Whirlwind (9 page)

“If it will make you happy, I'll move down to the boathouse!”

“Oh, there's no need for that,” Liza said breezily, enjoying herself once she had the upper hand again. “I'll lock my door and prop a chair under the knob, just in case you can't control yourself.”

He sighed. “Miss Baron...”

“I should warn you, Forrester. I'm not an easy woman. I don't go to bed with anybody on a first date, so don't get your hopes up, all right? I'm very finicky on that point.”

“I'm not surprised,” he said dryly.

Liza heard his tone and immediately took offense. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Not a thing.”

“Are you insinuating that I'm some kind of tease?”

“No.”

“I suppose you think I'm overcompensating for something, is that it?”

“I'm trying not to think about you at all,” Cliff returned coolly.

Liza strode to his chair and pointed a long finger at his
nose. “You'll think about me a lot tonight, Forrester. I guarantee it!”

Liza stalked toward the door after that, but she couldn't prevent herself from spinning around in the doorway for one last parting shot. “And don't try anything cute, Forrester. I wasn't kidding when I said my door would be locked!”

She marched toward the stairs then, leaving an ominous silence behind in the lounge. Only the gentle crackle of the fire could be heard over her stomping footsteps as she ascended the staircase to the second floor. On the landing, she paused and listened.

From the lounge came the quiet sound of Cliff Forrester clearing his throat. Or suppressing a laugh.

He was laughing at her! Infuriated, Liza slammed into her room and closed her door with a resounding crash. She whirled around, breathing hard, and glared at the door.

“Come on, Forrester!” she said to the door. “I dare you to come up here and make fun of me!”

She paced for several minutes, fuming and rehearsing the kind of remarks that would put Cliff Forrester firmly in his place.

But he didn't come, and eventually Liza let out a huge yawn. She tried to calculate how many hours she'd been awake and realized she couldn't force her brain to concentrate any longer.

Suddenly very tired, she washed up in the small bathroom, then returned to the pink bedroom she'd chosen for herself. She locked the door, as promised, then turned to study the room. It was one of the smaller guest rooms, but had been Liza's favorite when they'd played at the lodge in her childhood. No doubt it had been one of Margaret's pet projects. Unlike the other rustic rooms, which had probably been used by the men in her grandfather's hunting parties, the pink bedroom was cozy and pretty, with a light pink paint, windows festooned with tattered remains of lace
curtains, and a set of petite furniture—a small iron bed, a lady's dressing table and a delicate chest of drawers painted white and topped by a porcelain lamp decorated with roses.

The frilly bedclothes had disappeared, of course, and the pastel rug had faded into a pale twin of its former self, but the room still had a certain romantic air that suited Liza's suddenly nostalgic mood.

Though she had never been allowed to spend a night in the lodge, Liza had used the pink room to play pretend games on rainy afternoons. It had also been the hiding place for her collection of paper dolls. Liza hadn't wanted her brother or sister to know she owned such a collection—she had prided herself on her tomboy's reputation—so she'd kept her dolls a secret.

On a whim, she crawled under the bed to look for the familiar shoebox that she'd decorated with pictures clipped from
Life
magazine, but it wasn't there.

“I probably threw it away myself,” Liza murmured once she'd extricated herself from under the bed. Still on her knees, she yawned again. “I never did collect anything for very long.”

She found a blanket in the chest of drawers and dragged it to the bed, ready to tuck herself in for the night. At the last moment, she remembered her vow to sleep with the window open and hopped out once more, to throw open the casements as wide as they would go. A brisk breeze filled the room, and Liza smiled with satisfaction.

“Good, clean country air! Perfect!”

She climbed into bed then, scrunching her long body under the blanket to keep warm. Smiling, she closed her eyes and let her body relax.

She fell asleep and dozed for a while, but a weird noise suddenly brought her to full consciousness about an hour later. Liza sat up.

“What the hell—”

She heard it again—a soft, mournful sound. Music,
maybe? A human cry?
Singing?
Sitting in the dark, Liza listened hard, straining to decipher exactly what she'd heard.

Silence. Then, again, the quiet wail sounded. Liza's heart kicked, and she instinctively hugged the blanket to her chest, shivering with fear as the eerie, musical moan echoed in the empty lodge. The soft, unhappy cry reverberated from a distant room, yet seemed to fill the whole cavernous building with its lonesome lament. Liza couldn't think, couldn't move. Paralyzed, she listened to the echo and felt her skin break out in gooseflesh.

Then her brain snapped back, and she said aloud, “Forrester, you creep!”

He was trying to scare her out of the lodge! That had to be it.

“Oh, grow up!” Liza groaned, flopping back down onto the bed. “If you think you're going to chase me out of Timberlake, Forrester, you'll have to do better than a few stupid ghost sounds!”

She heard the cry again, but this time it made her giggle. Untroubled, she fell asleep in no time.

C
LIFF WOKE
with a jerk and found himself in the pitch-dark lounge, uncomfortably stiff from sleeping in a chair. Instinctively, he didn't move. Holding himself very still, he listened intently, trying to decide what had awakened him.

Sleep was a luxury. He'd discovered that long ago. In Cambodia, he'd been afraid to drift off in the darkness. To fall asleep meant he might die at the hands of an assassin. Back in the States, nightmares kept him awake, sometimes for days at a time. If he dozed off, terrible images filled his head, boiling out of his imagination, his memory, his fears. He'd forced himself to stay awake to avoid the horror of his subconscious mind.

But at the lodge, the nightmares were different.

He listened intensely, half-afraid he had imagined a noise, and finally the sound drifted down to him again. It was a plaintive, almost singsong voice. When he'd first heard it not long after moving into the lodge, he'd been afraid of the ghostly sound. He'd figured it was a new kind of torment generated by the events in Cambodia. But gradually, Cliff had become accustomed to the nightly serenade. It didn't feel threatening. It was...well, too feminine to be threatening.

What bothered Cliff most was his inability to explain the sound. He'd searched the lodge thoroughly and found nothing that could rouse him from his uneasy sleep every night. No open windows, no stray animals taking up residence in a nook or cranny. No logical explanation at all.

“Except one,” he said aloud. “I've gone crazy.”

He stood up quickly and snapped on a light, not surprised to see his hands shaking.

Was
he going crazy?

“I can't tell,” he muttered wearily, raking his hand through his long hair.

Cliff stumbled to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk, spilling a puddle on the counter before succeeding in filling the glass. He tried to drink, but the liquid seemed to congeal in his mouth, so he set the glass down again unsteadily and closed his eyes.

Don't let it happen tonight. Don't go berserk with Liza in the lodge.

He willed himself to breathe evenly, to quiet his pounding heart and empty his mind of the nightmarish images that bombarded him. It took a long time to calm down. When he felt steady enough to move, he went out onto the porch and sat on the steps with his back braced against the railing. There, he heard no more sounds from the lodge. Nor did the bizarre side of his own imagination intrude again. The cold night air helped keep him awake. If he stayed conscious, he couldn't hurt anyone.

He dozed off once, then woke again around dawn. The forest was alive with the chirping of birds, and Cliff listened to their friendly sound while working the kinks out of his stiff limbs. Then he walked down to the lake and cast his fishing line out over the water a few times. He welcomed the peace of the morning and the warmth of the sun. The dawning light seemed to wash away his bad dreams with a kind of golden serenity.

Luck was with him, as it had been the day before. A fat bass took his hook, despite Cliff's lackadaisical technique. Somewhat cheered and relieved that he'd made it through another night, he carried his fish up to the lodge.

He was cleaning it in the sink when Liza came
down-stairs. She looked bleary-eyed and grouchy—a sight that gave Cliff a surprising amount of pleasure.

“What are you doing?” she grumbled, rumpling her long hair with one graceful hand and crinkling her nose. “It smells awful in here.”

She was wearing a snug pair of jeans and the same sweater he'd lent her yesterday. It was an outfit that seemed to suit her better than the short dress and spike-heeled shoes—unaffected, but still magnificently sexy.

“I'm cleaning your breakfast,” Cliff said, rinsing his fish under the faucet and trying not to wonder if she was wearing anything underneath the sweater.

She strolled closer. “Why the change in attitude? I thought you wanted me to starve.”

“I'm feeling generous this morning.”

“How come?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. What's wrong with you this morning? You look like hell.”

Which wasn't exactly the truth. She looked very attractive—pretty despite the obvious circles under her eyes and the lack of makeup that emphasized her pale complexion.

Liza climbed onto a stool and glowered at him. “I didn't sleep well,” she said flatly. “No thanks to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I refuse to dignify that question with a response. Let's just say I didn't appreciate how annoying you were last night. That, combined with a lousy bed, translates into a body that hurts all over, and my nose is stuffy, too.”

“Maybe you're catching a cold.”

“That's ridiculous.”

Cliff dropped the fish onto a plate and proceeded to wash the scales from his hands, eyeing Liza as she felt her forehead for signs of fever. “You left your window open all night, didn't you?”

Irritably, she said, “People don't catch colds from open windows! I'm not getting sick.”

“You're giving a pretty good imitation of it.”

“I am not!”

“Your nose is red. Your eyes are glazed.”

“Quit trying to sweet-talk me, Forrester.”

“Face it, Miss Baron. You're getting sick.”

That enflamed her and she sat up straight. “I am not! I never get sick. Never!”

Liza punctuated that definitive statement by letting out an enormous sneeze.

Cliff burst out laughing. He couldn't help it. After a long, unpleasantly sleepless night, the sight of stubborn Liza Baron declaring her good health while snuffling and sneezing like an advertisement for a drugstore...well, it was too funny to ignore. He chuckled and reached for a towel.

Liza stared at him, pink nosed and blinking her wide blue eyes.

“What's the matter?” he asked, still amused.

“You look...” She shook her head as if to dispel amazement. “It's weird to see you laugh, that's all. I wasn't sure you were capable of it.”

“Of course I am.”

“When was the last time you really laughed like that?”

Cliff considered her question and realized he couldn't answer. “I don't know,” he said, surprising himself by telling the truth.

“Well, it's certainly an improvement,” Liza responded, and she meant it.

Feeling a lot better, she got down off the stool. Despite a headache and sore joints, her spirits had begun to rise at the sound of his laughter. Cliff Forrester had looked like death warmed over when she staggered into the kitchen, but his laugh sounded very good indeed. His mouth had a distinctly sexy curve to it when he smiled.

She tossed her hair and said, “You look like a normal human being when you smile like that, Forrester.”

And just to annoy him, she grasped the front of Cliff's
shirt and pulled him down for a kiss. It was an impulsive, thoughtless kiss—the kind that wasn't meant to be sexual, just teasing. It worked, too. The contact was fast and hard and very hot. It gave Liza tingles.

It must have done the same for him. When she released him and stood back, Liza could see that Cliff's gaze had filled with light and his breath had caught in his throat.

“What was that for?” he asked, voice low.

Liza shrugged carelessly. “I felt like it. Besides, it was a way of getting back at you.”

“What for?”

“The I-told-you-so about leaving my window open.”

“How do you figure?”

“It's simple. If I
am
catching a cold, you'll get it, too. Right?”

She laughed at his appalled expression and skipped out of the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “I'm not eating breakfast this morning, Forrester. I'm headed into town.”

“You're leaving, you mean?”

“No such luck!” Liza started up the stairs and shouted down to him, “I'm going to check on my car and talk to Granddad and run a few errands. I'll be back here by lunchtime. Want to drive me?”

He came out of the kitchen and stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her in his old solemn way again. “No.”

“Suit yourself. Trust me with the truck?”

“Of course not.”

Laughing, Liza leaned her elbows on the railing. Her hair tumbled around her face. “Would you trust me with anything, Forrester?”