Something Different/Pepper's Way (33 page)

“Started at Stanford at seventeen. Her father died about then, and apparently he left her an inheritance and told her to see the world. She always took off during vacations and holidays, bringing back gifts for the rest of us from all over the world. She never talked about her trips except for bits and pieces mentioned in passing. We learned not to ask questions about where she’d been. Pepper has a marvelous ability to head you off until you find yourself talking about something entirely different.

“Since college… I know a little, and can guess a little. She travels regularly now, out of the country more often than she’s in it. She leaves the RV and the pets with her mother, who lives here in the East. If we want to contact Pepper, we call her mother, who usually has a number where we can reach her. And—well, she just goes.”

“Alone?”

“As far as I know. She sometimes comes back with company though. She found Marsha stranded in London and brought her back. And several other members of our gang were discovered by her in various improbable parts of the globe. And I do mean improbable. Mae—who’s now married to Brian, who was one of the founding members of our group—is from Hong Kong. Pepper brought her over to visit, she said, and had them married before the visa expired.

“Then there’s Heather from Scotland and now married to Tom. And Jean-Paul, who came, of course, from France—”

“Jean-Paul?” Thor queried with all the American male’s distrust of Frenchmen.

Reading the tone correctly, Cal chuckled. “You should meet him. He’s an artist—a damn good one, as a matter of fact—and absolutely adores his Angelique.’ He and Angela were married last year. Another of Pepper’s matches.”

“She sounds like the United Nations,” Thor said in astonishment.

Cal shrugged. “What can I tell you? She likes her friends to be happy.”

“And are they?”

“Oh, yes. Pepper has an uncanny knack for matching people with the right partners. Not a divorce or separation in the lot, and for some of us it’s been a few years. She’s batting a thousand.”

Thor was silent for a moment, trying to fit pieces together and come up with a complete picture of a woman who was still largely unknown to him. Finally he shook his head. “The more I hear, the less I know.”

Cal looked at him with a certain amount of sympathy. “Yeah, I know the feeling. There isn’t much more I can tell you. She usually manages to drop in on us whenever she comes back to the States. We don’t ask questions; she doesn’t offer
answers. In spite of her sometimes talkative ways, Pepper doesn’t let a lot of herself out into the open.”

Suddenly, and for the first time in his life, Thor felt a feeling so strong and so savage that he had to look away from the other man. And in that moment he was literally afraid to move or speak, because he didn’t think he could be responsible for his actions or words. It had been building within him for long moments now, and he’d known it without recognizing the sensation.

Intellect struggled with two million years of instinct, and Thor wasn’t sure which would win.

His scant knowledge of both Pepper and Cal told him rationally that theirs was a friendship and nothing more, but instinct as old as the cave fiercely resented the ten years they had known each other. Resented those years with an irrational and bedeviled jealousy.

Intellect won the struggle, but it left Thor feeling shaken and oddly out of his depth. He could neither forget nor ignore the jealousy, but he was at least able to shut it away in a small room in his mind where it chased itself in vicious circles. Not a solution, of course, but that way it wouldn’t savagely attack Pepper’s friend.

Thor dragged his thoughts from that subject and realized Cal was watching him curiously. But before the other man could question what, Thor surmised, had probably been a peculiar expression, Marsha stuck her head out the front door and called to them.

“Hey, you two! Pepper’s found some stuff and she’s going to make shish kebab. Think you heroes can start a fire in that monstrosity of a barbecue out back?”

“We’ll do our best,” Cal called back dryly. As she disappeared back inside the house, he looked at Thor. “We have our orders.”

“Uh-huh.” Locked room or no, Thor badly needed an outlet for the various types of frustration building within him, and that very emotion was reflected in his voice when he went on irritably. “Shish kebab. Dammit, is there anything that woman
can’t
do? She cooks, sews, knits, and drives that monster RV of hers as if she’d driven a semi for years. She’s got my ‘vicious’ stallion eating out of her hand. She plays the piano beautifully. She’s a cardsharp. She knows enough about football to call the plays at a Super Bowl game, and enough about chess to be a grand master at the game—”

“She is,” Cal murmured helpfully. “Bona fide. Won an international competition in Bonn a couple of years ago. Impressed the hell out of the judges since she was so young. Of course, an unkind soul could point out that she probably rattled her opponent by looking dumb and sweet, but—”

“But”—Thor interrupted with a goaded glare—“she was probably
born
a grand master.” He released a sigh compounded of a groan and a growl. “She’s not real. I don’t believe in perfection, particularly in people. She has to have a fault somewhere—she has to!”

Cal frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then lifted a triumphant finger. “She’s stubborn!”

Glaring at him, Thor muttered, “You’re a lot of help.”

“Sorry.” Cal was smiling.

“Hell. Let’s go get that fire started.”

“Cheer up,” Cal advised gravely. “It could be worse, you know.”

“Yeah? How, for God’s sake?”

“She might not have warned you at all. At least you don’t go to your fate—uh—blindly unsuspecting.”

“Dammit.”

“Looked like they were having quite an interesting little chat,” Marsha announced to her friend, coming back into the kitchen.

Pepper was chopping meat on the cutting board, and glanced up with a slight smile. “I’m not at all surprised, considering that little scene you and Cal were playing.”

“Who was playing?” Marsha was cheerfully unrepentant. “Besides, it was a scream. Did you see Thor’s face?”

“I saw it.” Pepper laughed in spite of herself. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, and so should I; the man must think I’m after his scalp by now.”

“Well, aren’t you?” Marsha asked with a grin.

“Not with a knife.”

“So he keeps his hair but loses his freedom, huh?”

Pepper bent her head over her task and was silent for a long moment. Then, with unusual asperity, she burst out, “Is that what I’m doing—depriving him of his freedom?”

Startled, Marsha looked over from the sink, where she’d been washing tomatoes and onions. She turned off the water and slowly dried her hands on a paper towel, staring at her friend. “Hey I was kidding, Pepper.”

Pepper shook her head slightly. “I know. But the question’s still there, Marsha. If I win… does he lose?”

“Is it a game?” her friend asked soberly.

“Maybe he thinks it is. Maybe he thinks that one of us can lose, and that we’ll both end up with a nice little memory.”

“But… ?”

“But…” Pepper sighed softly. “I don’t think it’ll end that way. In the beginning I thought that if I won, we’d both win. You know, in love and loving it.” She laughed suddenly, harshly. “Vain of me, I realize. But I’ve always believed that happiness meant love and sharing.”

“And now you don’t believe that?”

“I don’t know. It’s … it’s not a gentle emotion, is it? I never
knew that.” She smiled crookedly at her friend. “Now I understand what kind of wringer I put the rest of you through. Would an apology on bended knees make amends?”

Marsha smiled in return. “No need. People rarely fall in love totally against their will, Pepper; not one of us regrets your matchmaking.”

“I’m glad,” Pepper said simply.

“You won’t get away with changing the subject this time,” Marsha said conversationally. “For once, you’re going to bend my ear—even if I have to badger you to do it. So. What makes you think Thor would lose if you win?”

“He doesn’t want permanent ties.”

“So?”

“So who am I to think he’d be happier tied to me?”

“Bad phrase, that,” Marsha remarked objectively. “‘Tied to,’ I mean. Conjures up images of slavery. We both know that’s not what you mean.”

Pepper stirred slightly. “I know, I know. But if he values his freedom so much, isn’t that what it amounts to?”

“He didn’t seem to me to be rabid about his freedom.”

“Not rabid. Just determined.”

“Whatever.”

“It’s just that… well, what right had I to move in on him? To plunk myself down squarely in the middle of his life as if I belonged here?”

“Do you love him?” Marsha asked bluntly, in the tone of a woman who’s sure of the answer.

Pepper stared at her fingers for a long moment, then lifted her gaze to her friend’s face. “So much so that I couldn’t bear for him to lose anything because of me. I want to add to his life, Marsha, not take away from it. And if that means I’ll have to leave him with a nice little memory and a triumphant victory … then that’s what I’ll have to do,” Pepper finished softly.

“Have you told him that you love him?” Marsha asked in an equally hushed tone.

“No.” Pepper smiled a little. “I won’t burden him with something he doesn’t want.”

Marsha stared at her for a moment, then said caustically, “If you ask me, you’re being unnecessarily noble. What makes you so certain it’d be a burden to him?”

“He knows how I feel about love. He knows that if I feel love, I expect something permanent. If I tell him I love him, it’ll be a burden to him. He’s that kind of man.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Marsha demanded, “that he might just possibly be changing his mind about his desire for ‘freedom’ even as we speak? Has it occurred to you that perhaps he thought he wanted no ties only because he’d never found the right woman?”

“Yes, it’s occurred to me.” Pepper laid the knife aside suddenly, aware of the dangers of slicing anything with only half her mind on what she was doing. “It occurs to me constantly.” She heard the hard-bitten sound of her own voice and was abruptly grateful that Marsha had stuck firmly to this subject; she needed to talk. “Don’t you think I
want
that to be true? Don’t you think I lie awake at night and wonder if I’ll be able to leave him when the time comes? Dammit, Marsha, I want to fling my love at him! I’ve had to choke back the words a hundred times. I want to … to touch him whenever he’s near me, and even more when he’s away from me. It’s hard to breathe when he’s there and even worse when he’s not.”

She laughed unsteadily, a laugh that was a talisman to ward off tears. “I look at you and Cal, and think of the others, and I wonder—my God, did I do this to them? Did I, in my insufferable arrogance, put them through this hell because I thought I knew what was best for them?”

“Pepper—”

“And now this!” Pepper cut off her friend flatly. “Thor. I fall in love for the first time in my life, and I launch a campaign with all the cocky arrogance of a paper-pushing general! And if Thor’s freedom is important to him and I win the battle, then he’ll be caged. Caged!”

She felt her fingers aching and realized that she was gripping the edge of the counter as though it were a lifeline. With an effort she spoke levelly almost neutrally. “Have you ever gone to a zoo and watched the cats? They pace. Constantly, endlessly. Do we have the right to do that to them? Animals should never be caged, even if they’re given an illusion of freedom. And people should never be caged, even if the bars are formed out of commitments.”

“We’re all caged,” Marsha pointed out quietly. “We’re caged by jobs, by a way of life, by people who love us and those whom we love. There are limits to everything, Pepper, boundaries we all observe. You know that as well as I do. And if we had the choice, most of us would choose to keep the boundaries. Because there’s something secure in knowing how far you can go.”

“But is it fair to place someone else inside our own boundaries?” Pepper looked searchingly at her friend. “That’s what bothers me. Thor has his own boundaries; is it fair to demand that he be limited by mine?”

Marsha returned the stare for a moment, then quoted softly, “‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.’ Thor strikes me as being both; he’s his own man. If he is limited by your boundaries, it’ll be because he wants to be— and for no other reason.”

Pepper drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I suppose I’m selfish, but I want him inside
my
boundaries.”

“You’re not selfish. You’re in love.”

“And I’m afraid of losing.” Pepper smiled shakily “Funny,
that’s something I haven’t been afraid of in years. But I’ve never gambled like this before; there’s never been so much at stake.”

Marsha smiled a little. “Follow your instincts, friend. I haven’t seen much of him, but I have a feeling that you and your Thor would be deliriously happy together. Go for it.”

There was no more teasing that day about Pepper’s matchmaking, and no real opportunity for Thor to learn more about her than he already had. But his sudden attack of jealousy had had more of an impact on him than anything Cal had told him about Pepper.

In that moment Thor had realized that it no longer mattered what and who Pepper was or had been. It wasn’t important. What mattered was that, like a thorn or a splinter or a virus, she’d somehow managed to burrow beneath his skin. He was no longer
just
fascinated by her.

The other couple left after dinner, steadfastly refusing to stay overnight. They had apparently promised Marsha’s mother in Bangor that they’d spend the night with her, and Cal professed himself in dread terror of offending his mother-in-law.

After they’d gone, Pepper sat on the couch absently dealing crooked poker hands on the coffee table and watching from the corner of her eye as Thor paced restlessly. She could feel the tension increasing moment by moment, growing within the room like a living thing. It made her so nervous that she mistakenly dealt a ten into a low straight flush. Swearing softly, she gathered up the cards.