Chapter 3

At the very moment that John was prodding information out of Ned Church, Cassie was lying across her bed crying her eyes out.

Why, why had she shut the door in his face? John Howard had only meant to be nice to her. Why couldn't she have refused him more graciously, why had she had to run?

Oh, but he was too much. Too worldly. Too outgoing, too likable. Too sexy by far. He was the kind who was proud of himself, of who he was, and he wanted others to approve of him as much as he approved of himself.

That was part of the trouble. They weren't anything alike.

Blotting her eyes with the ruffle of the embroidered pillow sham, she picked herself up. Bertrand rambled past and brushed her ankle, which was dangling off the edge of the bed.

"Oh, Bertrand, there's no end to the guilt." Why was it in her nature to feel guilty about everything? Had she been that way before?

"I don't think so," she said out loud. She had been carefree and ambitious and loving and... but what was the use? She was a different person now.

She got up—or, more accurately, down—from the tall old-fashioned brass bed, Gran's bed, and straightened the coverlet with its embroidered bluebirds of happiness.

Gran's bed was one of her favorite things about this house. With its gleaming spirals and curlicues culminating in four massive bedposts that flared at the tops like the ends of tubas, it was the most elaborate brass bed she'd ever seen. Cassie remembered arriving on Flat Top Mountain one summer from the small Piedmont North Carolina town where she'd lived as a child. It must have been shortly after the Fourth of July celebration when the big brass band marched down Main Street. Since Cassie had been only three or four at the time, she'd thought Gran was calling her bed a "brass band." To the tiny Cassie, awestruck at a piece of furniture the likes of which she'd never seen before, the bed had in fact looked like a whole brass band. She'd fully expected loud oompahs to come crashing from the bedposts.

She smiled at the memories. Gran's brass bed. How she wished there'd been time to show it to Rory. He would have loved it.

Bertrand scuttled into the closet and reappeared with a pair of panty hose in his mouth. One nylon foot was caught on something in the closet. He tugged at the nylon until it ripped.

"Bertrand," she said reprovingly. It was her last pair.

The skunk laid the shredded hose at her feet and licked her bare toe. She bent over and scratched him behind the ear.

"Trying to make it up to me, are you?" she said as she smiled, but her words gave her pause.

"As maybe I can make it up to John," she murmured thoughtfully as Bertrand skidded around the room, his toenails clicking on the plank floor.

Tigger emerged from under the bed and interrupted her thought processes. Yawning, the big marmalade cat stretched to his full length before hopping on the bed and starting to wash his face with one tiger-striped paw. Tigger ignored the cavorting skunk, his usual practice. Skunks and other such creatures were below his lofty dignity.

Cassie's behavior toward John had been inexcusable. She was ashamed of the way she'd acted; she could have been more polite.

"It was the way he looked," she explained to the animals. Tigger blinked up at her, then switched his attention and his tongue to one of his elegant rear legs. At least he didn't pass judgment on her. Cassie was grateful for that.

She chattered to Tigger, who jumped down and followed her to the kitchen, where she consulted the freezer. "What do you think, Tigger? I've got two or three casseroles of frozen shrimp Newburg. I could take one to John as a peace offering."

Tigger blinked inscrutably and jumped on the kitchen counter, which was his habit when he wanted attention. Absently Cassie shooed Tigger away. She sat down with him on the floor, scratching him under his chin until he rewarded her with a happy, guttural purr.

"I'll drop the casserole on John's doorstep with an apologetic note, knock on the door and run," she said, thinking out loud. Tigger opened one eye briefly, declining to comment as long as Cassie continued to scratch.

What Cassie failed to realize was that the ploy she had in mind wouldn't work with a man like John Howard.

* * *

A flutter of movement in the woods caught John's eye as he inexpertly fumbled with the Nikon. The damned thing was beyond him, with its apertures and its f/stops and all manner of lenses long and short. For a moment he watched to see if deer were coming close to the house, but he saw nothing. Not that he would have wanted to take pictures; he was sick of the fiction that he was a photographer.

He wished he'd told Cassie he was a biologist. There must be a number of things a biologist could do on Flat Top Mountain. Classify plants or something—yeah, that would be good. Crawl around peering at leaves with a magnifying glass. That he could handle.

He set the camera aside and moved closer to the window. Yes, there was something in the woods, and he was amazed to see that it was Cassie. Despite the limp, she moved like a wood nymph from the shadows of the forest into the soft lemon-yellow sunset of the clearing. Her hair swirled up and out and around her, a crisp frame for a face that looked tense but determined. With a certain detachment and a raised eyebrow, he waited until she set the basket she carried on his doorstep. Then he yanked the door open.

She stared openmouthed.

"Come in," he said, all courtesy.

"I—" She whirled to go.

He was too quick for her. He was down the steps in less than a second, his strong hand circling her wrist.

"Let me go!" she said, outraged.

"Not until you explain why you're creeping through the woods so quietly, and what's in the basket. What are you, Little Red Riding Hood?"

She glared at him. "Yes, and you must be the wolf."

"Grandma, what sharp claws you have," he said. He thought he saw the hint of a smile.

She nodded toward the basket. "I left you that," she said grudgingly.

"I believe you expect me to ask why." He waited expectantly.

"I'm sorry for this morning?" She tipped her head, which sent a ripple through her hair. He found her immensely appealing in that moment. She looked like a little girl who had been caught doing something wrong.

With a skeptical look, he released her wrist and picked up the basket, which he now saw contained a casserole, salad greens, and a loaf of bread neatly wrapped in a cloth napkin. An envelope addressed to him was taped to the casserole lid.

She stood watching, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

He unfolded the note and read it. The words were simple and to the point, apologizing for closing the door in his face. That was all, except for instructions about heating the shrimp Newburg.

"You're so contrite that you'll stay to eat dinner with me. Besides, you cheated me out of lunch."

"I didn't..." she began, then thought better of it. She detected a curl of amusement at the corners of his mouth, and it was hard to resist.

He grinned at her. "So come in and help me figure out how the gas stove works."

Cassie wasn't sure she wanted to do this, but she found herself replying anyway. "Mine's electric. I won't be much help."

"That's okay. You can stand around and hand me matches. The pilot light's gone out."

He started into the house with the food. She felt herself exhale, though she hadn't realized she was holding her breath. She had the feeling that she should go while the going was good, but at the moment, she was inordinately curious about how he lived.

She followed him inside and glanced around. His place was small and simply furnished. Everything was neat and clean, with a laptop computer open on a desk in the corner of the living room. Camera lens cases occupied most of the coffee table, and through the bedroom door, she spotted a double bed, neatly made.

The kitchen was basic, with the oldest stove Cassie had ever seen. John struck a match. His hands were big and sinewy and capable, with long fingers and squared-off fingernails. She let her eyes drift up his arms to his shoulders, so square and so masculine, and down to his chest. Her unobserved study ended when the pilot light lit with a whoosh!

"That was easier than I expected," he said in relief. He set the oven temperature and turned to her.

"While the oven preheats, I have a bottle of—" he took a bottle from the refrigerator—"well, it's nothing special. Ordinary Chablis, available in any supermarket. Scot's Cove doesn't have much of a wine selection, does it?"

"Maybe that's why Grandma used to make scuppernong wine. When I was twelve, I got tipsy on it."

He laughed. "You can tell me that tale on the porch while we watch the sun go down. Okay?"

"All right," she said. His attraction to her was obvious, but she didn't want to encourage it. Still, she was beginning to enjoy this. John wasn't bad company.

He slid the casserole in the oven and handed her a glass of wine. On the porch, he pulled up two chairs. They didn't talk as they sat in the deepening twilight inhaling the fragrance of honeysuckle from the woods. In the distance a small plane glided soundlessly, too far away for them to hear the sound of the engine. Cassie averted her eyes from it and focused on a bumblebee circling a rosebush. She saw few airplanes up here, which was a blessing.

"So what happened after you imbibed too much of Grandma's wine?" He leaned forward with interest. It had been a long time since anyone had paid her so much attention, and her shyness, if that's what you'd call it, seemed to dissolve.

"She sat down and drank a glass with me. Then she told me if she ever caught me doing it again, I would be sorry I'd ever been born. From the way my head hurt the morning after, I didn't care to repeat the experience." She smiled at the memory. Her grandmother had not only been a skilled healer, she'd also understood the psychology of the pre-adolescent.

"My dad did something similar. He caught me lighting a cigar in the garage. He made me smoke it to the end, and I threw up all over my bike. Washing the bike afterward was one of our major father-son bonding moments."

Cassie smiled and leaned her head against the chair back. It was hard to imagine John as a kid. She wondered if they'd have liked each other.

The sun slipped down, shooting a golden aureole up from the peak of the mountain. The wine sent relaxing signals to her elbows, her knees, her fingers, her eyelids. Her lips.

After a time John said, "I'm going to check on the casserole."

She nodded. "Need some help?"

"Maybe later. Another glass of wine?"

She shook her head. While he was gone, she rubbed a finger curiously against her bottom lip. The flesh was slightly numb, the way it felt when she had just come home from the dentist's office after having a tooth filled.

John stepped out the door as Cassie was rubbing her finger across her lip. Her mouth had relaxed, and her face in the glow of the sunset was stunning in its irregularity. He wished he really were a photographer. He would like to have a photograph of her, of each half of her face flip-flopped so that he could see what she would look like if her whole face was the same. Which side would he like best? The left or the right? They were both equally beautiful.

She dropped her finger away from her mouth and shot him a guilty look. Why guilty? Was she embarrassed that he had caught her in the act of doing something so sensual? He longed to touch her lips with his own finger. But no, he reminded himself. His attraction to her wasn't sexual. At least, it hadn't been.

When they saw the first mosquito hovering in wait and humming its song of the hunt, John took her hand and led her into the house.

"You can make the salad," he said, whipping a large bowl from a cupboard and setting it down with a clatter. "Those greens look wonderfully fresh. Did you grow them yourself?"

She couldn't stop herself from warming to his enthusiasm. "I brought them in from the garden this afternoon." She busied herself tearing up lettuce, slicing crisp baby scallions, quartering tomatoes.

"I've always wanted to have time for gardening. It fascinates me, the idea of watching live things grow." He set the casserole and the salad on a table in the small alcove that served as a dining room. Outside, Pride's Peak cast purple and lavender shadows in the deepening twilight.

John helped Cassie with her chair as though they were sitting down to dinner in the most elegant restaurant instead of a plain mountain cabin. He's used to nice things, she thought. He knows how to act. Her mind shot back to other places, other times. Being handed out of a limousine; walking, head held high, through a maze of beautifully set tables, candle flames glowing, fine crystal tinkling, and silver gleaming in the light from golden chandeliers. She had known that sort of place once upon a long-ago lifetime.

"Well," John said, "will you?"

She pulled herself back to the present and stared at him. She had no idea what he'd said.

He saw the lost expression on her face and knew at once that she had been somewhere else, not with him. Pity stabbed through him. He'd have to remind himself that something sad had happened to her. He'd have to remember that if it weren't for her, he wouldn't be here. Wouldn't be anywhere, for that matter. His gratitude to her filled him up, emptied his lungs, hit him stronger than any other emotion he had known.

"If you don't want to talk," he told her gently, "we don't have to."

"I—I'm not used to being with other people," she said unhappily. "It makes me nervous." Not only that, but being with him stirred dormant emotions that made her uncomfortable. She didn't want to have sexual feelings for anyone, but they were impossible to ignore when she was around him.

"Is it me? Something I'm doing wrong?"

He was doing everything right if the object was seduction. Not that he seemed to have that in mind, but she was responding as if that was what she wanted.

She looked down at her plate. She'd barely eaten anything.

John slid his hand over hers where it rested on the table.

"I don't like upsetting you. But I enjoy your company very much."

She shook her head and shoved the chair back from the table, knocking it over in her haste. It fell with a jarring crash.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have come here. It was a bad idea."

He was up and after her before she made it halfway across the room.

"Cassie!"

"Please leave me alone," she said, the words falling out in a rush. "You have no idea how it is with me. Leave me alone." She struggled clumsily with the rusty door latch, but it wouldn't budge.

"I want to know what's wrong, Cassie, if only you'd tell me."

But her eyes were wild and her fingers on the latch were frantic, so, hoping to quiet her, John wrapped her in his arms.

Cassie felt his warmth through her clothes. She swallowed and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, unable to breathe.

"Don't run, Cassie," he said softly into her ear. His breath fluttered at her temple. "I'd never hurt you." His hand left her shoulder and slid under her hair. She drew a rapid intake of breath as her bones liquefied beneath his touch.

"I'd better go," she said. "I'm not comfortable with this. There's no point in our getting to know each other better. None at all." Cassie wanted to cry so the tension would go away, this terrible and awful tension that he had started, for which he was responsible.

He let her go. He was perplexed at how a simple dinner, which they should have enjoyed, had turned out this way. Accepting defeat, he released the door latch so that the door swung open. Before he could speak, Cassie darted an unfathomable look at him, and then, like a figment of his imagination, she flitted away and the woven shadows of the woods pulled her in.

What had just happened? What had gone wrong? Suddenly exhausted, John massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and when his eyes closed, Cassie was there. He flicked his eyes open again, startled, wanting beyond all reason for her to be there, really there.

Throughout his journey to find her, John had never expected her to be somebody like this, so vulnerable, so damaged, so in need of comfort. So in need of touching, and that was obvious.

What should he do about it?

First of all, he'd have to let go of the fiction once and for all that his attraction to her wasn't sexual. It hadn't started out that way, but now...

Now, with that premise scuttled, he'd proceed from here. Somehow.