Silver and Spice (6 page)

“Anne?” Jake’s voice came from behind her.

All regal pride, she turned with the utmost patience.

“I’m leaving the motor home here, so you can put your clothes and things in place.”

“You can’t park here. The condo rules—”

“I fixed that.”

She sighed. “
Why
am I not surprised?”

Jake had his hand on the door. His silver wolverine eyes held hers, and she felt all the fascination of captured prey. “Run your tub full of very hot water, Anne,” he tossed after her thoughtfully. “I want you completely naked, darling. Leave all the lights off. Just darkness, just those petals floating all around you, clinging to that ivory skin of yours…”

He slowly shook his head, obviously in reverent appreciation of his fantasy, then closed the door. Thankfully, Anne noted, with him on the inside. She suddenly found herself staring at her neighbor, who was just as intently staring back at her, wide-eyed.

“He’s a total stranger,” Anne said weakly. “I’ve never met that man before in my life.”

Her neighbor nodded.

Mesmerized, Anne stared at the ocean of slow-waving corn that rippled on all sides from east to west, north to south. There was nothing else. Just the black strip of road, a blue sky that kept on coming, and the endless cornfields. It wasn’t a view she’d expected when they’d started out at two that morning.

“You haven’t said a word in an hour,” Jake remarked to her from the driver’s seat.

Absently, she fingered the lace ruffle at the throat of her pale blue blouse. “I’ve either fallen in love with Iowa or I’m suffering from culture shock.” Glancing at Jake, she smiled ruefully. “I just keep looking out there… Somewhere down those side roads are the people who feed this country. Survivors. And suddenly I feel like a parasite.”

“Because you work at a bank?” His brows shot up.

“Because I just
sit
at a bank, and usually think of corn as a commodity that fluctuates on the market. Of course, banking is exactly what I want to do, but I never considered how far removed my life really is from…I don’t know…
real
work.”

He shook his head. “You
do
real work, foolish one. You make it possible for that farmer out there to buy his farm, to keep operating through the bad years, to build up a heritage for his kids.”

His instant defense of her work surprised her; she’d always thought Jake felt more amusement than respect for anyone who worked at a desk. “That was almost a nice thing to say,” she ventured casually.

Jake shot her a crooked grin. “You love what you do, and you’re good at it. Did you think I never noticed?”

“Good Lord, I think that was another nice thing to say.”

Jake chuckled. “Maybe you could blend both worlds, and open up your bank vault in bib overalls.”

Anne smoothed her mauve wool skirt and thought,
We have to stop having these nice, easy conversations.
She’d chattered to him all morning, laughing over absolutely nothing, forgetting completely that it wasn’t just Jake next to her, but Jake-who-came-back-threatening-marriage-this-time. “Do you want a snack?” she asked suddenly.

“Restless, Anne?”

“Terribly,” she lied, as she got up, ducking under the overhead berth to head to the back of the motor home. “I warned you I wasn’t a very good traveler, Jake, much less a camper. I can’t imagine where we’re going to find a place to stay in country like this tonight.”

“Fildekirky, Iowa,” Jake called back to her.

In spite of herself, she chuckled at the sound of the name, and started opening cupboards.

“If you find a doughnut back there
…
”

She brought him a bag of dried pineapple slices, which would be much better for him than a doughnut and would still satisfy his sweet tooth, then returned to the miniature kitchen to make herself a cup of peppermint tea. It still amazed her that she could get up anytime she liked and make a cup of peppermint tea while driving.

A moment later, she took a sip of her brew, glancing around before going back to sit by Jake. The motor home, she decided, was a symbol of the impermanence of Jake’s lifestyle. It represented the unbridgeable distance between them…but she seemed to be falling in love with the darned thing. Everything was so meticulously neat; there was a place for everything, home comforts begging to be taken advantage of.

She’d had three days to rearrange everything, of course. Her yogurt had joined his beer, fresh fruits and vegetables supplemented his canned goods, sleeping bags had been replaced by percale sheets on both the double bed and her berth. Next to his paper plates and plastic forks were china and sterling. Her wardrobe provided a contrast to his; traveling suits to his jeans, high-heeled shoes to his tennies.

She’d deliberately gone overboard, right down to the brands of toothpaste she’d chosen, in an effort to impress Jake that their values were terribly different even in the little things. Taking a minute to reapply lipstick in their tiny bathroom, Anne took in her reflection, from the high-throated blouse and modest violet skirt to the prim coil of hair at the nape of her neck. The image was honestly Anne, soft fabrics and gentle colors and classic styles. She was not flamboyant and never would be; she was not at all the kind of woman she expected Jake to end up with.

Fleetingly, her soft jade eyes met their reflection in the mirror; her expression was oddly distressed at that moment. Surprisingly, she was happy to be with Jake. She had always been all too happy to be with Jake, at least until he’d brought up the subject of marriage. She knew that yogurt versus beer wasn’t the issue; rather, the crux of the matter was their different systems of values. Her craving for roots and stability and order…
Lord, you’re boring,
she told the mirror wryly.

And the man hadn’t touched her since she’d agreed to the trip. His restraint was making her nervous. She’d heard what he said about proving they had something more than sex between them, but Jake’s blood had certainly never run tepid before…
You’re
supposed
to be boring him,
she reminded herself.
You should be happy he’s keeping his hands to himself.

Still, though, a little kiss wouldn’t cost him much, her libido grumbled.
Would you stop
that?
 
Grabbing a newspaper, she walked back to the captain’s chair next to Jake, wearing her most formal, boring smile. “I’m going to read aloud to you from the
Wall Street Journal
so you won’t get restless,” she announced to him cheerfully. “Do you want to hear about common stocks or blue chips first, Jake?”

His crooked grin had a little too much Chesire cat in it for Anne to feel comfortable. She decided on blue chips. Most days, they even bored
her.

The dot on the map for Fildekirky was an overstatement. Anne, buried under campground directories and road maps, was by now heartily sick of cornfields. Once she’d directed Jake to the expressway exit he wanted, her nerves quieted down with an expectation that never materialized.

“This is
it?
”
 
she asked him unbelievingly.

A shabby little diner sat on one corner, a gas station on another. Three pickup trucks took up the restaurant’s parking lot, such as it was. A mongrel dog wandered along the middle of the main street. Late afternoon sun was pouring down in long yellow rays on the silence.

“I had a feeling your love affair with Iowa wouldn’t last,” Jake said lazily. “Not that you can judge any state by the view from its highways. Tomorrow will be quite different, Anne, but I have a feeling the campground will surprise you. I’ve been here before.”

The campground did surprise her. There were trees.

Gingerly, Anne stepped out of the motor home as Jake sauntered into a wooden A-frame building to check in. She felt like a toddler just learning to walk as her feet touched solid ground.

The A-frame and huge maples blocked her view of the actual campground. She’d already decided the trees were imported. Across the road were another five trillion acres of farmland and nothing else. At least there was a huge green tractor to relieve the monotony, but she had no real hope for the view behind the thick row of bushes and maple trees.

She glanced toward the door of the A-frame. Jake was taking forever. Smells assaulted her nostrils, the scents of rich brown earth and green leaves, not unpleasant. Rubbing at a kink in her neck from all the traveling, she wandered around one side of the building. A cool breeze had picked up the hint of a September night; a few of the maple leaves had started to turn gold and russet. The campground owners had planted a wild profusion of marigolds and asters, their perky colors splashing over the stone walk as she meandered farther. The place wasn’t totally uncivilized…

A fat white duck suddenly waddled in her direction, squawking belligerently. Startled, Anne glanced up. Her eyes widened in surprise. A narrow creek wandered like a serpent between shaded campsites; in the middle of the creek was a strange redwood structure that looked like a miniature fort mounted on wooden stilts with a rustic ladder leading up to its entrance. The place was almost pretty; the ambience had clearly been created to provide a quiet night’s rest for a stranger…barring the ducks.

White duck had friends. All of them seemed to catch sight of her at the same time, and instantly waddled forward to welcome her. There seemed to be thousands of them… Well, four dozen, anyway. Fat ducks, skinny ones, some white and some brightly feathered, all quacking unlyrically. Laughing helplessly, Anne bent down to pet one, and found a dozen yellow beaks very gently trying to devour her hand.

“It sounds good, but don’t believe a word you hear,” Jake suggested dryly from behind her.

“They’re obviously hungry.” She blinked. The squawking cacophony reached a dangerous decibel level. “Jake, they’re
terribly
hungry…”

“We’re just an hour ahead of the usual camper trade. By eight o’clock, those ducks will be so full they’ll sink if they try to swim, and Rochester—the owner of the campground—will pocket
mucho dinero
for every wee handful of feed he sells.”

“Oh? He sells the feed?” Anne questioned absently, her hand still stroking the silky feathers of the closest duck. She glanced up a moment later to find Jake studying her with one of his half-baked grins.

“Anne, don’t you think you’d better free yourself from your admirers before they nibble your immaculate nylon stockings to shreds?”

Anne threw him a speaking glance and waded through the ruffled feathers and outraged quacks to head for the door of the A-frame office. The screen door clapped shut behind her as she entered. Inside was a dizzying array of products for sale, from milk to
Penthouse
magazine, from ivory chess sets to canned soup. Behind the long counter, she noticed travel guides, diapers next to spark plugs, sunglasses next to aspirin. A short, cigar-smoking man stood waiting; a plaid shirt was stretched tightly over his watermelon-sized stomach. “Well, hi, little honey.”

“Hi.” She spotted the cardboard box filled with cellophane-wrapped packages of duck feed. Fifty cents for a handful. Robbery, sheer robbery. Instinctively, Anne clutched her purse in tight fingers for a second. She never even allowed pennies to collect in the bottom of her purse; it wasn’t in her nature to let herself be taken in by the owner of a tourist trap. On the other hand, it wasn’t in her nature to let the poor ducks be victimized, either.

“One or two, ma’am?”

Her voice seemed to come from a distance as her left hand forced her right hand to release its hold on her purse. “I’ll take all of it,” she told the man grimly.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

“If they eat all of what you have in that box in a day, I’ll take it all,” Anne enunciated clearly.

Jake burst out laughing when he saw her emerge from the building laden with little cellophane packages, but the ducks bore down on her like an attacking little army. “Darn it! Don’t you say one word,” she ordered Jake.

He reached her side in seconds and dived for the two bags she dropped, at the same time shooing away the persistent white duck who wanted her skirt hem for dinner. She tossed a cascade of mixed corn and other grain to the ground. The ducks dived for it with their beaks, their fat, feathered bottoms wiggling furiously in the air. Anne heard herself helplessly giggling, but there wasn’t time to enjoy the scene. Suddenly, dozens of beaks were poised expectantly in her direction again. Jake reached in front of her with another bag. She started laughing again as she tossed another handful of grain on the ground. “You don’t have to tell me this is ridiculous. It just went against the grain to know the poor creatures had to wait for a bunch of tourists to dole out their dinner. It’s cruel, Jake…”

“Went against the grain?” Jake groaned.

That started more giggles. The white duck sat on Anne’s foot. She ripped open three bags at once, and then had to swoop down and chase one brightly feathered bird who was taking off with an empty cellophane package in its beak, like a prize. When all the bags were empty, she held up her empty hands. “That’s all,” she told the ducks. “You guys are supposed to be full.”

Full or not, the ducks were irritated. They waddled off to splash one by one in the S-shaped creek beyond the maple trees, with a loud chorus of disgruntled quacks. “Did you hear that?” Anne brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, put her hands on her hips and suddenly whirled to face Jake indignantly. “They’re maligning my character. After going through all th-this…”

Her tongue seemed to trip. Jake was no longer smiling. He was staring at her, his silver-gray eyes intensely warm on hers. Boldly warm, vibrant. She caught her breath in sudden confusion. “I—I know it was…foolish,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t know what got into me. That man is a thief. Lord, I don’t even know anything about animals, let alone ducks.”

“Yes, you do. You had a puppy once, don’t you remember?” Jake crumpled the empty cellophane packages and tossed them into the closest litter bin, then brushed against Anne’s shoulder as he led her back to the motor home. “You and that puppy were inseparable. Then, when your mother married what’s-his-name, you had to give the pup away. The next time I saw you, I tried to give you a kitten. Have you forgotten that, too, Anne? But you wouldn’t take it. You said you’d never again accept anything that could later be taken away from you.”