Something Different/Pepper's Way (37 page)

Brutally abrupt good-byes. Fear-tainted absences. Desperate worry. And finally, the image that would haunt the kind of man he was: a woman in widow’s black weeping in a darkened room.

Hostages to fortune. Himself a hostage to someone else’s fortune, and he wouldn’t be that, never be that, never that.

“Dammit,” Pepper said, startling herself. She looked around, blinking, and realized that day had arrived while she’d been lost in thought. The dogs were quiet, heads lifted and
eyes fixed expectantly on her. They’re hungry, she thought vaguely. Breakfast time.

Then she heard the sound of Jean’s
VW,
and the dogs raced to the front door to greet her. Pepper sat where she was, saying a quiet string of swear words she’d learned in various languages. Damn the man, anyway. How to convince him that he was already her hostage to fortune and always would be? And judging by that embrace just before he’d gone, that she was his hostage to fortune whether he knew it… or wanted it?

“He’s gone?”

Pepper looked across to the doorway, meeting Jean’s eyes. “He’s gone. Venezuela. I think.”

Jean nodded slightly, watching the younger woman with sympathy. “It’s usually only a few days,” she volunteered quietly.

“Yes.” Pepper asked no questions, knowing that the housekeeper would understand. She’d hear the story from Thor or from no one. Period.

“I’ll fix breakfast,” Jean murmured. “And feed the dogs.”

Pepper shook her head slightly. “I’m not hungry.”

“You have to eat.”

Looking across the room to meet concerned, motherly eyes, Pepper couldn’t help but smile. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll go upstairs and get dressed.”

That day passed, then a second and a third. Pepper groomed her clients during the day, helped Jean experiment with “foreign” culinary fare, and took care of Thor’s horse and her own pets.

It was the nights that were bad. Jean had offered that first night to stay later than usual, but Pepper knew that she had a
husband waiting for her at home, and refused to allow it. Any one—or two—of her friends would have been delighted to come and stay, but Pepper didn’t even consider that.

She waited alone.

Watching television, knitting, reading, all were means to fill the time. A third night of automatically knitting while staring at the television produced a colorful afghan, which she defiantly tossed over the back of the couch.

It wasn’t fear that tortured her during those endless nights. It was uncertainty. She couldn’t know, after all, that Thor was even then in danger. She couldn’t know. Except that she did. Her uncertainty, though, was all wrapped up in his work and his rules.

What right did she have to tell Thor that he was wrong about avoiding commitments? She had seen how fear could batter the mind and twist the spirit; she understood his reasoning. But she still thought he was wrong. And no special wisdom told her that.

It was just that she loved him.

His absence gave Pepper the time she needed to gather her thoughts and emotions and examine them as objectively as she could. And as the days passed she realized it wasn’t only because she loved him and wanted to share his life that she believed his rules wrong. He was cheating himself, she knew, and cheating others as well. And no matter what happened between them, she meant to make him see that.

Pepper was curled up on the couch in the den watching a movie on television when she heard the Corvette. It would have been her fifth night alone.

As the dogs rushed to the front door she sat up slowly and used the remote control to turn off the television. Nervously
smoothing the fine silk of her blue gown and negligee, Pepper steeled herself to stay put and not rush to greet him. She wanted to, God knew, but she was afraid. Because, while she’d had time to think during these last days, he probably had too. And she didn’t know what conclusions he’d reached.

So she stayed put and listened to her heart thundering in her ears and the sound of his voice as he greeted the eagerly welcoming dogs. It wasn’t until he spoke directly to her from the doorway that Pepper rose slowly to her feet.

“Well, two out of three’s not bad, I guess.”

She stared across the room at him, feeding the hunger inside of her with the sight of him. Dressed almost exactly the same as when he’d left, he shrugged his jacket off and tossed it on a chair, revealing a casual flannel shirt and jeans. He looked tired, she thought, but was blessedly whole and unhurt, and she took an instinctive step toward him.

But as he stepped into the room and into the light, she saw the look in his eyes and halted. She swallowed hard and forced herself to respond easily to his comment and not to the look that told her the ending was, perhaps, in sight.

“I didn’t think you’d want a clinging sort of woman.”

“What sort of woman are you, Pepper? No curiosity? No questions?”

“Both,” she responded quietly. “I’ll ask the questions if you’re ready to answer. Are you, Thor?”

“Yes.” He walked abruptly over to the window, showing her only a sharply etched profile against the blackened glass.

Pepper sat down on the edge of the couch, watching him. She took a deep breath, wondering if she hoped or dreaded her guesses to be confirmed. “Then tell me about your job.”

He smiled a little, wryly. “Right to the heart of the matter. That’s my Pepper.”

“Tell me, Thor.”

“I’m a partner in a small company,” he told her quietly. “We specialize in dealing with fires. Oil and chemical fires; the kind that ordinary firemen just aren’t trained or equipped to deal with. We fly all over the world, to remote areas and into cities and put out the fires. Sometimes we deal with deliberate sabotage, or duck bullets in some idiotic brush war, or fight diplomatic or bureaucratic red tape.”

“And that’s why you… you wrote your rules?” she questioned, sure now of the answer.

“My father and his partner started the company.” Thor’s voice was flat, tight. “My mother loved my father very much. When I got old enough to understand that—really understand it—I saw what it did to her. Having to say good-bye to him, time after time, knowing that each time could be for good. It made her old before the years caught up with her.”

“And your father?” Pepper asked quietly.

“Dad.” Thor smiled faintly. “He loved her. But this business … well, it gets into the blood. The challenge, I guess. The danger. He tried to spend time behind a desk—for her. But it didn’t work for him.”

Pepper waited silently.

“He was killed,” Thor said abruptly. “An accident; they’re common in this business. The explosives were unstable, more so than normal. He was too near the blast.”

“I’m sorry.”

Thor nodded slightly, then went on in the same flat tone. “Mom died a year later. Her heart, the doctors said. I think they were more right than they knew.”

“And you went on with the business.”

“I went on.” He shrugged slightly, the movement rough. “Like I said—it gets into the blood. My father couldn’t sit behind a desk. I can’t either.”

“No commitments,” Pepper said softly.

Thor looked at her steadily. “After watching my mother die for twenty-five years, fear eating at her like a cancer? No. I can take the risk; I’ll be responsible for me. But I won’t torture another human being.”

“Do you think you can make that choice?” she asked flatly.

Thor was silent, staring out the window again. The back turned to her was stiffly held, tension evident.

“Do you?” she repeated fiercely.

“It’s my choice to make,” he said almost inaudibly “God knows, there are enough victims in the world; I won’t help add to the list.”

“You’re suffering under an excess of nobility, Thor,” she told him, letting scorn color her voice. He turned suddenly to face her—which was what she had wanted—and she went on quickly

“It was never your choice, Thor! And, however this little game of ours ends, win, lose, or draw, I’ll make you understand that!”

“Pepper—”

“All right, your mother couldn’t take worrying about her husband;
my
mother couldn’t take it either. Their men went into danger and it nearly destroyed them—did destroy your mother in the end. Well, it wouldn’t destroy
me!
Not because danger frightens me any less, or because I’d care any less, but because I can handle it.”

He looked puzzled. “Your mother… ?”

“My father was a cop.” Pepper looked at Thor steadily. “He didn’t have to be; his family was wealthy. But Dad was a cop down to his socks and through to his soul; it was in him to care about people, and he hated injustice. He loved his work. He also loved my mother. It took him two years to talk her into marrying him; she was terrified of being a cop’s wife.

“Like your father, mine offered to try sitting behind a desk.

But Mom… was strong in some ways. She knew that she had no real right to use the emotional power she had over him. He would have quit if she’d asked; she never did. And she loved him too much to walk away from him.

“So I went through the same thing as you, Thor. Whenever he was on duty, I watched her jump when the phone rang, watched her pale when someone knocked on the door. I saw her cling to him that extra second before he left in the morning, and that extra second when he came home—safe. At first I was too young to understand or see anything out of the ordinary; I thought every kid’s mother was nervous whenever Dad worked.

“Then I got older. And I saw then. I saw her bite her nails to the quick and pace the floor. I saw her watch television or listen to the radio with this terrible dread hanging over her if there was a report of police in a dangerous situation. And I got used to Dad calling her immediately because he’d known how it tortured her.”

Thor had come forward, his strong hands resting on the back of a chair, almost gripping it, as he listened. “What happened?”

“He was killed.” Pepper smiled a twisted smile. “But there was an irony about it. You see, Dad didn’t die in the line of duty. His death was due to one of those senseless ‘accidents’ that fill up statistical sheets. He’d driven down to the local market for something—I forget what. A drunken driver swung wide on a turn and plowed into Dad’s car head-on. He was killed instantly. The other man walked away.”

She shook her head slightly. “We were at home waiting dinner for him when someone knocked on the door. It was funny: when Mom went to answer and saw Dad’s partner standing there, she didn’t suspect a thing. Dad wasn’t on duty, you see. He hadn’t even taken his gun with him.”

“It must have been rough on both of you,” Thor murmured, wondering at the uncanny similarity of their pasts.

“It was.” Pepper lifted her chin and met his eyes levelly “But both of us learned something very important. My first reaction was about what yours had been, that I’d never go through what Mom had, or allow anyone else to suffer because of me. Mom grew stronger. Not because the worst had happened and she didn’t have to be afraid anymore, but because she realized how fear had cheated her all those years. She saw that their life together could have been so much fuller and happier if she’d only lived each day as it came instead of constantly dreading something she had no control over.

“And she made me understand that. She taught me that the worst thing anyone can do in this life is to regret—anything. Life’s too short for that. Mom found out too late, but I didn’t. I’ve been reckless more than once, and I’ve taken chances, but I’ve never regretted, Thor. And I don’t ever intend to.”

His hands tightened on the back of the chair. “And I don’t intend to watch anyone suffer because of me.”

Pepper laughed suddenly, a wry sound. “You believe that you can prevent others from caring about you? What about Jean? After five years d’you believe she thinks of you only as an employer, that she doesn’t know you inside out? That she wouldn’t feel grief if something happened to you? And what about Cody? He was your best friend until your father was killed, and then you shut him out. But he keeps coming around, doesn’t he? He keeps coming around because you’re his friend and he cares about you.

“And Lucifer? Oh, he’s just a horse… but we both know animals feel. He loved you in spite of yourself, and you couldn’t just walk away from that. And the dogs. Thor, both of them looked everywhere for you while you were gone, did you know that? They missed you.”

She rose and went over to stand by the chair, staring up at him. “Thor, all of us give hostages to fortune, whether we will it or not. It isn’t our choice to make. And we’re all hostages to someone else’s fortune. We can’t protect those we care about from things we have no control over. We can’t insulate ourselves or them.”

“Pepper—”

Reaching up, she placed two fingers lightly across his lips to halt whatever he’d been about to say. “Think about it,” she urged quietly. “That’s all I’m asking, Thor. If you decide in the end that you’d rather not litter your life with… with hostages to fortune, then that’s that. I told you I’d know if you took to your heels in earnest.”

Her smile was a little twisted. “But you asked me for honesty, so there’s something you have to know. If I walked out that door tonight, nothing would change. Like it or not, you’re a hostage to someone else’s fortune.”

He reached out suddenly to pull her against him, his arms wrapping her in a tight bear hug. “When are you going to stop surprising me?” he asked huskily, his chin rubbing slowly in her hair.

Pepper slid her arms around his waist, the feeling of his hard body pressed against hers only beginning to feed her hunger. Instead of answering his murmured question, she asked one of her own. “Do you mind if I cling…just a little?”

“I’d need to have my head examined if I did,” he whispered, almost to himself.

“Thor?”

“Hmm?”

“Welcome home. I missed you.”

He went very still for a moment, then swung her up into his arms and started for the stairs. “I missed you too,” he said gruffly

“Pepper?”

“Hmmm?”

“Will you show me your home-on-wheels tomorrow?”

“If you like.”

“I think it’s time, don’t you?”

“I’ve just been waiting for you to ask.”