Something Different/Pepper's Way (8 page)

Or maybe the giggles were caused by Chase’s “juice surprise.”

“What is this?”

“Juice, I told you. Different kinds.”

“Chase, there’s more in this than juice.”

“So I stretched a point a little. So what?”

“You’re disrupting the habit of a lifetime, that’s so what.”

“It’s time to broaden your horizons.”

“You sound like a travel ad.”

“Sorry.”

“This is very good, you know.”

“I’m glad you like it. It’s—”

“No, don’t tell me what it is,” she warned hastily.

“Why not?”

“Because if it’s snails, I don’t want to know about it.”

“It isn’t snails.”

“Good. Don’t tell me what it
is.”

“Whatever madam desires. Would madam like more— uh—juice?”

“Chase, are you trying to get me drunk?”

He looked scandalized. “How you could ever suspect—”

“Easily,” she interrupted, peering at him owlishly

“A
baby
has more kick than this stuff,” he maintained staunchly.

“Strong baby. Shall I sit here in royal detachment while you clear the table? I’ll help if you like, but I hope your china’s insured.”

“You stay put. I’ll clear the table and bring in dessert.” He began to do so efficiently

“What’s for dessert?”

“Baked Alaska.”

“I’ll take a wild guess,” she said drily, “that you’re a gourmet cook.”

“Something like that.”

“So tell me, master chef, to what do I owe the honor?”

“Honor?” He placed a delicious-looking dessert in front of her.

“Of having you cook for me.”

“I’m trying to seduce you, of course.”

Gypsy was vaguely glad that she’d swallowed the first bite before he answered her question. Otherwise, she’d have choked. “I see.” She touched her napkin delicately to her lips— mainly to hide the fact that they were twitching. “The way to a woman’s heart, and all that?”

Very seriously he responded, “Well, I thought that either the food would get you… or the juice would.”

She stared at his deadpan expression. How
could
the man look so ridiculously serious? After a moment she began eating again. “I’ll say this for you—the approach is certainly original. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the brutal truth used to such good effect.”

“Not
brutal
!” he protested, wounded.

She gave him a look.

Chase sighed sadly. “It isn’t working, is it?”

“No.” She didn’t mince words. She also didn’t tell him just how well his strategy was working. His straightforward approach was certainly startling, novel in her experience, and if she didn’t get out of his house very quickly she was going to make a total fool of herself.

“Aren’t you tired of a predictable life?” he asked persuasively. “Wouldn’t you like change, excitement, adventure?”

“Sounds like you’re inviting me on a safari,” she observed, eyes firmly on her dessert.

Chase gave up—for the moment, at least. Dessert was finished in silence, and then he sent her into the living room with her juice. Gypsy didn’t protest, and she didn’t try to leave. The juice was beginning to have the inevitable effect on her.

But the inevitable effect on Gypsy was a bit different from what Chase had probably hoped for. Except that she didn’t believe Chase had hoped for seduction at all. She had the definite feeling that he’d wanted to keep her off-balance more than anything else. However, visions of seduction or whatever
notwithstanding, Chase would probably get more than he bargained for.

The juice really didn’t have much of a kick. But then… it didn’t take much for Gypsy. It didn’t take much, that is, to release the reckless mischief she normally kept tightly reined.

She was going to teach him a lession, Gypsy decided.

When Chase came into the living room after clearing up in the kitchen, Gypsy was prowling the room like a caged tigress. The empty juice glass had been placed neatly in the center of the chrome and glass coffee table.

“Gypsy?”

She whirled around and flung herself into his arms. “I thought you said that we were going to make mad passionate love together?” she questioned throatily gazing up into startled jade eyes.

Chase had automatically caught her, and now stared down at her as though he’d caught a bundle of dynamite with a lighted fuse. “I did say that, didn’t I?” he mumbled.

“Yes. So what are we waiting for?”

“Sobriety,” he answered involuntarily.

Gypsy fiercely disentangled herself and stepped back, regaining her balance by sheer luck. “Did you or did you not intend to get me drunk and take advantage of me?” she demanded accusingly.

“Yes—no! Dammit, don’t put words in my mouth!”

“You’re rejecting me!” she announced in a hurt tone, doing a sudden and bewildering about-face.

“
No,
I’m not rejecting you! Gypsy—”

“Don’t… you… touch… me!” she warned awfully when he stepped toward her. “You had your chance, buster, and you blew it!”

For a long moment Chase looked about as bewildered as a man could look. Then the bewilderment slowly cleared, and a
whimsical expression replaced it. “Do you like playing with fire, Gypsy mine?”

Damn, but he’s quick! she thought wryly. Deciding that there was no graceful way out of the situation, she merely shrugged with a faint smile.

“I could read a great deal into that shrug,” he told her.

“Don’t imagine things. Thank you for the excellent dinner, master chef, and I think I’d better be going now.”

“You’re welcome, and I’ll walk you to your door.”

His easy acceptance bothered Gypsy for some reason. It might have had something to do with the unexplained gleam in his jade eyes. Or it might have had something to do with the fact that he’d twice announced his intention of attempting to seduce her today—and no attempt had yet been made.

The walk across to her front door was accomplished in silence, with Gypsy growing more nervous with every step. Along with the nervousness was a sudden, heart-pounding awareness of the man at her side, and she realized dimly that every muscle in her body was tense.

It was neither dark nor light outside; it was that odd twilight hour. Daylight was colors, darkness was stark black and white, but twilight was elusive shades of gray.

When they reached the front porch, Chase caught her arm and turned her to face him. Gypsy looked up at him instinctively, wary and uneasy. Her heart had recaptured its captive-beast rhythm, and she felt suddenly adrift in a dangerous and unpredictable sea.

“May I kiss you good night?” he asked softly, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders.

Gypsy wanted to say no, sharply and without mincing words. But she wasn’t very surprised to find herself nodding silently.

His hands lifted to cup her face, his head bending until
their lips touched with the lightness of a sigh. There was no pressure, no demand. Just warmth and sweetness, and a gentleness that was incredibly moving.

Gypsy felt herself relaxing, felt her body mold itself bone-lessly to his. Her arms moved of their own volition to slide around his waist even as she became aware of his hands moving slowly down her back.

If this was seduction, she thought dimly, then why on earth was she fighting it? It was a drugging, insidious thing, sapping her willpower and causing her to forget why she should have been protesting.

A tremor like the soft flutter of a butterfly’s wings began somewhere deep inside her body. It spread outward slowly, growing in strength, until she felt that her whole body was shaking with it.

When Chase finally drew away, Gypsy had the disturbing impression that she had lost something. She didn’t know what it was. But the tremor was still there, and she was having trouble breathing.

The man was a warlock, she thought.

“Good night, Gypsy mine,” he murmured huskily, reaching over to open the door for her.

Gypsy forced her arms to release him. “Good night,” she managed weakly, sliding past him to enter the house. She hesitated for a moment, glancing back over her shoulder at him, then softly closed the door.

She went into the den and sat down on the couch, curling up in one corner and staring at the blank television screen. For a long time she sat without moving. Corsair came to sit beside her, his rough purr like the rumble of a small engine. Gypsy stroked him absently. Bucephalus came and lay down on the carpet by the couch.

Gypsy smiled wryly. “What are you two trying to do—
comfort me?” she asked. A canine tail thumped the floor, and feline eyes blinked at her. “Thanks, guys, but I think it’s beyond your power.”

She sat for a while longer, listening to silence and the whispering voices of reason. But it was the gentle murmurs of desire that tormented her. She finally got up and went to take a long hot bath, hoping that the steam would carry away her problems.

It didn’t.

She let Corsair and Bucephalus outside for a few minutes, then called them back in and latched the pet door. She wandered around downstairs for a while, until disgust with her own restlessness drove her to bed. It was midnight by the time she crawled between the sheets, and Gypsy lay there for a while and stared at the ceiling. She finally reached and turned out the lamp on her nightstand, absently moving Corsair off her foot and patting Bucephalus where he lay beside the bed.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. She picked up the receiver without bothering to turn the lamp back on, wondering who could be calling her at that hour. “Hello?”

“Will you dream about me tonight?” a deep, muffled masculine voice asked softly.

Gypsy’s first impulse was to hang up. The last thing she needed tonight was a semi-obscene phone caller. But something about that voice nagged at her. It
could
be Chase, she decided finally. Besides, who
else
could it possibly be? So why not play along?

“Of course, I will,” she murmured seductively.

“Sweet dreams?”

“As sweet as honey.”

“I could make them even sweeter,” he drawled.

“Promises, promises.”

“Just give me the chance.”

“A man should always … make his own opportunities.”

“And what should a woman do?”

“She waits.”

“An old-fashioned lady, I see.”

“In…some ways.” Gypsy was thoroughly enjoying the suggestive conversation.

He chuckled softly. “Sweet dreams …”

Gypsy listened bemusedly to the dial tone for a moment, then cradled the receiver gently. “‘Curiouser and curiouser,’” she murmured to herself. She smiled into the darkness for a while.

Then she fell asleep.

Gypsy slept six hours—no more, no less. It was a peculiarly exact habit in a quite definitely inexact person. But apparently her biological clock was set for precisely six hours of sleep and not a second more. And during those six hours, Armageddon could have occurred without disturbing Gypsy.

She dressed and went through her morning routine. She fed the animals and herself, unlatched the pet door, and checked the weather (rainy). Sunday was “dealer’s choice” when it came to the day’s drink. She decided on iced tea and made a pitcherful.

Since her parents were coming to visit, she unlocked the front door—heaven only knew what she’d be doing by the time they arrived, so they usually just walked right in.

Then she carried a glass of tea to her desk, put a sheet of paper into Herman, and got down to work.

The morning advanced steadily as she worked. The rain stopped and the sun came out. Her canine and feline companions checked on progress from time to time and then disappeared. Gypsy refilled her glass once.

With utter concentration and not a little willpower, she’d
managed to put Chase out of her mind while she worked. And she was glad about that; not even friendship would be possible between them if thoughts of him disrupted her work, and Gypsy knew it. As impossible as she was to live with while she was writing, she was even worse when something prevented her from writing.

Around ten A.M. she heard the sound of a car in her driveway, but continued to work without a pause. If it was her parents, they’d come inside; anyone else would knock.

A few moments later her father came in. He was a tall man, slender and distinguished. His hair was black, save for wings of silver framing his lean face. Mild blue eyes gazed peacefully out from beneath straight brows. And lines of struggle coexisted peacefully with lines of humor on his face.

An interesting face for any artist—and Gypsy’s mother had painted it more than once.

Gypsy lifted an absent cheek for his kiss. “Hi, Poppy,” she said vaguely.

“Hello, darling.” Her father saluted the cheek, and then rested his hip against the corner of her desk. Conversationally he added, “There’s a man up a tree in your front yard.”

“Oh?” She briskly corrected a misspelled word. “That’s Chase.”

“An admirer, darling?”

“Neighbor.” Gypsy finished a paragraph and briefly debated over the next one before beginning to type again. “Did you ask him why he was in the tree?”

“I didn’t want to pry,” her sire murmured.

Gypsy acknowledged the gentle remark with a faint twinkle as she pulled the completed page from Herman. “I suppose Corsair stole his car keys again,” she explained cheerfully.

Allen Taylor didn’t even blink. “When did Corsair start stealing keys?”

“Yesterday. Where’s Mother?”

“Helping Chase, I assume. She went to see if he needed help.”

“Oh. Half a minute, Poppy; let me finish this page and I’ll be through for the day.” Gypsy was trying desperately not to think about Chase’s first meeting with her mother. But… oh, she wished she could be a butterfly poised on a flower out there….

Just as she was pulling the last sheet out of Herman, her father spoke again. He’d wandered over to her bookcase, and now held the masked rider’s souvenir in his hand.

“What’s this?”

“What does it look like? It’s a silver bullet obviously.”

“Silver plated,” her father corrected gravely.

“It’s the thought that counts,” Gypsy reproved.

“Oh. Where did you get it?”

“That’s obvious too.”