Whirlwind (12 page)

“No harm done.”

She propped her chin in her hands and devoted her attention to him fully. Her eyes found his, and she seemed to drink him in the way she'd consumed her dinner—with great pleasure. She asked, “Don't you eat dessert?”

“What? No. Not at all.”

“Really?” Her brows puckered with curiosity. “Don't you ever want to break out of this place and go have a piece of pie at Marge's?”

“No,” said Cliff. “I don't. But if you'd like to go, don't let me stop you.”

“Boy, you're a puzzle. I can never guess what you'll say next. I want to ask you a million questions.”

He held his breath. If she prodded him to talk about himself, he might do it. He didn't feel that she'd reject him if he told her about some of the things he'd seen or the way he'd chosen to live his life now. She wouldn't laugh or look at him as if he'd just turned into Frankenstein's monster. Cliff felt that Liza Baron might actually listen and absorb. If she asked a question at that moment, he thought, he would answer.

Liza gave a huge yawn instead. “No trip for pie tonight, I'm afraid. I think I'll take some medicine and go to bed. With the window closed.”

Cliff allowed a small smile and let the moment slip by. “Maybe the window had nothing to do with catching a cold.”

“Maybe,” said Liza, getting to her feet and stretching every muscle in her tall, lean frame. It was a very attractive frame, Cliff decided. Feminine, but not breakable. Sinuous,
he thought. And she seemed comfortable in her own skin. She moved with pride, the way a big cat might.

Unaware of his attention, she said, “I'll do the dishes before I go upstairs.”

“No,” said Cliff, catching himself before he put out a hand to touch her thigh as she stood next to the counter. “Go to bed. I'll clean up.”

She smiled at him, a smile at once teasing and grateful. “Okay,” she said. “I'll let you.”

Liza bent down and kissed him lightly on the temple. It wasn't a gentle kiss, but a quick, teasing one. She caught his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger and gave him a tug there, too.

“Good night, Forrester.”

“Good night, Liza,” he said. He sat for a long time in the kitchen after she'd left, contemplating women in general.

He hadn't thought about women in a long time. Not the way he thought about them that night. Sex had been a part of his other life. Since he'd come back, there hadn't been anyone. He hadn't let anyone get close enough.

Oh, he'd looked at women once in a while, of course. There was a pretty woman who lived in Tyler. Nora Gates, he thought her name was. Cliff had seen her in the hardware store once and had watched her buy a hammer. She'd made a light remark to him, but he'd been in a bad period at the time and hadn't responded. One thought had occurred to him, however—that Nora Gates had the look of a woman who'd had her heart broken once already. She looked vulnerable and sweet, a combination Cliff certainly couldn't have handled.

But Nora Gates hadn't gotten him thinking about sex. Not the way Liza did.

Sitting there, listening to Liza bathe in the tub overhead, hearing her footsteps pad down the hall and the soft click of the bedroom door, Cliff mused for a while. Had he for
gotten how? Had there been new developments in women's underclothes that he might not understand? What did it feel like to hold a woman close and listen to her breathe? To excite her and give her the ultimate of pleasures?

It was all academic, of course. Cliff had no intention of making love to anyone. It was impossible. He might have some kind of breakdown. Or get violent. Heaven only knew what might happen if he quit maintaining his self-control. No, it was best that he keep himself on track.

But Liza Baron was the one woman on the face of the Earth who was probably capable of forcing her way into a man's bed whether she was wanted or not. What if she pushed too hard?

Cliff got up hastily and began to wash the dishes. Here it was again. The same old fear. What if he lost control and hurt someone? He hated the idea of hurting anyone. But hurting Liza? The idea made him shiver.

* * *

L
IZA SWALLOWED
a swig of sickly-sweet medicine and climbed into the pink bed. With a full stomach, her head still pleasantly buzzing with ideas for the lodge and the surprisingly comfortable evening she'd spent with Cliff, she settled down and felt herself begin to doze off immediately. It was the medicine, she decided. She'd sleep like a log.

Sometime during the night, however, she heard a sound. A distant, ghostly voice, singing a song, perhaps. Or maybe she was dreaming.

“Forrester,” she mumbled. “Surely you don't think I'm falling for that....”

The sound faded and she went back to sleep. Untroubled thereafter, Liza slept soundly until late the next morning.

When she went downstairs to find Cliff, there was a note on the kitchen counter.

Working on hatching trays in the boathouse. Hope you feel better.

Liza tossed the note down and sighed. “Not exactly a love poem, is it? Well, what did I expect?”

And what in the world were hatching trays? Probably some fish experiment.

She found the keys to the pickup and drove into Tyler once again. Instead of looking for her grandfather, she did some research that led her to the doorstep of Joe Santori.

Joe Santori, Liza learned after asking the opinions of Marge, at the diner, and Rose Atkins, who was pedaling her tricycle around town, was Tyler's best building contractor.

“He's still a small operation,” Marge told her. “But he does quality work, and he's honest.”

“Besides,” Rose Atkins added, “he's just darling.”

“Okay,” said Joe, when she proposed her idea. He was an attractive man—a big grin seemed to be his best asset—but Liza would hardly have classified him as darling. He was a big, goofy lug who wore his carpenter's apron like a gunslinger, and she caught him singing a noisy, melodramatic song in Italian when she arrived at his office. Every small town has its share of peculiar characters, and Joe Santori was certainly one of Tyler's most colorful.

In a wonderfully mellow baritone voice, he said, “I'll follow you out to the lodge and we'll take a look during my lunch hour.”

Pleased that Joe had agreed to examine the project she proposed right away, she led the way back to Timberlake. They parked their trucks side by side and met on the gravel drive to look at the porch.

“Holy Mary,” said Joe, taking off his cap and scratching his curly black hair as he stared up at the lodge. He kept a short, unlighted cigar between his teeth and spoke around it. “This is quite a place, isn't it?”

“Isn't it great?”

“Well, it's spectacular, I'll give you that,” said Joe. “I
heard it was in pretty bad shape. I can see my source wasn't too far wrong. Does that nut still live here?”

Liza ground her teeth. “There's no nut here. Cliff Forrester is the caretaker.”

“Yeah, that's him. The crazy vet.”

“He's not crazy,” Liza snapped. “He's perfectly nice! If you'd just...oh, here he is. You can judge for yourself.”

Cliff came out onto the porch with a half-eaten sandwich in one hand. He stopped dead and looked stricken when he realized that Liza had brought an invader.

“Hi,” Liza said, bounding up the steps to Cliff before he could duck back into the lodge. “This is Joe Santori. He's a contractor who's going to give me some estimates for fixing up the lodge.”

Cliff didn't speak. His expression was stunned and a little frightened.

“Hello,” Joe drawled, mounting the steps warily and putting out his hand. “Anyone who's brave enough to live in this old wreck must be pretty tough, I guess.”

Silently, Cliff shook Joe's proffered hand, and Liza wanted to scream at them both. Cliff was acting weirder than ever, eyes cast down and his body stiff as a toy soldier's, which was only going to cement Joe's opinion that he was loony. Joe, for his part, seemed to think Cliff ought to be shipped off to a padded cell.

She made an effort to cover for Cliff, saying rapidly, “The lodge isn't really a wreck. It looks bad, but I think you're going to find that the structure's okay.”

“Let's get started, then.” Joe pulled a battered notebook from his hip pocket and shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Let's see. How about the roof? Does it leak?”

“I'm not sure. I...” Liza noticed that Cliff had started to slip away, so she grabbed one of his belt loops. “Cliff could tell you that kind of stuff. Right, Cliff?”

He didn't respond until Liza goosed him, then he said,
“The roof might leak. But I don't know how to get into the attic.”

“Uh-huh,” said Joe, glancing doubtfully at Cliff over the rim of his notebook. “Maybe I'd better take a look.”

Cliff shot Liza a deadly look, then led the way into the lodge without a word. Joe and Liza trooped after him. Liza finished the sandwich and prayed that Cliff would loosen up.

It took about an hour, but he did, thanks to Joe. Liza thanked her lucky stars that she'd chosen Joe Santori to come to the lodge, because he was a kindhearted fellow with a breezy sense of humor. In fact, Liza doubted he had a malicious bone in his body. Joe stopped acting nervously and made a few light remarks that gave Cliff a chance to relax, too, so that in time, the two men were talking as if they'd been working together for a long while.

“The porch is sound,” Cliff said in response to one of Joe's questions when they came downstairs again. “It's the water pipes that concern me most.”

“There's a well?”

“Only for drinking water. The rest of the water comes from the lake.”

“When were those pipes laid?”

Cliff shrugged. “Fifty years ago, at least. Maybe Liza knows.”

Liza hadn't been listening. Instead, she'd been watching covertly as Cliff became more natural talking business with Joe. He didn't seem crazy at all, just uncomfortable. And who wouldn't be after spending so many years all alone looking after fish?

Both men turned to her expectantly, and she said, “I'm sorry. I didn't catch that.”

Cliff grinned. “I forgot. You can't bother Liza with boring details. She's in charge of creative thinking around here.”

Joe chuckled. “Well, somebody's got to be the man in
charge—or woman in charge, I guess. I'll take a look at the pipes myself before I give you a final opinion.”

“Thanks,” said Liza gratefully.

“It may take some digging. Should I bring my backhoe and look around a little?”

“You'd better do whatever you have to do.” Then Liza sneezed.

“Wow, that's some cold you've got.”

“I'll get over it. In the meantime, Cliff and I will keep trying to find a way into the attic. I'm sure I remember going up there when I was a kid. I can't believe I don't remember where the staircase is.”

“It'll come back to you.”

“Assuming the roof will need to be replaced, can you give us a rough idea of how much the repairs will cost?”

Joe took off his hat and slid his stubby pencil behind his ear. Frowning professionally at the lodge and chewing on his cigar, he said, “It's a big job, no doubt about it. There's lots of stuff we should do to modernize the place. The good news is that we won't have to tear off half the structure before we start, since the foundation and basic framework are sound.”

Liza blew her nose and wished she'd remembered to take her cold tablet. “That's a relief. How about putting some numbers on paper for me?”

“Sure thing. It'll take a few days, since I'll have to come back with the backhoe. Is tomorrow a problem?”

Liza held her breath and looked at Cliff.

“No problem,” said Cliff. “Come anytime.”

Liza let out her pent-up air while the two men made further plans. They strolled over to Joe's truck as they talked, and Liza followed in their wake, blowing her nose.

At last, Joe climbed into his truck. “You know,” he said, casting a final look up at the lodge. “This could be a great place once you're finished.”

“I hope so.”

“Yep, I'm sure the two of you will be happy living here together.”

Liza blushed and said quickly, “We're not living here together.”

Joe looked puzzled. “No?”

“Not like you think. We're friends. Not even friends, really—we're acquaintances, that's all.” Liza sneezed again and fumbled for a tissue. “There's nothing at all going on between Cliff and me.”

“Nothing at all,” Cliff agreed.

“We barely tolerate each other, in fact.”

“That's right.”

Then Cliff sneezed. A tremendous, explosive, sinus-rattling sneeze that echoed in the trees overhead.

Joe laughed. “Nothing going on, huh?” He started the truck, continuing to chuckle at the picture they made standing together on the drive, both sniffling. He said, “There's nothing more romantic than sharing a head cold, is there?”

“We aren't sharing anything!”

“That's the trouble with kissing, you know. It spreads germs.”

“This is not what you think!” Liza bellowed over the roar of the truck's engine.

Cliff sneezed again.

“Stop that,” she commanded. “You're embarrassing me!”

“I can't help it,” Cliff said as Joe's truck started down the drive. “Hell,
you
gave me these germs!”

“I did not!” She grabbed a fresh tissue and pushed it into his hand.

He sneezed three more times and looked dazed when he'd finished. “I can't believe it! You gave me a cold. You really gave me a cold.”

“It was an accident! Oh, heavens, now we don't dare go into town together. The gossips will have us married by the end of the week.”

“I can't hear you. That last sneeze plugged up my ears completely.”