Eye of the Tiger (6 page)

“Mr. Taber and I just had a minor difference of opinion,” she said sweetly.

“It looks like he just got punched in the ego to me,” Wade said conversationally. “You really don’t like him, do you?”

“I like flies better than I like him,” she muttered, glaring at Keegan. “Conceited ape!”

Keegan must have read her lips, because he turned suddenly and went back to the Irish girl, appropriating her from her current partner with noticeable flair.

“Just look at him—” Eleanor glowered “—taking women away from other men, making passes at everything in skirts….”

“He’s quite popular with the ladies,” Wade observed. “I’m surprised you’re able to resist his charm so easily.”

If only he knew! “I’ve known him for years,” she said shortly. “He’s always around the house these days, talking to my father.”

“And playing chess?” Wade ventured. He cocked his head and studied her while they danced. “Does he really come to play chess, or to chance his arm with you?”

“He’d get his arm broken for him if he tried to put it around me,” she returned curtly. “And can we talk about something else? You’re ruining my appetite.”

“Oh, gladly,” he murmured, and whirled her around the floor with a smug expression that wasn’t lost on the tall, handsome redhead with the stunning brunette in his arms.

W
ade kept his sailboat in a slip at the marina on Cave Run Lake. It was a beautiful area, in the Daniel Boone National Forest, and there were hiking trails and a sky lift in the forest area. It was late spring, almost summer, and the woods were filled with picnickers and fishermen and hikers. Eleanor stared after them a little wistfully as Wade led the way to his slip at the sprawling marina. She liked boats but knew little about them. Her tastes leaned much more toward fishing and walking in the woods than toward water sports. It was another of the big differences between Wade’s lifestyle and her own, but perhaps she could adjust.

He looked handsome in his white slacks and navy pullover shirt, not a bad-looking man at all. She glanced ruefully at her jeans and multicolored knit shirt. She hoped she was properly dressed for sailing. She’d remembered the tennis shoes he told her to wear, but he
hadn’t specified what kind of clothes to wear. She sincerely hoped he didn’t have any ideas about taking her to an exclusive restaurant dressed like this.

“We have a budding sailing fraternity here,” he was telling her, glancing over his shoulder with a smile. “In October we have the Grand Annual Regatta. You’ll have to come with me this year,” he added, taking it for granted that theirs was going to be a long-term relationship. Eleanor beamed.

“Is it all sailing?” she asked innocently.

“Mostly,” he replied. “It’s the first weekend in October, and starts out with around-the-course racing the first day, with a big dinner that night and another race the second day. There’s an open regatta for all classes.”

“Do a lot of people from Lexington race in it?” she asked.

He grinned at her. “Darling, it’s only a short drive from the city. Even shorter from where we live, outside the city. In fact, the Tabers have a slip here, and Keegan and Gene won their class in the regatta last October.”

Her face colored. She knew that Keegan loved sailing, but she hadn’t remembered that he kept his sailboat here, or that his father raced with him. It was the kind of thing that Gene Taber would do, though. Like his son, he had a reckless streak. It was one of the first things she’d admired about Keegan, that recklessness.

“Speak of the devil,” Wade muttered, staring past her just as they reached his slip.

She half turned and found Keegan Taber walking casually along the marina, as if he spent every day there and was right at home.

“Hello, Wade!” he called with a friendly wave. “You
have a call at the desk. I told them I’d relay it, since I was on my way to my own slip.”

Wade sighed. “I might have known. You can’t ever get away from work, not as long as there are telephones anywhere on the planet.”

“Wait until the cellular phones catch on,” Keegan said with a grin.

“God forbid! Be right back, darling. Thanks, Keegan.”

“Sure.” Keegan stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’ll watch out for Eleanor until you get back.”

Eleanor glared at Keegan as Wade disappeared into the marina office. He looked as casual as she did, in jeans and a yellow knit shirt. And in deck shoes he didn’t tower over her as much as usual. The boots he wore around the farm gave him even more height. The wind was blowing his red hair around, disrupting its slightly wavy perfection, and against his deep tan the white flash of his teeth was even more attractive. The wind was behind him, blowing the heady scent of his aftershave into her nostrils, drowning her in its masculine lure.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“The same as you. Enjoying myself.”

“Aren’t you a little far from home and your houseguest?”

His eyebrows lifted. “Which houseguest?”

“The one with the figure,” she returned, smiling coolly.

“The one with the figure is on a tour of local farms with my father and her father,” he replied.

“And you didn’t want to go, too?”

His blue eyes twinkled at her. “I work hard enough during the week that I like having Sundays off.” He chuckled.

She lowered her eyes to his throat, where fine red hairs peeked out. She remembered that his chest was covered with that softly abrasive hair, and her face colored because of the intimacy that memory involved. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively and stared toward the marina office.

“He won’t save you, you know,” he remarked. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “That sounded like his housekeeper Mildred to me. And she’d never bother him on a date unless it was an emergency.”

“He won’t go home,” she said. “We’re going sailing.”

“Want to bet?”

She looked up at him, her eyes narrowed. “Not with a renegade like you,” she replied. “You stack the deck.”

He smiled, and little thrills raced through her body. She was still vulnerable, and she hated it. Four years should have given her some immunity. In fact, it had only fanned the flame, made her hungry for the sight of him.

Her eyes met his, and she felt her toes curling under at the pleasure of the exchange. The hand holding his cigarette froze in midair, and suddenly his smile was gone. She sensed his abrupt rigidity and felt it reflected in her own posture. At that moment she wanted nothing quite so desperately as to reach up and kiss that warm, hard mouth.

“Dangerous, baby, looking at me like that in public,” Keegan said in a tone she’d never heard him use. He
smiled faintly, but it did nothing to disguise the flare of hunger in his eyes.

Before she could answer him, and while she was still trying to get her heart to stop racing, Wade rejoined them. He was frowning, his mind already on business.

“I’m sorry as hell, but I’ve got a European businessman sitting on my front porch drinking my best bourbon and just dying to give me gobs of money for a foal.” He sighed. He grinned at Eleanor and Keegan, ignoring the tension. “I’m sorry, darling, but I’m so mercenary…”

She burst out laughing. “It’s all right. If you’ll drop me off…”

“I’ll let her ride home with me,” Keegan interrupted, lifting the cigarette to his lips. “Then you won’t have to go out of your way.”

Wade and Eleanor both started to protest, but they weren’t as quick as Keegan. He took Eleanor firmly by the arm.

“Come on, I have to pick up some papers from the boat first. See you, Wade!”

Wade faltered. “Well…Eleanor, I’ll call you tonight!”

“Yes…do!” she called over her shoulder, half running to keep up with Keegan’s long strides. She scowled up at him as he propelled her down the marina. “No wonder you have your own boat—you’re a pirate! You can’t just appropriate unwilling passengers!”

“You’re willing,” he replied without looking at her. “At least you will be when I show you what I’ve got in the boat.”

She sighed. “Does it bite?”

“It used to,” he murmured, grinning. He helped her
onto the polished deck of the big sailboat, its huge sails neatly wrapped and tied, and went below for a minute. He was back almost before she missed him, with a picnic basket in hand.

“How…what…?” she stammered.

“I had Mary June pack it this morning for us,” he said. He helped her back off the boat. “We can drive down to the picnic area and gorge ourselves. I didn’t have breakfast. I’m starving.”

Her mind was whirling. “You couldn’t have known Wade was going to have company.”

“Sure I did. I sent it over, as a matter of fact,” he said imperturbably, herding her right along.

Her jaw dropped. “Your Irish guests!”

“Dead straight,” he agreed, grinning broadly. “And he’d better hurry home, too, or O’Clancy will have persuaded Mildred to go home with him to Ireland. That man could get funding from Congress for a fruit-fly-mating program. I’ve never seen the beat.”

“You set me up!” she groaned.

“It’s your own fault,” he replied. He led her to his brightred Porsche and put her in on the passenger side. “You wouldn’t come with me when I invited you.”

“I didn’t want to! I still don’t!”

He got in beside her and, flashing a dazzling smile, started up the little convertible. “Mary June’s got roast beef and potato salad and homemade yeast rolls in the basket,” he coaxed. “And she made fried apple pies for dessert.”

She glanced at him mutinously. “I’ll get fat.”

“Is there hope?” he asked wide-eyed. “You’ve lost
ten pounds since you came back home, and you were never heavy to start with.”

“I like me the way I am,” she fired back.

“I’ll like you better twenty pounds heavier,” he replied. “There. That looks like a nice, private spot.” He pulled into a parking space in the deserted picnic area and cut off the engine. “Nice view. No people.” He stared at her musingly. “You could make love to me if you wanted to.”

The unexpected remark made her grow hot all over. She practically dived out of the car, avoiding his eyes.

He brought the picnic basket and bypassed the tables. “This looks good,” he remarked, scanning the area. He put the basket down under a huge oak tree overlooking the lake. Far away, the white and multicolored sails spread like tiny map indicators over the blue, blue water. “We can eat and watch the competition all at once.”

She sat down reluctantly in the pleasant shade, watching him spread the cloth and lay out the food. It did look delicious, and she knew Mary June’s reputation as a cook. She and her father had been invited to barbecues and other special events that the Tabers hosted annually for their employees on the farm, and she’d tasted the housekeeper’s cooking many times. Mary June was something of a family institution. Like her father, a treasured employee. The thought made her feel bitter, and she sighed, staring down at her hands in her lap.

“Don’t curdle the dessert by glaring at it,” he teased. “Eat something!”

He handed her a plate and busied himself pouring
sweetened iced tea into plastic glasses from a huge jug that contained crushed ice.

She held out her hand for it and sipped the cool liquid with a dreamy smile. “How delicious!”

“I’m partial to it myself.” He filled a plate for her, handing it over and ignoring her dubious expression as he filled another for himself. “Nothing like a picnic to make you hungry, I always say. Eat, for God’s sake, Eleanor!”

Her dark eyes pinned him. “Must you always sling out orders? Can’t you ever just ask?”

“Not my nature,” he said between bites of beef. He sipped tea and watched her for a minute as she began to eat.

“No, that’s true,” she said after she cleared her plate. “You’re a born manipulator. You’re only happy when you get your own way.”

“Aren’t most people?” he asked. He put the plates aside and refilled her glass and his own with iced tea. Then he sprawled back comfortably against the huge tree trunk and crossed his long legs with a sigh. He looked as at ease here as he did at a formal party. Keegan never put on airs or lorded it over anyone. He seemed at home anywhere.

Eleanor sipped her tea, looking out over the lake. “I’ve never been here before,” she remarked. “Dad and I drove past it on our way to see one of my great-aunts once, but we never stopped. We always go fishing on the river.”

“There’s a lot of bass and crappie in this lake,” he replied, smiling. “So you like to fish, do you?”

“Dad does. I go along for the ride, and the peace and quiet. You don’t get much of that in a hospital.”

“What made you choose nursing?” he asked unexpectedly.

She held the cool, frosty cup in both hands and smiled faintly. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I always liked patching people up when they were hurt. I still do. I feel as if I’m giving something back to the world, paying my way as I go.”

“Is that a dig at me?” he asked conversationally, but his blue eyes were serious.

“You work every bit as hard as I do,” she said honestly. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. I was explaining my own philosophy, not condemning your lifestyle.”

His broad chest rose and fell heavily. “Maybe I feel like condemning it,” he said broodingly. He ran a lean finger around the rim of his glass absently, watching its path. “My father built the farm up from bankruptcy when he was a young man. He worked hard all his life so that he’d have something to pass on to me, so that I wouldn’t have to break my back for a living. Well, I didn’t have to work, and it affected me. In consequence, I spent the first twenty-five years of my own life giving my father hell and expecting something for nothing. No matter how well meant, you can give a child too much.” He looked up into her eyes. “I won’t make that mistake with my sons.”

“Sons?” she echoed. “Do you already have names picked out for them, too?”

“Sure,” he said, grinning as the atmosphere changed between them. “Well, for the tenth one, anyway. I’ll call him Quits.”

She smiled, radiant. How odd, to sit and talk, really talk, to him. That was a first. She didn’t want to enjoy it, but she couldn’t help herself.

“How about you?” he asked with apparent carelessness. “Do you want kids?”