Gift of Gold (6 page)

If Laura thought her friend was chattering inanely, she kindly refrained from saying so. She smiled back, her bright hazel eyes moving with open interest from Jonas’s unruffled expression to Verity’s pink-tinged cheeks. Beneath the lighting of the spa room, Laura’s shoulder-length brown hair gleamed with health. In fact, her whole body looked quite sleek and trim and bursting with energy, as befitted the manager of a spa. She was three years older than Verity and occasionally took a somewhat protective attitude toward her.

Laura was not above trying to matchmake for Verity and had made several futile attempts to pair her friend off with a carefully chosen up-and-coming type who was vacationing at the spa. To date, all of Laura’s efforts had failed, so it was not surprising that she found the sight of Verity in a man’s arms quite interesting. Verity stifled a groan and finished drying herself.

“Don’t rush out on my account,” Laura said hastily as Jonas hauled himself lightly out of the pool. “Feel free to stay as long as you like. Verity and her friends aren’t subject to the same rules as the guests.”

“That’s all right,” Jonas said, his eyes on Verity as he reached for a towel to wrap around his waist. “Something tells me it’s time to call it a night. Ready to go back to the cabin, Verity?”

Verity cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said firmly, “I am. Good night, Laura.”

Laura’s smile was beatific. “Good night, Verity. Nice to meet you, Jonas. I’m glad Verity was able to solve her staffing problems so quickly. Good help is so hard to get.”

Chapter
Three

Jonas
got out of bed Monday morning with a feeling of pleasant expectation. The No Bull was closed for the day and he intended to use the free time to finish settling into his new home. It looked like he was going to be around for a while, he thought, as he padded barefoot across the cold wooden floor to the small, chilled bathroom. The notion gave him an unfamiliar sense of satisfaction.

He glanced at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined every wall of the small cabin and wondered where he would put his few personal items. Someone, presumably Emerson Ames, had already turned the place into a long-term storage facility for a private library.

Well, Jonas reminded himself as he considered the limited room available, he didn’t need much space. He’d been traveling light for years. A man on the run didn’t let himself get weighed down with too many belongings.

He studied himself critically in the cracked bathroom mirror while he ran water into the sink. There was no getting around the fact that he did not appear too prepossessing in the mornings. The dark stubble of his beard gave his lean face a shadowed, menacing look. Jonas wondered if Verity would mind.

Ah, well, she would get used to it. After all, he had.

He worked up a lather and applied it to the stubble while he contemplated the mental image of Verity in the mornings. Jonas decided she would look pleasantly tousled and flushed with sleep, all her normal barriers lowered.

Those barriers had begun to crumble quite nicely last night in the spa pool. Jonas felt another wave of satisfaction go through him as he picked up his razor. Given a little more time, he would have had that prim swimsuit off of her. Verity hadn’t been fighting him. In fact, she had seemed as caught up in the moment as he had.

It was too bad about Laura Griswald’s interruption, but Jonas was philosophical. He had plenty of time. He’d been in a rush to locate Verity, but now that he’d found her, he could afford to take things easy. He hadn’t even tried to pick up where he’d left off in the pool last night after he’d walked Verity back to her cabin. He had enough sense to know when to push and when not to.

He felt he had all the time in the world. It was a pleasant feeling. The idea of getting to know Verity slowly and intimately filled him with a throbbing excitement. The only major problem Jonas could see was the very practical one of how long he could restrain himself physically. After last night, it was going to be hard to let things take a slow, leisurely course toward bed. But he was determined to try. The last thing he wanted to do was rush her.

Verity deserves a proper courtship.

Jonas frowned into the mirror, wondering where that thought had come from. Was that what he was doing? Courting Verity? No, not quite. He wanted to learn her secrets, but that wasn’t the same as wanting to marry the woman, for Christ’s sake.

Jonas finished shaving and took his shower. By the time he was dressed and had water on the stove for instant coffee, the cabin was finally beginning to get warm. He made a mental note to see what he could do about the lousy heating system. He was supposed to be a handyperson, after all.

And if he didn’t get the system fixed, it was going to be one long, chilly winter here by the lake.

Of course, the winter would be far more comfortable if he moved in with his boss, Jonas told himself. He fingered the earring in his pocket as he stood by the stove waiting for the water to boil. From the kitchen window he could see the light in Verity’s bedroom window. She was up early, as usual.

A slow smile of satisfaction and anticipation edged his mouth. The gold circlet in his pocket felt warm to the touch, and the faint pulse of the earring’s vibrations was full of promise. Just like Verity.

Verity spent Monday morning taking inventory and planning menus for the week ahead. She would have to arrange for a delivery of rice and a few other staples, she noted. The supply of buckwheat was almost gone; her buckwheat crepes had proven quite popular. She sat at the desk in her tiny office and sipped coffee while she made lists, checked accounts, and paid bills.

The work was fairly routine and she found herself thinking about other things while she wrote out checks and made notes. Mostly what she thought about was Jonas Quarrel.

Verity still didn’t understand quite what had happened last night in the spa pool. True, she was twenty-eight years old and still a virgin, but she was far from naive. She had been kissed before and had derived moderate pleasure from the process.

But what she had been discovering last night could hardly be described as moderate. It couldn’t even be described as purely physical. Something more had been involved, something that went beyond the physical. On one level she felt vaguely alarmed, but on another, more immediate level, Verity was dangerously intrigued. She wondered how far things would have gone if Laura Griswald hadn’t walked into the spa room.

She was very much afraid she knew the answer to that question, and her insides tightened at the knowledge.

Everything had felt so right when Jonas held her in his arms. After all these years of waiting and wondering, things had finally felt
right.

But they had felt right with the wrong man.
It wasn’t fair. Her father had warned her once that life was not always fair, she reflected. It was more of a crapshoot, he had explained. A game without any rules except those an individual made for himself.

Perhaps it was just as well that Laura had interrupted matters, Verity decided as she put away the large check register. She needed time to think before she became any more involved with Jonas Quarrel. The last thing she wanted in her life was another drifter, even if he did know the secret of stirring her senses.

She frowned thoughtfully, wondering if Jonas had gained any wrong impressions from what had happened last night. Then she told herself there was nothing to worry about. In all the ways that counted, she was the one in charge around here. If worst came to worst, she could always fire him.

As she comforted herself with that thought, the phone rang. Verity smiled wryly as she reached for the receiver. It didn’t take much intuition to guess who would be calling.

“Hello, Laura,” Verity said without any preamble. “The answers are, I don’t know, no, and I doubt it.”

“How did you know what I was going to ask?” Laura demanded ruefully.

“You want to know where Jonas Quarrel came from, if he’s already my lover, and if he isn’t, will he be.”

“I’ll take comfort in the ‘I doubt it’ answer. There’s still hope,” Laura shot back. “You really did hire him?”

“He showed up looking for a job on Friday afternoon. He arrived just as I was about to pick up the phone and yell for help.”

“Well, he’s interesting, I’ll grant you that. But as much as I’d like to see you involved in a love affair, it’s my duty to advise caution. These days a woman can’t be too careful. Did you check his references?”

“You know me, Laura, I always check references.”

“Well? What did you learn?”

“To summarize: He’s an expert on Renaissance history and he’s got a lot of experience washing dishes, tending bar, and bouncing drunks. He’s drifted most of the way around the world earning a living with those job skills.”

“You don’t have a bar and you don’t get many drunks at the No Bull,” Laura pointed out. “Nor are you in the business of teaching Renaissance history.”

“True, but I do need a dishwasher. He’s a hard worker, Laura.”

“He looked more like a fast worker to me. I couldn’t believe it when I walked into the spa last night and saw you wrapped around him.”

She heard the back door open and close and knew Jonas was in the cafe kitchen. Her fingers tightened on the phone. “Don’t exaggerate. I was hardly wrapped around him. It was a simple kiss, Laura. Don’t make too much out of it.”

“Are you kidding? After three years of trying to match you up with a nice stockbroker or lawyer and getting nowhere for all my pains, you turn around and jump into a spa with your newest dishwasher and I’m not supposed to make too much out of it?”

Verity chuckled. “You should be grateful and infinitely relieved, Laura. For three years you’ve said my biggest problem was that I was too picky.

“Your biggest problem is that you’re going to spend your whole life looking for a man who has all your father’s strengths and none of his weaknesses.”

“Laura…”

“Common sense, which you usually have plenty of, should have told you by now that you’re not going to find that combination in any normal male. You are too picky. Much too picky. But there’s no need to go crazy now that you’ve decided to be more reasonable in what you demand in a man. Let me find you someone interesting from my guest list for next weekend. Now, I’ve got a nice doctor down here, age forty, and he’s coming by himself. Probably divorced.”

“Or gay.”

“No. If he were gay, he’d probably be checking in with another man,” Laura said thoughtfully. “I think this doctor might be a viable candidate.”

“Listen, Laura, I’d love to chat about my problems but right now I’ve got to go. I’ve got a million things to do and…”

“And your dishwasher just walked through the door, right?”

On cue, Jonas appeared in the office doorway, dark brows forming a solid, disapproving line across his blade of a nose. Verity glanced up and found her senses awash in memories of foaming water and a wet, warm kiss that had been more intimate than any kiss she had ever known.

“Goodbye, Laura. I’ll talk to you later.” She dropped the phone back into the cradle. “Good morning, Jonas,” she said very brightly.

“What the hell are you doing inside on your day off? Let’s go down to the lake. There’s some leftover curried lentil loaf in the refrigerator. Not the same thing as a real meat loaf, but if I put enough mayonnaise on the bread I might be able to disguise the stuff. I walked into town and picked up some beer an hour ago. We’re all set.”

Verity swung around in her chair so suddenly that she bumped one jeaned leg against the desk. “Ouch, dammit.” She winced, rubbing her knee. “I thought you were going to settle in to the cabin today.”

Jonas shrugged in his casual, curiously graceful way. “I’ve already done that. I didn’t have all that much to unpack. The main problem was finding room on the bookshelves for a few of my things. Your dad apparently has what is politely called eclectic tastes. He’s got everything from Nancy Drew to Shakespeare stashed in that cabin.”

Verity laughed. “That’s the library he used to educate me. The only thing Dad never throws away is a book. Everything else in his life is disposable. When I settled here in Sequence Springs, he boxed up all the books he’d been lugging around for years and shipped them to me to store.”

Jonas grinned. “I saw a copy of Castiglione’s
Courtier
on one shelf. Did you ever read it?”

“Years ago, when I had a certain interest in the Renaissance,” Verity admitted cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

Jonas’s grin turned wicked. “I happened to be thinking about a particular passage from it last night, and when I spotted it on the shelf this morning I thought about it a little bit more.”

“What part?” Verity demanded suspiciously, aware that she was enjoying the teasing quality in his voice.

“The part where one of the courtiers—Gaspare, I think—remarks that the way to win the fortress of a woman’s mind and soul is to take possession of her body.”

Verity smiled loftily. “I believe the response to that stupid remark was that if that were true, there would be no unhappy married women. Every woman would be madly in love with the man who had the right to make love to her, namely her husband. But since there are plenty of unhappily married women in the world, I think we can safely assume Gaspare was full of chicken manure.”

Jonas folded his arms and studied her for a few seconds. “You must have had more than a fleeting interest in the Renaissance if you remember that tort of detail from a book you read years ago. Let’s go pack lunch and head for the lake, boss lady. I’m hungry.”

Verity thought about telling him one more time not to call her “boss lady” but decided to tackle that at a later date. The idea of a picnic was too compelling to resist. It had been a long time since she’d been on a picnic.

They packed a lunch and Jonas put a couple of cans of cold beer into the basket. Then he led Verity through the trees to the water’s edge. He made a production out of picking the perfect spot among the pines before he allowed her to settle down on the blanket he had brought along. Verity was surprised to find herself very hungry.