Whirlwind (21 page)

Liza heard the pain in his voice and she climbed to her feet. She hugged Cliff fiercely, catching him around his waist and holding him tight. He reacted like a robot—with mechanical motions that showed no feeling underneath. Overhead, a wall of gathering clouds began to blot out the brilliant colors of the sunset. The air turned chilly, and Liza pressed close to Cliff to warm him.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

He talked then. In halting sentences, and with a volcano of emotions boiling behind the words but never exploding. Looking out over the lake, he told Liza of his friends, Cambodian people who had been simple folk.

“Good people,” he said. “Honorable people.”

He told her how they had been battered by the Vietnam war and their own government before the Khmer Rouge invasion blasted their lives beyond belief. Families were torn apart as fathers were conscripted into the army, death squads murdered innocents senselessly, and black-market thieves smiled one minute and plunged a bayonet the next. Children had been slaughtered by the thousands.

It had been more than the young, idealistic Cliff Forrester could stand.

“I don't know what happened to me,” he said. “I reacted, that's all. I remembered all the skills I'd learned in the woods at home, the silly games I used to play with my
brother—and suddenly it was real. I had to use every shred of intelligence I possessed or die. If I made a mistake, I was shot at. Or worse yet, someone I'd come to know, someone I'd shared a meal with or slept beside was blown to bits in front of my eyes.”

He passed one hand across his brow and went on. “One day I snapped. I went crazy.”

“Did something trigger it?”

It took a long time to pry the story out of him, but at last Cliff said, “There was a girl. She couldn't have been more than fourteen years old, and she'd been nice to me—I guess you could have called it a kid's crush. She followed me around, found me some food. Every morning when I woke up, she'd be sleeping beside me. It was like having a kid sister tagging along all the time.”

His eyes seemed to mist over at the memory of his little Cambodian sister.

“What happened, Cliff?”

He sighed. “She was captured. We went after her, but the men who'd taken her kept us pinned down with their automatic weapons. We could hear her screaming, though.”

A shudder racked his body as the memory bombarded Cliff. Slowly, he said, “I don't know what they did to her. When we finally got through, she was dead. And she'd been burned. They must have doused her with gasoline and—and—”

He couldn't go on after that.

But he didn't break down. Cliff didn't cry or shout or burst into a rage. His whole body felt as hard as steel, and his face became a mask of control.

Liza looked away so he wouldn't see how powerfully his tale had affected her. “Cliff,” she said when she trusted her voice to sound normal, “you can't blame yourself.”

“I do!”

“What would you have done differently?”

“I should have taken her away! We could have run ahead of the rest of the villagers or slipped past the enemy. We could have done something!”

“And left the rest to fend for themselves?”

Cliff shook his head. “We could have done something. I tried avenging her death. We tracked those men for days and picked them off one by one. But there were thousands more to take the place of every man we killed. We couldn't stop a whole army. So we turned south and headed for the sea.”

“And that's when you were wounded?”

“Eventually. Funny, but I didn't mind getting hit. By that time, I was ready for anything. I was surprised to find myself alive. And part of me was sorry I was.”

Liza gulped—only it sounded like a sob and she choked down another at once. “Don't say things like that, Cliff.”

For a long time, the storm seemed to mesmerize Cliff. A stiff, cool wind rustled the forest around them, then suddenly began to hiss ominously. The lake's gleaming surface turned gunmetal-gray beneath roiling clouds. But Cliff did not see the last dazzle of sunlight fade from the lake, nor did he notice how quickly the storm swooped down upon them. His gaze was turned inward.

Roughly, he said, “I did some terrible things, Liza. I don't want to be that crazy again. I've got to stay in control.”

At that moment Liza realized she wasn't capable of helping Cliff overcome his problem. He needed professional help far superior to anything she could offer. She had been foolish to imagine that she had the power to heal his psychological wounds.

Had her blunt and reckless style made things worse for him? She had bullied her way into his life. Was he better off alone?

I don't think so,
she thought.
My mother's been kind and
gentle to him for years, and look what's happened—he thinks he's barely holding on to his sanity.

“Cliff, you can't take responsibility for a whole war.”

“I must take responsibility for my own actions.”

“Sometimes circumstances make us do things we regret. But you have to put it behind you!”

“I can't,” he said simply. “I can't forget any of it.”

Alyssa had been too kind, Liza decided. She had never pushed him, never demanded that he change. So Cliff had gone deeper into his hiding place. Tenderness and understanding hadn't helped him at all.

“Come on,” she said, taking his hand. “Let's go get something to eat.”

He resisted her automatically. “I'm not hungry.”

“Force yourself,” she said, managing to grin. “You'll need your strength if you're going to continue fighting me off.”

He disengaged her grasp easily. “I don't want to fight you.”

Liza's temper snapped inside, and she let the anger lick through her words like brushfire. “Dammit, Cliff, you've got to fight something!”

“I've done enough fighting for a lifetime.”

“So what are you going to do now? Wait here until your bones molder? Forget it! I'm not going to watch you give up your life to bad memories!”

“I'm not asking you to watch. I just want to be left—”

“I don't want to hear it! I don't know why, but suddenly you're important to me.” She raised her voice and lectured, “You're not crazy and you're not stupid. It's time to get your act together!”

“I like my act the way it is.”

“You're wasting your life! Don't you know how precious it is? Life's a gift! You've got to use it! Abuse it! Love it!”

“That's the Liza Baron philosophy. But me—I've had enough of life.”

Conscious of her own cruelty, she said stonily, “You sound like my father.”

Cliff eyed her, nonplussed. “I'm not your father.”

“You know what I mean. He gave up. Nobody was there to push him when he needed it, so he took his own life. Well, I'm going to give you something to push against.”

“I want you to leave me alone.”

“Well, I won't,” Liza declared. “What are you going to do about it?”

Another heartbeat passed, and then a rumble of thunder echoed down from the forested hillside. The sound was enough to galvanize Cliff. Silently, he turned on his heel and began walking away.

Boiling with fury, Liza followed, shouting, “Don't turn your back on
me,
Forrester! I'm one woman you can't ignore!”

He laughed shortly. “That's certainly true.”

Liza ran after him. “I'm going to torment you, y'know.”

“Maybe I'll leave Timberlake.”

“Good! At least you'll have to function in the real world again!”

“Can't you just leave me alone?”

“No!”

Cliff halted and wheeled on her. “Why not? Why can't you just focus on your own business and leave me out of it?”

There were lots of ways to answer that. Liza wasn't sure of all the reasons she couldn't leave Cliff alone. She didn't want to admit how important he'd become to her in a very short time. So she said simply, “Because I need you.”

“Like hell. Maybe you need a trainer with a whip and a chair, but you don't need me.”

“Look,” Liza said determinedly, “I can't finish the lodge on my own. I know that now. I've bitten off more
than I can chew this time and I—I hate to admit it to Granddad. I need help, and I don't have anybody else to turn to.”

“My God, woman, you almost knocked the whole place down single-handedly with a tire iron yesterday! What else do you need?”

“I—I—”

“Yes?”

“All right,” she ground out, unwilling to admit a weakness but seeing no alternative. “I need your common sense. Maybe you've got problems, but you've also got something I need. Yankee practicality. I have good ideas, but I...well, that damned budget, for one thing. I don't know where to start.”

Impatient, he said, “Just get a piece of paper and start writing down what needs to be done.”

“See? That's easy for you to say, but it's beyond me! Help me with this one thing, okay? Then maybe I'll leave you alone.”

“Maybe?” he repeated dangerously.

“Maybe,” Liza reaffirmed, not about to give him an inch. “I never make promises I can't keep.”

Cliff looked away and sighed.

“Please?” she asked, stepping closer. “I do need you. Come on, I'm trying to be as polite as possible, aren't I?”

“I suppose I should be thankful for small favors,” he said sourly.

She grinned, and another rumble of thunder shook the ground under their feet. Cliff glanced up at the sky, as if seeing the descending storm for the first time. A huge thunderhead had boiled up from the leaden clouds.

“We're going to get wet in a minute,” he said.

“I don't care. I want an answer. Will you help me or not?”

The first drops of cold rain splashed down, striking Liza's shirt. She didn't flinch, but waited for his answer. The rain fell sharply around them, turning Cliff's dark hair
slick. He didn't seem to notice, but studied Liza's upturned face for a long moment—examining her expression for signs of deception.

He said, “I don't really have a choice, do I?”

Liza grinned. “Not really. I'm going to make your life miserable, one way or another. Come on, let's go inside before we get soaked.”

They ran for the lodge, dashing through the raindrops and sliding on the wet grass. Cliff reached the porch first and put out an automatic hand to help Liza up the steps. They staggered inside and headed for the kitchen.

Liza prepared the food while trying to coax Cliff out of his dark mood. Relentlessly, she teased him, forced him to respond, asked questions and waited for answers.
Like pulling teeth,
she thought. Gradually, however, Cliff began to thaw.

Dinner turned out to be a surprisingly delicious omelet with a salad and buttered bread. They ate together companionably in the kitchen. At least, Cliff ate. Liza scribbled notes on a scrap of paper torn from her sketch pad while Cliff outlined a preliminary budget for the refurbishing of the lodge. Mind you, she had more experience with budgets than she'd let Cliff believe. But she'd always had a staff of accountants to supervise before, and she didn't feel capable of organizing figures on a project as big as Timberlake without some help.

“Once Joe figures out how much some of these things will cost,” Cliff explained, “you can plug in the numbers. If the cost of repairs is too high, you'll just have to figure out what work can wait.”

“But I want to do all of it at once.”

Cliff looked amused. “If you're a millionaire, you can do that. If you aren't, you need to learn some patience.”

Liza tossed down her pencil. “Not one of my best qualities.”

She reached for the bottle of catsup on the counter and
poured a liberal dollop onto her omelet. “I hope Joe will hurry up and figure out how much the repairs will cost. I want to get started.”

“He seems like a hardworking guy. I'm sure it won't take him long to work up an estimate.”

Liza used her fork to smear the catsup evenly over her omelet and said musingly, “I bet poor Joe freaked out when the backhoe hit that body today.”

Cliff studied her splash of catsup and said, “He was upset, of course. I gathered it wasn't something that happens to him every day.”

Once her omelet was smothered in catsup, Liza reached for the jar of pickle relish. “It sure scared the hell out of me. I never thought of Timberlake as having a dark side, but I guess some terrible things must have happened here once.”

“It scares
you?
”

“It makes me think. I hope it won't keep Joe from coming back to work at the lodge.”

“He'll be back,” Cliff said, drinking the crown of foam off his beer. “He didn't strike me as the kind of man who gets rattled easily.”

“Still, I'm glad you were here when it happened,” Liza said truthfully, slathering relish on top of the catsup that coated her omelet. “I couldn't have handled it alone.”

“You did okay. I noticed Alyssa slipped away pretty quickly. She didn't even stick around for the police to arrive.”

“She really hates this place, I think.”

“Bad memories for her here?”

“I guess so.” Liza sighed. “I wish I knew more. Maybe I'll look through Margaret's diary tomorrow.”

“I left it on the table in the lounge.”

“Thanks. If I look through it, I might be able to find out a few things about my family.”

“Maybe you won't like what you learn.”

Liza smiled and forked up some of her omelet. “I think I can handle just about anything. At least I hope so. Mmm. Delicious. But I sure wish I had some onions!”

“Onions?” Cliff asked, eyeing the concoction on Liza's plate. “That looks like an explosive combination already. You're not actually going to eat it, are you?”