Where the Heart Is by Elizabeth Lowell
“Because human stupidity pisses me off.”
“You must spend most of your time in an advanced state of pissed-offness.”
He laughed and lay back again.
She curled along his side and waited.
“You know the geologist and the engineer I was having trouble with?” he asked finally.
“The ones who were fighting over the, uh, town bike?”
“Yeah. I got up there just in time to break up a nasty little brawl.”
“That’s when someone used a hammer on you?”
“My own damn fault,” he said, yawning. “I was more worried about the guy with the pistol. Drunks are really unpredictable.”
Her mouth went dry.
“When I went after the gun, Joe and the woman jumped me. I got the gun away from Ken and blocked most of the hammer blow. Then I knocked some sense into the two men.”
A ragged, indrawn breath was Shelley’s first comment.
“Does this happen often?” she asked faintly.
“No. When it does, it’s usually between miners, not engineers, and I just let them have at it, so long as they’re pretty evenly matched. But Ken was a miner before he was anything else. Two drinks, one flashy piece of ass, and he goes ballistic.”
“Aren’t there any police?”
“Were there many cops in the Sahara?” Cain asked wryly.
She closed her eyes, remembering. There had been times when she and her mother retreated into their tent. That was when her mother took a well-oiled pistol out of a false compartment in a suitcase. Then mother and daughter waited quietly behind canvas walls.
In time, Shelley learned to shoot and care for the pistol herself. Even before then, she was squinting through the slit where the tent flaps didn’t meet. More than once she had watched her father talk to angry men with a shotgun in the crook of his arm.
“No police until after the fact, and usually not even then,” she said. “Dad had to take care of things himself.”
“It’s the same in a mining camp. It’s up to the camp boss to keep order.”
“Are you the camp boss?”
“No, Ken is. Unfortunately, the town bike in question—”
“Lulu?”
“Yeah. Joe’s wife. She was the one with the hammer.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“If she’d been a man, I’d have broken her arm.” He shrugged. “As it was, I told Lulu if she ever came at me again, I’d take her down like any man.”
“What about Ken?”
“He’ll be looking for a new job as soon as his arm heals.”
“His arm?”
“I broke it. I don’t like guns, especially when they’re pointed at me.”
“I . . . see. And the husband?”
“Joe took Lulu back to their cabin. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“I doubt if a good time was had by all.”
“I hope not,” Cain said bluntly. “I didn’t see Lulu the rest of the time I was there, which was fine with me. I was too busy trying to get things running again to worry about some troublemaking slut.”
The contempt in Cain’s voice chilled her. It was the same cold disdain that came when he mentioned his ex-wife or JoLynn.
Town bike.
Even Shelley had felt the sharp edge of his tongue when they first met.
Spinster. A woman who can’t hold a man.
“You don’t like women very well, do you?” Shelley asked quietly.
And she had just discovered that she was very much a woman.
Chapter Fifteen
The silence stretched for so long that Shelley decided Cain simply was going to ignore the question. Then he sighed, raked a hand through his shaggy hair, and began talking.
“Too many women are on power trips,” he said. “They want every man they see. But they don’t really want men. They just want men to want them.”
The tension in his body was plain to her. His muscles were as hard as the line of his mouth. He turned and looked at her.
“I haven’t liked women for a long time,” he said evenly. “Then I saw a woman standing in a shaft of sunlight with a snake draped over her arm. She was handling it so gently . . .”
He traced the line of her eyebrows with his thumbs.
“And she handled a lonely boy just as gently,” he said, his voice slow and deep. “She had no reason to be gentle, nothing to gain. She was simply a loving kind of woman.”
“A spinster who couldn’t hold a man?”
His laughter and warm lips brushed over her forehead.
“There I was, all intrigued by you,” he said, “and you couldn’t hold your nose high enough when you looked at me. Yeah, I was pissed off.”
“It never occurred to me that you saw past JoLynn’s, uh . . .”
“Tits?”
“Let’s not forget her ass.”
“I did a long time ago. It’s called growing up.”
Shelley’s smile faded when she saw the intensity in Cain’s eyes.
“That’s why you intrigued me,” he said. “You were real all the way to the bone. No games, no lies. You had the kind of honesty I’d given up hoping to find in a woman.”
She turned and kissed his palm. Then she bit it.
He laughed and caressed her lips with his thumb.
“When I saw you lighting candles on Billy’s cake, I knew I had to find out what it was like to have an honest, loving kind of woman in my bed.”
“So what was it like?” she asked, her voice light. But there was no laughter in her eyes as she watched him.
“You taught me that some dreams come true,” he said simply.
“Some dreams are nightmares.”
“Not this one. I’ve finally found a woman who is strong and tender, smart and honest, civilized and wild.”
His warm breath mingled with hers in a kiss. When it ended, she tilted back her head and looked directly in his eyes.
“Cain, I’m not wild. I’m a homebody.”
“Look out that wall of glass and tell me you aren’t wild.”
She looked across his chest to the tall windows that gave the guest bedroom a spectacular view of the steep hills. Even as she rejected the truth of what he said, she had to admit the land called to her at a level deeper than words, deeper than thought, deeper than denial.
Soon twilight would come, and with it the moist sigh of an ocean breeze reversing the hot Santa Ana winds. The sea air would bring life to the empty land. Evening would be a chaparral-scented coolness sliding down hot ravines. Deer would begin to glide out of cover, picking their way through the brush on delicate feet. Raccoons would sneak up to drink from her pool, followed by opossums. Sometimes there would be the amusing black-and-silver elegance of a skunk strolling by.
And always there were jackrabbits freezing at the first sound, alert for the coyotes that moved like tan shadows through the concealing brush.
This was Shelley’s favorite time of day, when the sun was easing its fierce grip on the land. Everything glowed with a rich, mystic light that whispered to her to go out to the untamed hills and explore them, to walk in places where man rarely went.
Cain watched her looking at the land and knew that he was right. Whether she admitted it aloud or not, she was too honest to hide her reactions. She loved the wild places where animals were more common than man and the wind was more common than any life.
“So I like a good view,” she said. “So what? Everyone does.”
“What makes a good view is a matter of opinion.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the windows in this house are oriented toward the land rather than the city lights.”
She shrugged. “I can see lights at night.”
“You can, yes. But it’s the view of the land you truly enjoy.”
“Lots of people like a view that isn’t cluttered up by houses. That’s why oceanfront property is so expensive. Does that mean that everyone who lives along the beach wa
The challenging note in her voice made him pause, but not for long. What he was trying to point out about her basic nature was too important to shove under the rug.
Even though she plainly wanted to.
“JoLynn covered up her windows because she’s too silly and shallow to respond to something as wild as the sea,” Cain said quietly. “You chose walls of glass facing away from the city because you need to see something untamed in the midst of all the concrete and macadam.”
She tossed her head impatiently.
He didn’t take the hint.
“There is wildness in you,” he said. “You can’t hide it. Why even bother to try?”
She stiffened beneath his caressing hand, withdrawing from him without moving away.
Yet he sensed the change in her as surely as he would have sensed a change in his own heartbeat. He watched her with clear, unflinching eyes.
“Why do you deny that you’re not a complete homebody?” he asked.
“Because it isn’t true.”
“Give me a better explanation.”
She shifted restlessly. “I love the hills for their tawny colors and the way light transforms them. They’re as superb as any piece of art created by man.”
“You love them because they weren’t created by man. The hills are wild.”
She turned and watched him with wary hazel eyes.
“You’re wrong. I’m a homebody.” She smiled, trying to soften the hard edge of her voice. “People come in all different types and sizes. Like you. A big, rangy traveling man.”
And the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.
Her sad smile made Cain’s breath catch. Her eyes were brilliant with what could easily turn into tears. His gut instinct told him she was saying good-bye all over again.
“You can’t dismiss what we have so easily,” he said.
“Who said it was easy?”
Before he could answer, she covered his mouth with her hand.
“No, please,” she said. “We can’t change what we are. But we can share ourselves, can’t we? For as long as it lasts?”
“It will last forever. I love you.” His fingertip touched her lips delicately. “And that’s another first. I’ve never told a woman I loved her.”
The words swept through Shelley, destroying and creating at the same time, changing her whether she willed it or not. Tears trembled in her eyelashes. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream or just plain run from the certainty in Cain’s silver eyes.
Homebody and traveling man joined forever.
It will never work.
Losing him will hurt like nothing else in my life ever has.
“Cain . . .”
Her voice was small, anguished. Frightened.
He kissed her very gently.
“Don’t cry. As soon as you know why you’re afraid of your own wildness, you’ll know that you love me as much as I love you.”
She shook her head and fought not to lash out at life’s whimsical cruelty, matching JoLynn with Billy and a homebody with a traveling man.
Cain sat up and looked down at the slender, dark-haired woman who was as stubborn as she was sensual.
“I’m tempted to make love to you right now,” he said. “I could make you come apart in my arms. You would cry your pleasure and your love for me to the skies.”
She looked at the burning assurance in his eyes. Hunger raced through her. So did fear.
“But that would only scare you more,” he said, turning away. “So show me your hills, homebody. I’ve never hiked through a piece of art.”
For a moment Shelley simply lay on the bed, watching Cain as he got up and started putting on the clothes he had shed with such impatience earlier. Then she got up herself, trying to equal his calm.
She couldn’t. She was clumsy getting dressed. Her hands were shaking and her thoughts were a jumble.
“We should take a canteen,” he said. “Do you have one in that big bedroom closet of yours?”
The casual question shocked her. It was as though he had never looked at her with luminous, unflinching gray eyes and spoken of love. She swallowed hard, yanked on her jeans, and turned to face him.
He wasn’t even looking in her direction.
“Yes, I have a canteen.”
She was pleased that her voice was almost as matter-of-fact as his.
“Knapsack?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Hiking shoes?”
“Not in your size.”
“I have my own. What about you?”
“Right next to the canteen.”
He smiled lazily at nothing in particular, as though he had just won a bet with himself.
“Know a place where we can picnic in your hills?” he asked.
Slowly she nodded again and watched his smile soften the lean lines of his face. Emotion rippled through her. His smile was so beautiful to her that she simply wanted to stand and stare at him.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll make some more sandwiches while you gather the gear.”
With a feeling of unreality, she watched him walk out of the room.
He doesn’t believe what I told him. Or is it just that he doesn’t really care?
Alone in the room, Shelley stared out the window at the mysterious, alluring hills. Slowly she shook her head.
He cares. Not enough to change his roaming ways, of course. On the other hand, he’s never had a real home, so he doesn’t know what he’s missing.
Yet I know he feels something more than just desire for me. He might say he loves me in order to get me in bed, but there wouldn’t be much point in lying about his feelings now. Why bother? He got what he wanted.
So did I.
Sensual memories shimmered through her, making her catch her breath. She was honest enough with herself to know that Cain could have her again and again, for as long as he stayed.
Not just for the sex; although God knows it’s good. But because I . . . care for him. Too much.
Homebody and traveling man.
God, what a mess.
Biting her lip, she stood motionless, trying to bring order to the chaos of her emotions.
She couldn’t. Every scent in the room, every velvet shadow in the rumpled sheets, every crumb on the sandwich tray—everything reminded her of his generous lovemaking.
Enough running in circles, she told herself briskly. I’ll do what I always do when life closes in and I can’t think.
And what she did was hike in the hills. That was why every item of gear that Cain had mentioned was neatly stacked in a corner of her closet, waiting to be used. At least once a week she slipped away into the hills with her knapsack and a cold dinner. She loved to sit out there in the stillness with twilight sliding into night, watching while shadowy bits of life ghosted through the chaparral in search of food, prey, or sanctuary.
Eagerly Shelley finished dressing, gathered the hiking gear in her arms, and went up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Cain looked up from making sandwiches and smiled at her as she came into the kitchen with an easy, cross-country kind of stride. As he had guessed, she was at home wearing hiking boots.
“I poured the last of the lemonade into the canteen,” he said. “If you want to take something else, I have an empty canteen in the truck.”
“Lemonade is fine with me. It’s cool at night. We won’t be gone long enough to really need water.”
“That’s the way I figured it. Did you pack a flashlight?”
She hesitated. Somehow there was more statement than question in his words.
“I always have one in the knapsack,” she said.
“Knife? Matches? Compass?”
“And a first-aid kit and a survival blanket that can either reflect or absorb heat,” she said dryly. “Did I miss anything, O mighty trail master?”
“Nope.”
He gave her a sidelong glance, then returned to making
“Drop the other shoe,” Shelley said.
He smiled slightly. “Quick, aren’t you?”
“Mink usually are. So what are you trying not to say?”
“For a homebody, you sure know a lot about surviving in rough places.”
“I learned the hard way. That,” she said distinctly, “was before I had a home.”
All he said was, “Got something to wrap these sandwiches in?”
“Third drawer from the right.”
While he rummaged, she went to the refrigerator.
“I’ve got some fried chicken left from last night,” she said.
“Billy must have been off his feed.”
“No. I got smart. I cooked enough for five normal appetites. That way there was enough left for him to take a piece or three in his lunch bag.”
Cain snickered.
“Go ahead, laugh,” she said. “But I never really understood the expression ‘hollow leg’ until I saw Billy eat. While he was here, I made a quadruple batch of chocolate chip cookies. Twice.”
When she looked up from packing chicken in the knapsack, Cain was watching her with a gentle smile that made her heart turn over.
“A loving kind of woman,” he said softly.
“It comes with being a nice, tame homebody.”
But her voice wasn’t nearly as contrary as her words. It was impossible for her to argue with Cain when he smiled at her like that.
“Next time I’ll come back before my nephew eats the last cookie.”
Shelley’s eyelids flinched at his calm acceptance of the fact that he would be going away again.
And coming back.
“I hid some cookies in the red coffee tin on the top shelf of the cupboard over the refrigerator,” she said, reaching for a kitchen chair. “I thought you might not have outgrown your taste for them.”
“Does that mean you have?”
“Are you kidding? Those cookies have three of the basic food groups—sugar, grease, and chocolate.”
He lifted the chair from her hands and put it back under the table.
“Remember?” he said. “You have a man in your home now.”
He leaned past her and opened the cupboard above the refrigerator. Sourly she noted that he didn’t even have to stand on his tiptoes.