most interesting of the men in your family," Sara told him. "Probably the most creative too. So Jeopard used his perfect smile and expensive champagne to lure beach bunnies? What was your modus operandi?"

"I offered them milk," he assured her solemnly. "I went for the wholesome girls."

"Or maybe the girls with good teeth and big, uhmmm, bones."

He laughed richly. "Those too."

The beautiful masculine tones of his laughter made her giddy; they were like fine wine hitting her bloodstream. When he suddenly stepped into the hall, Sara moved quickly away from him, almost stumbling.

"I just want to look at your cottontail," he protested.

Sara put a hand over the spot where the picnic basket's lid had once, years before, had a clasp. "It's it's wild. I can't open the basket."

"You keep a wild rabbit for a pet? Let me guessIt's a guard rabbit for the lab. All right, youse dirty thief"he turned his voice into what could only, to Sara's rattled mind, be described as James Cagney doing Thumper "drop the microscope or I'll mate with your wife's fuzzy bedroom slippers."

Sara covered her mouth to keep from either laughing or crying, she wasn't sure which. The strain of having Kyle so close to Noelle was beginning to tell.

"Your rabbit smells like you sprayed perfume on it," he commented, sniffing.

Baby powder
. Sara winced inwardly. Damn this situation! Everything in her scientist's nature was devoted to finding and recognizing the truth. Weaving this ludicrous lie went against the principles of her orderly universe. And she was just plain lousy at it. She walked toward the great room, holding her picnic basket in front of her as if she could block the fragrance of scented talc.

"You smell Eau de Carrot," she said over her shoulder in a tone that meant drop the subject. "Hurry up. I'm leaving."

"Sara." He caught up with her, slipping into his dirty jacket as she entered a big foyer where the cold gray stone walls suited her mood. "Let me carry your killer bunny," he teased gently. "I didn't mean to upset you."

She shook her head but gave him a reassuring smile. "Just open the door and let the bridge down. The key's hanging on the horn over there."

From a short white horn mounted on a wall plaque he took a key ring so large that Sara could have put it over her head like a heavy necklace. It was made of wrought iron, with moons and stars worked into one quadrant of the circle. The ornate key contained the same design. The head of it filled the palm of Kyle's hand.

"When did you buy the place from the giant?" he asked dryly. Then he glanced at the horn. "Nice trophy. Caught a unicorn in the backyard, hmmm?"

"It came from an antelope." Sara felt Noelle shift inside the basket. "My brother and I found it on a family safari to Africa. I must have been about ten years old. The antelope had died from natural causes. But I do love unicorns. When I was very little my grandfather had me believing that they hid behind the trees in the garden. I knew that if I looked hard enough, I'd see them. I don't think I've ever given up hope. Open the door. This rabbit might get impatient."

The door's original bolt slid back with a ponderous creaking of iron on wood as Kyle turned the key. He studied the newer electronic lock next to the door handle. "Your code, m'lady."

"One four two, two two six."

He punched buttons. "Any mystical significance, sorceress?"

"Nope. It's just a combination of my IQ and birthday."

Kyle arched a brow at her. "You were born in January 1942?" Smiling wryly, she shook her head. He exhaled with relief. "February twenty-sixth?" She nodded. "So your IQ is only a modest genius level of one hundred and forty-two points?"

"Yes."

"Thank God. For a second I felt like a chimpanzee who's just found out he's been discussing bananas with Albert Einstein."

He pushed the door open. Sara pointed to a control panel on the wall of the outer foyer. "That operates the bridge."

She waited until she was certain that Kyle's atten-

tion was trained on the interesting spectacle of a hydraulic system lowering five yards of heavy wooden bridge across a moat filled with good old southern privet hedge. Then she lifted the basket lid and peeked inside. Noelle lay on her stomach sleeping soundly, just as before.