Florida Knight (32 page)

“Welcome, fair maiden,” Dean
Roberson
quipped. “Another paleface dares enter Apache land.”

“Old tale,” Michael interjected, taking Kate’s arm.

“Word of warning,” Dean intoned. “The army exiled the fightingest Apaches to
Florida
where some ended up in the glades with a bunch of other Indians running from the government.” Dean waggled his eyebrows. “And not all of them stayed in the swamp,” he added, tossing a significant, if good-humored, glance at his father-in-law.

“Apocryphal,” Buck Turco rumbled. “Don’t believe a word, Kate. We’re just plain old Americans here. Maybe older than some,” he conceded, “but I don’t sweat the ancestry.”

Lips twitching, Michael led Kate into the kitchen where his mother was just bending down to lift a glazed ham from the oven. Cramming his hands into her oven mitts, he lifted the pan to the top of the stove.

Kate eyed the immensity of the Turco’s country kitchen. A place of wonder, it seemed larger than her entire mobile home. Gleaming countertops, beautifully detailed wooden cabinets, stove, grill, double ovens, and every other kitchen appliance ever invented from microwave to juicer and bread machine. Ruthlessly, Kate repressed a wave of outright jealousy. She wasn’t domestic. It didn’t matter.

Really.

Michael’s mother, she discovered, was only average height, her hair chestnut, eyes a light amber, skin so pale it could almost be called classic English. Carrie Turco’s smile of welcome was so genuine, her spontaneous hug so natural and unaffected Kate couldn’t possibly retreat into her shell. She didn’t even stop to wonder if Michael’s mother was looking on her as the answer to the Turcos’ prayers for their eldest son to settle down.

That would come later.

“Hi, Kate.”

She gulped, repressing a gasp of dismay, as she turned toward the doorway. Blast Michael! Why hadn’t he warned her Mark was in a wheelchair? He’d aged five years, Kate thought. Yet Mark Turco was still the handsome charmer, the dashing dark-eyed knight, somehow managing to give the impression his wheelchair was only a temporary inconvenience, a new toy to be played with and discarded when he grew tired of it.

“Hi, yourself!” Kate strode across the kitchen, bent down to give Mark a hug. “So how goes it?” she asked, allowing him to see in her eyes the anxiety her light words masked.

Mark tossed his head toward the hallway. “So let’s talk.” He did a fast wheelie, as adept at his wheelchair as he once was with his horse, and headed down the hall, obviously expecting Kate to follow. After an apologetic glance at Michael and his mother, Kate trotted after him. Mark disappeared through a door at the end of hallway. Kate followed. The room was an office, complete with nearly every gadget considered essential to the modern age, from computer, printer, scanner, fax
, and
copier to multi-line phone. “Sit,” Mark commanded, waving a hand toward an office swivel chair. Kate sat.

“A spectacular girl,” Carrie Turco approved as Kate followed Mark out of the kitchen.

Michael looked down on his mother with one eyebrow raised, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Well?” Carrie challenged, surprising him..

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

“What else can I say? I just met the girl.
Spectacular
covers it all. Her looks are striking. She’s a match for you in energy and intelligence, that much I can see at a glance. If she wasn’t well brought up and good-natured, you wouldn’t have brought her here. So what more can I say?”

“You’re biting your tongue on a lot of questions.”

Carrie Turco turned away, ostensibly to check on something simmering on the stove. Over her shoulder she said, “You warned us not to jump to conclusions, Michael, and I’m trying. But . . .” Carrie sighed, looked her son in the eye. “Let’s face it, we all want to know if you’re serious about Kate. I mean, I can’t remember the last time you brought a girl home for dinner. I know you think I’m anxious to marry you off,” Carrie added in a rush, “but it’s time, you know. You’ve been on your own too long. A wife and children are wonderful things, Michael. Don’t blame us for wondering, even pushing, a bit.”

Michael gave his mother a bear hug. “I don’t, mom. Oh, I admit I grumble when you’re eager to hear about any girl I date more than once. But . . . well, a home and family are beginning to look more appealing by the minute. Scary, but true. Unfortunately . . .” Michael stepped back, ran a hand through his straight black hair. “Unfortunately, Kate’s not quite on the same wave length yet. But,” he
added with a
grin, “I’m working on it.

Carrie squeezed her son’s arm. “I’m glad there’s someone at last, Michael. And no need to worry. You’re a fighter. You always seem to get what you want.”

Michael’s smile faded, he shook his head. “It’s all so new, I can’t really be sure where we’re headed. I’m so used to being alone. So’s Kate. There’s a lot we have to work out. At this point it could go either way. But, yes, I catch myself thinking beyond tomorrow or next week. This one could be for the long haul.”

From the sparkle in his mother’s eyes Michael could tell she was suppressing an urge to shout, “Hip hip, hooray!” But Carrie Turco merely smiled a secret little smile and turned back to the stove.

Obviously, Mark Turco had passed Speech Therapy with flying colors. “Look, Kate,” he burst out as soon as she sat down, “I’m sorry you got mixed up in all this. I never thought of old Michael as being the Quest type, but finding this jerk has turned into his personal Holy Grail. Which is no excuse for getting you involved.”

Even as Kate found herself springing to Michael’s defense, she was aware of the irony. “It’s all right, really,” she declared. “It’s a simple thing, introducing him to LALOC. And the king knows. I mean”—Kate smiled—“it’s pretty hard to hide that Michael’s a cop.”

Mark grinned, then shook his head, his good humor quickly fading. “This guy’s dangerous, Kate. I don’t want his madness to spill over on you. Michael shouldn’t be using you like this.”

Warmed by his concern, Kate paused her automatic protest. She really didn’t know Mark Turco well. They were simply acquaintances who knew each other from the Medieval and Renaissance Fair circuit. Yet he was reacting with the concern of a brother. Her brother, not Michael’s. She needed to treat his anxiety with as much seriousness as he was. “I admit I was angry when Michael first asked me to help him go undercover among my friends. It seemed like betrayal. And then”—Kate looked Mark straight in the eye—“and then I recalled why he was doing it. That it was for you. And for the other people who had been hurt. Plus the people who would be hurt—as they have been these last few weeks.”

Mark looked down, then out the window toward the brilliant April sunshine. “You’re saying I shouldn’t take so much blame on myself, that I’m too blasted egotistical.”

“Mark,” Kate chided gently, “I’m saying you’re not the only one who’s been hurt. The worst, yes, but Michael’s doing this for everyone, including me, because any of us could be next. I’m
glad
to be helping.” Mark was now scowling at the dark computer screen. “Okay,” Kate added briskly, “I doubt Michael would be giving his own time to what’s really a low-priority investigation, and outside his jurisdiction, if it weren’t for you. But he is, and I’m damned glad of it. We’ve got some kind of crazy prankster, maybe a genuine madman on the loose, and none of the rest of us are qualified to know what to do when we actually find out who it is.”

Silence. Kate couldn’t tell if she’d made her point or not.

“So how are you and big brother getting along?”

The question came out of thin air. Kate’s feet pressed into the floor, as if she were about to jump up and run. “Uh . . . fine,” she murmured.

“Fine as in you’re sleeping together, or as in you’re still celibate?”

Kate gasped. “Who told you I was celibate?” she demanded.

“Come on, Kate, be real. A woman your age is celibate, and you think the guys aren’t going to talk about it?”

Of course they talked about it. The LALOC men talked about it; why shouldn’t the men on the Fair circuit? Why shouldn’t she be the butt of crude jokes, the meat of speculation, innuendo, gossip . . .
Damn and blast!

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Mark persisted.

“Your brother and I are friends,” Kate replied, hoping her tone would give him frostbite.

“That phrase sure covers a multitude of sins.”

“We leave sinning to our psycho.” Even as she said it, Kate cringed at her Miss-Prim-and-Proper tone.

“I didn’t think old Michael was such a slow-top.” Mark shook his head. “Here the whole family is rejoicing because big brother’s brought a girl home for dinner, and now we find he’s not even sleeping with—”

“
You wouldn’t!
”

Mark sighed. “No, you’re right, I don’t tell other people’s secrets. I apologize. I was way out of line. It’s just that . . . I guess I’ve been bound to this damn chair too long. Have to get my kicks somehow. And . . . well, I kinda hoped you and Michael were hitting it off. A match made in heaven and all that. I mean, it’s gotta be at least ten years since he brought a girl to the house.”

Kate winced. She’d been right to be terrified. This
was
a significant occasion. No wonder everyone was examining her like some prize hunk of meat newly displayed on the counter. She wasn’t going to forgive Michael for this. He was creating a false impression, fooling his parents, his sister, everyone but Mark. Making her into something she wasn’t.

The question was, by fitting her into his personal life, was Michael making her into something she wanted to be?

It was just a Sunday dinner, for heaven’s sake! No need to make such a fuss. Talk about making mountains out of molehills.

“I’m here because Michael and I are working together,” Kate stated firmly. “We’re partners, that’s all.” She turned the full force of flashing green eyes on Mark. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let your sense of humor get the best of you. You know—tossing out smart remarks, cute innuendos, knowing smirks.
If
—and it’s a very big
if
—anything is going to happen between Michael and me, it needs privacy to grow on. Lots of it. You start making us a couple, and I’m walking home. Got it?”

Mark’s grin was unrepentant. “Got it
. . .
Sis.”

“If you weren’t in a wheelchair . . .,” Kate threatened.

Chuckling, Mark snapped his chair around and headed for the door, grandly waving Kate in front of him.

Chapter 19

“Do you think Ace would like a playmate?” Michael asked as they knelt beside the box of kittens, which was tucked into a corner of the laundry room. Five small balls of fur, eyes barely open, wriggled for position against their mother’s underbelly, pink mouths searching for a nipple, tiny claws kneading fur as they, too, had their Easter dinner.

“I’d like to make off with the whole litter,” Kate admitted, “but one cat is about all a mobile home can stand.” She made soothing noises to the momma cat, a coal black long-hair who, from the mixed colors and fur quality of her offspring, had probably mated with an orange alley cat. “Pretty babies,” Kate cooed. “Pretty, pretty babies. We’re not going to hurt them, you know.” Carefully, Kate stretched out her hand, petted the mother cat’s head. Equally slowly, she touched an index finger to the soft body of one of the kittens. The mother cat watched intently, but didn’t move, recognizing Kate as a cat person.

She sighed. “Oh, Michael, they’re so beautiful.”

“I’m not sure Mom would agree with you. That’s a pedigreed Persian who broke through a window screen to get to freedom. And a really mixed-up litter.”

“True romance,” Kate murmured.

“Hormones.”
Shit!
That was the last thing in the world he should have said. Kate was actually feeling sentimental, and he’d interjected the ugly face of pure lust. “They
are
cute,” he added hastily. “Babies are always cute.” Did he actually believe that? Had he even looked, really looked, at Gayle’s children when they were babies?

Michael didn’t care for the upheaval tearing at his ordered life. The feeling that he’d strayed from the comfortable world he’d known for so long, opening a door into some terrifying new plane of existence. A world he’d thought a deep abyss to be scrupulously avoided, and which was suddenly glowing with warmth and light, enticing him in. Hell, he was as terrified of what was happening as Kate was. And yet . . . neither of them seemed to have much choice.

Kate moved her finger to the runt of the litter, a tiny scrap of orange, still rooting around its mother’s fur, trying to find a source of milk. Gently, she pushed aside a larger kitten, making sure it didn’t lose its grip on its meal, then positioned the runt on a newly exposed nipple. Eagerly, it seized hold, its little jaw working away at its slim hold on life. “I guess . . . I can’t resist that one,” Kate sighed. “Do you think Ace will use him for a football?”

“Probably, but six or seven weeks from now when he’s ready to leave his mother, he’ll be used to scrapping for food, know how to hold his own. So I wouldn’t worry about it. In fact, he’ll probably end up chasing Ace. That cat of yours is not exactly the bravest feline on the block, you know.”