Florida Knight (20 page)

“You pop up out of nowhere, glued to our Catriona MacDuff, who won’t let a man within ten feet of her unless she has a sword in her hand. You stalk through the camp like you own the place, take charge in emergencies like it’s something you do every day. You can’t expect us to think you’re somebody’s tame pussy cat. So who—and what—are you?”

Raven stalled. “I thought what you call our mundane lives were private.”

“What’s happening is too serious for us to be sticklers about privacy. We’ve got a problem, and we need to know if you’re part of the solution.”

Raven smoothed a wrinkle from the wingtip of the shining black satin bird on his surcoat. Well . . . Cat had warned him he was a hard man to hide. He could brazen it out, make everyone angry or disappointed. But that wouldn’t help his investigation one damn bit. And telling some of the truth didn’t necessarily mean all of the truth.

Cat was sitting motionless beside him—he could only imagine what she was thinking.
Caught on our very first LALOC weekend.
Raven lifted his head, flicked his gaze over each of LALOC’s inner circle. “Some of you may know Mark Turco, the knight who was injured at the Fair in
Manatee
Bay
?” There was a murmur, nodding heads from several of the LALOC hierarchy. “Well, Mark is my brother. I heard talk there’d been some other so-called ‘accidents’ at LALOC, so I asked Cat to bring me to an Event.” Raven shrugged. “Nothing official, you understand. I’m just looking around on my own, trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“And you’d rather we didn’t ask you what ‘nothing official’ means.” Queen Eilis, the thirty-something mother of two, raised one haughty brow, then spoiled the effect by smiling broadly. She had him, and they both knew it.

Lt. Michael Turco fixed his eyes on the queen’s gold crown. “Yes, ma’am . . . my lady . . . uh
–
your majesty.”

There was a general shuffling, a clearing of throats. Question asked and answered. Time to get down to business.

By the time the meeting broke up Princess Kiriana, who would be queen in six months time, had volunteered to put together a team to examine the registration slips for every event at which a serious problem had occurred. And each of the LALOC officers present had agreed to put together a personal list of members who had displayed aberrant behavior.

“Come on, man, you’ve got to be kidding!” Earl Marshal Drakon had declared when Raven first raised the subject. “Just about every damn member of LALOC would qualify.”

Over the general laughter, Cat said, “You know what he means, Drakon. There’s quite a difference between being odd and being dangerous.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have called Brocc dangerous until today. Now . . . I’m not so sure.”

“Not Brocc!” Oddly enough, Cat was horrified. “He’s got a bad temper. Iffy manners, but he wouldn’t . . . he’d never . . .”

“Put him on the list,” Raven intoned. “Somewhere near the top.”

She, a lowly knight, had kept her mouth shut throughout the entire meeting, but this was too much. “You can’t put someone on a list just because you don’t like them.”

“Why not?” Raven growled. “A man who would beat on a woman
is capable of doing anything.”

“He didn’t
beat on
me! He just got carried away. Like it was a real battle.”

“He lost his head. He goes on the list.”

“Women demanded equality. We have to take the knocks that come with it!”

“Are you crazy? If you’d seen what I’ve—”

“Hold!” Earl Marshal Drakon’s voice roared through the room. “Brocc was out of line. He’s been banished. And his name will be at the top of my list.”

“So be it,” King Corwyn pronounced.

“Still glowering, Raven dropped the subject. “So what about the vendors?” he asked. “Is there anyone who knows them well enough to make a list?”

“Lady Cara is in charge of vendors,” Prince Marius said. “She’s in my shire. I’ll find out what she can tell me.”

After another twenty minutes of desultory speculation and general frustration over the job of trying to find a needle in a hay stack, King Corwyn thanked all those present, and the meeting broke up. As Raven walked toward the door, he felt a hand on his shoulder. “My lord,” Corwyn said, “you walk tall, make a big target. We can’t be the only ones who’ve noticed. LALOC members tend to be pretty bright. Watch your back.”

For a moment the two men stared at each other. Corwyn was right, and they both knew it. “Thanks. Goodnight,” Raven said. A firm handshake, and he and Cat were out the door.

“Damn!” Raven breathed as they walked the sandy road back to their camp site.

“You were never cut out for undercover work,” Cat consoled. “You just don’t blend in with the crowd. Particularly this one.”

“The place is full of tall macho jocks!”

“Yes, but you’re just . . . different. They’re jocks,” Cat explained, “you’re a cop.”

“And nobody really believed I could make it with LALOC’s resident celibate knight.”

Cat’s soft leather slippers almost stuck to the sand beneath her feet. Her whole body glitched, her brain went numb. Somehow she kept moving. The arm closest to Raven was holding up her train, her elbow out as if to ward him off. After all, a Lady Knight had no need for a comforting arm around her shoulders. For . . . caring. Or friendship. So what if the entire hierarchy of LALOC knew Raven was a fake, nothing but a false lover, that he never laid a hand on her . . .

Okay, so she was being about as dog in the manger as it was possible to get. She wouldn’t let him near her, and now she was embarrassed that people knew it.

But they didn’t know. Not really. They only knew Raven wasn’t here solely because he was her lover. They probably still thought she and Raven were sleeping together.

Silently, Cat swore. She couldn’t believe she was
pleased
.
Did she actually
want
her friends to think Raven was her lover? Was it possible
she was so flustered because Raven had cracked open a niche in her personal armor? Sent a warm breeze wafting inside her shell, a sensuous swirl insinuating its way to her heart?

No. Wrong part of the anatomy. As she’d told herself that afternoon at the Archery Field, all she was feeling was the uncomplicated lust of a woman who’d gone too long without a man. Michael Turco just happened to come along at a weak moment. He was simply too much man to ignore. Big and tough . . . tenderhearted. Chivalrous.

And wouldn’t he hate to be called
that
!

Cat strode down the sandy road as if her abdomen didn’t scream with every step. If she’d thought to get away from Raven, she’d failed. He was swinging along beside her as if he hadn’t made his outrageous remark about making it with LALOC’s celibate knight. As if they weren’t headed back toward their tiny, intimate, dark tent, destined to spend the night side by side with nothing but a lantern between them.

“Look, Cat, I’m sorry. I’m feeling lean and mean and I took it out on you.” Three more paces, while unspoken thoughts zinged between them. “So I’m not cut out for undercover work and I’m no ladies man. What else is new? We still have a job to do. Are you with me?”

“Yes.” Cat didn’t slow down, didn’t turn her head.

Ahead, the lights of the wash house sent a glow over the trail. Too close to their camp for frank conversation, they closed the distance in silence. A party was just breaking up at the camp site to the tune of boisterous song, feminine giggles and the sonorous tones of their shire’s seneschal ordering that the torches be put out with great care. Raven and Cat waved to those who were cleaning up, made straight for their tent.

Cat didn’t even try to stifle a groan as she bent down to go through the low opening. Strong hands steadied her, eased her to the ground in the center of the small space. Raven hunkered down on his heels in front of her. In the faint light that shone through the screening, Cat found his rough-hewn face beautiful. Not handsome, never that. But beautiful in its character, the planes and angles of a man who had no trouble distinguishing right from wrong, the web lines worn more by caring than hard living.
His black eyes
blaze
d
with some inner light even in the deep shadows of their nylon igloo.

When he spoke, his words echoed her own frantic thoughts. “Look, Cat, let’s face facts here. It’s a damn good thing you’re hurting tonight, because I admit I want you. I’d have to be some kind of alien robot not to. It’s wrong, it messes up my head, messes up my mission. But if you weren’t hurt, I’d probably be doing my damnedest to get you in the sack.” Raven tugged at her turned-back veil, his deft fingers easing out the hair pins. With care for her artistic creation, he gently laid the headdress aside. “Are we straight here, woman? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I can get a good night’s sleep?” Cat ventured, unsure if she was relieved, insulted, or exultant that he was truly interested.

“Do they make tents with two rooms?” Raven growled. “If so, I’m going to find one before the next Event.”

“Sure, lots of couples have them. One for sleeping, one for their garb.” Obviously, her brain was running on automatic. That wasn’t at all what she should have said. Raven actually had the nerve to chuckle.

And what happened when they got back to the real world? Cat wondered. When they were FHP Lieutenant Michael Turco and Kate Knight, the paralegal who created costumes on the side? Were they an item at LALOC only? Or did Michael have something more in mind?

“You need help getting out of your gown?” Raven sounded as if the sand had permeated his vocal cords.

“Just help getting up. I’ll change in the wash house.” Cat felt for the switch on the lantern, flicked it on so she could find her nightshirt.

Twenty minutes later they were each tucked up in their sleeping bags, the torches dark, the campsite silent except for the rustle of nighttime creatures in the surrounding woods, the chirp of insects, the occasional bellow of a distant frog.

“I meant it about the tent, Kate. I’m going to look for one after work Monday.”

“You don’t need to get a big one. We could have separate tents.”

Michael groaned. “Kate, we’ve only blown our cover to the VIPs. We have to do everything we can to maintain it for everyone else.”

“Oh.”

“So I’m going shopping.”

“Okay.”

Cat turned her back on Raven, tried to concentrate on the peacefulness of the night. She loved being out in the woods . . . away from modern civilization and its problems. Until recently, she thought she’d found her perfect niche. That of a loner buoyed up by the camaraderie of like-minded LALOC members. Now she was being forced to face reality. Sharing a tent with Michael Turco was more exciting than fighting, more stimulating than being knighted. She should be terrified . . . but she wasn’t. If he touched her she’d probably . . .

Whack him with her sword—

Kick him in the balls—

Her heart was thudding so loudly, he couldn’t fail to hear it! Cat buried her face in her pillow, muffling her gasps for air. A soft snore riffled across the short distance between them. Silently, Cat groaned. She was suffering, dammit, and Raven was asleep.

Four days later Kate Knight got out of her car, brushed aside a tendril of bougainvillea which was encroaching on the carport, and hauled herself up the steep steps to her mobile home. She still hurt like hell and hoped nobody was watching as she inched her way up, trying to avoid the inevitable stab of pain just below her sternum. She should take the blasted steps at her usual pace and be done with it. What was a little agony to a LALOC knight? Soonest done, soonest mended.

Not!

She should be getting lunch, but her appetite seemed to have gone with her ease of movement. Kate poured a tall glass of grapefruit juice laced with tangerine and lowered herself, gingerly, into the comfortably upholstered lavender chair. A mountain of pearls for Queen Eilis’s new gown
was
waiting in the sewing room next door. She wanted to cut out anoth
er Ren shirt for Raven.
And here she sat, doing nothing. Except thinking. Moping. More thinking.

On Sunday morning they’d dressed in twenty-first century clothing, struck camp, then piled into the van for the long trip back to
Golden
Beach
. When they were far enough back toward
civilization to pick up a cell
phone tower, Michael had called the hospital and been put through to Garth himself. The archer’s ever-cheerful voice informed them he was fine, he’d be going home in a day or two. No, he didn’t have an enemy in the world, no angry ex-girlfriends or girlfriends’ angry ex-boyfriends. “There’s a nut running around out there, man,” he’d told Raven. “Some kind of phantom creep who gets his jollies out of hurting people.”

Solemnly, Michael had agreed with him, while shrugging off Garth’s profuse thanks for his help. After repeating the conversation verbatim to the others in the van, Michael lapsed into almost total silence. Kate, who had woken to so much abdominal pain she could hardly get out of her sleeping bag, was as close-mouthed as Michael. Mona made a few desultory attempts at conversation, then gave up. When they got home, Michael helped unload the van, insisted on carrying all Kate’s gear, stowing every item away exactly where she told him. He’d said goodnight to Bubba and Mona, then stood in the middle of Kate’s compact living room, looking rather like a tiger in a bird cage. “Look, Kate,” he said, “there’s no way I can thank you enough. I got more than I bargained for this weekend . . .” Michael’s voice trailed away, his face twisting into the first sign of animation she’d seen that day. “A
lot
more,” he added, his dark eyes enigmatic, leaving Kate free to interpret his remark any way she wanted. Was he talking about life in Medieval times or . . .